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  “Have you seen a little Latina girl around here today?” she asked in a low voice.

  The man squinted at her, then at the money in her hand. “There’s lots a them Mexicans lives here,” he said.

  “This little girl used to live here, but hasn’t for a while. She may have come back here today, maybe with a Latino man.” She dangled the money, but didn’t offer it to him yet.

  The man wiped a grimy hand across his eyes. “I seen ’em. I think she ran away from him, ’cause he was cussing in Mexican, lookin’ for her.” He chuckled. “He didn’t find her, though. That little chica knows how to hide.”

  “Thanks,” Maddie said, holding the money out to him. As he reached for it, she yanked it out of reach again. “Is there a back way into this building?”

  Scowling, he jerked his head to the left. “There’s a door to the basement down there. It’s s’posed to be locked, but the lock is broken.”

  Maddie gave him the money and got to her feet. “Ready?” she asked, leading the way to the door the man had indicated.

  Spying a broken pallet leaning against the wall, Nan tore a piece of two-by-four loose and, thus armed, followed Maddie and Lyn inside.

  “Where is it?”

  Leisa glared up at Pedro Alarcon who was pacing agitatedly, his hand spasmodically gripping and releasing the butt of the revolver tucked in the waist of his pants. She worked her jaw back and forth, trying to tell if it was broken. She could feel her lips swelling and taste the blood inside her mouth.

  Alarcon was the only man Florida Gonzalez had been truly afraid of. Most other men were stupid, especially if she could get them drunk or hard. Then they only thought of one thing. Occasionally, one of them might hit her if he was a mean drunk, or couldn’t get off, but mostly, they were easy to manipulate. Not Alarcon.

  He was never drunk or stoned. Florida had never seen him with one of the girls. He was always in control, and he was dangerous. One night, she had watched in horror as he slit the throat of one of the other girls, slowly, as if he was enjoying it. Calmly, he looked up at her as he wiped the bloody blade on the woman’s dress and Florida knew that he would do the same to her if she said a word. She warned Mariela, “Never let him see you. Hide when he’s here.” Now she would have said to Leisa, “Be careful what you say.”

  “I asked you a question, bitch,” he said, standing over her as she sat on the floor of the empty apartment. He drew the revolver and aimed it at her.

  She had no idea what he was talking about, but whatever it was, he wanted it badly. She didn’t think he was likely to shoot. She decided to stall. “Where’s Mariela?” she countered.

  It was apparently the wrong question, as he responded by kicking at her viciously, catching her in the right flank. Gasping in pain, she tried to catch her breath, grateful she didn’t have a kidney on that side anymore because she was certain it would no longer function if she did.

  “I know she told you where it is!” he shouted, sounding desperate. “Why else would you be here?”

  Blinking rapidly, trying to clear her vision, Leisa managed to croak, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Mariela saw all of this while peering through a tiny crack in the door of her hiding place. A couple of years ago, she had discovered a sliding panel at the back of one of the closets in their apartment. It opened to reveal a kind of dumb waiter that was originally intended for moving tools and maintenance supplies from one floor to another. If there were clothes or boxes in the closet, it was nearly undetectable. When Mariela found it, it hadn’t been used in decades, but the well-greased pulleys were still operational. She discovered how to manipulate the pulley system to take her all the way down to the basement. This was how she got in and out of the building most of the time, especially when her mother had men in the apartment. She had remained silently crouching in the cramped space for the past several hours, since she’d managed to get away from the man who took her from the zoo.

  She knew what he wanted. Her mama had given it to her the day before she died, saying, “Take this, Mariela, and give it to the policía. They will know what to do with it.”

  Mariela had taken the bundle, but was too afraid to go to the police. The police had taken her mama away before, and she knew they would do the same with her. She had hidden the bundle on the top of the moving carriage instead. When she returned to the apartment late that night, her mama was still and wouldn’t wake. She was like that sometimes. But this time she didn’t wake up the next day or the day after that. Then the police did find her, and then Leisa came.

  Silently, Mariela slid open the access panel above her, and cautiously reached up, feeling for the bundle. It was still where she’d left it. She was just about to pull it down, when she heard the sound of the basement door being opened four stories below her, as even quiet sounds were magnified if you were inside the shaft.

  “Mariela?”

  Startled, Mariela heard her name being whispered from below.

  “Mariela, it’s Miss Maddie. If you’re here, let me help you.”

  Mariela quickly peeked through the crack again. Leisa was on her side on the floor, and Mariela could hear the pacing footsteps of the man. She knew he could hurt Leisa because he used to hurt her mama. Carefully, she began pulling the ropes that moved the box down. She hoped the box would still move silently like it did before.

  When she got to the basement, she slid open the door that closed off her carriage. There, she saw the beam of the flashlight, but couldn’t tell who was behind it. She knew better than to show herself if she wasn’t sure who was there.

  “What floor did Mariela and her mother live on?” a voice whispered.

  “I think the apartment number was 4C,” another voice whispered.

  “I’m here,” Mariela said softly, scaring all three of the women.

  The flashlight beam whipped through the darkness, illuminating her as she stood outside the dumb waiter. Maddie rushed over to her and dropped to her knees, hugging Mariela to her.

  “Oh, honey, are you all right?” Maddie asked.

  Mariela nodded. “He has Miss Leisa. She’s hurt.”

  Maddie released her and held her at arm’s length. “Where?”

  “Upstairs,” Mariela replied.

  Maddie thought quickly. “Lyn, you need to go call the police. Lock yourself in the car until they come, and then bring them up to the fourth floor.” She looked at the dumb waiter. “Does this open directly into your apartment? Is that where Leisa is?”

  Mariela nodded. “It’s my secret place. He has her up there.”

  “I’ll never fit in there,” Maddie muttered.

  “I’ll go,” Nan offered. “You go up the stairs. Maybe if we surprise him from two sides, we can get the upper hand before he hurts Leisa.” She was trying not to picture what might be happening upstairs.

  “All right,” Maddie agreed. She watched for a few seconds as Nan squeezed into the carriage with Mariela. “Be careful.”

  Mariela was the only person who could recall later precisely what happened. When the dumb waiter got up to her old apartment, she and Nan peered through the crack at the edge of the door. The only thing they could see were Leisa’s legs all askew. She seemed to be lying on her side. They could see no sign of Alarcon.

  Nan knew they had to have gotten up to the fourth floor faster than Maddie could by the stairs. Just as she decided to wait a couple more minutes to give Maddie time to get up there, Alarcon stepped into view, a knife in his hand.

  “If you don’t know where it is, puta, then you are of no use to me,” he said menacingly.

  Without thinking, Nan slid the door open and ran at Alarcon. He saw movement behind him, but before he could react, Nan hit him on the side of the head with her two-by-four, dropping him senseless to the floor.

  Mariela scrambled after her, running to Leisa who was conscious, but clutching her side, blood running from her mouth.

  Leisa looked up at Nan who dropped her two-
by-four, breathing hard and looking stunned by what she had just done. She rushed to Leisa’s side and helped her sit up.

  “Are you all right?” she demanded. “What did he do to you?”

  “I’m okay,” Leisa reassured her. “Just a little bruised.”

  Then several things happened simultaneously – Mariela’s eyes widened as she screamed and pointed; Nan turned her head just in time to see Alarcon moving; without thinking, she threw herself across Leisa and Mariela; behind him, Maddie burst through the door. Alarcon was raising the handgun and fired two quick shots as Maddie tackled him from behind, planting her knee on his neck and mashing his face painfully into the floor. She grabbed the two-by-four and bashed his forearm as he fired a third shot. The snap of the bones was masked by his howl of pain.

  A couple of seconds later, three police officers ran into the apartment, closely followed by Lyn.

  “What the f–?” one of the officers began upon surveying the scene. He was stopped mid-word by a jab in the ribs from the female officer next to him.

  “Leisa?” said the third officer as he recognized her still sitting with her back to the wall, a bullet hole in the plaster not a foot from her head.

  “Matt,” she smiled, although her swollen, bloody lips made that an effort.

  Matt Wellby scanned the bizarre scene before him. His eyes lit on Mariela. “Isn’t –” he pointed. “Isn’t that the little girl you came down for last winter?” he asked in complete bewilderment.

  “Ma’am?” the female officer interrupted, looking at Nan who was swaying where she sat.

  “Nan!” Leisa cried, reaching for her as she slumped to the floor, a growing patch of crimson spreading across her back.

  Chapter 21

  “WHAT WERE YOU PLAYING AT?”

  No one voiced that question aloud, but Leisa knew they must have been thinking it, because she was.

  Impatiently, she had shrugged off the paramedics who tried to examine her in the apartment. “I’m fine,” she repeated emphatically, insisting they take care of Nan.

  It didn’t matter that the police finally had enough evidence to charge Pedro Alarcon with various crimes, aided by Mariela when she produced a paper-wrapped bundle that contained thousands of dollars and a large plastic bag of heroin.

  It didn’t matter that Leisa was injured, her still-healing abdomen bruised and bleeding internally where she’d been kicked. She refused to stay in her hospital room once Nan was out of surgery, insisting on sitting by her bed in the ICU to receive her own transfusion.

  “What were you playing at?”

  That wasn’t how the police worded it, but that was the implication as they gathered data for their report, and the entire story fell into place.

  She’d known it was foolish, to say the least, to wander into that part of town at that hour of the night, to think she had any chance of finding Mariela on her own, but “I couldn’t sit and do nothing while Mariela was in danger,” she would have explained, except then she would have had to add, “because it was all my fault.” Only now, because of her, Nan was the one in danger.

  Mariela sensed Leisa’s anguish and felt she was to blame.

  “None of this is your fault,” Maddie said, trying to make Mariela understand. “You were very smart and very brave to be able to get away from him and stay safe.” She and Lyn took Mariela back to St. Joseph’s as the ambulance pulled away with Nan and Leisa inside.

  The bullet had bored through Nan’s right lung, piercing one of the pulmonary arteries, and it had taken hours of careful surgery to repair the delicate tissue. She’d lost a tremendous amount of blood, and looked very pale and fragile as she lay there, not really unconscious, but medicated into a heavy stupor with a chest tube and vacuum pump in place.

  Leisa reached through the bedside rails and held Nan’s hand. “Please, don’t leave me,” she whispered, trying to quell the fear of that shadow, that presence she knew was looming there, waiting to pull her back into its grasp.

  “What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done?” Leisa had asked as she stood on a ladder, carefully running her paintbrush along the ceiling’s edge, cutting in so Nan could roll paint onto the walls of the living room.

  Nan shook her head. “I will never understand how your mind works,” she said somewhat absently as she concentrated on not hitting the ceiling with her roller. “It bounces along like a tumbleweed, and random thoughts pop out of your mouth. I never know what’s going to come out.”

  Leisa laughed. “Stop stalling and answer. What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done?”

  “Buying this house with you,” Nan answered.

  Leisa paused long enough to look down at her ruefully. “Be serious.”

  “I am being serious,” Nan replied, risking a quick glance up at her. “This is scary shit. I’m tied to you legally now.” She shook her head. “I never thought I’d be doing this in my lifetime.”

  Leisa came down off the ladder and wrapped her paintbrush arm around Nan’s neck, kissing her.

  Nan pulled back and looked askance at the paintbrush. “If you get that in my hair, you are going to get this roller someplace you don’t want it,” she warned.

  “Are you sorry?” Leisa asked.

  “Sorry about threatening you with this roller?”

  “No, silly,” Leisa said with a grin. “Sorry about buying this house with me?”

  Nan wrapped her free arm around Leisa’s waist and drew her close, kissing her again. “No. I’m not sorry.”

  “So what’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done?” Leisa asked insistently.

  “You are like a dog with a bone,” Nan sighed in resignation. “Nothing,” she shrugged. She thought about Marcus and never standing up to her mother in his defense, and she thought about giving up her baby to strangers because she didn’t want to be saddled with the responsibility, and she shook her head. “I’ve never done anything brave in my life,” she said flatly.

  Leisa recalled that conversation as she sat there, and thought about all the things she knew now that she hadn’t known then, all the times Nan had sacrificed herself for others.

  “You are the bravest person I know,” she whispered.

  “No,” Nan mumbled groggily. “I was just the closest target.”

  “You’re awake!” Leisa stood, clutching her own side in pain as she leaned over the bed rails to kiss Nan’s forehead.

  “I think that’s the only place that doesn’t hurt,” Nan grimaced as she tried to sit up a little higher in bed.

  “I don’t think you should move yet,” Leisa said worriedly.

  “Oh, I think you’re right,” Nan agreed, sinking back into the same depression in the mattress. She looked up at Leisa. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” Leisa said, brushing Nan’s hair back off her forehead. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have gone down there.”

  Nan squeezed Leisa’s other hand, still clasped in hers. “You had to go.”

  “I couldn’t bear the thought of losing someone else, but then I almost lost you,” Leisa said, her eyes filling suddenly.

  “You almost got yourself killed,” Nan reminded her.

  “You saved our lives, Mariela’s and mine.”

  Nan laughed a little and immediately winced. “I don’t know who that was, but it wasn’t me.”

  “Oh, yes it was,” Leisa said. “You can’t fool me anymore. I’ve seen you without your mask on and I know who you are.” She kissed Nan’s hand tenderly. “You’re my hero.”

  “There you are,” said Jo Ann when she found Leisa sitting in the family room, staring out the window.

  Jo and Bruce had insisted that Leisa come home with them when she was discharged from the hospital, and told Nan they expected her, too, whenever her doctor released her. Jo drove her over to visit Nan briefly each day, but reminded Leisa that she was still supposed to be resting.

  “I keep forgetting to ask if you’ve ever heard from the people in New York,” Jo Ann said casua
lly as she sat at the other end of the couch. She rarely called them by name, and never, Leisa noted, referred to them as her biological mother or brother.

  Leisa looked at her aunt. She hadn’t told anyone about that last day in the hospital in Syracuse. “I don’t really expect to hear from them,” she said vaguely, turning back to the window.

  “What is it, honey?” Jo Ann asked. “You’ve been so quiet.”

  Leisa didn’t answer for long seconds. “I’ve made such a mess of things.” She blinked hard, not wanting Jo to see her crying. “They didn’t…” She pressed her fingers to her eyes, ashamed to admit, even to herself, how much she had wanted them, wanted Eleanor, to want her.

  “They got what they wanted and didn’t need you anymore?” Jo Ann guessed astutely.

  “I know I sound horrible,” Jo had confessed to Nan back when they were still waiting for the results of the bloodwork, “but I hope she isn’t a match. I know I shouldn’t deny the poor boy a kidney –”

  “He’s not a boy,” Nan interrupted. “He’s a twenty-eight-year-old man who sponges off his mother and does absolutely nothing to keep himself healthy. And I know exactly what you mean,” she sighed.

  “I’m worried about Leisa,” Jo said. “I don’t really understand what she thinks she’s going to find with these people, but I’m afraid she’s going to get hurt.”

  Nan looked at Jo and nodded. “I know. It’s like… like she’s lost. Like she’s searching for – I don’t know what. I’m not sure even she knows what she’s searching for, but I agree with you,” she said darkly. “I don’t think she’s going to find it with them.”

  Jo Ann reached out now and squeezed Leisa’s knee. “Was it so important to be part of that family?”

  “No, it’s just…” Leisa wiped her eyes impatiently. “I don’t know why it mattered so much. I am such an idiot.”

  “You’re not an idiot,” Jo said reassuringly. “But you have a family here that loves you.”