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“There’s a turn onto a rural road, coming in roughly five minutes, at the speed you’re going.  It may be best not to speed up.  Let the other car do what they’re doing for now.”

“Why should we trust you?” Rider asked.

“Because there’s nobody in the world more committed to Ripley’s safety than me.  I don’t want anything to happen to Sterling either.”

“And the rest of us?” Rider asked.  “Chopped liver?”

“Rider, I know you’re probably debating your options right now.  I don’t have a lot of field experience, but I’ve asked others what you might be thinking.  Probably, you can get away if they don’t see you as a problem, but protecting the kids, your friend, and making sure they don’t shoot before confirming identities or allegiances is hard.”

“You’re still pretending I’m a traitor?”

“Not pretending.  I’ll just let you know this is Davie Cavalcanti that we’re up against.  You should know of him from the Angel Circle job.  Adjust your planning accordingly.”

Ben wasn’t sure, but he might’ve seen Rider grip the steering wheel tighter.

Rider caught him looking.

“I’m not playing a game on the side, Ben,” Rider said, quiet.  “But I know who Davie Cavalcanti is.”

“Yeah?” Ben asked, just as quiet.

“If you’re trying to communicate to me, can you speak-?”

“I’m not,” Rider said, sharply.  Then, to Ben, he said, “Yeah.  I’ve heard about him.”

Rider had, consciously or unconsciously, put a little more weight on the gas.

“Rider,” Mia said.  “Don’t accelerate.  A car will pass you, it will take the other car out of the chase.  That’s the easy part.  Once that happens, we expect Davie Cavalcanti to pull resources from elsewhere.  Depending on where he draws them from, our plan changes.”

“Mom?” Ripley asked.

“You have eyes on these Cavalcanti resources?” Rider asked, talking over Ripley.

“I hired people.  Yes.  Hi Ripley.  Are you okay?  Are they treating you alright?”

“You have zero right to ask that,” Natalie said.

“Not really,” Ripley said.

“She’s okay,” Ben said.  “Unhappy, but that’s this messed up situation, upset feelings all around.”

“I’m going to take your word for that, that it’s only emotional harm you’ve inflicted.  Ripley, if there’s anything you need-”

“This is on you, Mia, if that’s your real name.  On you,” Ben said.  “The emotions, the hurt, the danger we’re supposedly in right now, the lives that were shattered.”

Sterling made an unhappy noise from the middle of the back seat.

“Natalie knows full well it started with her,” Mia replied.  “Ripley would have died if I hadn’t rescued her.”

“That’s your story?” Natalie spoke up, at the same time Ripley asked, “What?  What happened?”

And whatever either of them said in the moment after, it was lost in the noise of the car… and the overriden by a ‘hurk’ sound.

Sterling, face screwed up, had thrown up his baloney on untoasted white sandwich all over himself.

“Oh honey,” Natalie turned to him.  Ripley said something to the effect of, “Hey, hey, it’s okay.”

“What happened?”  Mia asked.

Nobody had an immediate answer.  Ben focused on getting bottled water and napkins- there were still in the bag with the unfinished sandwiches they’d brought with.  Something to clean Sterling up with.  A part of him was privately glad that nobody was engaging with Mia.

“Is anyone hurt?”

“Sterling threw up,” Ripley said.  Ben wished she hadn’t broken that trend of not responding.  “It’s like Tyr getting so mad he’d hold his breath and throw up, when he was younger.”

“Sounds like stellar parenting,” Natalie said.

Which Mia started to respond to, but Rider called back-

Mess.  Noise.

“Please!” Ripley raised her voice, putting hands over Sterling’s ears for a second.  “No shouting.”

“One minute,” Mia said.  “Then the turn.”

“If we turn,” Rider said.  “You’re asking us to trust you.”

“No angry voices, please,” Ripley said.  “Let’s go easy?  Please?  If I’ve never asked for anything else in my whole life.  I want this to be easier.”

“Okay,” Mia responded.

Ben turned, checking on Sterling, and caught a glimpse of Natalie preparing to say something.  He put a hand up.  “What if we say we won’t listen to you until we get some answers?”

“That would be very stupid.”  There was a pause, where there was none of the background buzz coming over the phone.  “It has to all be askable and answerable in the next forty-five seconds.”

“Why are the Cavalcantis after us?”

“Because I rescued another girl, Gio Cavalcanti, from her abusive father.  She was running away from home, she wouldn’t have made it.  He would have hurt her.”

“Another girl?” Natalie asked, voice sharp, and the tone made Ripley react, with a louder, “Stop.”

“I’m sorry, Ripley.  I wanted to tell you this when you were a little older.  You’re not mine by blood, but you’re mine in every other way possible.  For a long time, I’ve been working to rescue people from bad situations.  You, Tyr, Valentina.  This time, I bit off too much.  I underestimated the man.”

“Rescue,” Natalie said.

“Stop.  If you ever want me to talk to you again,” Ripley said.  “Please just stop.”

“Unless you have something to add,” Ben said, giving Natalie a firm look.

“This is the turn,” Mia said.

Rider glanced at Ben, who nodded.  He turned onto the rural road, where a single line of trees separated the road from the corn fields on either side.  The road had a different texture.

The other car, presumably, was already in view.

Behind them, the other car had picked up speed, presumably to not lose them if they started turning more corners.  It came around the corner hard, oversteering, then corrected.

The incoming car passed them.  Ben tried to catch a glimpse of them, with a glance and his camera, but it looked hard.  The windows were down.

“Heads down,” he told the kids.

In the side view mirror, Ben could see the man in the passenger seat of the pursuing car lean out the window.

Keeping his hand inside the car.

Gun.

He reminded himself where his gun was.

“Heads down.  Crouch.  You too, Natalie.”

The car that had passed them reached the other car too.  At the last second, they tossed something out the window, last second.

Spike strip?  Except it was attached to a rod.  It landed awkwardly, and only the two left tires ran over it.

Spikes and what looked like straps in neon yellow.

The spikes got the front tire.

The straps tangled around the spinning, now popped wheels, caught the axle, and, car lurching at a sharp angle as the bar was pulled up against the undercarriage, had one side of the front axle disconnect, followed by the other.  The entire hood and nose of the car popping up briefly as it came free.  The sound of the crash, even relatively distant in the rear view mirror, was horrendous.

“What was that!?” Sterling shouted.

Ripley peeked, then raised her head more.  “The car chasing us just had a little crash.”

“That was little!?”

He was talking louder while covering his ears.  Ripley eased his hand down and got him sitting up straight again.

“We’ll see how long it takes the Cavalcantis to adjust.  Carry on straight, and be ready to move fast,” Mia said.

“Mom?” Ripley asked.  “Is it safe to ask questions?”

“Yes.  But I may have to interrupt.”

“I have questions of my own,” Rider said.

“You had all night and other times to ask, and I need to know,” Ripley said, insistent.  “I almost died?  When?”

“When you were a month old.  You were left in a car, with the door open, but the wind must have blown it shut.”

“No,” Natalie said.

“I was passing through, I heard you, I was worried.  I stopped, I found you, I got you out and tried to cool you down.  I shouted, but Natalie Teale and Sean Bruner were preoccupied.”

“She’s lying to make herself sound good,” Natalie said.  “I was close, I checked regularly, to make sure you were okay.  The door was open.  You were cranky but fine.”

“Preoccupied with what?” Ripley asked.

“Natalie and Sean were caught up in a long argument.  I waited for twenty minutes.  To see if they’d check on you.”

“You came, you saw a momentary opportunity, you took it,” Natalie said.  “You took her.”

“I’ve heard they argue a lot,” Ripley said.

“It wasn’t only that.  Even the way the car was parked, the rear of it stuck out into the road.  If a less attentive driver had come down that road, they could have hit the car you were in.  Based on the timing of the police call, ten minutes after I left, you were left for thirty minutes total.”

Ben looked, angling the camera.  Ripley had tears in her eyes.

“You’re such a liar,” Natalie said, shaking her head.  “You’re a monster.”

“Ben?  Did you look into it?  The positioning of the cars, at least?”

“Thirty minutes doesn’t line up with when you were seen entering and leaving the area,” Ben said.

It didn’t help anything to play into her story.  Even if it meant telling the truth.

“I waited just under twenty.  Another five or so to drive in and out of the area.  They called the emergency line at eleven fifty-eight, according to the police dispatch.  It was even printed onscreen when they repeated the call on the news, five days later.  Not counting the time before I arrived, it was thirty-five minutes total she was left in an oven of a car.  Twenty-five minutes or so I was there.”

“No.  That’s not even a good lie.  It doesn’t make sense given the timing of the abduction,” Natalie said.

“I believe it,” Ripley said.  She was leaning into Sterling, holding his hand, her head at a angle, resting against his.  He was mostly cleaned up, except for the wet spots still on his shirt and sleeve.  “I believe my mom, not Natalie.”

“Natalie’s right, it doesn’t make sense, given the information we have,” Ben agreed.  It doesn’t make sense to make this relationship between Ripley and Natalie worse by validating you.

“I thought you’d be better with this, Ben,” Mia said.

No real emotion, tone hard to read.

“Then let’s figure it out,” Ben said.

He got his phone out, and he dialed.

It was a number to be called only in the most extreme situations.  Because every time he abused it, there was a chance the person on the other end wouldn’t pick up.

“Hello?”

Another voice, on speaker.  Male.

“Sean.  It’s Benito Jaime.  Ben.”

“I know.  So?”

“We found her.  She’s in the car with me and the licensed marshal that’s helping us.”

Ripley’s face had crumpled up.  She focused her gaze out the window.

The day was still sunny to a degree that felt weird, with just a bit of smoke in the air, making the lights have auras.  The cornfields had given way to orchards.  Trees planted in organized rows.  There were tons of roads cutting through them, presumably for the work trucks, and Ben had a hard time shaking the feeling that some car would come lunging out to start a new car chase.

“Sean?” he asked.

“You found Cammy?”

“Her name for now is Ripley.”

“Hi,” Ripley said, quiet.

“Hi.  I”

Sean’s voice audibly broke.

“Hi dad!” Sterling called out.

“Heyyy, my man.”

“A car just chased us and crashed!”

“Are you okay?  Is everything okay?”

“We’re fine.  Sean,” Ben said.  “I’m going to ask you a question.  No context.  I need you to be honest.  This is very important.”

“What’s going on?”

Ben interrupted, before things could get more off track.  “Too much to explain, we’re trying to make sense of things.  On the day your daughter was taken… how long was she left unattended for?”

Please understand where we are.  Please understand what’s at stake.

“She was in the back of the car.  Door open for air, which must have given them access.  Natalie was looking back every fifteen, twenty seconds.”

Ben avoided letting out a sigh of relief.

“He knows his ex and son are in the car, his daughter’s listening, of course he’d lie,” Mia said.  “It wasn’t only Natalie who failed to look back and check on their daughter.  It was both of them.”

“Your story doesn’t make sense,” Natalie said, sitting a little taller, voice more confident.

“Who is that?”

“The kidnapper,” Natalie said, before Ben could voice anything.

“You’re talking to her?”

“Not for long,” Mia said.  “Ripley?  Can you take me off speaker phone, and hand the phone to Ben?  We’ll talk soon.  I promise.”

Ripley had tears running down her cheeks.  She wrung her hands together, with enough force and weird angles that it looked like she was trying to break a finger.

“Ripley.  I promise.”

Ripley stuck her hand behind the kid seat, and it looked like the phone was easier to slide in there than a hand.  When she pulled her hand out, her knuckles were scraped raw.

She passed the flip phone forward.  The moment she let go, she rubbed at her eyes.

“Ben, Natalie, can I come to you?” Ripley’s father asked.  “Do you need to clarify something else?  Why were you asking?”

“I’m giving you to Natalie,” Ben said.  “Take it off speaker?  Catch him up?”

Natalie nodded, and set about doing just that.

“Mia Hurst,” Ben said.  “Can I call this number from another phone?  I want to leave this line open, for reasons personal to Rider.”

Rider gave him a long sideways look, as Mia said ‘yes’, and Ben dug for Rider’s other phone and dialed the number on display.

It felt much different to have Mia’s voice in his ear, instead of on a tinny phone speaker.

“We should be connected,” Mia said, once she’d picked up.  Ben hung up the other phone, and put the flip phone aside.  Out of Ripley’s reach.

“Weird way of phrasing it.”

“Mom, Ripley’s crying,” Sterling called out.

Ben wasn’t sure if Mia had heard.

“No movement from the Cavalcantis yet.  The car stopper we rigged has a cell jammer duct taped to the pipe.  If they haven’t tried walking away from the wreck before trying to call again, that might be why they’re delaying.”

“You like those, don’t you?” Ben asked.  “You had one in the house, when the traps went off.”

“It helps seal the deal, sometimes.”

“What deal?  The house?  A lot of people got hurt.”

“They’re people who hurt others.  They would have hurt me, or Ripley, or even you.  So yes.  I set them up to get hurt, and took away their ability to call for help.”

“Who are you?” he asked.  “And how do we know that when you’ve figured out how to get us away from any people the Cavalcantis send, you won’t do the same to us, stopping our car, taking Ripley?  Or do you want more than just her?”

“If I wanted Sterling I could have taken him from the school.  That’s not who I am.  It’s not how I operate.  Either you’re horribly incompetent as a journalist, or you just intentionally lied to Ripley, and I think it’s the latter.  Did you text him just before asking?”

“No.  It’s the truth,” he said, knowing it was a lie.

“So he stuck to her story to keep the story straight, keep the peace.  I’ve only ever rescued children who were in danger.  Ripley would have died, or suffered lifelong complications.  Tyr would have died.  Valentina would have wished she was dead.  If you don’t listen to me today, you may wish you were dead.”

“How do we know we’re not escaping a Cavalcanti trap, and waltzing into yours?”

“Believe it or not, this is a specialty of mine.”

“Traps?”

“No.  My specialty is navigating that fine line where neither party trusts the other.  I’m going to outline a plan.  Check with Rider, but don’t put too much trust in the man.  Check with Natalie.  Decide if you’re willing to follow it.”

“Run it by me.”

“The Cavalcantis are at war with a lot of gangs and old enemies right now.  A group six and a half miles away just got orders to pull away from a fight with the Sons of Satunday and come here.  They’re on their way.  Take your choice of the routes I give you.  You’ll go to a public place with no cameras nearby where you can better look at the information I have and validate it for yourself.  Do you have a laptop?”

“Yeah.”

After a bit more talking, and running things by Rider and Natalie, Ben directed Rider to make a turn.

“They’ll be on your heels.  Don’t delay.”

I’m not under any illusions that you’re not on our heels as well, Ben thought.

⯁

Ben opened his laptop, watching out the window of the library.  Ripley had taken Sterling to go look for books, and Natalie was watching them.

They’d chosen this location because it was closer to the purported threats.  Because the skeptical part of Ben wanted to see, and because, in a whispered discussion away from the car, they’d decided that it was the location Mia Hurst was least likely to anticipate them going to.

Sure enough, there were a number of men walking down the street, dressed the same way as the ones who’d died in the Hurst house a day ago.  Light black suit jackets and white shirts with black slacks, or just the white shirts, sleeves rolled up, because of the heat, or black shirts.  Some earrings or gold chain necklaces.  Young.  Driven.

“They found the car and now they’re fanning out,” Rider said, watching.

Ben found the email Mia had sent.

“If she’s watching them, then she’ll have a sense of where we are too.”

“This is insane,” Ben said.  “Who is she?”

“To hear her describe it, she’s a heroine, saving people.  But the pauses in that conversation on the phone, she was talking to people.  She had help at the house, people came to pick her up.  It wasn’t just the ex-soldier and Gio Cavalcanti.  She’s had eyes on the Cavalcanti groups, she knew when they came.”

“Supposedly,” Ben said.

“Supposedly, yeah,” Rider replied.

“This isn’t something she pulled together out of nowhere.  This is something she’s been building for years.  To hold onto what she has.  She won’t give it up easily.”

“I’m aware,” Ben said.  “But what do we do?  She tracks us, Davie Cavalcanti tracks us.  One will take Ripley away.  The other supposedly wants to hurt us.”

“Let’s take a look at what she sent us.  Virtual machine,” Rider said.

Ben set one up.  Like a fake computer, running on his computer.  It would keep most viruses in bounds.  If she tried to take over the computer, it would only take the virtual machine, which could be deleted.

The files opened.

Markers showed the ongoing Cavalcanti conflicts on a map, many with an ‘updated 2:05pm’, or something in that neighborhood, fifteen minutes late, at worst.

“What do you know about the local gangs?” Rider asked.

“General overview.  I looked them up when considering who might have taken Ripley.  A lot of them got squashed five to ten years back.  A lot of these got squashed.”

“Yeah.  How much of this is her?” Rider asked.  “How much is fake?  To intimidate us?” While musing, he asked another few questions.

Ben didn’t hear it.

Mia Hurst, in a fresh dump of information, had sent them a slice of what she saw.  A bit of how she saw.  They were absent, missing from this picture.  In this view of the world, Mia was watching through the most easily accessed security cameras.  Coffee shops, pharmacy, mall, big box store.  Fresh images from social media were downloaded.  A lot of it focused on the street level.

More distant, there were multiple groups of Cavalcanti soldiers in confrontations, or pursuits, or looking for others the way they were apparently looking for him, Rider, Natalie, Sterling, and Ripley.  Each of those was labeled.  That information was cleanly packaged.  Some of it tied to what he’d seen in the other infodump.

That one hadn’t looked like this.  It had been overwhelming and overwhelmed.  Something shoved out there to get him to look away.  It had been too much, enough that he’d backed away, gone to get lunch, reconsidered, and then returned to what he was doing.

This was similar, but digestible, neat.

Here, inside the mall, a group of police officers on strike got a large focus from social media.  They had a crew of people carrying signs.  Their most buxom woman officer was wearing a ‘dress’ that was layers of plastic wrap, encircling her until it was opaque enough to be clear, with a plastic shower cap with a bulge in it.  The idea, apparently, was that she was wearing a condom, in keeping with the ‘protect our police’ slogan.

It was sexy, she was an officer who’d had allegations against her, and she looked unhappy.  A recipe social media loved.  They took a lot of pictures and video as a result.

Among them, pictures of members of that group on the phone.  A timelapse showed the group changing direction after the car was found.

Davie Cavalcanti apparently used live satellite to see.  So Mia was aware of that, tracking that.  It meant they could only get so far with the car.  Mia had an imperfect picture, but had still satellite images roughly shaded out to show the danger zones.  Which was pretty much everywhere they could see the sky.

And, to top it off, he had two crews of people who used drones.  The photos of these weren’t from nearby, or of the current areas.  From past confrontations, maybe.  Small drones in the sky.

News articles, about the larger ones.  Gun drones, stolen from the army, in a series of attacks meant to blow the whistle, drawing attention to the fact they were being stolen to be resold to gangs anyway.

Davie Cavalcanti had been buying them.  On their own, they were resistant to most small ammunition, used a rough AI for target selection and targeting, evasive maneuvers, flight planning and catching itself after the highest recoil shots.

Mia painted a picture.  One that didn’t have them in it, because in this picture, she was focused wholly on the threats, giving them some routes, and encouraging them to take one of those forking paths.  In this scenario, Davie had been after them at the hospital, had been informed about the car they’d taken, had been monitoring them, or had flagged the car as one that shouldn’t be leaving, and gave chase.  Then, still using satellite, had traced them to here, dispatching available soldiers and calling connections like the striking police.

In that picture she’d painted, there were twenty paths available to them.  Thirty, if he counted the semi-dangerous ones, like the one they’d taken to come here.  If they waited too long, there was a risk Davie would deploy drones.  They were of limited use in the city, since he has little record of using them in an urban area, except at night, but it was still a risk.

That was what Mia wanted to convey.

But she was also sharing how she saw the world.

That was what Ben had been groping for, and so frustrated about.  What she’d done so far had seemed like magic, tracking them when they’d evaded the planted cameras and used the bug detector.

A little less so now.

Their best move had been moving to the hospital catacombs.  There had to be a way that held true now.  Ben had an idea.  The library was across the street from a mall.

“Memorize what’s there, best as you can,” he told Rider.

Natalie was sitting watch, while Sterling sat in a library-provided beanbag chair with Ripley.  Ripley had a stack of books beside her, but was reading for her brother.

“We should go,” Rider told them.

“I want to rest.  To stop.  Can I read something for Sterling, then read a book or two?” Ripley asked.

“A book or two?” Rider asked, shocked.

Ripley spoke very slowly, saying, “They’re made of paper, and they have words on them, printed with ink, and when you read them, you sometimes forget that things suck, everyone disappoints you, and jerks are dragging you all over the place.”

“Cute.  But that’s a lot of reading to do before we move on.”

“I read fast.  Sometimes I read a book before I get all the way home from the library.  An hour?”

“That’ll take too long.  We need to keep moving, before anyone stumbles on us,” Rider said.  “No taking anything out at the library either.”

“But…”

“Everything’s being watched.”

“Come on,” Natalie said, more gently.

Sterling got up.  Ripley looked reluctant.

“This is your happy place?” Ben asked.

“Closest I have to one right now,” Ripley said.

“A library is a good sort of happy place,” Natalie said.  “Better than video games and television, or getting into trouble.”

Ripley shrugged.  Ben wondered how much that was just her not wanting to agree.

But Ripley did get up.

A little distance away, Rider had walked off, and now he was walking back faster.

“What’s going on?” Ben asked.

“They’re quietly evacuating the library.”

“Who?”

“The protesting police.  Ushering people out.  They just started, with the younger age section, they’re close.”

Ben pointed, and Rider nodded.

There was an emergency stairwell off to the side.

They avoided walking in the open, and passing in view of any officers, and the officers, it seemed, wanted to get as many people out of the way before they moved in.

The way they’d moved was suspect.  Was there a chance they were working against the Cavalcantis?  Yes.  That they’d see this situation as dire and break the strike?  Less so.

Ben snuck a peek over some books on the shelf.  It looked like there was a student study area past the door, past the reception and book sign out area, and that was being evacuated too.  They were going area by area through the library.

The library had Wi-fi, and as soon as they were in the stairwell, Ben got his laptop out.  Rider held it for him while he checked.

Some new updates.  Markers placed for each of the people around them.

“This is Mia?” Natalie asked.

Ripley perked up at the question.

“It’s Mia,” he said.  He closed the laptop and slid it into the side of the camera bag.  “Downstairs and over, they might not have made it that deep into the library.”

Rider led the way down the stairs.  The rest of them followed.

“Are we in trouble?” Sterling asked.

“No,” Natalie said.

“Yes,” Ripley said, countering her.  “But it’s okay.  We didn’t do anything wrong.  You and I didn’t, anyway.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Natalie asked.

“I dunno.  But my mom said you left me in a car.  That’s not great.”

“I didn’t leave you in a car.  Sean explained that-”

“I believe her,” Ripley said.

That seemed to take all the air out of Natalie.

They went down a flight of stairs.

“Why?” Natalie asked.  “Why believe her?  Her story doesn’t match up with anyone else’s.  Later, Ben can show you the details.”

I’m not so sure about that, Ben thought.

“Because she-” Ripley started.  She stopped herself.

“What?”

“I believe her,” Ripley said, with less conviction.  “She doesn’t lie to me.”

“Ripley,” Natalie said, and it was obvious she was trying to sound gentle.  At the same time, she was carrying Sterling who was, even as a wisp of a five year old, five years old – maybe thirty, forty pounds.  “She lied about your name, where you came from, her name, what she does for a living- do you think the fact she knows all about this criminal business is a coincidence?”

“I don’t know.  I mean she hasn’t lied to me… like that.  She left stuff out.”

“Mia left some damn critical things out,” Rider said.

“But she didn’t lie to my face,” Ripley said.  “She didn’t give times like that and then disappoint me.  If she said she’d do something, she did it.”

“I’d love the chance to dig into that,” Rider said.  “Were there people she had around, and she said they were such-and-such?  Or did she go out and say she was going on a date with her husband, only to… do what she was really doing?  Still working that one out.”

“Ripley,” Natalie said.  “I hate that name.  You-”

“Well I kind of hate you.”

Natalie had another of those moments she didn’t seem to have the breath to speak.

She paused, licking her lips.  Sterling, held against her side, was wide-eyed.

“I’m sorry if that’s the case.  But she lied about the times and the numbers.  Do you think we coordinated ahead of time?  That doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t talk to your father very often, we don’t always agree, even, but both of us were there.  I did not look away for very long at all.  The evidence backs that up.  Right Ben?”

Ben paused.

He didn’t like this.

“Yeah.”

“I dunno,” Ripley said, quieter.

They reached the bottom of the flight of stairs.  In the basement, which had a faint musty smell, there were more study areas for students, all vacant, and then areas for microfiche, newspaper archives, there was a station for printing things out, a place where books were being repaired, an old book storage, with a sign saying to ask for library staff to enter…

But there was also a door, with a short stairwell leading back up to the street.  From the Shotgun coffee cups in the waste bin by the door, Ben was willing to bet there were times a class ended and a wave of university students would come through here.

Not right now, though.

And back out onto the street.

They hurried across the street, with Ben nudging Natalie to stay close to the crowd when she seemed to want to avoid it.

Inside the mall, there was an elevator.  They got into one, and stayed on it, because it was occupied, going all the way up, and all the way down, before the doors closed and they were on their own.

Ben dug into his bag for keys.

“Aha,” Rider said.  “You still have those?”

“They’re useful,” Ben said.

Rider opened the panel of the elevator.  There was an intercom system, and there was a lock.

“Lockpicks?” Natalie asked.

“No.  The keys to access these elevators are standardized.  If you have the right keys…”

The keyring was large, and not the lightest thing in the world, but as much as Ben was under the average height, he was a bit stocky and he’d gotten used to carrying a full kit with him.

He did have lockpicks too.  He’d gotten both the keys and lockpicks back when he’d started training as a licensed marshal, and he’d never had cause to lose them.  They even came in useful, once in a while.

After he’d quit the licensing program, he’d figured the most serious of those reasons would be to impress a friend or get into his apartment if he locked himself out.

He found the right key, put it in, and turned it on, before pressing the button combinations.  It took two tries before he remembered the exact one.  The display at the top of the elevator went blank, and the elevator took them to the top floor.

The room the elevator took them to was dingy, with peeling paint on metal walls, with writing in permanent marker and what might’ve been chalk, noting the various technicians’ work, for the elevator and the breaker system for the mall.

Ben hit the button to send the elevator back down.

The area was as cramped as a closet, and might’ve been used as one, though bottles of cleaner and brooms were kept clear of the elevator.  Past that… he opened the door.

They had access to the top level of the mall, which had the cheapest carpet, folding chairs, conference tables, and a single coat of paint on drywall.  It looked like the hallways ran around the circumference of the mall itself, with rooms clustered in the corners, while leaving the center clear for skylights.  There was access to the roof too, it looked like, but if they were being watched by satellite, he didn’t want to do anything there.

All unoccupied, unlit, a bit dingy.  Maybe cleaning crews came by once a week to vacuum.  Maybe once a season or once a month, the owners of the mall did something here, or an event might get hosted.

“Tell me that isn’t a little bit cool,” he said.  He aimed the question at Natalie.

“It’s cool.  It’s useful,” she said.  “Thank you.  I don’t know if I’ve said that recently.”

“Of course.”

“It’s neat, I guess,” Ripley said.  The look in her eyes betrayed the lack of enthusiasm in the words or tone.

“If your special place is a library, mine’s… the stage.  Like your friend Blair, I think?”

“Yeah,” Ripley said.  There was a hint of a smile on her face, thinking about her friend.  But it fell away fast.

“But I wasn’t so good at it.  I think, more specifically, my special place is backstage.  Places the usual audience doesn’t get to see, dealing with the things they don’t usuall get to deal with,” Ben explained.  “I’m willing to bet they won’t think of looking for us here.”

And I think this is another space your abductor will have trouble tracking us.  She does best in the areas that are so public that nobody thinks about security or privacy and then she paints a complete picture.

This was more the kind of place which was a minute or two of travel away from those public places, that nobody even considered the existence of.  Like the conference space below the library.

“It’s scary,” Sterling said.

“It’s safe,” his mom said.  She was carrying him, and gave him a light jostle.

He seemed to accept that.

“It’d be nice to stop and calm down,” Ben said.

“What does that look like?” Natalie asked.  “How do we get there?”

“Getting out of the city, maybe.  We’ll talk about that later,” he replied.

They walked down the hall and put distance between themselves and the elevator.  Ben checked, and found there was Wi-fi through a nearby coffee shop.  He tried ten different, usual passwords before one worked.

Not perfect, but it was something.  He could use data for whatever was necessary.

That more or less decided where they stopped.  Leaving the door open, they had a view down a long hallway, running along the east side of the mall.  Another of them could sit at a position to watch down another, along the south.  The elevator was center-north.  There was a stairwell nearby, which they blocked with a table.  Easy enough to move, but they’d hear noise if someone tried to force their way in.

Finally, they settled.  Natalie got the uneaten sandwiches from earlier out, along with drinks.

“I want to talk,” Ben told her.  “A word?”

“Me too.” Natalie asked Ben.  “In private?”

“Yeah.  Perfect.”

“Bring your camera.”

Ben was a bit surprised at that, but he did.

They ended up walking partway down the hallway, so Ben could keep an eye on Rider.

Ripley was reading a book her friends had brought her.

“I don’t like this emphasis on the fifteen second thing,” he said.

She’d just been getting a bite to eat, and licked the space between her cheek and gum, to get a bit of food from there.  The look in her eyes was unhappy.

“I don’t believe it.  The evidence doesn’t support it unless we stretch a bit, and think she stayed in the car somewhere nearby before leaving.”

“Sean knows it’s true.”

“Sean was reading the room and trying to keep the peace.  And the reason I said it, even if I know it’s not the truth, is because you’re losing Ripley.  In the moment, it felt like if I let Mia have that win, and tell her version of the story, which might be as untrue, in the other direction, I don’t know… she’d win.  And I don’t want her to win.”

“Thank you.”

“Pushing that at Ripley the second time, all of us against her, it felt like browbeating.”

“You slip into journalist mode sometimes.  Using rare words.”

“Nat.  Natalie.”

“Yeah.  It was fifteen seconds, Ben.”

“I know you want to believe that, but-”

“It has to be true.”

He shut his eyes for a second.

“It has to,” she repeated.

Eyes still closed, he said, “It’s still three, kind of four adults, pushing their version of the truth onto a kid.”

“The truth, not a version.”

“Okay,” he said.  “But what if it turns out that it was a reflection in the window that you thought was her-”

Natalie shook her head.

“Or if it was thirty seconds, not fifteen?  If you, if we put everything on that lie, if we build everything we’re doing and saying here off of one discrepancy, that it’s fifteen seconds, Mia said thirty minutes.  That Mia’s in the wrong… and it turns out to be even slightly wrong?  You will never repair that.”

“There’s a lot I don’t think I’ll ever repair.  That’s the absolute horror of all of this,” Natalie replied.

“Nat, it’s not an ‘I’ll’ thing.  It’s a ‘we’ thing.  You have to meet her halfway.  You don’t make her trust you.  You earn the trust.  Show you can be a caring and attentive mom to Sterling.  Love her through osmosis.  I know it’s hard.  I know that we can barely think, with all of this going on.  But, putting it bluntly, you’ve been a massive bitch.”

Natalie let out a soft half-laugh.

“I’m serious.”

“I know,” she replied.

“She sees that.  She feels it.  She takes it to heart.  Ripley does.  Camellia, if you want to call her that, in private.”

“She’s not, is she?  Camellia?”

“Who knows?” he asked.  “Who the fuck knows, Nat?  Maybe you’ll find some connection.  Common ground.  Maybe there’s something in there that’s yours, and Sean’s.  But you don’t force it.  You don’t demand it.  That kid’s had her entire world ripped away from her.  I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but if you just offer the basic minimum of care, no judgment, no bitchiness, no… attacking her old life and reminding her of what she’s lost, or forcing her to take a side, or browbeating her… I think she’ll be receptive.  Maybe not today, or this week, but kids need that.”

“It’s hard,” she said.  Moisture in her eyes.

“Suck it the fuck up.  It’s harder for her.”

She let out another of those half-laughs, looking aside.

“Yeah?”

She didn’t respond.

“Natalie, if this subject of the fifteen seconds comes up again?  I’ll tell my version.  And if you act in a way that leaves me feeling like I have to make apologies for you, or like I’ve done a bad thing by reuniting you two?”

“You haven’t done a bad thing.”  Natalie’s voice was quiet.

“It sometimes feels like I have.  Not that I think Mia should have her either, but fuck me, fuck you, fuck how you’re acting.  I will walk away.  Maybe Rider comes with me.  He seems to think he’s returning a favor, for something I don’t remember doing.  Or he’s in this because he’s tied to the Cavalcanti’s, and he’s feeding them information, in which case you’ve got less eyes on him, and they might come straight for Ripley, to hurt Mia Hurst.”

Natalie didn’t respond.

“I have footage. If we separate ways, and you guys drop off the map, I’ll put something together.  If I walk away and that means the Hursts have an easier time abducting Ripley, and they take her back… I guess that’s how the documentary ends.  But I don’t want to do either of those things.”

Natalie sighed, eyes averted.

He waited for a long while.

“Camera on,” Natalie said.

“Hm?”

She motioned.

He got it from the camera bag, turned it on, then got positioned, putting her center shot.

She didn’t look at him, or the camera.  She didn’t say anything.

“Nat-”

“I said-”

“-alie,” he said, belatedly.  He didn’t want to sound too familiar for the camera.

She took a deep breath, then sighed.  “I said I’d explain.”

“Did you?”

“Earlier this morning.  I said to give me the benefit of a doubt.  That I’d explain.  This is me doing that.”

“Okay.”

There was another pause.  He couldn’t read her expression.

“I was… targeted, by two relatives.  They were my age.  I was a little younger than Ripley is now.  It started with verbal abuse, name calling, and accusations.  It got worse. It’s not what you’re thinking, okay?”

“Okay.”

“But it was bad.  In that neighborhood.  Adjacent.”

Ben wasn’t sure what that meant, but he made a mental note.

She met his eyes, then looked away.  “You don’t get it.”

“I’ll try,” he said.

“I went to the washroom once, and was rushing, running, and they took that as a cue to chase and intercept me.  Kept me from reaching the bathroom until I had an accident.  Roughhousing, or tickling, two on one, until I was sobbing, tears running down my face.  Spanking.  Wedgies.  It sounds so minor.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Ben said.

“Thank you for saying so.  I got to where I felt so awful being around them, it made it easier to… make me sick.  Make me have accidents.  Get me to cry, so I’d go back to my family sobbing, and they’d be mad at me for being such a crybaby, while my relatives acted innocent.  Sometimes it meant we went home early, which… made me want to be more of a crybaby, after.  Because it worked those other times, right?”

“It’s insidious.”

“There’s that journalist voice again.  Who says that?” she asked, smiling a bit.  “I’ve had years to think about it.  It’s… adjacent, isn’t it?  Like my body wasn’t my own.  I don’t know why they singled me out.  But they did.  Every time we were with family.  And we were with family often.  Every weekend.  Sometimes they got caught, but it was always treated as an isolated incident.  But it was constant.”

She swallowed hard.  Still looking at a spot of the wall.

“What they said and did, even back then, it felt like they were play-acting, that it wasn’t them.  It wasn’t.  They’d learned it from their dad.  I was right.  Go me.  Good instincts, for that at least.  He was a sadist.  He was stronger, he spanked me harder.  I stopped crying.”

Ben remained silent.

“I told people.  First, I said I didn’t want to go to family events anymore.  That I wanted to hang out with friends.  For a few months, that worked.  I’d go to a friend’s for sleepovers.  Then that stopped.  I think because my- my relative, he said I shouldn’t avoid family.  Then I used the language they were using to taunt me, in school, and I got in trouble.  I cried, I told people at school what was happening, where I’d heard the words.  That I was being bullied by relatives.”

She took a deep breath, then sighed.  Rigid, expressionless.

“Humiliation, calling me names, pushing me down into the mud, and after a few years of that, where nobody stuck up for me or stopped it, it started to feel like I belonged that way.  Every single person let me down.  You might have noticed my family wasn’t overly involved in the search for Camellia.  Sean’s was, a bit.  So was Sean, a bit.  My mom, my dad, they… I guess without getting into details, you can sum it up by saying they didn’t believe me and they took me to more family events.  If I said one thing and my relatives said another, they believed them.  I went to a therapist and it was only when I was twenty-two, years later, that I realized he was my dad’s friend.  And probably my relative’s, too.  So that skewed his read on the situation.”

“Sure.  Makes sense,” Ben said.  It was feeling too much like he was leaving her out on a limb.  “I’m sorry.”

“Second therapist was better.  Not great, it’s… slower than the movies make it seem.  But better.  Then one day, I talked about my frustrations with the other therapist and his therapy and… it’s like therapist number two was offended?  Like I’d insulted his whole profession by proxy?”

Her face screwed up.  It made Ben think a lot of Ripley in the car.

After the fifteen second thing.

She pulled herself together.  Forced her tone to be normal.  “His tone got colder.  Sometime after that, he called me manipulative.  Maybe I am.  I told a friend some of it, and she told my other friends, and then I had no friends at all.  Partially my fault, maybe.  I got angry, pushed them away.  I made others, after a year or so, but I didn’t tell any of them.  Every last person in the world let me down.  Then I got pregnant.”

“With Camellia.”

“We can say that, huh?” Natalie asked, and she looked straight at the camera.  Her eyes were moist.  “That girl in the other room isn’t Camellia, but the child I was born with was?”

“Yeah.  I think so.”

“I thought she was mine.  That I could keep her separate from everything that came before.  Enforce ideas of consent.  Protect her.  She was a paradigm shift for me.  A fresh start, separate from everything that came before.  I guess a part of me hoped Sean would feel the same way, and he’d come around.  Then he didn’t.  He let me down.  That’s why we fought that day.  Or why I fought as hard as I did.  I was hurting, hurt.  Disappointed.  I had blood clots the size of my fist coming out of me, still.  I had barely slept, my legs trembled when I stood up.  I drove at a crawl, down roads with no cars, and stopped if anyone came, I didn’t trust myself driving.  It’s why I parked like I did.  That much is true.”

She looked at the camera again.

“It’s why I looked away for those fifteen seconds.  And lost Camellia.  Forever, apparently.  I got another girl back.”

“In a sense,” Ben said.

“I love her, still.  But I guess… she let me down?”

“That’s not her fault.”

“No, but it still happened.  And that’s the deal, I guess?  I looked away for fifteen seconds, and let her down, despite all the promises I told myself before her birth, and in those wonderful four and a half weeks we spent together.  So its only fair, I guess.”

“You can still build something,” Ben told her.

“Let’s hope,” she said.  “You can turn that off now.  I just told you things I haven’t said since I told my second therapist.”

“You know there are other therapists.  They aren’t all like that.”

“I know.  But at this point, it’d hurt more to dredge it all back up, more than any benefit I’d get out of it.  I’ve read books, sat with it on my own.”

“It might be worth doing, for Ripley’s sake.”

“It’s a gamble, isn’t it?  That they’re decent?  And so costly if they aren’t.  And then you consider the state of things… over a year to wait for one roll of the dice, I’ve heard.”

“I’ve heard similar,” Ben said.

“But we can ramble forever.  I’d rather this be… what it is.  Stop the camera.”

He pressed the power button.

They sat in silence for a minute.  Ben found himself stuck on what to say.  The process of wracking his brain, trying to think of a response, made him instead go back and recontextualize aspects of the Natalie he’d gotten to know over the last almost-decade.

“You’re the only one who hasn’t let me down, Ben.”

He met her eyes.

“Thank you.  I do mean that.”

“Sure.  I’m glad.”

“Nobody believed me or backed me up, during the second lowest period of my life.  I deserve for it to be fifteen seconds.  To be believed now.”

“I don’t think it works that way.  Ripley comes first.”

“Yeah?” she asked.

“I’m sympathetic.  I had a good childhood, so I don’t…” he trailed off.  “But I’m sympathetic.  At the same time, this has been about her, not you.  Time for another paradigm shift.  Her and Sterling first, you second.”

Natalie took a long second or two, staring at that point in the wall.

“Okay.”

“Mom her by osmosis, through Sterling,” he said, again.  “Look.”

She turned.

Ripley and Sterling were drawing on spare paper.

“Whatever else, she’s a terrific big sister.  And Sterling, vomit in the car aside, has been a champ.”

“Yeah.”

“Focus on that part of it.”

“I fucking hate the name Ripley so much.”

“Hate it away from Ripley, then.”

“Okay.”

It was Ben who let out a heavy sigh.

“I don’t have much money.  You made it clear you’re not into me, or you’re not into women.”

“I’m not into… exploitation.  It would feel like that.”

“It would.  Thank you for saying no, when I tried.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t have a lot to offer, Ben.  I’ll work on things with Ripley and Sterling.  But I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say or do.  You’ve got… probably two hours of me ugly crying on camera.  All of that vulnerability, loss, hurt, the desperation.  Stupidity.  Awful mistakes.  Me thinking it was Maya.  I don’t think there’s anything more humiliating.”

“Yeah.  But there was also the fight.  The conviction.”

“Sure.  Thanks for saying that.  I guess, um.” Again, she looked away, averting eye contact.  “You have that piece of my story now.  I don’t know if that’s currency, if it buys a bit more…”

She trailed off.

“A bit more of me not letting you down?”

“Basically,” Natalie replied.

“It doesn’t work that way.  I’m part of this.  If you’re trying, I’m trying.”

“Use it how you want.  You have permission.  If you made me look more sympathetic than like that… humiliated girl I was, that’d be nice.  If you left out pieces… but didn’t imply it was more than it was, because like I said, that came up with the first therapist-”

“Yeah.  Sure.  I get it.”

“I guess one day Ripley and Sterling will see it,” she said, voice soft.  “Even if I don’t have to, to buy your help, I’ve shared it, isn’t that showing I can put myself second?”

He wasn’t sure how to frame his answer, and before he could, she turned to walk away, wiping her eyes clear.

She went to the table with Sterling and Ripley.

Camera on.

“Putting yourself down isn’t the same as putting yourself second.”

The thought had come to mind, and saying it at the end of the clip would be a better reminder to himself than taking a note and remembering to connect that note in his notebook to that camera clip.

But.

Ripley was saying something snarky.  Now Natalie was trying a little harder.

Still more ‘I’ and ‘me’ in what she was saying than Ben might’ve hoped for, but… it made a bit more sense if he was the only one she could count on, or vent to.

He walked back to his laptop.  Rider came to look over his shoulder.

There was all the material Valentina had given.  The tidier package of material Mia had given.

It was an actual quiet moment, without other kids.  Where he felt like he had to watch Natalie a bit less than before.  Where Rider was a step away.  No parents.  No child service worker.

He had a sense of how Mia saw the world, now.  She’d showed him.  He wasn’t sure how much she’d meant to.

The more he dwelt on that, the more little details stood out.

“Shit,” he murmured.

“What?” Rider asked.

“Look here,” Ben said.  He brought up an image and focused on it.  It was Los Isleños, resurrected from the dead, apparently, pushing up against the Cavalcanti’s in a bad part of town.

“I see it.  They came back all of a sudden.”

“I think she brought them back.”

“Makes sense.”

“Look.  They’re set up here.  Run down house off to the side of their old territory.  She has a note, saying they started moving at eleven twenty.”

“Before we were even on the road.”

“Sure, but that’s not the weird part.  Rider… how did she know?”

Rider cocked his head.

Ben went over the available information.  There was nothing nearby Mia could have used to track them.  No cameras outside of fast food places within view of that place.  There was one road into the cul de sac.  “I don’t think they even left the house until five minutes after the call.  Look at when they were caught on camera here.”

“They told her,” Rider said.

“They’re on board.  It’s not that she stirred the pot.  They’re working for her.  Or with her,” Ben said.

Now that he had that impression, he could look elsewhere and find more of the same.

He glanced over at Natalie.

They weren’t up against one unusually tech-savvy woman with some traps, her husband, a Cavalcanti runaway, and a hired gun.  She wasn’t bluffing when she suggested she had eyes on the Cavalcantis.  Some of the images were cameras.  Timing of the metadata on the images put the shots at the same time, so it wasn’t one person roving and getting lots of lucky shots.  It wasn’t two, or three.  There were easily eight or nine.  Just as people watching things on her behalf, taking pictures, reporting in.

Multiple gangs.  Multiple agents.  Multiple mercenaries.

This was Mia Hurst.

“Ben?” Rider asked, his voice cutting past Ben’s train of thought.

“Yeah?”

“Not sure how to broach this difficult a subject, but that sandwich is working its way down, and it’s moving stuff down the pipe as it goes.  I need to take a massive dump.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you feel the need to watch me while I do it?”

“Yeah.”

“Pervert.”

Ben snorted air out his nostrils. He locked his computer, brought his camera and camera bag, and walked with Rider to the sad little toilet at the corner of the office.

“Shout if there’s trouble,” he told Natalie.

He still had the gun.

“Okay.”

“You’re bringing your camera?  I can promise you, nobody wants to see a recording of me doing my business,” Rider said.

“Hah.  No.  Reviewing footage, is all.”

Rider sat and proved he wasn’t bathroom shy- or that he’d needed to use the facilities after all.  Ben stood with his back to the bathroom door, and went back through the footage.  Reversed, silent, there was only the facial expressions and posture.  In a journalism class, he’d been told to read material and transcripts from the last blurb backwards, to force his brain to avoid skimming, and to pick up more details.  This was like that.

Delete.

He selected the option.

Natalie’s unpleasant, humiliated childhood and adolescence.  The disappointment.  The reasons.

They’d be gone if he said ‘yes’.  More gone if he overwrote the data.

She’d asked him just yesterday morning.  If he could get Ripley back and get no documentary, or get a documentary but have the ending be bad… what would he prefer?

It wasn’t that simple.  It wasn’t a binary this or that, or a dot placed on a line between one or the other, with him deciding how far he’d go in a given direction.

It wasn’t easy, either.  Because the way things were, they were up against someone scary.  Mia Hurst had resources that he wasn’t even sure he had a full grasp on.  If Rider hadn’t stopped him, he would’ve no doubt uncovered more depths.  More resources.

The abductor showing herself to be more of a monster, in terms of how powerful she was, how far her reach might go.

No, there was a third vector.

It was possible to have Ripley back, and to get a good ending.

But what was the cost?

“Fuck, that stinks,” Ben said.

“That’s nature.  It’s not like we didn’t smell worse, bunking together at the barracks, while we got our licenses.”

“Almost got, in my case.  What the fuck did you eat, Rider?”

“Cheese and beef sub, pork rinds.  I said I’d shove your head in the toilet and leave you like that if you put the wrong thing on camera.  I figured I should have something loaded in the chamber.”

“Horrible,” Ben said, smiling a bit despite himself.

He opened the door and stood so stale, musty air could flow from the stairwell into the bathroom area.

“You’re not working directly with Davie Cavalcanti, but you’re working with the judge, who almost certainly is,” Ben said.

He didn’t look at Rider as he made the accusation.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ben.”

“Do you owe the judge favors?  Is that it?  Did he get you off the hook?”

“No.”

Ben waited, letting the silence hang.

“You sound pretty certain of this bullshit,” Rider said.  “They got you good, huh?”

“Call your judge.  If he’s the go-between or anything like that, use him to get in touch with Davie Cavalcanti.  Tell Davie we’ll work with him to get Mia Hurst.  We can inform a bit about some of the information she has and what she’s doing.  But most of all, we have bait.”

He looked over at Rider, who still sat on the toilet, pants at his ankles.  Expression hard to read, but concerned.

We can save Ripley and have a documentary.  But we can’t do it and remain ‘good’.

He’d make the sacrifice.  Work with someone horrendous.

Rider wouldn’t say ‘yes’ or agree unless Ben convinced him.

“She’s too well set up.  There’s no way we get through this and get away with Mia Hurst alive.  She has too many resources.  She’ll follow us to the ends of the Earth.  So… cooperation.  With the Cavalcantis.”

Rider studied him.

Ben got his phone out.  “Want my phone, to make the call?”

“Let me finish taking my shit first, then I’ll call.  With my own phone.”

Ben nodded, then let the door close behind him as he returned to Natalie, Ripley, and Sterling.  He deleted Natalie’s footage on the way back.

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