They were back in the city before Arsen spoke to her again. Maya was glad for the silence. She needed some time to gather herself.
But eventually, Arsen broke the easy, healing quiet. “Why did you…” He trailed off, apparently uncertain of what he was trying to say.
“Why did I freak the fuck out at him?” Maya suggested.
“Well, yeah,” Arsen said.
Maya wasn’t sure whether or not she even knew the answer at first. “Nobody shoots at me,” Maya said through gritted teeth, as if that explained everything. Not anymore, she added silently.
She was shaken up, though. She felt like all the hairs on her body were standing at attention, posed for a fight. The kid had crumbled beneath her like a cookie, falling apart under the slightest bit of pressure. I probably traumatized the hell out of him, she thought, feeling the heavy sensation of sadness descend upon her. I probably fucked him up for life. He’s going to have nightmares for years to come.
Maya sighed deeply, wishing she could expel the negative thoughts along with the air leaving her body. Instead, she pushed the bad feelings to the back of her mind. She’d just have to deal with them later. “Onto the next suspect?” she said to Arsen, applying a fake smile to her face in an effort to trick him into thinking that she was okay.
Arsen stared at her for a long moment, looking like he wanted to say something else to her about the incident in the woods, but after a second, he nodded. “We’ll stop by my apartment first to drop the gun off.”
“We might need it,” Maya argued, her fingers itching to take the gun back into her own hand. She felt safer when she was holding it, stronger. She missed that feeling.
“Maybe,” Arsen said. “But it’s too big. It’ll be hard to get a suspect to talk without committing felony assault with that thing.”
Maya suppressed the urge to grumble under her breath and just nodded, letting Arsen take them back into the city and onto the subway, where they got strange looks from other riders as a result of the huge gun in their laps. Soon enough, however, they arrived at their stop and went to Arsen’s apartment.
“We should try the teenage boy next,” Maya said, thinking out loud as she stepped back into Arsen’s living room. “Her ex or whatever he was. The guy who was annoying her.”
“We’ll have to call the school, get his address. Do you have his first and last name?” Arsen asked as he removed his jacket and placed the gun down on the mantel above his fireplace.
Maya shook her head. “Just his first name and his last initial. Tristan S. She referred to him that way in her text messages when she was talking to her friend Celeste.” Maya slipped out of her sweater, feeling too hot and sweaty to keep it on indoors.
Arsen didn’t answer her right away. Instead, he just stood still in the center of the room, apparently not doing anything. What’s up with him? Maya wondered.
In fact, Arsen was looking at her, just not at her eyes. His gaze was focused on her….chest. It took Maya an embarrassingly long time before she realized what he was looking at. Oh, fuck, he’s staring at my cleavage, she thought, immediately feeling the urge to cross her arms over her chest. But…for some reason, she didn’t. She held back, wanting to see how long he’d stare at her before he got embarrassed. It never happened, and eventually, his eyes moved upward to her face, a slight smile playing across his lips. Shit! Maya thought. He knows that I know. He knows that I know he still wants me.
She cleared her throat and looked away, feeling her cheeks go red in shame. She shouldn’t have allowed Arsen to stare at her. She should have told him to stop it the second she noticed. Why was she letting him cross these lines with her? What was wrong with her?
“Um, anyway, you should call the school. Pretend you’re the police again. That’s always a good way to get people to listen to you,” Maya said, pacing back and forth so that Arsen couldn’t grab any more cheap glances. “Get his last name, get his address. He’s in her civics class; that might help you when you talk to the people in the main office.”
“Got it,” Arsen said, walking out of the room to make the phone call, leaving Maya with her thoughts again.
She sighed deeply and walked to the bathroom to splash some cool water on her face. “Okay, it’s okay,” she said to her own reflection. “You haven’t done anything. Nothing is wrong. Everything is okay. You’re going to be fine.”
A moment later, she heard the front door slam, causing her to jump a little bit before she slapped her own forehead in frustration. It was just Arsen coming back in. Why was she so jumpy, so nervous? Why couldn’t she just be strong? She’d been through so much worse than this investigation. It shouldn’t have been affecting her like this.
She walked back out into the living room. “So?” she asked.
“We’ve got it,” Arsen said, slipping his jacket back on. “Come on, let’s go. It’s not far.”
They hopped back onto the subway, heading deeper into the city, the opposite direction from before. Maya felt her anxiety rise with each passing minute, her shoulders bunching up around her face. Arsen must have noticed it, as—once again—he reached over and tapped her knee, lightly this time, like he was a little boy trying to get her to smile. It didn’t work, but for some reason, Maya appreciated the effort. She wished he would touch her a little bit more, maybe even give her one of his great massages like he used to when they were together. She used to melt under his touch, coming apart in the best of ways. But now, she had to remind herself that she couldn’t get that gentle, tender treatment from Arsen anymore. It was unfair to expect it from him, right? She’d sacrificed that when she’d left the city, and there was no getting it back, no matter how exhausted or stressed-out or overwhelmed she became.
Arsen tapped her elbow, so lightly that the hairs on her arm stood up, when it was time to get off the subway and head toward the second suspect’s house. He was rich, that much was clear, judging by the district that he lived in. “He probably has a doorman for Christ’s sake,” Maya said, sighing deeply as they turned onto the right street to find “Tristan S.”
“We’ll find a way in,” Arsen reassured her, rubbing his hand down her back once, then twice before letting his hand fall away from her body. Despite what she’d berated herself about earlier, it seemed like Arsen was still willing to comfort her, even if he got nothing in return for it. Somehow, that only made Maya feel more guilty about this whole mess.
There wasn’t a doorman, at least not that Maya could see, but there was a heavily-locked front door. They’d have to buzz their way in. It wouldn’t be as easy to break in this time.
“It’s number 16,” Arsen said, hitting the buzzer for Tristan’s apartment. They waited on pins and needles, Maya fidgeting with her hands while they waited for a response.
“Hello?” a male voice said from the speaker above the front door.
“Hey, is this Tristan Smith?” Arsen said into the speaker.
There was a long pause where they heard only static before the male voice said, “Um, yeah. Who’s this?”
Maya panicked for a second, her eyes going wide as she realized she never thought up an excuse that would convince the kid to let them into the building. It was all up to Arsen now, but at least he didn’t look as scared as Maya felt.
“We’re here from the Weekend Post. We’re doing a story about the soccer team, and we were hoping that we could get a few minutes of your time?” Arsen said, his voice going up at the end of his sentence so that it sounded like a question.
There was silence for a long minute before they heard a loud buzzing noise, signifying that the door was unlocked. Arsen quickly grabbed the door handle and opened it for Maya, allowing her to step inside first. Maya found the elevator on the first floor and pushed the button to go up, jumping in place just to get the excess anxious energy out of her body. It wasn’t going to do her any good if she looked nervous while they were lying to the suspect to try to get information out of him.
They rode the elevator, going up to the sixteenth floor. Apparently, Tristan’s family owned the whole level. Fucking rich people, Maya thought.
Arsen gently rapped on the door across from the elevator, looking as secure and confident as ever. Maya tried to match his level of calm, even though she honestly expected more gunshots to ring over their heads.
But instead, the door swung open a second later. The kid had clearly been waiting on them. Tristan was dressed in bright neon pink shorts and a tie-dyed top, very out of place in his otherwise monochrome, minimalist apartment. “I’m Sterling, Sterling Arsen,” Arsen said, flipping his first and last names to disguise his identity. Maya made a mental note of that, reminding herself to berate him for that later. It’d be incredibly easy to find him that way, just by Googling the two names together, but she figured that he probably couldn’t think of another name quickly enough to look natural.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Arsen,” the teenager said, tossing his head to flip some strands of messy brown hair out of his eyes. “And you?”
“That’s Maya,” Arsen answered for her, “my photographer.”
“Sweet,” Tristan said. “Well, step on in. I didn’t know you guys were doing a feature on the soccer team. Why? We’ve lost like the past three seasons.”
“The female soccer team,” Maya said in a rush, the idea hitting her right away as they stepped inside the apartment. “We need a male soccer player’s perspective on their strengths and weaknesses.”
“Oh,” Tristan said, disappointment seeping into his voice. “Well, have a seat. You want something to drink? Water? Vodka?”
“I’ll take a martini if you’re taking orders,” Arsen said with a laugh, clearly trying to sound as charming as possible.
As soon as Maya sat down, two dogs came running out from one of the side rooms, pawing her legs and trying to climb up in her lap.
Maya used to love dogs. She had family dogs as a kid, but after her kidnapping, they were ruined for her forever. Her captor had three or four big dogs. He’d bring them up to them to allow her to pet them. He’d even unshackle her hands and wrists so that she could reach forward and touch the dog. But then, the dog would growl at her and flinch backwards, preparing to fight. She remembered that even as a teenager, when she was still tied up in that basement, she used to think, We’re the same. That dog and me, we’re the same pathetic little beast. We’ll never get out of here. We’ll never be free.
Now, sitting in Tristan’s room with his big, fluffy dogs trying to climb up into her lap, all of that came back to her, hitting her straight in the heart. She gently pushed the dogs away from her body, letting them walk over to Arsen instead.
Arsen pulled out his notepad from his pocket and turned to an empty page. “So, who would you say is the strongest asset on the team?”
Tristan rolled his eyes up in the back of his head as he considered the question. “Mmm, probably Stefany Malin,” he said a moment later, nodding up and down to himself.
“Really?” Arsen said. “That’s interesting. Everyone else we interviewed said somebody else.”
Tristan’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “That’s weird. Stefany is the best. Who’d everybody else say?”
“Um, I don’t know. What was her name, Maya? Oh, that’s right. Roxie Greenwood,” Arsen said, petting the top of the two dogs’ heads.
Tristan was silent for a long moment, but Maya saw his face fall. He suddenly looked about ten years younger, a little boy trapped in a corner, terrified, with nowhere to turn.
“What…what do you really want from me?” he whispered.
Arsen pretended not to understand what he meant. “Just a few more questions, if that’s alright with you. I just wanted to get your insight on a few things.”
“No, I mean, why are you really here? You don’t care about the soccer team, do you?” Tristan asked.
Maya looked at Arsen, who turned and stared back at her. Together, they nodded, both simultaneously deciding to drop the act, at least in part. “We’re here because of Roxie,” Maya said, turning back to face Tristan. “We wanted to know if you could help us find her.”
“Why would I know anything about that?” Tristan asked, but his tone turned mean and angry as he got up from his chair. “I don’t even know her that well.”
“Mmm, I think we both know that’s not really true, Tristan,” Maya said, uncrossing her legs and standing up to her full height, which was about an inch or two taller than Tristan’s. “I think you know what I’m talking about.”
“I don’t know anything!” Tristan shouted, and his voice actually broke and cracked on the last word.
“Stop lying to us, Tristan!” Maya shouted back, walking closer to him. She saw him shrink before her, and some little piece of Maya—a horrible, hateful piece—cherished his fear. That part of her felt satisfied, like causing somebody pain was the one thing she’d been waiting for all these years.
“We can help you, Tristan,” Arsen said, obviously playing the “good cop” to Maya’s “bad cop.”
“Just tell us the truth,” Maya said, stepping ever closer to Tristan. “Just tell us.”
But then, Tristan suddenly stomped his feet and his dogs began growling, circling Maya’s body like sharks in the ocean.
“Get ‘em, Porkie! Get ‘em, Donnie!” Tristan yelled, running to the other side of the room.
Maya tried to stay calm, looking from one growling, snarling dog to the other, but her legs started shaking, so hard that her knees gave out, sending her tumbling to the ground. Get up, Maya’s inner voice insisted. Get up. You can do it. You can get up. You can survive this, just as you’ve survived everything else. You can get out of this alive.
But her body wasn’t cooperating. No matter how hard she concentrated, she couldn’t budge a single inch. It was like her body had already given up, slipping away from her like the dogs had already torn her apart.
Maya shut her eyes, letting the darkness overtake her. It was always waiting for her, after all these years. It was fitting that it would end this way.
“Here, boys! Here, boys!” Arsen’s voice pierced through the darkness like a flaming sword, cutting apart all the fog that seemed to clog Maya’s panicked brain. He must have yelled at the dogs from the other end of the room. “Come here, come here. It’s okay, babies, come here!”
For one long, eternal, terrible moment, there was total silence. Nobody made a single noise. But a second later, Maya heard the rapid pitter-patter of the dogs’ paws against the shiny hardwood floor, scurrying off toward Arsen and away from her.
At first, Maya just curled into the fetal position, keeping her eyes shut even as her other senses returned to her, gradually filling her brain with new perceptions. The dogs were panting now, whining a little bit, and their paws kept scratching against the floor. They obviously weren’t angry anymore.. They must be…playing, Maya thought. Playing with Arsen.
That’s right, Maya thought as she slowly pried her eyes back open and lifted her head to see Arsen laughing down at the dogs. His family had dogs, lots of them. She remembered from the first time she stopped by his house, the week after the trial ended. The dogs jumped up on her then, and she almost had a panic attack right then and there, but Arsen talked them down, convincing them to stay away from her. He was always good with dogs.
Maybe for Arsen’s sister, Lizzie, the kidnapper’s dogs were a comfort in the darkness of the basement. For Maya, they just tortured her even more, giving her a glimpse of sweetness and softness that she’d never get to feel again. It was like holding a single drop of water above a starving man in the desert, just a cruel reminder of what was being snatched away from her. But for Lizzie, it must have been a reminder of her family. Maybe even a reminder of Arsen.
Maya was torn back to reality by the sound of Tristan’s weeping on the other side of the room. “What do you want from me?” he cried out. Maya turned to see him sitting on the floor, hugging his knees to his chest.
“Roxie Greenwood,” Maya said, her voice squeaking at first but slowly restoring itself with each subsequent syllable. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know!” Tristan said. “Honestly, I don’t. She just disappeared. Nobody knows where she went.”
“That’s awfully convenient for you, Tristan,” Arsen said from the couch on the other side of the room, still petting the dogs and letting them lick his hands. “We got evidence that says that she was scared of you.”
Tristan blew out his breath, staring down at his own lap. “I tried to get with her, okay? But she turned me down,” he said a moment later.
“And by ‘tried to get with her,’ you mean you assaulted her?” Maya asked, suddenly feeling sick to her stomach as she pictured Roxie’s bright, smiling face.
“No, no! I just…I didn’t know she meant ‘no,’ at first, that’s all,” Tristan said, but Maya still doubted him. There was a part of her that wanted to launch her body across the room and smash this little shit into the ground, beat the truth out of him until she got something that she could use.
But she held herself back, balancing her weight on the balls of her feet to distract herself from the urge cause harm to this punk. She wanted to tear into something, pound something soft and fragile into the hard ground. She wanted to punish somebody for how weak she felt, how helpless she still was to save Roxie. She wanted to see blood. But instead, she just bit down on her bottom lip until she tasted copper and glared at the terrified teenage boy that cowered before her.
“We should search this place,” Arsen said, still petting the dogs as if they were his own pets.
“Right,” Maya said, walking deeper into the large apartment and turning the corner to search several bedrooms for any sign of Roxie or spatters of blood or any other telltale evidence that she might find. But nothing came up. “Goddammit,” Maya muttered as she came up empty on the right side of the apartment. She turned the other way, heading into the kitchen and den area, but again, it was just an immaculately cleaned, normal apartment. There was nothing to find.
“Nothing,” Maya murmured as she returned to the foyer where Arsen was still holding one of the big dogs in his lap while petting the other one with his free hand. Meanwhile, Tristan was in a pile on the floor, tear tracks visible on his face. Maya’s stomach turned over as she looked at him, seeing how scared he was.
“Why’d you set the dogs on us?” she asked, but she didn’t feel as fiercely angry as she had before. It was clear this kid wasn’t involved in Roxie’s disappearance.
“I don’t know. I thought…I thought maybe you were her family coming to beat me up or something. I didn’t mean to hurt her….I didn’t mean to do anything bad,” the kid said, rubbing the side of his face with one hand while he slowly pushed himself to his feet with the other. “Please, just leave me alone.”
Arsen also got to his feet, gently pushing the dogs away, even though they whined at the loss of contact. “We’ll get out of your hair.”
“If…if we find out that you hurt her, really hurt her…” Maya said, her hands curling up into fists automatically. She didn’t finish the sentence, letting the unspoken threat hang in the air instead.
Tristan nodded quickly, but his eyes were unfocused, staring off behind Arsen and Maya like he was too scared to look them directly in the eyes. Good, Maya thought. He should be scared of me.
Arsen and Maya walked out of the apartment and went back down the elevator, heading towards the subway stop back to Arsen’s apartment. Maya had to restrain herself from banging her head against the back of her seat, a thousand different emotions colliding inside her skull.
Two suspects down and still no solid leads. Goddammit.
And besides, the further they rode away from Tristan’s apartment, the shakier Maya felt about her own actions, intimidating the young boy the way she had as well as scaring the shit out of the sunglasses employee earlier.
What is wrong with me? Maya wondered. She’d wanted to hurt these two young men so badly. She wanted to cause real damage. There was something broken inside of her, something bad and dirty and wrong. That’s why he took me, she thought. The kidnapper, years ago. That’s why I survived. Because there’s something evil about me, too.
Some tiny voice inside her brain tried to argue back, saying that it wasn’t true, that she was just a little messed-up because of her trauma. But it wasn’t convincing. Deep inside, she knew the truth about herself. She was every bit as rotten and corrupted as any killer. Her soul was full of holes, eaten-through like an old wedding dress. Soiled. Ruined. That’s what I am, Maya thought as the subway rolled to a stop. I wasn’t broken. I was remade into something dark, something sick, something evil. I just have to accept it.