When Gunner was gone, Lola let her knees give way. She managed to collect herself enough not to fall in the goddamn cum stain, but that was as much as she could manage at that exact moment. She should have kept her mouth shut. She shouldn’t have asked. She knew better than to ask for things. Than to want things. Hadn’t she learned well enough in her life? That asking for things led to pain and misery and shattered expectations. Nothing good, ever.
She gave herself a solid five minutes to wallow in misery, in hating herself for wanting things that she shouldn’t ask for, and then she made herself pull her phone out of her skirt pocket and tap in the number that she’d memorized back in Laurel’s apartment. She probably ought to climb those stairs again, wait with her until her girlfriend came back, but she couldn’t stand the thought of it. The woman looked at her like she was the worst kind of traitor, and maybe she was. Maybe she’d played this whole damn thing wrong from the first second, but what could she possibly do about it? Looking back, thinking it over, there wasn’t a single thing that she could have done differently. In hindsight, sure, there were isolated events that might have played out in a different way, but knowing what she knew at each moment, there was nothing she could point to and say yes, that was the change that would have made this okay. She had to trust Laurel and Gunner. How hard would the police really have looked for the child of a known gang member and a dead black woman? It hurt, but she couldn’t find herself believing that they would’ve looked for Grace half as hard as she and Gunner had. And as much as she wanted to believe they would look for any child as hard as any other child… it just didn’t seem true. You only had to turn on the news at night, follow half a dozen hashtags on social media, to know that some kids were worthier than others. Sick as it was.
She pushed away those thoughts. They weren’t serving her now. She didn’t have a madman in a blue box at her disposal, and she didn’t have a time turner. She had to exist in the here and now and find a solution that would help her, help Grace, help all of them. For Gunner. Even if he didn’t want her. The child needed to be brought home safe. Grace was still her responsibility.
She dialed the number, the one the kidnapper had used to provide proof of life. It only took a moment for the phone to pick up.
“Took you long enough,” he said.
“I figured you were making a point, calling from an unblocked number,” she replied. “I’m surprised you answered, though. I want the girl back.”
“I want a lot of things, Miss Sykes,” the man said.
“Tell me your name,” she replied. Let him give her something, anything.
Still, when he said, “Soren Keller,” she jumped a little bit. She hadn’t expected anything like a response. Who knew if it was an honest one. It didn’t matter. He hadn’t made her fight for it, which was strange, odd. An offering of some kind.
“What do you want, Mr. Keller?”
“I want to get out of some very bad trouble. I do not want this girl to get hurt, Miss Sykes, and I feel like I’ve been very clear about that. I’ve done quite a lot to keep her safe. Not just getting her medicine, which I consider an act that any decent human being would’ve completed, but things you don’t realize yet. She has been in incredible danger for years, and no one knew it. But very recently, someone found out, and now some very, very bad men are following her, trying to get what she knows.”
“She’s a little kid,” Lola said. She didn’t realize how loud her voice was until she heard it echo back to her, bouncing off the roof of the parking structure. She forced herself to lower her voice, take a breath, calm down as much as she could. “She’s a child. What could she possibly know that would have caused all this chaos?”
The man on the phone — Keller — laughed, and it was one of the most awful sounds Lola had ever heard in her life. “Ironically, Miss Sykes, if I knew that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’m not sure even the child knows what she knows. It’s just not as simple as all of that.”
“So, what do we do?” Lola asked, and tried hard to keep the rising tide of fury out of her voice.
“So far you and I have shown that we can exist in the same space without tearing each other to pieces,” Keller said. “I think it’s time for us to meet, face to face, no subterfuge, and see what we can do to create some peace where currently there is only chaos.”
“The last time you asked to meet me, I got kidnapped and dumped in the hands of a biker gang with a grudge against me and my—” she’d stopped herself before she called Gunner her boyfriend. “I don’t feel like meeting with you is going to lead to peace.”
“It’s up to you,” Keller said, “but I’m afraid to tell you, I have to meet with someone in the next hour. If it’s not you, it will be those very bad men who want the child, and I can no longer vouch for her safety once she’s out of my hands.”
Lola cursed. What could she possibly do? Call Gunner? Make him come back for her? No, dammit. No. No subterfuge. Keller had given her the number. He’d picked up because she had called him back, not Laurel, and not Gunner. For whatever reason, he was fixated on her. If she called Gunner, whatever fragile deal they were forming would be shattered. She might be about to make a terrible mistake, but if it helped Grace? Then the risk was worth it.
“Where do you want to meet?”