In the morning, when Gentry had come back, there I was with Marcus and LaReigne, camped out in a motel room he’d paid for. Even while I was trying to let Gentry off the hook, I was dragging him in deeper. Like I was quicksand, too.

It scared me, because of how awful his family was, and how he put up with it. My lady, thy servant started to look like an invitation to use him, and I was afraid I wasn’t good enough to resist that temptation. I knew I had to walk away after I borrowed a thousand bucks from him to pay the deposit on an apartment for LaReigne, Marcus, and me. I had mooched off so many people over the years, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it to him.

That was why I agreed to do the Trinidad run for Asher the first time. Money from waiting tables got spent as fast as I could make it, but I walked away from that first run with two thousand in cash. After Toby dropped me off, I sat out on the apartment building’s steps, waiting for Gentry to show up, like he did most mornings. I hadn’t talked to him since I borrowed the money, and I figured that would be the last time. I walked over to his truck and, when he rolled down the window, handed him the thousand dollars. I thanked him and said goodbye. Then I went inside.

Two minutes later, he knocked on the apartment door, and handed me the cash back.

“’Twas a present, my lady,” he said.

I never tried to give him the money again. I used it to buy the piece-of-shit car that was still getting me from one lousy waitressing job to another.

After that, I thought he would go his way, and I’d go mine. We’d never had a relationship or anything, but apparently we had something, because he kept coming around. He never tried to talk to me, but he kept driving by the apartment and the restaurants where I worked. For a while, I worked at this Cantonese place, and Gentry started coming in and ordering food to go. Sometimes for a bunch of people—his shitty family, I guessed—but usually just for himself. After I left that job and went to work at a Mediterranean place, he started getting food from there. No matter where I went, he eventually showed up and got takeout.

If I’d been afraid of him, I would have felt differently about the whole thing, but he’d never said or done anything that seemed threatening. He’d only touched me that one time, and he’d never given me so much as a hard look. After a while, I got used to it. He became a fixture in my life. LaReigne started calling him your stalker, which stuck, even though I hated it. As in, “My car wouldn’t start this morning, but your stalker jumped my battery.”

“Maybe he’ll start stalking you,” I said.

“Please. He was all business. Didn’t even try to flirt with me. He’s in love with you.”

She didn’t believe me that we’d never had that kind of relationship, and I was sorry I’d let her joke about him. Yes, he was weird, but he’d rescued LaReigne, Marcus, and me, and never asked for anything in return.

Now he’d rescued me again, standing there in the middle of my mother’s wrecked house, and all I could think of to say about him was “It’s complicated.”

CHAPTER 6

Dottie

   My late husband was tall and handsome, the sort of man who draws women’s attention everywhere he goes. Our girls both took after Leroy in their own way, LaReigne because she was beautiful and Zhorzha because she was tall. In fact, she was taller than her new boyfriend and both of the federal marshals who came to talk with us.

Mansur, who did most of the talking, was an older black man, quite stout around the middle. Smith, who didn’t talk much, was a younger white man, wearing a suit like a bowl of oatmeal. They introduced themselves but didn’t offer to shake hands. Not that Zhorzha gave any indication that would be acceptable. She stood there with her arms crossed over her chest, prickly as a cactus.

The marshals started out very polite, letting me know how concerned they were about finding LaReigne safe. They were polite until I started asking questions.

“There is very little information I can give out right now, because of our investigation and ongoing security issues at the facility,” Mansur said.

“Well, goodness, I’m not asking you to tell me how they broke out or where the secret tunnels are. Imagine!”

“The fact is, we didn’t come here to brief you. We’re hoping you might be able to tell us something about your daughter that will help us find her.”

“What do you think we can tell you?” Zhorzha said. “My mother just wants to know something. Is—is LaReigne alive?”

“We have no reason to suspect that she’s been harmed,” Mansur said.

“Well, thank you for that,” I said. Zhorzha snorted and turned her back on the marshals.

“Did she ever talk to you about the inmates she volunteered with?” Smith said.

“I asked her if it was safe,” I said. “These aren’t men like my husband. He was a good man. Of course, yes, he was involved in that robbery, but he was not a violent man.”

“Did she ever mention these men to you?” Smith asked. “Tague Barnwell. Conrad Ligett?”

“Which is the younger one? The handsome one?”

Zhorzha scowled at me, but with regards to LaReigne, it was certainly a valid question. She’d never been interested in homely men, and why should she be when she looked like that?

“Barnwell is in his thirties. Ligett is in his forties,” Mansur said. “I’m not sure I would describe either of them as handsome.”

“Well, Ligett is bald,” Smith said, which was at least useful information. I couldn’t imagine LaReigne falling in love with a bald man, and, after all, that’s what they were insinuating. Why would they question us unless they thought LaReigne was involved somehow? And why would LaReigne be involved unless there was a handsome man? That’s the kind of girl she was. She got that from me.

“Does the name Craig Van Eck ring any bells for you? He’s serving a life sentence for murdering a police officer and his family,” Mansur said.

“Yes, he was a friend of my husband’s. He had flowers sent to me after Leroy passed away.” I’d never asked why Craig was in prison. He was Leroy’s friend; that was enough for me.

“What did these guys do? Barnwell and Ligett,” Zhorzha said. “Why were they in prison?”

“They’re both serving life sentences for that shooting at the Muslim student center five or six years ago.” Mansur looked at his notebook as though he needed to look that up, whereas I knew it perfectly well from watching the news. They’d mentioned it dozens of times.

“So the prison let her volunteer with murderers?” Zhorzha paced into the kitchen, and when she came back she stayed behind my chair, where I couldn’t see her. Her breathing sounded sniffly, like she was trying not to cry.