Page 60 of A Step You Shouldn't Take

“How long until we get there?” I asked Reed.

“Another hour. You okay?”

Yes. Strangely, I was.

CHAPTER 18 - REED

EMMA HAD BOUGHT her groceries from a dusty dump called Joe’s Spend ’n’ Save. A fucking oxymoron if I ever heard one. Located at one end of a crumbling strip mall, it was only one step away from demolition, and I spotted mouse shit in the chiller aisle.

“Now what?” Kim asked, sticking close by my side as she skirted a puddle of something sticky on the grimy floor.

I nodded towards the checkout clerk, a blonde with nails so long it was a miracle she managed to work the register.

“Once she’s finished serving that customer, I’ll have a chat with her.”

Gaudy banners still advertised last summer’s barbecue specials, and unsurprisingly, the hot dogs were out of date. How did places like this survive? The cynic in me said it was a front for money laundering, but in reality, the proprietor probably just preyed on desperate people like my sister.

The grubby teenager pocketed his package of candy and disappeared out the front door, leaving back-alley Barbie to stare at Kim and me with a mix of incredulity and curiosity. Yeah, we must have looked like a strange pair, me in my jeans and a beat-up leather jacket and Kim in a pale-pink shift dress and another pair of those prissy little heels. Today’s had fancy rosettes made from ribbon on them.

“Hey, my name’s Reed, and this is Kim. I’m a private investigator from Pennsylvania, and we’re searching for her sister. We’ve got reason to believe she was shopping in here this morning. Were you working then?”

The blonde nodded and carried on chewing her gum, eyes vacant.

“She’s a little shorter than Kim here, and she’s got red hair. Green eyes, a stud in her nose, pierced ears. Do you remember her?”

Blondie shook her head. “Ain’t seen nobody like that.”

“Early, about eight o’clock.”

“Bin here since seven. Ain’t seen no redheads.”

“Sometimes she dyes it. Brown, usually. She spent just over forty dollars on a debit card in the name of Emma Cullen.”

The girl shrugged infuriatingly. “Like I said, I don’t remember.”

“Do you have cameras?”

“Mister, does this look like the type of place to have a security system? Kids steal stuff all the time. The boss don’t care, and as long as I get paid, I don’t care neither.”

“Is there anyone else working here that I can talk to?”

“Billy called in sick. Left me with everything to do, the asshole. He’s not sick, he’s hung-over.”

Like the place was so damn busy. Another thread of hope fluttered away, going the same way as all the others. Whether deliberately or by coincidence, Emma always popped up in places with no cameras and nobody who remembered her. Sometimes, as in this case, the witnesses didn’t seem all that switched on, and other times, there were too many people around for one small redhead to make an impression. Especially if she’d gone brunette or worn a hat.

She’d always hated her hair colour, and if I cared to admit it, which I didn’t, I’d had doubts about her parentage more than once. Our mother gave birth to her, that was for sure, but I’d long suspected she didn’t always keep her legs together where her marriage was concerned. Did I ever want to find out for sure? No. In all the ways that mattered, Emma was my sister, full stop, and genetics aside, that didn’t make what our father did to her acceptable in any way.

“Just leave it,” Kim said, giving me a gentle tug towards the back of the store. Tell me she didn’t have a sudden urge to catch E. coli?

“What is it?”

“Can you distract the clerk for a few minutes? Get her away from the register?”

“Why?”

“Because then I can talk to the other clerk.”

“What other clerk?”

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