A mirthless smile tugged at her lips. “In my line of work, I can’t afford to be a victim. Not once. Not ever.”
He dug between the lines and extracted the meaning lurking in the dark. “What happened to you?”
“Stirring the pot won’t help you at all, and it’ll hurt me a lot. I’ve got a career. A kid. An adoption pending.”
“Why’d you leave New Orleans?”
“Things weren’t good at home. My mother died and my stepfather wasn’t Father Knows Best. I figured out pretty quickly it was better for me to get out of town.”
“You were underage.”
She was reaching for the doughnut again but stopped at his words. “Desperation knows no age.”
“Your stepfather didn’t try to bring you back home?”
“He wanted me back. Came looking for me. Almost found me in a coffee shop the day after I left, but I ducked out.” She shook her head. “I still remember his face when I saw him crossing the street toward the shop. He was pissed.”
“Not concerned?”
“No, definitely angry. I threw one hard punch that last night I was in his home. Connected with his face so hard I thought I broke my hand. His broken nose told me he was hurting.”
“Why’d you hit him?”
She pushed aside the remains of her doughnut. “He wanted to play house.”
He’d suspected as much but hearing her say it triggered cold, deadly contempt. “Did he?”
“No. But he tried and I clocked him.”
“Good for you.”
She flexed the fingers of her right hand, glancing at an index finger that was slightly bent. “I was sorry I didn’t hit him with something harder.”
“What about your biological father?”
“Left when I was two. Haven’t seen him since. His parents are dead. No extended family except for my mother’s great-aunt, but she was old when I was born. I think a lack of extended family was one of the things that appealed to William when he met my mother.”
“Do you have any siblings?”
“No. William was never able to produce a male heir, which always bothered him. In fact, the more years that passed and he didn’t get his son, the more he resented me.” She shook her head as if brushing off a memory.
“So you picked Virginia just like that?”
“Nothing strategic. This is where the bus money ran out.”
“And from there?”
“There’s a man in the area named Duke Spence. He helps runaways. I was lucky. He and his volunteers were at the bus station the day I arrived. He gave me a place to stay and told me to get into school. I did and from there, I took it one step at a time.”
“You mentioned a kid and an adoption. Is that Hanna?”
“She’s seventeen. She was in a dark place when I found her several years ago. I’m offering her a hand like Duke did for me.”
“You’re taking it a step further with an adoption.”
“It means a lot to her. To me.”
In the last five years, he’d thought about Riley several times. He’d never pictured her with a child. A teenager explained the second car in the driveway. “She’s lucky.”
A hint of color warmed her cheeks. “The luck cuts both ways. She’s a great kid.” She reached for her coffee. “Better get back. Dr. Kincaid and Agent Sharp wait for no one.”
“Understood.”
Ten minutes later, she parked in front of the medical examiner’s office. Hands on the steering wheel, she drew in a breath, studied the building, as if she were mulling over a question.
Out of the car, she didn’t hurry inside but stood stiff, staring ahead, her dark glasses obscuring her eyes.
He opened his door and paused, knowing there were moments in the job when silence and patience were critical. “My sole motive is to catch this guy, Riley. I don’t want the Shark to hurt anyone else. Anyone like you or Hanna. You’re a cop. You know how important witnesses are to an investigation.”
“If I had any information, I’d share it.”
Did that mean she was talking? “You can trust me.”
She didn’t speak for a long moment as she absently tightened her grip on her keys. “People get burned in police investigations all the time. We don’t always mean for it to happen, but it does.”
Traffic buzzed past on the busy street, but he sensed she didn’t notice any of it as she glanced up at the building.
“Talk to me, Riley. None of us wants to see another girl like Vicky get killed.”
She flinched as if he’d struck a nerve. “I don’t know you. There was a time I thought I did, but I was wrong.”
“You knew me better than I did myself.”
She moistened her lips while shaking her head. “You were very clear.”
“I was wrong.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“No, it’s not.”
For a long moment she was silent again. “After I ditched my stepfather, I ran to the back of an alley and hid for hours. I wandered for a couple of weeks, trying to stay away from trouble and the cops.” She sighed. “The little money I had ran out, and I remember being so hungry I thought my stomach was going to eat itself. There were offers for me to make money, but I wasn’t taking that road willingly.”
He marveled at her strength. She took it for granted, but it was a rare thing in this world.
“I was drinking a bottled water one minute and the next my vision was blurring. The next thing I knew, I woke up in this fancy room.” Her voice was a ragged whisper, as if speaking each word hurt.
“You were out the entire time?”
“I came around twice. First time there was someone there who seemed to notice I was awake and shoved a needle in my arm. I went right out. The second time I remember the sound of poker chips. A man cursing and then someone grabbing me by the hair and calling me ‘one lucky bitch.’ I passed out and woke up a thousand miles north in a bus station in Richmond, Virginia. There was a bus ticket crammed in my back pocket with the playing cards.”
“What about the bus ride?”
“I stumbled off the bus and like I said, Duke was there. He noticed me and took care of me. If not for him, well, I don’t know what would’ve happened.”
“The Shark never made contact with you?”
“Not one time. Never a note or a call or anything. It was like the whole thing never happened. To keep my sanity, I convinced myself it was a bad dream. The dreams stopped. Life moved on. I thought it was over until I saw Vicky lying in the grass. When I saw the cards in her backpack, the twelve years vanished.”
“What about the yellow dress? Were you wearing one?”
“No. I never saw a yellow dress, but there is so much I don’t remember. All I know is I had cards in my back pocket.”
“Where are they?”
“I told Agent Sharp about the cards and gave them to him. He’s having the forensic lab look at them, but I can tell you like I told Sharp, they were wiped clean. If not for the cards, I have no proof it ever happened.”
“What were the cards?”
“A royal flush. Diamonds.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and fingered the loose change against a small pocketknife. “Doesn’t get much better than that.”