Atone (2 page)

The office of the private investigation agency isn't special. After all I've heard about it, I was expecting something more lavish or flashy. It's understated and utilitarian, like a government building. Whoever decorated it didn't care about esthetics, only functionality and, distantly second, comfort. There are a few photos on the walls and some news clippings of their most notable cases—mainly, images of the two men the agency helped free after serving prison sentences for crimes they didn't commit. I lean closer to get a better look.

One photo is of Maurice Battle, an elderly black man who was freed after nearly four decades. The other is of Beau Hollis, a younger white man about my age. The grainy black-and-white newspaper photo washes out a lot of detail, but I can tell he's handsome. Other than that, there's nothing remarkable about either man. You'd pass them on the street and not have a clue about what they'd been through. I'm working on that trick.

I touch a finger to the glass over the photo of Maurice Battle. Thirty-nine years is a hell of a long time to be locked away.

The tall, blond receptionist, who greeted me when I first walked in, returns. “Cora will be with you in a moment. Can I offer you a beverage? Coffee? Tea? Water?”

“No, thank you.”

She shifts, gesturing to the young woman joining us. “This is Cora Hollis.” The rest of what she says fades to background noise.

It takes everything in me to stay still and not let the careful mask I've perfected slip. Behind Cora is the young man from the photograph. His gaze connects with mine and I hear an audible
snick
like the sound of a lock being engaged or the cock of a gun hammer. Danger radiates in the air around him. Instinctively, I adjust my stance. He watches me like he knows me, like he knows what I'll do next before I can even think to do it. The other two women in the room seem oblivious to the force of him. No. Not the receptionist. She keeps just out of his reach.

He tilts his head to the side and looks me over like he can see through my carefully maintained appearance. It amuses him that he can do it. I raise my chin and look down my nose at him, staring right back just as bold and brazen as he does. Standing a full foot and a half taller than me, he clearly has the advantage. I've fought men his size and lost, but that wouldn't stop me from taking him on if I had to. He concedes this with a nod that tells me he means me no harm. His eyes crease at the corners in a smile that doesn't reach his mouth.

I slowly let out the breath I've been holding. He uses his size and attitude the way I use clothing and makeup—to project an image the rest of world would expect and accept. His is as careful and meticulous as mine. Predictable. Protective. Very, very protective. Inclining my head, I acknowledge him in return.

I shake Cora's offered hand. Her handshake is firm and brief. She's about my age, I'd guess, with striking blue eyes that match the streaks woven through her black hair. She introduces me to a man who doesn't need an introduction. Beau. Beau Hollis. Her brother. She explains that he'll be taking the meeting with her and asks if that's okay.

“Yes,” I say. “That's fine.”

It is. Despite my initial reaction to him, I know Beau wouldn't harm me. I don't know why I know this, I just do. He responds with more eye crinkling and doesn't offer his hand. I'm glad. I don't like touching strangers. Especially men.

He gives me a wide berth as I pass, following Cora into a conference room. I can feel him behind me, but it's not an uncomfortable sensation. It's an
I've got your back
awareness, unlike the
watch your back
feeling I get from most men. We move around each other like potential opponents on a battlefield, sizing up each other, gauging strengths and weaknesses. There's some admiration as well, and a keen sense of attraction between us that has me struggling to maintain my cool, unaffected façade.

He mesmerizes me. I seem to hold the same fascination for him, because once we make eye contact again across the conference table we're reluctant to break it. If Cora notices, she doesn't let on as she asks me how the agency can help me.

“I need help finding my sister,” I tell them.

Cora holds her pen suspended above a notebook. “Can you tell us about her?”

“Her name is Marie Saint Claire, but they might have her in the system as Molly Johnston. We were taken from our mother and placed in the custody of Child Protective Services when I was three and she was about six months old. We have the same mother, but different fathers. She's about to age out of the system at eighteen, and I want to find her before that happens. I had a lead that she might be in a group home in Santee, but that's old information. I'm not sure where she is now.”

“We'll need her birth date, your mother's name and birthday, any information on her father you might have, and her Social Security number, if you know it.”

From my purse I pull out a sheet with all the info I have on my mother and sister and pass it Cora. “I don't know her Social Security number, but I do have copy of her birth certificate.” I slide that over too. “There's no father listed. Our mother wasn't very…particular or careful. She liked the extra money she got to charge for going bareback.”

“Your mother may be of
some
help.” Cora doesn't blink at the fact that my mother was a prostitute and didn't have a clue who had fathered either one of her daughters. “Can we contact her?”

“Not unless you have a direct line to the hereafter. She was murdered about a year after we were put into the system.”

Beau does a slow blink, absorbing this info as though it confirms something for him about me.

“I'm so sorry,” Cora says.

I ignore her well-meaning sentiment. It's wasted on that worthless piece of shit I get to call my mother. “This is the address of the group home Marie was in. I'm concerned about her. We used to communicate through social media, but she hasn't logged in to any of her accounts for months.”

“Do you have a photo of your sister?”

I pull out the pictures I printed off her social media profile and give them to Cora. She glances at them and her eyebrows flinch. It's the only reaction she's had since we sat down. Marie doesn't look like me. Her father was black or half black. Who knows? But her features and coloring are nothing like mine. She's big-boned. I'm petite. Her skin is dark. Mine is freckly and pale. Her black hair is in dreadlocks in some of the photos and straightened in others. I lighten my bone-straight hair to a pale blond and wear it short, cropped over my ears. It's nothing like how I used to wear it before. Back then I would've looked more like Cora's sister than Marie's.

Beau hasn't looked away from me for a second, not even to check out Marie's pictures. He hasn't asked a single question even though I can see in his eyes that he has about a million of them. I don't have any for him. Not a single one. I feel like I already know too much about him and yet not enough. It doesn't matter, anyway. I have a single goal here, and it has nothing to do with the man sitting across from me. My sister is all I have left of whatever family I might have had, and I'm terrified for her. I spent time in that group home and I know what she might have fallen into if she left it.

But I can't tell Cora and Beau anything about that.

“Please help me find her.” I know I sound desperate. I am.

“We'll do our best.”

I start at the sound of Beau's voice. Cora seems equally startled as she swings her gaze away from me to her brother. This time the smile reaches all the way to his lips and my own mouth tilts up at the corners in response. He's on my side. I've never had anyone take up for me. No one in any of the foster or group homes. Not even my own mother. I'm caught by the look in his eyes and what he communicates silently. He wants to champion my cause.

Cora's head swivels back and forth between Beau and me. I wonder what she sees when she looks at us. Can she feel the pull? Does she understand what's being said without words? Can she feel my barely suppressed panic? Does she know what that look on her brother's face means? Because I don't. I don't understand what's happening here, except that it scares the shit out of me. And Beau too. His eyebrows draw together and he suddenly looks away. I slide my chair back from the table and stand, needing some distance.

I pull the strap of my bag over my shoulder. “Thank you.”

Cora gets to her feet too, but it takes a moment for Beau to react. I head for the front door with Cora on my heels. I can't get out of there fast enough.

“Your form and the retainer,” Cora reminds me.

“Oh, right.” Pausing in the open doorway, I dig out a cashier's check and the client form they wanted me to fill out and hand them over.

“We'll be in touch,” Cora says, accepting them.

“I look forward to hearing from you.” I don't wait for her response and leave, walking to my car as quickly as possible.

Sliding behind the wheel, I glance up at the closed door of the agency.
What have I done?
I can't do this. I should go in and get my check back, find a different PI agency to help me. I wanted the best, and Nash Security and Investigation was supposed to be the best. Anyone else I hire would just be second string. It would take time to find another agency. Time is the one thing I don't have. Marie will be eighteen in a few months. I thought I could find her by myself, but I couldn't do that without giving away who I really am. I can't ever reveal that.

I think of Marie and where she might be right now. I lied when I told Cora that I was worried for her. I'm terrified. Thinking of her and imagining what she might be going through, I realize that I can put up with the strangeness between Beau and me if I have to. I can handle just about anything for my sister. If I can't work around him, then I'll just have to find a way to work with him. For Marie. I'd do anything to keep what happened to me from happening to her.

Anything.

Cora comes back into the conference room and closes the door quietly behind her. I'm standing exactly where I was standing when Vera freaked out and left. I stare at the stack of papers and photos Vera left behind without really seeing them. If I thought my life was complicated before, it just got a shit-ton more complex.

“You want to tell me what's going on with you?” Cora asks.

“No.”

She looks for a moment like she might press the issue, then takes the seat she was in before and starts flipping through the information Vera gave her. I watch her, wondering what in the hell just happened.

When I woke up this morning, my life was all stop signs and red lights. I was waiting for something to happen, waiting for my turn to move forward, questioning if I'd ever get a shot. And then a pale, blond little pixie walked into the office and quietly made me care about something other than how fucked-up my life is. I try to pin down the one thing she said or did that made me actually want to give a shit about something in this world and I can't come up with it. Maybe it was a lot of little things that added up and before I knew it she'd given me a reason to get out of bed tomorrow.

I told her I'd do my best. I don't have a best. I sure as fuck don't have any experience in finding a missing person. How in the hell am I going to live up to that promise? I'm a total and complete idiot. I meet the first chick to make me look twice and I fall on my face trying to impress her. Impress her with what? I don't even have a bed or a place to live. I don't have a car. I don't have a job or the hope of one. What was I doing telling her I'd
help
her? What a fuckwit.

Cora goes through the photos of Vera's sister, Marie. “What do you think of Vera's story?”

“What do you mean?”

“You have a pretty accurate bullshit detector.”

“So do you.”

“Yup, and I'm asking you what you think.”

I drop into my chair and put a hand out for the papers and pics. She gives them to me and I leaf through them slowly, studying each one, practically memorizing them. Vera's handwriting is precise. All of the letters are the same at the bottom, like she used a ruler to keep them in perfect line. If I'd ever taken a handwriting analysis course I could probably tell a lot about her from her scrawl. Control. Vera wants and needs control. I got that much from meeting her. The meticulousness of her lettering confirms it, but while she tries to keep her writing neat, it swirls unexpectedly, slipping past that control. I'm going to have to Google what that means.

“Well?” Cora's impatient for my answer.

“I don't think it's bullshit, but I also think she didn't tell us everything she knows.”

She nods, confirming her own suspicions. “Do you really think that's her sister?”

“Yeah. I do.” Vera had a strong emotional reaction to the photos of Marie. They're connected for sure.

“Well, I guess it's time to find out if our hunches about her are correct or not.”

“What do you mean?”

“We run background checks on all of our potential clients. They ran one on me when I first came to them about you.”

“You're kidding.”

“Nope. We need to make sure she's on the up and up and that we're not putting the person she's looking for in any potential danger. Abusive husbands sometimes use PIs to find their wives. We want to make sure we're not setting this Marie up to be victimized.”

“I don't think—”

“She might not be who she says she is. She might've come here helping someone else out. She
seems
harmless, but you never know. We have to be sure. I want you to run a background check on her. We need to know that Vera's legit and that we're not putting this girl in harm's way.”

I glance up at my sister. She's serious. Vera didn't strike me as someone who would purposefully hurt someone else, not when she's been so badly damaged. Taking on this task would give me the opportunity to learn more about Vera, and that's something I definitely want to do. But it also feels like a betrayal. I know what it's like for people to know everything about me without actually
knowing
me. I'd essentially be doing the same to Vera.

“I don't know.”

“It'll have to be done whether you do it or not. Please. I could really use your help.”

I can't say no to Cora. She could ask me to cut off my right leg and I'd do it. She's done more for me than I could ever repay.

“Leo's coming down today,” she adds. “He can help you.”

She's tamping down her excitement, but I see it in the smile that won't be confined. Her boyfriend coming down to visit from UCLA means I'll be sleeping with pillows piled on my head tonight. I don't mind. Much. Leo makes my sister happy, and that's pretty much all I need to know about him. If it weren't for him taking on my case and helping Cora get trained in private investigation, I'd still be sitting in a cell and Cora would still be spending all her time and money trying to get me free. I like the guy, but it's part of my job as Cora's big brother to make sure he does right by her.

“You can do this,” she says, correctly reading one of the reasons for my reluctance. “It's easy.”

Cora's faith in my Internet searching skills is out of proportion with the couple hours I spent today learning how to do it. And as much as I don't want to pry into Vera's background, I also don't want anyone else to do it.

“Okay.” All my reasoning doesn't make me feel less shitty about what I'm going to do.

“We could use some help around the office. I was thinking of asking Mr. Nash about hiring you on…if you're interested.”

“So I can terrorize Savannah permanently instead of temporarily?”

“You don't terrorize her.”

I lift my eyebrows in response.

“She might be a bit nervous around you,” she concedes. “She'll get over it.”

“In the meantime, I'll have to learn to ignore her flinches and suppressed screams?”

“I'll get Leo to talk to her.”

“Thanks for the job offer, but no, thanks.”

“I could really use the help.”

What she doesn't say is that I need a job so I can move out of her small garage apartment and get a place of my own. She'd never kick me out, but with Leo coming for a visit, her six-hundred-square-foot studio is about to get very, very crowded. Since no one else has been interested in hiring me, this potential office job could be the start of an employment record I can build on. I need a job and money. What I don't need is a reminder of my past every time Savannah squeaks like a mouse caught in a trap.

“This isn't some bullshit charity offer, is it?”

“No. Mr. Nash isn't in the office as much as he used to be. He's trying out semi-retirement so we're a man short. I really do need the help. What do you say?” She's not lying. I'd know it if she was.

“You really think I'll be any good at this investigation stuff?”

“Yeah, I do. You caught on pretty quickly, and the rest isn't hard. Basically, all it takes is tenacity, and I know you have that in spades. Start here. See where it goes. If you don't like the work, you can always quit. I won't hold it against you, and neither would Mr. Nash.” She puts her hand on mine to stop my drumming fingers. “You have to start somewhere, Beau. It might as well be here.” Her voice is quiet yet pleading.

I know my inability to figure my shit out worries her and I can't keep disappointing her. She'd tell me I'm not, but I know I am. I'm disappointing myself. She's right. I have to start somewhere. I have to find something that makes me want to get out of bed in the morning. Maybe this is it. At the very least, maybe this job will help me figure out where to go next.

“Let
me
talk to Savannah before you go to Mr. Nash,” I tell her.

“Okay.” She does a little bounce in her chair, her lips curling inward like she's trying to suppress a grin.

I wish she wasn't so excited. If I can't get Savannah to stop looking at me like I'll jump her, this whole conversation is a waste and so is Cora's enthusiasm.

“Hey, Bluebird.” Leo leans in the doorway of the conference room.

Cora leaps out of her seat and runs at Leo. He meets her halfway, catching her in a spinning hug. The months she and Leo have been together are the happiest I've ever seen my sister. I scoop up Vera's papers and photos, go around the table, and slip past them and out the door. Leo kissing Cora is not something I want to stick around to watch.

Savannah's on the phone, so I head to Cora's office and begin my search. My mind's back on Vera. I feel like I owe her an apology for what I'm about to do. Or at the very least a heads-up. I start with the genealogy site Cora showed me earlier and plug in Trudy Saint Claire, Vera's mother's name. There are birth and death birth certificates for her. I dig some more and come up with two children—a son and a daughter. The daughter is Marie Anne Saint Claire. There is no third child. No other daughter.

The question becomes: Who is Vera Swain, if she's not Marie's sister?

I clear the search and type in Vera's name and birth date from the form Cora had her fill out. While the site does its thing I open another window and pull up the address she gave. It's to one of those P.O. box places. I do a reverse lookup with the phone number she listed. It comes up with no information. I go back to the genealogy site and click on Vera's birth record. The birth date matches. Her parents are listed as Karen and Michael Swain. She was born in—ironically—Agenda, Wisconsin. I click on the other document and
holy shit.
Vera Swain died when she was three years old.

If the real Vera is dead, who was the woman who came in to the office and kicked my world on its ass?