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“Thanks for not running away when I walked over,” Natalie said.

The woman was wearing a mint-colored blouse, a blue blazer left off because of the warmth and draped over the fence in front of her, with pants a darker color than the blazer.  Her face mask on her lower face had a pattern of water on it, sunlight highlighting the peaking waves.  Eye irritation from the air pollution had made a blot appear at the outside corner of one eye.  Or maybe she’d had a tear well but recede, not quite tracing a line of mascara down her cheek.  Her straight blond hair was tied back into a loose ponytail.

With face masks hiding expressions, Mia could only focus on the details that were there.

“Should I have?” Mia responded.

“I don’t know.  Maybe?  If people give you weird looks when they think you’re not looking, and look away when you go to meet their eyes?  And avoid talking to you?  Wouldn’t you start to wonder if you’re wrong, and they’re right?  If it’s a dozen people?  A hundred?  Hundreds, over years?”

“I don’t know,” Mia replied.  Short, boring answers, right?  If she could help this conversation run aground, giving no threads to follow, maybe it would be over sooner, her face, insofar as it was visible, readily forgotten.

“Something to think about.  Which one is yours?”

“I have two.  One is… out of sight, for the moment.  Older.  My son is over there.”

Ripley wasn’t quite out of sight, but anything to mislead.

“Hm, can’t quite tell who you mean.  Is he the wrecking ball, the one very bravely standing up to the wrecking ball, the adorable shy one, the little Lothario with a girl attached to him already?”

Mia was very much not a fan of attaching romantic motives to anything -or as some adults seemed to do, near-everything- a small child did, but she held her tongue.  “Which do you think?”

“The shy one?”

Mia shook her head.

“The Lothario?”

She came very close to rolling her eyes.  She folded her arms.

“Wrecking ball, then?”

“Yeah.  Speaking of…”  Tyr was smashing his face mask into the face masks of other boys, like a goat butting heads, testing the sturdy material and the padded sealing around the edges.  Mia whistled.

Tyr broke away immediately and came jogging over.  Huffing for breath, rosy in the cheeks, light in his eyes.  Mia put her hands on her hips, mock stern.

“Do something else?” he asked, moving closer to the fence.

“Please.”

He lingered.

“No rewards if you were just being rough.”

“Okay!” he shouted, already moving, seemingly from the word ‘no’.

“That’s impressive,” Natalie said.  “I can’t get mine to listen for things he wants to do.  Can you guess who mine is?”

Mia pointed at Natalie’s son.

“Got it in one.”

The boy was withdrawn in a different way from Dart, the boy in Tyr’s orbit who Natalie had called adorable and shy.  He wasn’t having an easy time of it, other kids forming groups or easily interacting with one another.  He went between finding things to do himself and standing on the outside, watching the activities of others.

“Easier.  You’re the new mom, new kid.”

“I’m from Trorough.  East coast.”

Why say that like there was an assumption that Mia would know?  Was that leading?  Was something up?

“Remind me?” Mia asked.

“It’s a town.  Satellite of ‘gator city.  Sometimes it feels like people only know it exists because of what happened to my family.”

Natalie was short enough she could rest her forearms on the top of the chain link fence that divided the kindergarten play area from the parking lot.

“And you came to Camrose, a few weeks ago?” Mia asked.  She shouldn’t have asked, she knew.

“Yep.  Just in time for our government to cave in on itself again.  Fires, riots.  Quite a welcome party.”

“Mm,” Mia grunted her response.

She’d had a lot of anxiety around the subject of Ripley, of Io- Mia’s mind had never readily locked onto Natalie Teale, the woman who’d appeared before cameras, sometimes dolled up, sometimes bedraggled, sometimes teary-eyed and begging, sometimes stoic, never the woman she’d heard, never the woman she’d waited twenty minutes for, baby abandoned and ignored in a car.  The ever-shuffling presentation had created a mental image of the woman that felt more like someone she’d known in her childhood.  Try as she might, the details wouldn’t coalesce for long.  When something had loomed in her nightmares, it had been that car, bumper sticker, the altered logo like a glyph, against a backdrop of dark green paint and rust.  It had been Io she’d told Carson about.

As part of the very first stages of that anxiety, she’d started making the rules for herself.  Rules about conduct, measuring sticks and ways of making sense of the situation, assuaging anxiety.  Ninety percent of people were idiots.  Cops included.  That the best way to avoid being caught was to not have them looking in the first place, then to not give them any leads, and so on.

Among those early rules had been that she couldn’t get involved.  The most cunning misdirect she could think of and give to the tip lines couldn’t come close to measuring up to the other option- not calling at all.  No going to community events or meetings.  No lies, no misdirects, no keeping close tabs on Natalie or setting up a tracker or cameras to know what she was doing.

Because any and all of those things could backfire.

Now she was here, talking to her.  It made the foundation of that system of rules shake.  Behaviors and responses to any threat to that foundation could so easily become traps and destabilizing forces themselves.  That was a fast road to making up new rules she could keep to, in some desperate hope to stabilize.  An endlessly compounding mess of new rules with increasingly unfounded behavior that could spiral, demanding new rules…

She wanted so badly to ask.

It was dangerous to ask.  Against those personal rules.  She could make an amendment, but that was dangerous too, leading to the spiral, endless excuses… she shouldn’t ask.

“Why come to Camrose?” Mia asked.  “All this way?”

All the way from Trorough, across the United States, straight to my neck of the woods.  The school my children attend.  Now talking to me.

“A lead.”

Bull fucking shit there’s a lead.

The foundations rattled.

“That’s amazing.”

“The police are so f- so useless, they’ve always been.  Told me to do this, do that, appeal to the kidnapper, tell them every detail, tell them every detail again.”

Did you tell them how long that baby was in the car?

“An independent journalist reached out.  Made a deal.  He’d look over everything, fresh eyes, if he could find any threads to follow, he’d chase it down.  If nothing panned out, he’d do a ‘where are they now, impact on their lives’ piece.  If something did, he wanted the ability to market it.”

“True crime.”

“Yeah.  Now we’re here.  Picked up everything, moved.  Brought Sterling.”

The son.

“Does ‘we’ include your husband, then?  Because the order of what you said-?”

“Hah.  No.  My ex isn’t in the picture.”

Mia was aware, but a part of her wanted to find ways to prick at Natalie, take the wind out of her sails.  Mia hated this.  Hated the feeling that was gripping her.  Not fear, not dread, not anxiety, not numbness.  All of those things together, bundled into a core of oblivion.

Her headache was bad enough it grazed her memories of the post-Fall days.  The recovery.  Pain that had her curled up, while the damage left her unable to articulate that pain or ask for help.

“Ben- the journalist, he’s living with me.  Separate part of the apartment.  It was easier.”

“I’d be worried it’s a scam,” Mia remarked.

Natalie smiled a bit.  A knowing smile?  Then she gave her head a small shake.

“Ah, fair enough.”

She wanted so badly to ask, but for right now, she was leaning on the fact that she hadn’t broken her own rule.  Natalie had come to her.  She hadn’t asked, except for the one question.  Natalie had volunteered, and even with the one question, she’d practically invited it.

What’s the lead?

What did I miss?  What did I do?

She felt nauseous.

The kids kept playing.  Tyr was high energy and pulled others into his orbit.  It made her think of Carson.  Sterling kept watching from the sidelines.  Would it be good to direct Tyr to include Sterling?  Mia didn’t want that ongoing association.  Imagine playdates with this woman.

Natalie commented about the political unrest, and the fires, and the move.  Mia kept her engagement light, not giving too much fuel, wishing Natalie would go already.

The bell rang, and the kids began to file inside.

Tyr went in without so much as a glance at Mia.  Mia wouldn’t normally have given it a second thought, but Sterling, Natalie’s boy, took a route around the play structure that brought him closer to the fence.

“Go on, honey,” Natalie said.  “I’ll see you this afternoon.”

It was hard not to over-analyze, judge, compare.  Was Tyr less attached?  Or Sterling less secure because of how he’d been raised?

Stupidity, to think down those lines, when every kid was different.  But Mia’s mind worked doubletime on the subject.

The little kids were in first, ushered by teachers.  The older kids divided themselves into two groups, half going through the side door of the school, half moving along the corridor, roughly four kids wide, with a tall fence on the one side and brick building panted with a mural on the other, to follow the littlest kids in.  There was some grouping by age, because the first, second, and third grades were just a few doors down from the kindergarten, but some of it was convenience, locker location for the twelve and thirteen year olds, some of the students of the attached middle school going to the gym at the center of the school for their first class.

The corridor with the fence keeping kids from passing through the parking lot had always made Mia think of a prison.  Natalie was watching the older kids, hands gripping the top of the fence.  Trying not to make too big a deal of it, face forward, eyes turned left.  But intent.

Mia glanced back.  A lot of parents were looking at her and Natalie.  She hated that.

“How is your son doing with-”

“Shh,” Natalie shushed her.

Tracking the group with her eyes.

There’s a lead?  Good enough she’s here, now?

Natalie watched all the young girls.  Trying to interrupt would raise flags.  Mia was left hoping that Ripley would use the other door.  She usually did.

For a second, it looked like she had.

Ripley passed within Natalie’s field of view.

“God forbid,” Natalie said, with a tone of bitterness.  “If Camellia hadn’t been taken, I wouldn’t let her leave the house dressed like that girl.”

It wasn’t some commentary about some girl dressed too lightly.  Mia wasn’t a fan of that kind of thinking any more than she was a fan of attaching romantic ideas to the nigh-on-random actions of kindergarten-age kids.  Ripley had worn the heavier coveralls today, and was already warm enough to be sweaty.  She’d undone the front and there was a ring of sweat at the collar of the top she wore beneath.  Her hair was similar- already sticking to her forehead.

She was with her friends, a mix of boys and girls, and made a pointed effort to not notice Mia by the fence- a half glance, if that.  When they reached the landing at the top of the stairs that led to the front door, her friend group moved to the side.

Ripley adjusted, pulling arms from sleeves and tying them at the waist.  She was wearing a camisole top that Mia might’ve recommended be swapped out for a tank top, instead, but… it really didn’t matter.

At least it was lightweight.

Just go inside, please.

“As our model so demonstrates, it is easy to adjust the layers for comfort.  Easier to clean than a frilly blouse,” Mia said, quiet.

“Girls should dress like girls.  I thought that was a boy at first.”

Mia couldn’t help but feel a sort of euphoria, over this woman being so wrong, so off base.  Not even recognizing her daughter.

But it mingled with that core of numb oblivion.

One of Ripley’s guy friends was Devon, who was the youngest of six sisters.  His father had desperately wanted a son who’d play baseball, and then Devon hadn’t had any interest or inclination.  The dad had left the family, loudly citing the then-ten year old as a reason.  He’d been crushed, understandably.  As had others- the wife, the third daughter who’d given her all for the game, hoping her dad would see her.  A mess overall.

He gravitated toward female friends, and had, during one hangout at Mia’s house, in a very kid way, explained how he’d be very understanding about periods and all things girl, even to the point of knowing things his girl classmates didn’t, because of his sisters.  She’d heard him out and told him that was very good, provided snacks, and let them go back out to take turns hurling themselves across the length of a four foot kiddie pool.

He stood guard, back turned, while Ripley sorted out her clothing situation.  Which Mia did wish wasn’t happening so close to a main thoroughfare with parents nearby, but… it wasn’t too bad.  Pulling her shirt down where it had ridden up to the top of her belly, at worst.

Another friend, Blair, was very into music, and dancing, and stage magic, and anything that would get her on stage, she so needed to be on stage, it was in her blood, it was related to her every waking thought, seemingly.  She handed Ripley’s bag back to her.

Just… a very eclectic group.  To the point they didn’t seem to have much interests in common.  They’d indulge or tolerate one another’s weirdnesses, but eventually lose patience, whoever wasn’t being indulged would pout, but they stuck together.

She wondered if part of the reason she hadn’t fled already was that she didn’t want to tear this apart.  If they had to leave, and Ripley went to a new school, and couldn’t find a group?  It would be heartbreaking.

She didn’t reply to Natalie’s comment.  Better to be boring.  Better to not help this moment or interaction stick in Natalie’s mind.

The kids entered the school.

“How many people are behind me, looking at me?” Natalie asked.

Mia glanced back.  “A good few.”

“I’m going to stay put for a bit, I think.  Until some are gone.  Have a think.  Don’t feel obligated to stick around.”

“Okay,” Mia replied.

She started to leave, and saw that there were eyes on her, too.  Judging how she was dealing with this, imagining themselves in her shoes, handling it better.

“I’m sorry you lost your child,” Mia said.

She wasn’t sorry but-

“I didn’t lose my child.  My child was taken from me.”

The tone was sharp.  Natalie turned.

All eyes that hadn’t been on the pair of them were on them now.

“Sorry.”

Again, she wasn’t sorry.

“Fuck you.  I did nothing wrong.”

Mia considered what to say, saw the heat and anger in Natalie’s eyes, and decided not to.

She turned to leave.

“Yeah.  Fuck off, then.”

Mia walked back toward her car, past some parents she knew.

“Fuck,” Natalie could be heard, closer to the fence.

At least the kids had gone inside already, before the swearing spree.

“What happened?” Devon’s aunt, mom to other kids, asked.

“I accidentally pushed a button.  She’s angry,” Mia said.  Which was a different phrasing and emphasis than ‘I accidentally pushed a button, she’s angry’.

Alarm bells had already been ringing, nerves had already been on edge, numb oblivion had already been eating at the core of her.  Now that was magnified by the countless eyes of parents who hadn’t left after dropping their kids off.

“What did you say?”

If Mia was someone else, she’d have maybe tried to play into this.  Make Natalie out to be the bad guy.  If Natalie had less people supporting her, that could make a crucial difference.

But trying could be dangerous, if anyone realized Mia was doing that, specifically.

The rules, she reminded herself.

“It doesn’t matter.  I should go.  Got a family thing going on.  Took the day off work to get it sorted.”

Better to get ahead of any questions, since she knew at least one mom here worked at the hospital.

“Good luck.”

Mia said her goodbyes to those moms, fended off a few similar questions from a group closer to her car, with two dads, then got in her car, pulling out and getting onto the road before she let herself sigh and start to relax by fractions.

What lead?  How?

What gets them here?  It doesn’t make sense.  Fingerprints?  Footprints?  If it was that specific, they’d already be taking action.

I didn’t send them any letters or use anything printed out in both Trorough and Camrose, specifically because I was worried about dot matrix identification- little yellow dots that identify the printer a page is printed from.

No calls were made.

Think it through.  A journalist came in, and went over all the old material.  Things the police overlooked.  The files aren’t all public access.  What else?

What might have eluded the ninety percent who are lazy and disinterested, maybe even eluded the nine percent who are interested but mediocre, but be caught by someone dedicated and savvy?

Mia’s mind raced through the events that followed- ones she’d been distant from, her focus elsewhere.  She had the impression that Natalie had hired people to drive attention to her missing daughter- a media team that could guide her through the interviews, manage social media, get the public to pressure police to put more effort into things.

Part of that had been a campaign with a picture of Ripley as a baby, drawing on the fact the name Natalie had come up with for Ripley was Camellia Teale, for the color scheme of the media campaign.  Camellia pink and teal.  It had been hideous, and striking.

That had lasted about three months, before Natalie had run out of funds and dropped of the map.

There were a lot of resources.  Aged-up images of Ripley.  Hotlines.

Something in the hotlines?  Mia could imagine the call recordings being given to Natalie, then a dedicated person going through every single call, following up on anything and everything.

Mia was mulling it over, when she turned back, to check her blind spot, her neck stiff, her mind partially on Ripley.  She saw it.

Tyr’s car seat, as mandated by law.  As if police were still paying attention to laws on this level.  He was still young enough to need one.

She had to force herself to check the blind spot, change her lane, stay on track.

It had been part of the information handed out.  Images of the car seat Mia had taken, when she’d saved Ripley, distributed to countless people.

Dismantled, down to its constituent parts.  Tags clipped off and burned.  Plastic cut into sections no larger than the flat of her hand, duct taped together, then centered in a trash bag with various waste.  No receipts.  Nothing that could trace a line back to her.  She’d considered bleaching it, but didn’t like the idea of someone noticing the bleach smell, and had instead gone over it carefully, mindful of the duct tape and anything it could catch, like a fallen hair.

There were parts of it too large to cut up.  A piece of metal in the base of the removable portion, that connected it to the car seat or stroller.  She hadn’t had the stroller part.  Two other smaller segments- metal tubes.  Her focus had been on work, a baby Ripley, and locking other things down.  She’d cleaned it meticulously, mindful of hair or fingerprints, put pieces in trash bags, and thrown them out.

Later, she’d regretted not addressing the bigger pieces better.  It was the sort of moment that left her staring up at the ceiling, too worried to sleep.  She’d assuaged her worries, telling herself that time only bought security.  Trash would be buried under other trash in landfills.  The deed was already done.  It was an irregular piece of metal, a needle in a haystack.

It was one of the only things she could think of, that she could’ve brought back from Trorough, left here.  She’d thought she was safe, but if someone had, what, gone looking for scrap in the landfill?  Found the base of the car seat, recognized it for what it was?

Then called the hotline?

Ignored by police, then dug up a decade later, by an intrepid reporter?

Then traced, matched to trash in other bags nearby, tied to a particular trash pickup zone?

What other explanation was there, though?

Mia was careful to drive with caution, because she knew she was distracted.  Whatever was going on with her brain that made it so hard to put her worries away, made medications less effective, while side effects remained rampant, it meant she was always overly cautious of people on the road.  That might have been a saving grace here, because it meant she was wary.

Still, good to think about what needed thinking about, watch traffic, make sure she was taking in everything she needed to take in.

What a disaster it would be, to be sidelined by an accident.

That included ‘accidents’, of the more intentional sort, that would be handwaved away.  Davie might still be watching her, looking out for her.  Any car behind her could be tailing her vehicle.  There could be people scouting Camrose, just in case.  People who might notice her by her height and frame, if Davie caught that on camera and spread it around to his people.  If he had a mind to, he could cause an accident, spirit Mia away, interrogate her as he’d done with his son.

Valentina, Io, a reporter, now, ‘Ben’.  Davie, stupid drivers on the road, the eyes of other parents in the parking lot.

Mia knew that people who consumed drugs built up a tolerance.  She swam in stress hormones, now.  She wondered if an ordinary person were to get a dose of what she experienced right now, if they’d crumple over.

She did it for family.

Her family needed her.

That was the paradigm she had to shift to.  It was the lens she needed, to take her distorted reality that was quickly getting more and more bent out of shape, and view it straight-on.

Valentina was the newest member of her family.  Beautiful girl, scared, lost.  She needed information.  She needed a lot of things.  What she didn’t need was this stress.  Mia couldn’t let all of this affect how she treated that girl.  She needed to provide stability, guidance, reassurance.  Security above all.

And Ripley?  Tyr?  What did they need?

She let herself into the house, the car seat at the back of her mind.

Tyr was fine.  Maybe that would change, and he’d jump to being a priority.  He was less the type to throw a tantrum, more the type to break his arm.  Which he hadn’t yet.  But Mia could see it.  Or goof around with a friend and have the friend put his wrist through a plate glass window at someone’s front door.

Or have a friend bash his head on the underside of a porch hard enough he needed medical aid.

Ripley, though, there was one easy fix.  With stress as steam, driving her, Mia got stuff done, with the first thing being to put Ripley’s clothes in the wash.

She texted:

Me:
If I wash and dry your coveralls by lunch, do you want me to drop by so you can change into them?

The response was a bunch of hearts and ‘I love yous’.

Me:
Don’t text in class.

She checked on Valentina.  “Need anything?”

“Tired.  Which is weird because I was lying around all day yesterday.”

“It’s fine. Eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired.  You want to have a sleep in now?”

“And TV.”

“Okay.  We’ll find a balance later.  For now, we keep your head down.  When you want to feel more anchored, we’ll sort out clothes, hair, and other things.”

“Okay.  Carson said something similar.”

“Good.  I’m going to be in my office.  Knock, feel free.  Where’s Carson?”

“Workshop.”

Carson was sorting out tools, wires, and odds and ends.  Mia had organized, Carson kept to the system.

“Natalie Teale walked up to me, let me know she had a lead.”

“How long did it take her to bring that up?”

“Minutes.”

“How worried are we?”

“We?  I don’t know.  My scale’s broken, so I’m not sure it’s useful.  Worried.  I’m wondering if it was the car seat.  If someone found it and traced it here.”

“Or something else?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s still awkward to leave,” Carson remarked.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been putting out feelers to people I know.  Not asking anything direct, but seeing who’s around, what’s going on.  I know a couple are pretty reliable sources, who don’t even realize they’re my sources.  One I’d need to take out for drinks.”

“And?”

“For right now, Davie’s active.  He’s not calming down.  His men are working overtime, but they’re not getting overtime pay.  Some are annoyed.  My contact for this, he’s upset, he’s trying to date a lady who has a kid, she is, to hear him talk, stacked to the nines gorgeous.  Like a certain someone.”

Mia gave Carson her best dispassionate look.  He grabbed the button area of her jeans with one hand, and pulled her a stumbling step closer.  The fingers dipped a little lower, between her body, buttons, and zipper, while he didn’t break eye contact.

If Valentina wasn’t elsewhere in the house, with other things a priority.  If she didn’t have a headache that would only get worse if she couldn’t find a way to ratchet down the internal tension, resolve something?  If she didn’t need to burn off anxiety…

She’d have ridden him hard enough to hurt him, or herself.  Or furniture.

He grabbed the button area of her jeans in a closed fist, and gave it a little side-to-side motion.  “You’re not eager.”

“Preoccupied.  Really.”

“No, it’s fine.  But I want you eager,” he said, withdrawing his hand.  He smiled lightly.  “My friend is trying very, very hard to impress a lady who he thinks is out of his league.  I told him he needs to step up, be a great stepdad to the boy who’d be his stepson.  Not trying too hard, but… being there.  Being reliable.”

“You know all about that.”

“It’s the best way to this woman’s heart, I figure.  But working this non-optional overtime, he’s having to break promises.  He’s bothered.  So he spilled.”

“If Davie’s men are losing patience… that’s a good thing?”

“Maybe.”

“Messy thing, too,” Mia noted.  “In a way that splashes back on us.”

“What resolution do we want?” Carson asked.

“I don’t know.  Leaving, but…”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to get stuff sorted.  Burn off energy.  Keep an ear and an eye out for Valentina.”

“I’ll go see my other friend.  Loose lipped when tipsy.”

“Okay.”

Plans made.

He’d revved up her engine and even if her head wasn’t in it, four-fifths full of knee-buckling headache instead, it took a bit to shake.  She changed clothes, then hit the weights.  Aggressive to the point of self-punishment.  Getting to the zone, where she could sort out thoughts, figure out what she needed to do.

Sweat came off her in small rivulets, veins standing out, Valentina was walking around, and Mia worried it’d be a startling to see.  Or triggering, with the sound of the weights, even.  Loud violent banging, with a man like Davie as a dad?  Or ex-cons working under her dad, in her orbit?  It wouldn’t be hard to imagine.  Mia wrapped up sooner than she normally would.

She showered, put the wash into the dryer, then sat down at her desk.

Couldn’t do anything about the car seat.  She worried about poking the bear, by going after this ‘Ben’.  Too cursory a search didn’t get her anywhere, but any search but the most cursory could trip alarms, depending on how things were set.

If Mia had lost her child, and she had a lead for a particular area, that’s how she’d tackle this.  Inform people, one by one, that she had help, had a lead.  Give different names to each, inviting them to dig or pry.

See what floated around, in word of mouth, or what happened, in internet searches.  What names?  What caught traction, out of the hooks that were put out there?

She turned her focus elsewhere.  Foundations.

Catching up on hospital records, with a spoofed IP from the same township that her ex-coworker lived in, she accessed the hospital records through the RATs.  Births and deaths.

People had died in the protests over the canceled election.  They weren’t the sort of people she preferred to work with, with too many attachments, but she noted a few that were borderline.  Myface page that hadn’t been updated in eight years, minimal social media, minimal condolences appearing on that social media.  It looked like they’d been in foster care, and hadn’t come out of it with any residual family, biological or foster.  She’d do more digging for that one.  Teenagers with an open, attachment free identity were tough.

Homeless teen, wounded by police, died around the time Mia had been talking to Natalie.  But there might be investigations around that.  She’d keep eyes out for that, too.

More homeless.  More wounded.

Timoteo Altamirano.  The birth name of the contact.  He was dead, the body left in a place where someone would find it.  Taken to the hospital.

Both arms severed mid-bicep.  Clean.

One Leg removed mid-thigh.

Care taken in every case to tie off blood vessels.  Skin had been set into place and stitched.  Tidy amputations.

The same for the genitals.

Both eyes had tacks pushed into the pupils.  One was intact, the other had collapsed.

One eardrum perforated.

All pre-mortem.

Marks suggesting one IV inserted multiple times, or multiple IVs.  It was hard to tell, the notes said, because of traumatic damage around it.

Trauma to various orifices suggested a feeding tube, urinary catheter.  Nothing for fecal waste, but maybe they’d been getting to that.

Cause of death: brain contusion.  Some neck damage noted.

A drawing of a man had the marks noted in messy handwriting.  This was here, this angle, this shape.  This was removed.

No beating, no roughness.  A very careful man- differently careful from Mia, had managed to escape this fate.  With one leg presumably left on the chopping block, he’d managed to get free, hurling himself off the table- the catheter, IV, and feeding tube had been torn out.  He’d hit the ground or hit something on the way, swinging by tubes in and around his body.

Brain damage in a Fall of his own.  Whoever had been taking him apart while taking care to keep him alive, they hadn’t had the ability to respond to the brain damage.

Blood tests and drug tests pending.

A horrible enough end to stand out amid the noise of the protest and the city being on fire.

There, on the back pages, files copied to D. Selvidge, date.

Detective Selvidge was gang violence.

Interesting they’d jumped to that so fast.

She printed it out, then took it to Carson.

“I guess we lost our money launderer,” Carson said, dryly.  He kept reading.  “What a way to go.”

“At least he got to go,” Mia said.  “I think they were planning to keep him.”

“Yeah,” Carson said, voice soft.

Valentina approached, still wearing pyjama pants, and a large tee of Mia’s.  She hung back at the door to the workshop area.  Maybe she read something into their tone and postures.

“An acquaintance of ours.  Not a friend, but not an enemy.  Met a bad end,” Mia said.

“What kind of bad end?”

“Arms and legs removed, among other things.”

Valentina swallowed, and nodded a small nod.

“It was put down as gang violence.  Very quickly.  Makes me think it’s not the first time they’ve seen this?”

“I’ve seen it too,” Valentina said, quiet.  “It’s the sort of thing I was talking about, when I said, um, you don’t know how dangerous he is.”

“Okay,” Mia said.  She glanced at Carson, then back to Valentina.  “Was that why you ran?”

“I saw the room where he keeps people.  This guy, Ribeiro.  He drove me to the cabin, last night.”

“João Ribeiro?”

“Yeah.  He came, brought two girls.  They went downstairs.  The one girl didn’t look happy about it.  They were down there a while.  She came back out, looked- crazy, right?  Like a panicked horse.  They went to deal with her, I looked.”

Mia held out the police report.  “Arms and legs missing?”

“He keeps them.  Some have an eye, so they can watch, I guess.  Some keep an ear and a tongue, so they can talk, I guess.  One heard me whispering, started shouting.  The rest started making these… noises.  No tongues.”

Her voice was getting shakier as she went.

“Okay,” Mia said.  “You don’t have to rehash it.  That’s enough information.  Unless there’s more?”

Valentina looked like she wanted to say something else, then shook her head.

“I guess he wanted to bring the girl in line, showing her what waited for her?” Carson murmured.

“Clued me in,” Valentina said.  “He caught me at the door.  I kn- I think he knew I went down.  But he’s-”

“Hard to read,” Mia said.

“Y’h.” Valentina said, a bit breathless, shaky.  “I think my brother’s safe.  He wasn’t around, my dad adores him.”

The fact he was beaten that badly might be telling.  There was a big effort to not hurt the contact before cutting him up.  The beating I saw the aftermath of might mean he skipped the worse option.

“Okay.  Listen,” Mia said.  “We’re effectively your parents in this situation.  Thank you for telling us.  Now we’ll handle it.  Put it out of mind, trust.  Try to unwind.  Carson, you want to handle lunch for us, and Valentina?  Put off the drinking?”

“Works with the guy’s schedule.  What are you up to?”

“For right now?  Dropping off a change of clothes for Ripley, so she’s not swimming in sweat by the end of the day.  We’ve lost our contact, our setup’s shaky.  I don’t love being this exposed.”

“Yeah.  I follow your line of thought.”

“Be careful.”

“You too.”

Mental images of what the contact might have looked like dwelt in Mia’s mind’s eye.  The final days.  She was only imagining it.  Valentina had seen.  That was what had pushed her.

This was easier to deal with than the specter of the journalist and the ‘lead’.  That was too amorphous, too much.  She needed to get on top of that.

But first… foundations.

She got Ripley’s clothes, included a tank top, sorted things out, and added a large resealable bag that she put some basic toiletries in.

She messaged Ripley, then drove out toward the school.  Still watching for other drivers, as she always did.  Watching for anyone who might be watching her.  For drones in the sky.  For other things.

Sure enough, Ripley was feeling the effects of the heat.

“I sat by an open window and it was still so hot in the classroom,” Ripley complained.  “Mrs. Clark felt sorry for me and I don’t think she even likes me.”

“She’s an idiot if she doesn’t like you.  You’re a gem.  Wet wipes and deodorant in the bag,” Mia told her.  “Dry shampoo to get the sweat and oils out.”

“Okay.”

The car windows were tinted, so Ripley had some privacy.

Mia stood guard.  Some of Ripley’s friends had come out, hanging out by the side door of the school, and Mia had a rare chance to see them interacting, goofing around.

One of the ones she’d previously written off as sort of dull and negative compared to other members of that group was making the others laugh.  It was enough that Mia was re-evaluating him.  If he made Ripley laugh like that, then she liked him.

Ripley finished, bursting from the car, refreshed and renewed, now wearing coveralls that weren’t winterweight, and a top that would look better on its own, if she tied off the top portion again.

She gave effusive thanks, then ran off, back to her friends, to go eat lunch.

Natalie Teale was picking up her son from his half day at kindergarten.  Mia saw her connect Ripley to her.

Bad timing.

But Ripley was happy, in the moment, back with her friends.

Mia wished, dearly, that they would find an equilibrium as they entered the more tumultuous teenage years.  Blair would be a beauty and she was passionate, dramatic.  Devon was bright and sensitive and good.  There were others who were bright or interesting.  One or two who weren’t any of those things, a bit dumpy and negative, dim, and boring.  Some kids were just like that, but they were friends in the group all the same.  Ripley would be a treasure for the lucky souls who could see her.  Would their diverging interests pull that group of eight or so kids apart?

Would Natalie?  Prying?  This journalist?

Would Mia?

Because what she wanted more than anything was to run.  Run before Davie could take what he’d done to the contact and do it to her.  Or Carson.  Or Ripley and Tyr.

Running meant removing Ripley from her connections here.  It would be a wound.

Much as Natalie had planned to do, standing and thinking by the playground, no doubt dwelling on the past and the mistakes she might not have even told the police about- it had not been fifteen seconds that she turned her back… Mia had a think.

She called Carson, to outline her thoughts.

If this was what she wanted, he was on board.

She took another few moments, then called.

“Hello?  Max?  I don’t know if you recognize my voice.  You’re one of my earlier clients, we talked, if I remember right.”

“I recognize your voice.”

Maybe not a good thing that she was that memorable, but it made things convenient here.  And she had a kind of trust for Max.

“I regret to inform you that our mutual acquaintance, the one who introduced us, has passed.”

“I call you if there’s problems from now on, then?”

“Absolutely.  But I’d like to ask.  Would you be willing to return to your old ways, in the short-term?  To our mutual benefit.  It tidies up a mess that could touch either of us.  And as revenge for our acquaintance’s passing.”

There was silence on the other end.

“I’ll pay, for your trouble.  This is something that shouldn’t happen,” Mia said.  “I’ll help with the task at hand.”

Still no response.

“Can you relocate me after?”

“It goes without saying.”

“Are you calling others?”

“I am.”

“I decide who I work with.  If I don’t like them, I don’t work with them.”

“Of course.  I’ll be in touch.”

“I will get ready, then.”

It was breaking rules.  A degree of involvement, even detached, finding the right people and equipping them with information, the ability to maneuver.  It was unsettling, but there was no other way to support the kids in this, and securing things for Ripley, Tyr, and Valentina was the whole point of it all.

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