Page 43 of Duplicity

Carlos wanted to prove to her that what he’d said was accurate, and yet right after she left the tire shop, she’d had that incident with the paint can. The two had to be connected. Either Carlos was trying to misdirect her into believing he was behindit, or someone else had been watching her and had seen her go talk to him.

Alayna stared at the fork as she rotated it. “Something happened to me…two years ago.”

Cat waited and allowed her to figure out where to start talking. Probing questions might be a good idea in police interrogations, but they weren’t always the right tactic in talking with a survivor.

“I was walking home from work. It was a Thursday, after eleven. My car broke down, and my dad had it up on blocks, so I didn’t have a way to get to and from work aside from walking.” Alayna swallowed. The fork clattered to the tabletop. “Someone grabbed me. I think there were two of them, and they shoved me into a trunk. Tied me up and injected me with something. I remember feeling a needle.”

The young woman sucked in a choppy breath.

Cat could guess what was coming, and it was likely similar to what Simon had been through. Either way, she’d survived. She had returned to her life, and the days had moved on. But Cat, of all people, understood that intense pain left a mark on a person that was not easily forgotten.

“I knew what was happening, but I couldn’t do anything about it.” Alayna sniffed. “They called it a party. I was in a hotel room, and I couldn’t even stand up, let alone figure out how to get out of there.” She cleared her throat. “Men came in and out. I couldn’t do anything.”

“But you escaped.” How else would she have managed to get free?

“Three days, maybe four days later. Someone found me in an alley. An ambulance took me to the hospital, and the doctor said I’d overdosed.”

If she had seen a doctor, there could very well be evidence. “Did they do a sexual assault exam?”

“The nurse was crying. She told me I would probably take weeks to heal, but that there was nothing found on me…as if someone had cleaned me. I have no idea how.”

Cat bit her lip. “I’m sorry for what you went through.”

She couldn’t even imagine having to live with those kinds of questions. What she had survived was bad enough, but for Alayna to know things had happened that were out of her control. Nightmarish things that were buried somewhere in her mind. Maybe it was better that she didn’t remember. It was possible that being drugged was a kind of mercy.

Sure, she hadn’t been able to fight back or stop it. Alayna also had enough gaps in her memory that it was mostly only the blank of unanswered questions she had to live with. Not every second of it indelibly etched into her psyche.

Which would be worse? The memories, or the unanswered questions. “I go to this group. It’s for survivors of any trauma. I can give you the information if you want.”

Alayna said, “I don’t need help.”

“You know where to find me if you ever do. For anything.” The tools for healing weren’t a one-size-fits-all thing. Everyone dealt with their history in their own way, and not everyone wanted to talk it out in a group. “Thank you for sharing that with me. I can only imagine how hard it was to talk about it aloud.”

Alayna shrugged a slender shoulder but said nothing.

Cat asked, “Do you know if it was just you or if there were more girls who were taken the same way?” After all, Vanguard seemed to believe more than one young girl had been abducted recently. Perhaps it was happening again.

Two years later. Long enough that no one would tie the incidents together.

“I don’t know how many of us there were or who the others are. I just know they shoved me out of the car just like they grabbed me. And everyone pretended like it never happened.”

Cat nodded. “All right. Thank you.”

Alayna shifted in her seat. Maybe she had already said everything she came here to say.

Cat leaned forward in her chair. “Do you know if there’s any connection between what happened to you and this Hayden person?”

Alayna flinched. “I try to stay as far away from anything to do with him as possible. I don’t know what it is or if my mind can remember something, but he seriously gives me the creeps. He tried to steal Carlos’s business from him. They were harassing him and pressuring him to sell the tire shop to them. He refused.”

So there was something in it for him if the police had Hayden on their radar. Not just a show of good faith on Carlos’s part, confirming that what he had told her was legit. But he was also handing her a possible witness—or at least good intel—that the police needed laser focus on Hayden. And in the end, Carlos would have one less headache.

Whether this Hayden person was connected to the more recent disappearances was something the police were going to have to prove. With strong enough evidence that there could be no doubt when it came down to the court case.

“Thank you for coming. Like I said, if you need anything?—”

Alayna said, “Carlos takes care of me.” She slid the chair back and nearly silently walked through the restaurant and out the door.

Cat closed her eyes for a second, giving her heart and mind a moment to process the enormity of what that girl had been through. She prayed for her and for any of the other victims who had been abducted around the same time. Then she prayed for Marianna and any other girl who had been taken now.

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