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

Her hands clench and unclench at her sides. Teeth clenched, her breath seethes in and out. I step in front of Misty to try to break her fixated stare.

“Focus on me,” I say. “Just look at me. Do you see me? It’s me, Emma. Just focus on me, okay?”

She looks at me and I see the emotion shift. She nods.

“Good. Good. Can you show me where Leona is?”

She turns without a word and I follow her across the dirty floor to a set of spiral metal steps. We climb up them and she points down into an empty water reservoir. Leona lies at the bottom on a pile of debris. One leg is twisted and broken and I can see blood on her face. I hear a groan.

“She’s alive,” I say. “We need to get help for her.”

Ashley faces off with her mother.

“She came here looking for me, didn’t she?” she asks.

“We didn’t know where you went,” Misty says. “You were just gone. She was worried about you.”

“No. She came here to see if I really had crawled out of the grave she put me in.”

Misty recoils. “Stop it. Don’t you say things like that!”

“She already knows, Misty. And so do I.” I turn to the girl I’ve been calling Ashley. “Lyla. Have you heard that name?” She shakes her head. “It’s yours. It has been since you were born.” I gesture toward the top of the steps. “Leona didn’t know. She didn’t know about you.”

“This is ridiculous,” Misty says. “What are you going on about? This is Ashley. My daughter. Ashley Marie Stevenson.”

“This is your daughter, but it’s not Ashley. I noticed your mother’s medical ID bracelet. Leona mentioned it had birthstones for her grandchildren in it. There were three. One for January, two for June.”

“I lost a baby,” Misty says. “I told you that.”

“I know,” I say. “And in a way, you did. But not how you say. The daughter you raised, one of the June babies, was actually a twin.”

Misty looks angry, but a smug look crosses her face.

“You have no way of knowing us,” she says. “You can’t access my medical records.”

“No,” I say. “I can’t. But I can access death records. They’re public. And there’s one for Lyla Jane Gray. Your infant daughter. You hadn’t married John yet, so she didn’t have his last name. Ashley didn’t get his last name until she was almost a year old, did she?”

“This is completely outrageous,” Misty snaps. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I do, Misty. The death record is for a stillborn twin. Only, the morgue has no records of receiving or disposing of any infant remains on that day, or any of the days in the week before or after June thirteenth. That’s because there weren’t any. Because your daughter Lyla wasn’t stillborn. She was born healthy and strong, just like Ashley.

“And then she went home with your nurse. Jessica Blanchette. She had been pretending to be pregnant for months, ever since she took care of you when you were sent to rehab for your gambling addiction, rather than having to serve jail time after being caught with a hell of a lot of pills. Tell me, was that the plan all along? Did you know while you were in that rehab center that you would sell your baby daughter to her? Or were you as fooled as everybody else was with her fake pregnancy?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Misty says.

“Of course, you do. John showed me the picture of the two of you with your pregnant bellies. How long did it take until you found out your boyfriend was in that facility a year before you? That they met before you racked up a huge debt to him and then made it infinitely worse by losing the drugs you were supposed to sell?”

“So, you sold me instead,” Lyla says.

“I’ve seen all the transactions. I know how it happened. Just tell me, for my peace of mind, that that man isn’t your children’s father,” I say.

“No,” Misty says, shaking her head. “He died before I found out I was pregnant.”

“Why did you lie to your husband about when you lost a baby? Why didn’t you tell him the twin died, the same story you told your mother?” I ask.

The tears are falling freely down Misty’s face now. She’s stammering, but somehow holding it together.

“I didn’t want him to know. I begged my mother not to tell him. He was in treatment longer than I was. We weren’t really serious until after he got out. I hadn’t told him I was pregnant with twins. It wasn’t something we talked about. My life was finally starting to turn around. I told my mother I didn’t want to start our life together in pain.” She turns to Lyla. “But I was still mourning. I needed to be able to grieve for you.”

“To grieve for me?” Lyla screams. “You’re the one who caused this. You’re the one who put me in his grasp! He called me ‘thirteen’. That’s all he ever called me. I used to spend all my time dreaming of my family. Wondering what you were like. Imagining that you were looking for me. That you loved me and were going to find me one day.”

Misty shudders. Lyla continues.

“Things didn’t start getting really bad until I was around twelve. Before then, I knew they weren’t my parents, but they took care of me. I didn’t realize until then they were grooming me. They were raising me like livestock. That’s when I found out the truth. Where I actually came from. And the thing was, I didn’t even know then how horrible you really were. Not until Ashley disappeared. He used to make me watch the news with him so he could laugh about Ashley. About you.

“He wanted me to know that what I thought about you was wrong. He wanted me to know where I really came