Page 75 of Bitter Falls

The drive to Knoxville takes a torturously long time, and inside my brain a horrible litany of the abuse that my boys could be suffering loops over and over and over, and I have to keep my hands firm on the steering wheel so they don’t shake. It feels like a relief when I spot the office building in the distance, and I park and hustle the girls upstairs. My key card gets us inside the plain, solid door, and we step inside the large open-plan office. Lots of desks, and some of them are occupied with people doing computer work; for some of J. B.’s investigators, that’s the only kind they do. For others, their desk is just a place to type up reports and take calls.

I don’t even have one, officially. I just claim one of the desks without a nameplate whenever I’m here, which isn’t that often. That’s the agreement I have with J. B.

Her office is a glass box near the back in the corner; she has all the blinds raised, and she sees me coming. She meets us halfway and gives me a hug. “Hey,” she says. “How are you?” She shoves me back to take a good look, and shakes her head before I can try to lie. “Never mind. I know how you are. Lanny, hi. And I recognize Vee Crockett, of course.” She would, from Wolfhunter. Her glance toward me clearly says she has no idea why Vee’s with us now, and I don’t try to explain. “Hey, girls. Why don’t you go back there to the break room and grab some snacks while I talk with Gwen?”

Lanny hangs back for a second until I nod, then takes Vee back in the direction that J. B. points. I follow J. B. to her office, and wait until she’s closed the door and lowered the blinds before I sink into a chair. She leans against her desk and crosses her arms.

“I’d ask how in the world Vee Crockett figures into this, but that’s probably not important right now,” she says. “You need help, and not just moral support. Right?”

I nod. The suffocating pressure is closing in again. I want to be Badass Gwen, the woman she hired, the one who fights everything, all the time...but I’ve got no one to fight. I suck in a deep breath and say, “I need Carol.”

J. B. doesn’t move. “I put Fareed and Cicely on that after your bail hearing.”

“And the case?”

“Dropped as of twenty-seven minutes ago. I checked. You’re no longer out on bail. You’re a free woman.”

“That’s a relief,” I say. “Fareed and Cicely?” They’re top operatives for J. B. Fareed is an absolute master of all levels of the internet; he can trace anyone, anywhere, anytime if they’ve ever so much as glanced at a computer. And Cicely is a little pocket dragon of a woman J. B. hired away from a top bail bondsman. Cicely isdangerous. And expensive. “Thanks.”

She waves that aside. “Fareed got nothing, which wasn’t too much of a surprise, as careful as this woman is. But Cicely hit the ground running. She had a theory that Carol might not chance public transportation again, not even a bus, so she went to domestic abuse shelters first. Carol has visible bruising and they don’t ask questions.”

“And?”

J. B. gives me a smile that makes me remember what hope feels like. “She found her. Cicely’s sitting on the place; so far, Carol hasn’t tried to leave it. She probably feels secure for now, but that shelter has a network that could get her out of Knoxville quickly and quietly, anytime she wants it.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“It’s Cicely. She’s never wrong.” J. B. raises eyebrows at me. “What do you want to do? Please don’t say abduct Carol; I’m not risking it. And I don’t think you’ll get her to come with you willingly this time.”

“I’m not trying to,” I tell her. “I just need a conversation. She can point to the exact location and what we’ll be up against when we get there. Carol’s the key to getting Connor and Sam back safe.” I have a brief, dizzying moment imagining what might happen if Carol won’t talk to me. What would I do then?

It occurs to me that I could put a tracker on her. Maybe in a zipper pocket of her backpack. That way, if everything fails, if I have to trade her for my son’s life...

I flinch. I can’t.I can’t.I won’t betray Carol to the people she fears, even after what she pulled on me. She was just trying to survive then. To protect herownchild.

The thought I’ve been trying to avoid brings me up short, and I ask J. B., “Does she have a child with her at the shelter?”

J. B. cocks her head to one side, still unreadable. “Why would you ask?”

“Because I think when she ran from the cult she was pregnant,” I say. “The men who came to my house were looking for herand a child. I’m sure they want to shut her up, if she’s got information that could link them back to Remy’s kidnapping. But they want that child just as much.”

J. B. sighs and looks down. Her shoulders angle forward. “Cicely says there’s a child with her, three or four years old. A boy.”

Carol must have retrieved her child from whoever was keeping him for her. She’s planning to get out of town as soon as the heat dies down. A domestic abuse shelter is an absolutely perfect place to hide.

“If it comes to that...” J. B. shakes her head. “Maybe you have to tell them where she is.”

“I can’t.” I say it softly, but it feels heavy in the air anyway. “I won’t turn her or her son over to them. I could never live with that. Everything I know about this cult tells me they see Carol as nothing but a walking incubator, and her son...They’d raise him to believe as they do. If Vee’s right, I’ve seen video of one of their old compounds. J. B., it’s...” I can’t put into words the wave of slow horror I feel. I remember that nightmarish house in Wolfhunter, and what Sam told me of the women out at Carr’s compound. I can’t condemn Carol back to living hell, or her son.

“I know,” she says. “You were never going to make that bargain, Gwen. That’s why I like you.” She pushes away from the desk. “Come on. I’ll drive.”

We leave Vee and Lanny at the office, over their protests; I don’t want the girls anywhere near this. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Carol’s desperate. She might be armed...I certainly am, and I’d do desperate things to protect my children. I don’t want Lanny and Vee in the line of fire. They’re parked on a sofa in the break room with a pizza and a stack of movies, and a stern warning tostay put. And J. B. assigns someone to watch them too.Trust but verify.I remember Lilah Belldene saying that, and I shake my head.

Dammit. She was right.

The domestic abuse shelter sits in a neighborhood that was once residential, now rezoned for commercial purposes; most of the original houses have been demolished or significantly renovated, but the one J. B. points to as we drive by it looks like the outlier. It’s a large place, at least four or five bedrooms; at one time it was probably a showplace. Now it’s showing its age and is in need of a good coat of paint and roof repairs. There’s no sign on it except a small one that saysNOSOLICITORS. The front door looks normal enough, but it’s painted metal. I’m sure it’s solid. Bars on all the windows too.

“The main entrance is in the rear,” J. B. says. “Cicely’s in a neighbor’s yard watching it. How do you want to do this?”

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