Page 109 of Smooth Sailing

My hip was moving, and I wasn’t doing it.

I opened my eyes to early morning sun, turned my head and saw Hugger looming over me.

Well then.

Good morning to me.

“Hey,” I whispered.

“Fucks me to wake you, babe, but Scott’s been on the phone and shit’s going down.”

I sat up so fast, I nearly crashed heads with Hugger.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

He sat on the side of my bed. “First, Madison’s people are at the police station. Probably not a surprise they’re being vocal about wanting to see her.”

“Crap,” I mumbled.

I’d hoped to have at least the morning to break the news to her and talk her into seeing them.

“And Scott told me something else.”

All sleep gone, I focused hard on him. “What’d he tell you?”

“That phone is not Imran Babic’s.”

Wait.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s his son’s. Esad Babic.”

Wait.

“What?”

Hugger shook his head. “Don’t know, Di. But Scott really wants to talk to Madison.”

There’s more I haven’t told you.

Maybe she didn’t mean what I thought she meant with that.

“Di?” Hugger called.

“I don’t know what to do with that.”

“I don’t either, but Scott told me something else.”

Fantastic.

“That being?” I asked, even if I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“There was a call during the time Madison had the phone from a number programmed in as ‘Otac,’ which apparently means ‘father’ in Bosnian. The call came in the morning after she showed at the emergency room and lasted fifteen minutes.”

“And this means she had the son’s phone, but talked to the dad.”

“I don’t know what it means, honey. I just know Scott told me that call came before the police interviewed her. So shit is now convoluted, because she named Imran Babic as her rapist, and they arrested him for that crime, but she’s got his son’s phone and shared yesterday it was the phone of the man who assaulted her.”

---