Page 37 of Hell to Pay

“Has she ever been out of touch for so long?” I knew from the date of birth on the flyer that Rain was twenty-two, too old to be considered a runaway.

“No.” Hattie’s brown eyes flashed. “The police asked if she’d ever run away when I filed the missing-person’s report.”

“How long had she been working at Pink?” I knew Rain had been a dancer at the adult club from the one and only article I’d been able to find about her disappearance, written by a reporter named Daniel Longhat atThe Blackwell Tribune.

“About a year.” Hattie looked at her hands. “I know how it looks.”

“How what looks?”

“A young woman working at a club like that,” she said softly. “But Rain was a good girl. She lived here with her sister and me, worked and went to school, helped with the bills and tried to save money so she could transfer into a four-year school.”

“She sounds smart,” I said. “Ambitious.”

Hattie looked up and met my eyes. “Yes. She’s both of those things and more.”

I thought about Mr. Suit, about the car behind the Dive. “Had she mentioned any trouble? Anyone who was scaring her or following her? Anything unusual going on at work?”

Hattie hesitated and my nerves went on full alert. There was something, something that had her on alert too.

“Please,” I said. “Even if it seems like nothing, it might be something.”

She studied my face. “Why are you doing this?”

The question wasn’t accusatory. She was genuinely curious. I’d told her on the phone that I was looking into her daughter’s disappearance, but I hadn’t gone any deeper than that. Honestly, she’d just seemed happy someone was asking questions.

I drew in a breath. “I worked at the Dive. It’s a bar not far from Pink.”

Hattie nodded. “I know of it.”

“I thought I saw your daughter being pushed into a car behind the bar a couple months ago. I had a feeling I was seeing something I shouldn’t, and I was right, because a few nights later some men chased me through the woods because of what I saw.”

“Now I really don’t understand,” Hattie said. “You shouldn’t be asking about this. It’ll draw attention to you, put you in danger again. All for someone you don’t even know.”

I bit my lip. “I’m already in danger. And the truth is, I just can’t stop thinking about your daughter. I feel like…” She frowned while I searched for the right words. “I feel like I should have done more that night. Like I should have… I don’t know, yelled at the men to stop or pulled her away from the car or something.”

It was the first time I’d articulated the guilt I’d been carrying around since I’d found the flyer at Cassie’s Cuppa. It was entirely possible I’d been the last person to see Rain before she’d been abducted and I’d just stood there with my mouth hanging open in shock while Mr. Suit had whisked her away.

“Then you both might be gone.” She met my gaze. “Then you wouldn’t be here to ask these questions about her. And the truth is, no one else is asking them.”

I thought about my conversation with Jude, how I’d told him that in my own life at least, it had seemed like even the bad stuff had been planned, that it was all leading me to a destination I couldn’t quite see but one that might not be all bad.

I nodded.

“She liked working at the club for the first few months,” Hattie said, picking up the thread of our conversation. “The girls were nice, the money was good. There were flexible hours, hours that worked with her school schedule. I worried about her — what mother wouldn’t? — but she seemed happy there.”

“What about after that?” Nolan spoke for the first time, his voice soft and respectful. “What about after the first few months?”

She studied him, like she was making a snap character judgement, deciding whether he could be trusted. “She stopped talking about it.”

“About work?” Nolan asked.

Hattie nodded. “She used to tell us things, about the girls who worked there, the customers… Funny stories, things like that.”

“But after the first few months she didn’t?” I asked.

Hattie frowned. “It sounds silly. Maybe she just got bored of it. But it felt like something more.”

“How so?” Nolan asked.

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