“So, you’re sure she’s the right one?” One man asked the suited man.
“Sir, trust me on this. Not only is she beautiful, but she’s got a sick mother. Once you’ve spent enough time, she’ll do just about anything to get the money she needs for her care,” the suited man said.
The guy talking to him smiled. “Perfect.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash and peeled about ten, one-hundred dollar bills off the wad and handed them over. In exchange he received a manila envelope and the suited man gave him a knowing nod. “Best of luck.”
The man took his envelope and walked away and then the suited man turned his attention to me. “Why hello.”
“Hi.” Even though I didn’t see anyone who I thought would recognize me, I wanted to use as few words as possible, just in case.”
“Are you in the market for a beautiful car today?” he said.
“Possibly,” I replied. “I’m browsing.”
The man took a step back and raised an eyebrow. “Browsing?”
“Yes.” I looked over my shoulder to make sure no one was looking at me and then turned back to face the suited man. “A teacher possibly.”
He crossed his arms and I got the funny feeling I’d done or said something wrong, though I wasn’t sure what. “I’m not in the business of teachers anymore. Not since all of that mess in Postings.”
My heart started to beat a little faster. I was in the right place at least. If I could just get the guy to relax a bit, I’d be in a better spot. “That’s a shame. I’d pay well for one.”
The man looked over my shoulder and nodded his head. I glanced back in the direction he was looking and saw two masked people staring back at me. In a slow-motion, heart pounding moment, one of them reached up and lifted the mask on his face up, revealing that he was one of the two who’d captured and tortured me before I managed to escape.
Shit.
I turned and looked back at the suited man and raised an eyebrow. “I guess you don’t want my business.”
He smiled. “You’re right. I don’t.”
With that, I slid away from the area and started to scan the crowd for Felicity. It was harder with everyone masked, so I simply kept an eye out for her signature braids and the dark blue dress she’d worn. As I turned a corner, I risked a look to my right and saw that the two people, including one of my former captors, was still following me. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong, but maybe Felicity was right, it was a bad idea to ask around.
Eventually, I came to a bustling corner of the show and saw Felicity standing amongst the fray. I tried not to raise any eyebrows as I slid and pushed my way towards her, and instead of reaching out to grab her, I just moved and stood at her side.
“Felicity?” I asked.
She turned and looked at me. “Hey. You good?”
“Um, not really,” I replied. “Remember when you told me to come find you if I ran into any trouble?”
“Yeah,” she said, nervousness in her voice.
I looked over her. “Well this is me finding you.”
15
Cherri
No one mentioned the dead end we found for a handful of days. Though none of us were willing to say it, I think the same one thing was true for all of us.
We weren’t expecting to still be searching for answers a month later.
Sicily was still trying to work his way through the muddle of information he ran into from the unknown number that had called Nathan and I, which turned out to be how Deon was communicating with Nathan, but the information he was getting was hard to stick to anything. The only thing he’d learned was that a majority of the pings from the number were in and around Maine, which meant Deon was likely still in the state, but he had no idea where. Just being in Maine was useless to us.
The road we’d followed with Brayden trying to find Connor had hit the same brick wall. Wherever Connor had been meeting with Brayden, it had been totally cleaned out. Apparently Connor was a man who liked to cover his bases.
Who knew?
Brayden had mentioned that there were a few different places he’d been brought to, but none of them sat as clearly in his mind as the one we’d found and now knew was of no use to us. We had made a couple of attempts that same day we hit the first dead end to find something else—it was Brayden’s way of trying to keep us all from getting too down in the dumps—but nothing led anywhere near as concrete.
Suddenly, it felt like we had nothing.
Stalemate.
A knock on my door pulled my attention over, and I looked up to see Nathan walking into the room. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
Nathan walked in and sat down in the chair sitting at the desk and spun it to face me. “How you doing?”
“I’m okay. I just feel… out of options,” I said. “I feel like we’re no closer to finding Connor or Deon than we were a month ago.” Nathan slid his hands into his dark brown hair. It’d gotten much longer since we were dating. “You taking a stand against haircuts?” I asked.
He chuckled. “Nah. My therapist and I talked about it. I’ve always liked my hair longer, and Nikki likes it long, but it’s more of a control thing. It’s one thing I have control over, whether or not I cut my hair.” He laughed. “I know that sounds dumb.”
“No.” I smiled at him. “Are you really seeing a therapist?”
He nodded. “Yeah. It’s been great. I mean… I needed it.”
“I’d say so,” I responded.
“My dad used to do strange shit,” he said suddenly. “He’d blindfold me, or bind my hands, and I usually had to pass some test or recall specific information before he’d let me out. He said that if I had pressure to get the information right, I always would. He wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t even realize until I started going to therapy how much I’d repressed that stuff. I’d forgotten.”
“That’s probably why you always felt like the best way to communicate was to trap who you were talking to,” I said.
He nodded. “So I’ve discovered. Not doing that is hard. It’s scary not being able to control everything in my world, but I know now how unhealthy that is.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“I saw how disturbed you got when I said something about the blindfold,” Nathan replied. “I… want us to be close again, Cherri. Not romantically, but you’re important to me. I want to be open and honest with you.” He shrugged. “I mean, you’ll probably be my sister-in-law… someday I think.”
“Oh god. I will have dated my children’s—”
“Nope,” Nathan cut me off. “We’re not going to talk about that… ever.”
I laughed. “Fair.”
He stood up from the chair and tapped me. “Come on. I’ve set up a dinner meeting for all of us. Hopefully it’ll help you not to feel so lost.”
“Okay.” I stood up and Nathan started to walk away, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him back. My heart started to pound a bit faster, but I closed in on Nathan and wrapped my arms around him in a hug. He hugged me back, and I could feel in the way he squeezed that it was just as needed for him as it was for me. I stepped away and laughed. “Sorry.