Maya lunged out of the car, leaving Arsen behind as she ran across the road. But then she realized, I’m going to scare her if I just run up on her like this. I don’t know what she’s been through. I have to be careful. So she slowed down, walking at a normal pace, deciding to let Roxie approach her instead.
But instead of walking towards Maya, Roxie suddenly turned, stumbling up the front walk towards her house. Of course, Maya thought. She’s going home. Where else would she go?
Maya slowly followed her, not wanting to alarm the clearly traumatized girl, whose stuttering steps finally got her to the front door. Maya watched as the girl weakly knocked before propping her head against the door, as if she no longer had enough energy to hold herself up. Maybe she didn’t. Judging from the bloody footsteps that she left on the front pathway and sidewalk, she must have walked a long way.
Arsen appeared behind Maya, putting a hand on the lower half of her back. Maya was tempted to push him away, still feeling the aftereffects of their little argument, but now wasn’t the time to feel angry. Now was the time to take care of the bloodied, bruised young woman before them.
“Roxie?” Maya called out, keeping her voice steady and calm so as to avoid alarming Roxie as much as possible. “Roxie, honey? Can you talk to us?”
Roxie lifted her head, but she didn’t turn around, instead lifting her fists to pound again against the front door of her house, whining a little under her breath like a beaten dog.
Maya slowly walked forward, making her footfall as heavy as possible so Roxie would know that she was heading towards her, but she still said, “Roxie, honey, I’m going to come to you, okay? I’m going to help you. Just hold on.”
She reached the bloodied girl but didn’t touch her right away. Maya didn’t want her to freak out and run away from them. That’s what I would do in her situation, Maya thought, thinking back fifteen years earlier. I would run and run and keep running until my legs gave out.
“Roxie? Sweetheart? You need to get to a hospital, okay? My friend and I were hired to help find you. We’ll take you to the ER, and they’ll make sure that you’re okay. I’ll call your parents right away, honey, alright? But we need to get you to see a doctor.”
Roxie slowly turned around to face Maya, her eyes glued to the pavement below her bare bloody feet. “Roxie,” she said slowly, sounding out the syllables. “That’s my name?”
“Yes, yes, that’s your name, darling. Roxie. Roxie Greenwood. That’s who you are,” Maya replied before offering her hand. “Here, come here. We’ll keep you safe. I promise. I promise, darling, nothing bad is going to happen to you.”
Roxie opened her mouth to answer, but before she could say anything, the door to the house behind them flung open, revealing a greying middle-aged woman in a nice pantsuit. “Oh, God! Oh, my God!” she cried out. This must be Mrs. Greenwood, Maya thought, watching as the mother collided with her daughter, crushing her into her arms. Roxie winced a little and went limp, like a ragdoll being embraced by a little child who didn’t understand that she couldn’t feel anything. “Oh, Jesus, thank you, Jesus, thank you, God!” Mrs. Greenwood cried out, tears spilling out of her eyes as she clutched her broken daughter closely to her chest.
“Mrs. Greenwood?” Arsen said, stepping forward in front of Maya. “Mrs. Greenwood, we need to get your daughter to a hospital. She must have broken free somehow, and we’ll figure out where she was kept, but first, we have to make sure she’s alright. She needs a doctor right now.”
“I’m not letting her go. I’m never letting her go,” Mrs. Greenwood sobbed, rubbing the back of her daughter’s head. “My baby, my baby!”
“Just give them a minute,” Arsen whispered to Maya, putting a hand on her shoulder and rubbing at Maya’s skin, sending sparks of heat down into her bones.
But Maya could only watch as Roxie balled her hands into fists, keeping her arms stiffly by her sides as her mother held her close. “She’s suffocating her,” she whispered softly to Arsen, looking on as Roxie began to full-body tremble like electric shocks were being shot through her skin.
“Mrs. Greenwood,” Maya said, a little louder and more firmly than Arsen had spoken. “Mrs. Greenwood, I’m a victims’ advocate and a survivor of a kidnapper, just like your daughter. We need to get her to a hospital immediately, okay?”
At first Mrs. Greenwood just stared at her through tear-clogged eyes, sniffling and keeping her arms wrapped around her daughter, so Maya spoke again. “The next hour is critical. We have to make sure she gets the help she needs right away,” Maya said. What she was really thinking, but didn’t say, was that potential DNA from the kidnapper could be extracted from Roxie’s clothes and skin, and the longer they waited, the more they risked losing that crucial piece of evidence.
“Okay,” Mrs. Greenwood said softly, keeping her daughter close to her body as she began walking down the front path. “Can you call her father, Mr. Sterling?” she asked Arsen. “Tell him to meet us at the university hospital. That’s the closest one to here,” she said as they walked over to the car in the driveway.
“Will do,” Arsen said, taking Maya by the elbow. “Come on, we’ll follow in our car.”
Maya was tempted to argue with him, wanting to stay as close to Roxie as possible, but before she could answer, Mrs. Greenwood already started up their car and pulled out onto the street, speeding away towards the hospital. “Fine,” she mumbled, heading back towards Arsen’s car.
They rode over to the hospital in complete silence, Maya fighting back tears as the images of the bloodied teenage girl replayed themselves over and over again inside her head. She looked so broken, Maya thought. So defeated. But she got out, just like me. She fought her way out and made it home, just like I did. Maya’s chest ached like she’d been shot, like a hole had been blown through her body. She needed to be by the girl’s side, no matter what, even if she couldn’t help, even if she could only watch. She had to see that she was okay. She had to see that that fucker hadn’t broken her, not completely.
After fifteen minutes, they rolled to a stop in the hospital parking lot, and Maya, once again, bolted from the car at the first opportunity, leaving Arsen in the dust. She ran into the emergency room where she saw Mrs. Greenwood crumpled over in a corner in the waiting room, sobbing quietly.
“Mrs. Greenwood, where is she? What happened?”
“The doctors took her,” Mrs. Greenwood said, forcing the words out in between silent crying fits while tears skidded down her face and neck and disappeared into her shirt. “They said they needed to do a rape kit.”
Maya nodded, reaching over to take the mother’s hand into her own, rubbing the backs of her knuckles with her thumb. “Okay, that’s normal. That’s just procedure. It’ll be okay. They might knock her out for it, give her a sedative so that they don’t hurt her again.”
Her words didn’t seem to help Mrs. Greenwood very much, as she just used her free hand to cup her face, sobbing more loudly as the seconds went by. A minute later, Maya felt Arsen walk up behind them. She knew it was him just from the sound of his feet, without turning around. He didn’t say anything, just stared down at them—Mrs. Greenwood in a chair, Maya squatting to look her in the eyes.
“Can I tell you something I haven’t told anybody in a very long time?” Maya whispered, clutching the mother’s hand a bit tighter within her own to make sure that she got her attention.
Mrs. Greenwood looked up at her but didn’t say anything in response.
Maya decided to interpret her silence as a “yes.” She cleared her throat and looked down at the ground, summoning up whatever courage she had to tell the truth. It was the hardest thing for her to do, but she had to do it, for this woman, for this family. For Roxie.
“When I was your daughter’s age, I was stolen by a very bad man.” That seemed to get Mrs. Greenwood’s attention, as her eyes suddenly focused, her pupils going wide as she looked at Maya. “A very bad man. He took me and he put me in a cellar somewhere, and he put handcuffs on my wrists and ankles to keep me in place. And he’d come by at night, when the sound of the traffic faded away, and he’d…do things to me. And he’d always clean me up after, wipe me off. He’d torture me, cut into me, hit me, call me names. I still hear him sometimes, in my nightmares,” Maya confessed, the words spilling out of her like they had been waiting, perched on her tongue for years, ready to launch off at the first opportunity. Mrs. Greenwood’s face had crumpled, obviously picturing all the same things happening to her daughter, but Maya persisted, continuing the story. “He was stupid, though. One day, he forgot to lock the handcuffs back up after…well, after doing things to me. I managed to hop over to the window, and I pried it open with a stick he left in the room, and I climbed out, and then I hopped all the way to a road and screamed until a cop came to pick me up.” She cleared her throat. “I wasn’t as strong as your daughter is, ma’am. I didn’t make it all the way home by myself. But I did get home. I did make it home. The other girls…the other ones didn’t.” She reached over for Mrs. Greenwood’s other hand, bringing them both close to her chest so that the older woman could feel her heartbeat. “I’m alive. That’s got to count for something, right?”
Mrs. Greenwood was still crying but the tears came out faster, without the same choking sobs as before. “Are you…okay?” she whispered, pressing her hand harder against Maya’s chest.
Maya smiled, feeling tears pool in her own eyes. “Yes, yes, I’m okay,” she whispered. Somehow, it felt like a lie, but she repeated it again. “I’m fine. I’m totally okay. I survived. Just like your daughter. Just like Roxie.”
Mrs. Greenwood nodded, the tears slowing down in the path down her cheeks. Maya reached up and wiped a few of them away with her thumb, smiling as brightly as she could manage at the mother. “It’s a miracle, Mrs. Greenwood,” she whispered, cupping the side of her face. “Your daughter. She’s a miracle. Cherish her, no matter what.”
“Mrs. Greenwood?” a nurse said on the other side of the emergency room. “Mrs. Greenwood? Your daughter is ready to see you.”
Maya pulled Mrs. Greenwood to her feet, holding on to her hand as they walked forward towards the nurse, following her down the hall to Roxie’s room. “I’ll give you a minute alone,” Maya whispered, staying out in the hallway with Arsen as Mrs. Greenwood walked in to see her daughter.
“That was amazing,” Arsen mumbled, leaning his head back against the wall of the hospital hallway.
“What was?” Maya asked, totally oblivious. Her fingers were shaking a little bit, distracting her from her surroundings. She willed herself to calm down. It’s just a story, she told herself. It’s just a story in your head now. You’re free. You’re away from all of that.
“What you just did in there,” Arsen said, lifting his eyes to look directly into Maya’s. “Calming her down. Giving her hope. It was amazing.”
Maya’s natural instinct was to argue with him. I didn’t do anything good. I just lied to her, made her feel like things are over. Things aren’t over. They’re going to continue to haunt that family until all of them die. This will never leave them. Instead, she just cleared her throat and shook her head. “They’ve got a long fight ahead of them,” she said.
“Yeah, but Mrs. Greenwood is better armed for it now that you’ve said what you said,” Arsen argued.
Maya shrugged, letting the topic fade away. She didn’t want to fight with him right now. She felt too tired, her muscles already aching, even though she hadn’t even talked to Roxie yet. Her scalp started itching, a weird habit that her body pulled when she was under stress, so she reached up to undo her ponytail, letting her hair fall back down to her shoulders. “We still have a girl to save,” she mumbled, more to herself than to Arsen.
Arsen nodded. “Yeah. The girl who just went missing. I wonder if Roxie saw her or if he kept them in separate rooms.” He paused for a second before speaking again. “I hope…I hope he hasn’t killed her yet.”
“The missing girl?” Maya asked.
“Yeah,” Arsen said. “I can imagine him killing her out of anger that Roxie got away.”
Maya shook her head, thinking back on all the crime scene photographs from before. “No, he wouldn’t do that. There’s a process to his killings. He…he wouldn’t let it get fucked up just because one girl got away.”
“What do you mean?” Arsen asked.
“I mean, he cuts them very methodically. He’s not doing this for fun, at least not just for fun. He’s doing it because he thinks it’s his mission, and he has to do it right. The girls have to be cut up for several weeks first and then cleaned and prepared as if for a religious ritual. Then, the heart is taken out,” Maya replied, her voice coming out wooden and flat, like she was talking about the weather or mathematics rather than the very real prospect of another girl being brutally murdered.
Arsen nodded, stepping forward to close the distance between them. He reached out as if he was going to grab her hands, but then he stopped short, pulling back and leaving her untouched, at least for the moment. “I couldn’t do this without you,” he murmured, his eyes glued to the floor rather than looking across at Maya.
Maya didn’t know what to say to that. They hadn’t even accomplished anything yet. All of her expertise was good for nothing, as far as Maya was concerned. But for some reason, she held herself back from saying that, at least while they were outside Roxie’s hospital room. And…there was something else, some other reason why she fought against the despair that wanted to dominate her mind. For the first time in a long time, Maya felt determined about something. She licked her lips and said the words that were on her mind. “No matter what, we’re going to get him. No matter how many girls he takes. We’re going to get him, Arsen.”
“We will,” Arsen said, and Maya wasn’t sure if he meant it as an affirmation or a question, but it didn’t matter. She already knew the answer.
“We’re going to get him,” she swore, “if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
“Mr. Sterling?” Mrs. Greenwood called from inside the hospital room. “Ms…? I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Maya,” she said, turning to face Roxie’s mother as she exited the room and walked out into the hallway. “I’m Maya.”
“Maya,” Mrs. Greenwood said, smiling sadly, the tears faded from her eyes. “Could you go in and talk to my daughter, please? I can’t…I can’t get her to tell me where she was. I thought maybe you could help.”
Maya’s skin immediately prickled with anxiety, tingling almost painfully like it was waiting to be stabbed. That was how her nerves worked, at least for the last fifteen years. She was always waiting for her skin to be punctured, for her flesh to be torn apart. Maya never quite got used to it, feeling that way, but she was better at shaking it off nowadays.
For now, she nodded at Mrs. Greenwood and forced a smile, despite the fear that clawed up against the sides of her stomach like a caged beast. “I’ll do what I can.”
She walked into Roxie’s hospital room, feeling like she was entering an arena, readying herself for battle. Time to face your fears, she said, swallowing the bile that rose up in her throat as she walked in to see the bruised girl staring at her from the hospital bed. Time to face the darkness again.