Page 11 of Savior

Sure, they’ll give it a few weeks of attention, and then it’ll be buried. She’s one of many who go missing daily here.

I saw a statistic once that said nearly forty people go missing in the New York City area each day. Thirteen thousand by year’s end.

She will sink to the bottom of the stack on the detective’s desk quicker than the next case lands on it.

“I’m sure she’ll pop up,” Mama says, and I flick my eyes towards her.

“What do you mean? What if something happened to her?” I ask her. I’ve seen the darkest parts of this city in the last few months of working with Ardesia, but Mama doesn’t need to know that.

As much as she hates me being in the priesthood, shecan’tknow that. She’d be the one who called the church and blabbed to get me de-clothed.

“She’s survived this long with a whore for a mother and a junkie for a father. She’s got backbone, is all I’m saying. A girl like that doesn’t go down without a fight.”

John nods, and there’s no arrogant look on his smug face for once.

It breeds hope in my gut, where I have had none for quite some time.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I agree.

Long after dinner and returning home, I can’t shake the idea of Ray’s daughter being out there somewhere. Who the hell knows who could have her? The streets of New York City aren’t safe at night, and a girl like her would know that.

Why would she be walking them alone?

Could it be she’s had such a rough upbringing that it’s bred a false sense of courage in her?

Sitting down at my laptop, I power it on and pull up a search engine.

Sloane Collins,I type in, chewing anxiously at the tip of my finger as the results load.

The newspapers had about as much information as John and Mama did.

But what they had that Mama didn’t was her photograph.

My blood stops moving as I stare at the photo of Sloane on the screen.

She has wavy hair, pouty lips, a round face, and a button nose. She’s in black and white in the article, but I’d kill to know her eye color.

Is it still the mix of green and brown it was when she was a toddler, which was the last time I saw Sloane?

Or did they darken as the world obscured and molded her into adulthood?

She’d be twenty by now.

Running my thumb over the photograph on the screen, something deep in my stomach burns too much to examine.

I snag the article and e-mail it to Ardesia, along with a brief paragraph on how I know the girl, and ask for his help.

If anything, the Ricci name may provide a bit more information than the cops can access.

CHAPTER FOUR

SLOANE

“Hold still, little sheep. I might even make it feel good for you,” Giani says, panting as he spreads my legs and rips through the panties that I was given to wear earlier.

Fighting him seems futile, but I do it anyhow. I’m not like the girls he usually takes advantage of. Nor do I want to be. You can choose how to handle situations where your life and limb hang in the balance. And I choose to fight with everything I have.

Frustration makes Giani growl, slurring derogatory words at me as he wrestles me.

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