“So someone else is using Gloria’s log in. Could it be Lee?”
“If it was, it wasn’t from his computer—it’s clean, and the clerks probably would have noticed if he’d been out there on Gloria’s computer. The really weird part is that there’s one search that comes up almost every day that isn’t in Manassas CPS jurisdiction. It’s over in Stafford, and there is no active CPS file for that address. Can you think why anyone would do a daily search on an address that’s not only out of their office’s jurisdiction, but also out of their hunting ground?”
“Stafford? Stafford, Stafford . . .” Listen to your gut, Mercedes, it’s telling you something. “Run that address against my old cases.”
“Let’s see . . .” In the silence of the house, I can hear the click of keys over the phone. “Holy shit, Mercedes. Nine years ago, a fourteen-year-old girl named Cara Ehret. Her father beat her, raped her, and prostituted her to his friends. Fuck. You stayed with her in the hospital.”
“A guardian angel,” I murmur, remembering. “She said she finally had a guardian angel. Her mother drove her car into a tree when Cara was nine or ten. Her father’s still in prison—the rest of his life, I seem to recall—so he’s not still living in that house. And I doubt Cara is either. We looked at her case this morning but couldn’t trace her after high school; where is she now?”
“We’ll dig in and find out. I’ll call back when we’ve got it.”
“Cara Ehret,” Sterling repeats, tasting the name. “She was on our short list. But what’s her connection to Gloria? Or to whoever was using Gloria’s log in?”
I shake my head, the final threads still just out of reach. “She was blonde as a kid, but her father dyed her hair red when he started renting her to his friends,” I tell her, the details I read so recently crowding in on me. “What if we’re looking for Cara, but she—”
My phone rings again before I can finish the thought, but it isn’t Cass. It’s an unfamiliar number. “Ramirez.”
“Mercedes,” comes a hoarse whisper. “Mercedes, she’s here!”
“She’s here? Where’s here? Who is this?”
“It’s Emilia,” the girl on the other end of the call whispers. “The lady who killed my parents, she’s here at my Uncle Lincoln’s!”
26
“We’re on our way,” I promise immediately, and Sterling has her keys and phones in hand before we even get to the door. She tosses me her keys so she can get the phones ready. “Emilia, are you safe? Are you hiding?”
“No, I have to warn my uncle.”
“Emilia, you need to hide.” My hands are steady as I jam the keys in the ignition, training beating adrenaline. I can see Sterling texting Cass with one phone and looking up the number for the Chantilly police with the other.
“I can’t let him die like my mom did. He’s been taking real good care of me. He’s nice, and he doesn’t hurt me. I can’t just leave him.”
“Is she in the house?” I ask, pulling out of the driveway. Sterling grabs the phone from my shoulder and switches it to speaker, sliding it into a cradle sticking out of the cigarette lighter.
“No. She’s walking around it.”
“Is it just you and your uncle in the house?”
“No. His girlfriend’s here.”
“Okay, Emilia, run to their room if you can do it without being seen through a window. Wake them up. But be sneaky. If they’re loud, you could all get hurt. Keep the phone with you.”
I can hear her heavy breathing over the line. Mother of God, this girl is brave. Sterling cups her hand around her mouth and the mic on her phone to muffle her conversation with the dispatch officer in Chantilly. Driving like a bat out of hell, I tap her other phone and make a swirling motion with my finger, the closest I can get to lights.
She gets it, though, and starts punching in another text, this one to Holmes, to let her know we’re driving like LEOs in a personal vehicle without lights or sirens. She tells the dispatch officer, too, so hopefully we’ll be able to get to Chantilly without a well-meaning officer pulling us over for violating a dozen or two traffic laws.
Lincoln Anders’s groggy voice comes through the background. “Emilia? What is it, Emi?”
“The lady who killed my parents. She’s outside,” she tells him, and the phone is right up against her face.
“Did you have a nightmare, sweetheart?” asks a female voice, just as sleep muddled. God, it’s later than I thought.
“No, she’s here, she’s just outside. We have to hide.”
“Emilia, put the phone on speaker,” I tell her. “Let your uncle hear me.”
“Okay,” she pants, and I hear the change in the background.
“Mr. Anders, this is FBI Agent Mercedes Ramirez. Emilia called me. If she says the woman is outside, believe her. The Chantilly police are on their way to your address. Is there a cellar or basement where you can hide?”
“No,” he answers, suddenly sounding much more awake. “There’s a root cellar—”
I cringe.
“—but the entrance is outside. You can’t get there from here.”
“Do you have any weapons in the house?”
“N-no.”
“The address is outside city limits,” Sterling whispers. “Dispatch says two cars will be there in ten.”
Ten minutes. Jesus fucking Christ.
“Can you get out of the house?” I demand. “Can you get to a neighbor?”
“Come on, Stacia, get up. We’ll just—” He cuts himself off, and Emilia whimpers. “She’s inside the house,” he hisses.
“Get out. Get out now!”
Sterling holds her phone near the microphone, the recording function lit up, and gives me a wide-eyed look.
A gunshot cracks through the silence, followed by a grunt and two screams.
“Emilia, RUN,” I yell through the gunshots that follow. Emilia is the only one screaming now. I don’t even know if she heard me.
“Stop,” a muffled voice commands on the other end. “Stop, you’re safe now.”
Emilia is sobbing now, and then there’s a startled grunt.
“Stop fighting me,” the voice snaps. “You’re safe now. You’re going to be okay.”
“Emilia!”
More grunts, and Emilia’s screaming again, feral, broken things that must be shredding her throat, and then— Another gunshot, and a heavy thump.
“No, no, no,” whines the voice. “No, it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. No. NO. You’re supposed to be SAFE! I’m making you SAFE!” She screams, and it tangles off into a choking rasp. I can barely hear footsteps. The time between treads says she’s running, and shit, the police aren’t there yet, they can’t get there in time to stop her!
“Cara!” I yell, wondering if she can hear me. “Cara, it’s Mercedes. Do you remember me?”
But the only thing I can hear is the pained groans of someone still alive. Tears running down bloodless cheeks, Sterling tells the dispatch officer to send ambulances.
Too many minutes later, we hear the officers arrive, calling into the house. “This one’s alive!” one shouts, and someone steps on Emilia’s phone before they say who it is.
I’m doing 110 in a 45, and I wasn’t anywhere near fast enough.
When we screech to a halt in front of the Anders house, lights are flashing everywhere, pressing in on wounds that are far more raw than usual. Two ambulances are in the drive, and as we run up to the front door, two paramedics rush out with a gurney.
There’s a man on it. Her dad’s cousin, Lincoln Anders.
“The little girl!” I snap.
One of them shakes his head, and they push past into the ambulance.
There’s an officer at the door, and he barely gives our credentials a glance. “The woman and the girl were dead before they hit the ground,” he tells us. “Woman was shot straight through the heart, the girl took one to the head, point-blank.”
“We were on the phone with her,” Sterling tells him, voice shaking. “She saw the intruder, called us, and went to wake up her uncle and his girlfriend. They were trying to leave the house.”
“Why did she call you? Why not the police?”
“Her parents were murdered on the third.” I scrub my hands against my cheeks. “She was delivered to my house, and I gave her my number if she needed anything. She saw the same woman outside here.”