The Girl and the Unlucky 13 (Emma Griffin™ FBI Mystery) A.J. Rivers (historical books to read TXT) 📖

almost expect tears in them, but they’re dry. Instead, there’s confusion and anger. It passes quickly and she holds the tablet back out to me.

“I don’t know what happened after that. Just that I woke up in the house,” she says.

I nod and sit beside her again. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk with you about. You seem to remember the house better than anything else. Can you tell me more about it?”

She describes the house and the first moments she remembered being awake. Again, she talks about the man she called Wolf, but skirts around what he might have done to her. I don’t need her to go into detail. I already know. At least, I have a good idea. The deeper dive into the details can come later.

“What do you think about taking me back there?” I ask.

Misty explodes beside me. “Absolutely not. Are you out of your mind? She just escaped that place and now you want her to just stroll back in there? Are you going to leave her alone in there with a big ribbon around her, too?”

“Misty, you need to calm down,” I say.

“Stop telling me to calm down when you’re saying you want to put my child in danger again.”

“I wouldn’t put her in danger,” I say. “I would be there with her the entire time. Along with the other members of my team. A backup team would be on stand-by, ready to come in if we need assistance. There would be no point at which she would be alone or vulnerable.”

“Seriously? Do you think that having you or either of those guys with her creates some sort of impenetrable force field? That it will create a shield around her that will deflect bullets?” she snaps.

“The chances of Ashley’s captor’s remaining there after she escaped are very low,” I explain. “This is a high-profile case. Staying would just be an invitation. That’s not how these types of criminals work. If there’s a chance of identification, predators don’t linger in the same place.”

“No,” Misty says. “No. You’re not going to take her somewhere that has so many horrible memories for her. Even if it’s empty, it’s not safe. As you said, this is a high-profile case. I was already afraid enough when she was in the hospital. If you make her do this, you’re just trotting her out and putting a target on her back. They will come for her. Don’t you understand that?”

That strikes me. “They?”

“What?”

“You said ‘they’. ‘They’ will come for her. Who do you mean?”

Misty stammers for a second, the question apparently having caught her off guard.

“Ashley was a young, healthy, smart girl. It wouldn’t be easy to just keep her captive like that. I just assume it had to be more than one person,” she says.

“She has only talked about one person,” I point out. “This man she calls Wolf.”

“To you,” Misty says. “But she’s said ‘they’ to me when we were just talking.”

The words are thin and snipped as she squirms, obviously uncomfortable under my scrutiny. But I’m not going to let her off the hook that easily.

“So you didn’t assume,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“You just said that you assumed there was more than one person, but then you said that Ashley mentioned it to you. So, did you assume there was more than one person who had her, or did Ashley tell you there was more than one person?” I ask.

Misty’s mouth opens, then closes, bending down into a scowl.

“You’re trying to put words in my mouth,” she protests.

“No, I’m not. I’m actually trying to do the opposite. I’m trying to understand what you’re telling me and to get as much information out of Ashley as possible,” I say.

“She isn’t a bottle of ketchup you can shake until you get to the last drop,” Misty says. “She already said she told you everything she remembers. What else is it that she needs to do?”

“Keep trying,” Ashley says.

Something is different about her voice now. It’s not a dramatic shift. She hasn’t suddenly slipped into a robotic monotone or developed an accent. The change is more subtle, but it’s there. The words seem to have more weight. They’re more anchored inside her when she says them. Misty looks over at her, but I can’t tell if she’s noticed the change or if she just didn’t catch what her daughter said.

“What, honey?” she asks.

“We need to keep trying. I might not know every step that happened that night, but I know some things. And I want to help figure out the rest,” she says.

“Honey, you’ve already done everything you need to do. You got yourself out and you told your story. That’s the most anyone can expect from you. The rest is the responsibility of the police and the FBI. Let them do their jobs.”

“I’m here because I didn’t just let them do their jobs,” Ashley replies. She scrolls back through the footage on the tablet again and pauses it, turning it to her mother. “You see her? You see that girl? Tell her to just let them do their jobs.”

“Honey,” Misty says in the slow, quiet tone I notice she uses when she’s trying to calm Ashley. “All I mean is…”

“I waited for so long. I waited for someone to help, for anyone to come. No one ever did. If I kept waiting, I would still be there. I had to get myself out of there. I did their job then, and if I need to do it now, I will.” She looks at the screen again, her face clouding. “To make it up to that girl back then.”

“You have my word I am doing everything I can to do just that,” I say. “I know going back to the house isn’t going to be easy, but I’ll be right there with you. The whole time. And if you change your mind while we’re there, we’ll leave.”

“It’s time for you to leave,” Misty tells me.

“Mom,” Ashley says.

“Dinner will