Page 62 of Draven
A faint smile touches her lips, but it’s gone so fast I wonder if I imagined it. “If you’re sure you have the time.”
“I have the time.”
I drive the three miles to my favorite coffee place, which, as luck would have it, is nowhere near Bolder Street where those bastards snatched Darla. I settle both ladies into a comfy sofa by the window and head up to the counter, ordering coffees and slices of pound cake. While I wait for the barista to fill my order, I glance over and watch Darla pulling on a loose thread as Linda whispers in her ear. I’ll need to take care with Darla. The woman has been through enough, and I don’t want to add to her pain.
I set the tray on the table and take a seat opposite the two women. “I hope you like pound cake,” I say. “Although it should be called ten-pound cake, because I’m certain that’s the amount of weight I put on after eating it.”
Darla breaks into a genuine smile, and this time it holds. It changes her entire face. A tinge of pride tugs at my chest that she smiled because of something I said.
“It’s one of my favorites.”
“Mine, too,” Linda says. “Thank you, detective.”
“My pleasure.” I split my cake in half and take a bite, brushing crumbs off my skirt. I make a satisfied groan. “God, it should be illegal for something to taste so good.”
Darla giggles, and her whole body relaxes. Good. I thought hard on the drive over how to approach questioning her, how best to tease any information she has from her. I decided to treat the situation as though we’re just friends engaging in nothing more than sharing a coffee and enjoying a good old gossip.
Darla sips her latte, spilling a little on the table as she puts down her cup. She dabs the spillage with a napkin. “What do you want to know?” she asks.
I lean forward, locking eyes with her. God only knows what horrors she endured, what terrible acts she witnessed, and personally suffered.
“Whatever you’re willing to tell me,” I say. “I’m not here as a detective. There are others investigating this case, and I’m not one of them. I just want to hear about my sister.”
Darla nods, her mouth turning down at the edges, her eyes a dull shade of brown. “She was lovely,” she whispers. “We were kept in adjacent cells, and sometimes, when the drugs began to wear off, before the men would return, we’d stretch as far as our chains would allow and touch fingers through the bars.”
My breath hitches, my emotions on the edge of spilling over. The image Darla paints is as clear as if I’d been right there with them. Her chin dips, and Linda squeezes her arm in encouragement.
“I cried a lot, but Kiera… she was so strong. She’d comfort me, telling me her sister was on the police force and she’d never give up looking for us. She trusted you implicitly, so dogged in her belief that you’d rescue us in the end.” Darla lifts her head, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. “And you did.”
Tears bubble behind my eyes, and I dig my fingernails into my palms to distract me. “We’ll get the men who did this, I promise you. They’ll pay for what they’ve done.”
Darla briefly closes her eyes, nodding. “I wouldn’t have gotten through this if it weren’t for Kiera and the others. We were in it together, you know? All of us just trying to survive the next minute, the next hour, the next day.”
Linda sniffs, then riffles through her purse. She pulls out a tissue and blows her nose. I reach across the table and clasp Darla’s hand, woman to woman. We’re connected by a different kind of pain brought about by the same events. “Is there anything you can tell me that you haven’t already told the police?” I ask gently, conscious of my earlier declaration of not being here in an official capacity.
Darla plucks at the skin at the base of her neck. “I don’t think so. I can’t even tell you how many there were. Four? Five, maybe. They kept me—us—drugged a lot of the time. Except when they… when they...” She swallows, squeezing her eyes closed once more. “Then they liked us lucid. They liked it when we fought them, when the other women screamed, knowing their time was coming.”
Nausea swirls in my gut. A part of me knew the women would have been repeatedly raped, but to hear it from one of the victims, and to know Kiera went through the same thing... I can’t bear it. Anger curls my hands into fists, and sweat beads along the nape of my neck despite the cool air inside the coffee shop. If I ever get my hands on the men who did this, I’m not sure what I’ll do. I don’t trust myself not to do something stupid.
“It’s okay, Detective Rhodes,” Darla says, offering comfort in the form of a pat on the back of my hand when I’m the one who should be comforting her.
I place my hand over hers, grappling with emotions that threaten to erupt from deep within me. I have to stay focused on the end game—bringing those responsible to justice. This isn’t about my personal vendetta, as much as I sometimes want it to be. Death is too quick for these men. Too easy. Life in prison is a much greater punishment.
“I’m so sorry Kiera didn’t make it. She deserved to live.”
“You all deserved to live,” I say. “No one’s life was worth more than the other.” I draw in a cleansing breath, refocusing my mind. “Would you recognize the men again? Their faces? Voices?”
Darla pulls in her lips. “I honestly don’t know. Everything is so fuzzy. The doctors put my lack of memory down to the cocktail of drugs they fed us.” She offers an apologetic smile. “I feel so useless.”
“You’re not useless. Not at all. You’ve been through a horrific experience. I’m no doctor, but the lack of recall is probably your mind protecting itself.”
She lifts one shoulder. “Maybe.”
“Rick—Lieutenant Mathieson—told me all the men were foreign. Would you be able to place their accent?” I’ll lay odds on them being Albanian given they’re Shala’s men, but it doesn’t do to presume anything.
Darla shakes her head. “I doubt it. I’d struggle even if they were Americ—” Her eyes widen. “Wait a minute.” She reaches for Linda’s hand. “God, how could I have forgotten?”
Hope spikes within me. “Forgotten what?” I probe gently.