Hating Beauty (The Vegas Titans Series Book 6) (12 page)

I stare at him still tangled in my arms, and feel my own mind
cool and clear to match his businesslike tone.

“Knox, the police can’t help. They have nothing on Keto, or
Breslin. My mother went to them so many times.”

“She didn’t go to this guy. Trust me.”

“Trust you?” I whisper. “How?”

I am really asking, and he frowns,
not knowing how to respond. An idea occurs, a way that he can help me feel
safer, a way he can let me in as I have let him in.

“Knox, will you tell me your story,
eh? Are you going to tell me why you are helping me? Who you really are? Tell
me why I should trust you.”

He stares back at me, and I see many things flicker over his
face. Confusion. Resistance. Longing. Hope. Fear. Pride.

Shame.

What is he ashamed of, I wonder?

He doesn’t give me an answer. He doesn’t tell me his story.
I recognize in his face the same fear I felt a moment ago.

Instead of telling me his truth, he
jerks my body on top of his so that I am on his lap, so I can feel all of him
pressed against me, his arms crushingly powerful around me like a cage. There’s
no escaping him, his strong body, his desire. He kisses me deeply, the force
and relentlessness of the kiss taking my breath away. I can feel him as if he’s
invading me, pouring all of himself into me. He’s straining and pushing and
plundering his tongue into my mouth as if it’s possible to fill us both to the
brim with his kiss, as if we can overflow and flood each other and find peace
in this way. His arms work up my back, pulling me closer, as if he can crush
our bodies together into one. My skin burns, my blood coursing through my veins
furiously. His body curls around mine, touching me in every way he can. I don’t
want it to stop. I don’t want to breathe ever again. I don’t want to think,
feel, or be anything else other than this kiss.

I understand what he is doing.

He is doing this on purpose, trying to make me forget my
questions.

For now, his kiss is the only answer I am going to get.

Chapter Seventeen

Rusudan Tsetsilia Dadiana

The 114
^th
Precinct is
clean, quiet, and gives me the creeps.

It’s hard to say why police
stations make me nervous. Maybe because I’ve lived as a lawbreaker in this
country for so long, maybe because I remember the stories of the police in the
Soviet times, corrupt and brutal.

From the moment we walk through the
doors, I feel surrounded and frightened by the men in blue, like I am a fox in
a hunt and all around me are dogs that could tear me apart if they caught my
scent.

Knox asks the booking officer at
the desk to check and see if Detective Dario Lopez is there, and while the
message is relayed I look around to find my exits. There are only a few drunks
handcuffed to a bench, a few officers standing around talking and filling out
paperwork. I feel like I stand out like a sore thumb, with a big sign on my
head: illegal alien, past-due visa, parole violation.

Knox squeezes my shoulder
reassuringly, making me wonder if he can read my thoughts and sense my tension.

“You ok, Mystery Girl?”

 I glance at him, trying for a
smile, but I don’t know if it works. He kisses me lightly on the cheek and
chuckles.

“Believe me, I get it. Cops make me
crazy too. Even when I’ve been a very good boy.”

This makes me raise an eyebrow.

Knox laughs. “Ok, so I’m not a very
good boy often. But still. They give me the willies.”

He leans against the counter,
seemingly at ease, his muscles shifting lazily under his black t-shirt as he
opens his chest, stretches, and sighs. I can’t help it, but my eyes flicker
over his fitted jeans and hips too before meandering back to his chiseled face.

It’s just such a nice view.

“Spent a lot of time in these
places,” he admits, with a hint of nostalgia. “You’d think that would make me
feel more at home.”

“Or maybe think about changing your
ways.”

This comment comes from behind us,
and we turn to find a handsome, young, sarcastic-looking Detective striding
through an office door. He’s in jeans and a sports jacket, his curly black hair
styled to within an inch of its life.

“Lopez,” Knox laughs. He steps over
and clasps hands with the newcomer, the gesture merging into a quick brotherly
embrace. “You know me better than that. Something about old dogs and new
tricks.”

“Well, you know me—I’ll never stop
hoping that you’ll have a come-to-Jesus moment, bat for my team for a change,
instead of giving me and my boys more messes to clean up.”

Knox grimaces. “You and your
justice league. I was never that into comic books.”

“Too bad for you,” Lopez chuckles.
“Woulda raised your IQ and maybe taught you some manners. You haven’t
introduced me to your lady friend.”

“Oh, excuse me. Detective Dario
Lopez, meet my friend, uh, –”

“Tatiana,” I say reflexively,
cutting off Knox before he has a chance to fumble through my list of aliases. “Tatiana
White.”

“A pleasure, Miss White.”

Detective Lopez shakes my hand, and then looks back to Knox.

“Tell me you’re here voluntarily,” he said, “Or do I have to
get your ass out of trouble again?”

Knox grins. “Yes, but unfortunately, also yes.”

The Detective shakes his head and turns to open the door.
“Come on back then. It’s not like I am busy solving crime or anything.”

He leads us through a narrow hallway, past an open floor of
desks and cubicles, to a little conference room. As we walk, Knox fills him in
on the most basic thing: that we are lying low, that we need to find someone, that
it is urgent, and might be life or death.

Lopez seats us around a small table and crosses his arms.

“What do you need from me?” He asks bluntly.

Knox turns to me. “We’re looking for her sister. Disappeared
in 2009. We need to look through your all Jane Does that went through the
morgue, make sure she’s not one of them. Only we’re not sure where in the city
she might have been. So we need to see all of them.”

Lopez’s eyebrows shoot up. “You wanna look through all my Jane
Does. All the dead Jane Does in New York City in 2009. Are you insane?”

“Got a better idea?” Knox growls.

“You’re a sick bastard, Cole.” The Detective shakes his head
and looks at me. “I won’t ask why the sudden urgency for an old case like this.
I don’t want to know what kind of trouble you’re in. But this isn’t going to be
a picnic for you Miss White, if we go forward with this search. You’re going to
be trying to ID your sister based on post-mortem pictures, you understand?”

I nod. What else can I do?

Lopez sighs. “When exactly did your
sister disappear? Was there a missing person report, a date? Anything to help
me narrow it down?”

I nod and swallow, but my mouth is dry as ashes.

“It was October fifteenth that we
went to the police. My mother filed a report under the name Tamar White. My
sister’s name in the report is Madlena Ketevan White, known by the nickname
Sunny. We were living in Brighton Beach, 60
^th
Precinct.”

The Detective nods, and I can feel
that he is refraining from commenting on my word choices that I am sure tell
him more than I wanted to.
Under the name…the name in the report
…I realize
he knows what is under the surface of this neat turn of phrase, that my mother
and my sister and our names are not what we seem.

But it doesn’t really matter, not
for this search of Jane Does. And so he lets it go.

“That helps me,” Lopez says, shooting Knox a look. “She
helps me. You, you don’t help me. Wait here, I’ll see what I can do.”

Knox grins as Lopez ducks out of the room.

“We go a long way back,” Knox explains. “He’s a good man.
Good friend. Good cop. World could use more like him.”

“So I guessed.”

Knox falls quiet a minute, then
brushes his hand over mine. “First time I’ve ever introduced a girl to a buddy
of mine. Feels weird.”

The absurdity of that comment makes me laugh.

“That’s what feels weird? I suppose this isn’t typically how
that happens, how lovers meet each other’s friends. In a police station, on the
run from a psychopath.”

“Is that what we are?” Knox teases. “Lovers?”

My cheeks flame hot then cold, but
I don’t respond. I am not feeling playful. My thoughts turn to Knox’s plan, my
stomach already twisting in knots.

“Right now we seem to be
investigators,” I say. “Morbid investigators. This was your big idea? Looking
through dead girls to find Sunny?”

Knox squeezes my hand, then sighs and lets it go.

“If your sister is dead, he’ll find
the right files for us to look through. The man is like a bloodhound. Hell of a
detective, really knows his shit. It seemed like the only thing we could do
next, the only clear step forward. Given the circumstances.”

Even as objections and bile rise in
my throat, I swallow it all down. Knox is right. If Keto is dead, I need to
find out. Knowing this will help us figure out what to do next, where to go,
how to outmaneuver Breslin. This will help.

If Keto died, we’ll find her. If
she’s not here, then she is probably alive, probably out there waiting for me.
Needing me. I’ve never had access to those kinds of files before. I’ve never actually
known for sure whether my lifelong search has been a waste.

The only question now is: am I
strong enough to do this? Am I strong enough to look straight at the truth,
whatever it is?

Until Lopez returns with three boxes of thick three-ring
binders, I think the answer is yes. I think I am strong enough to do this, to
look through so many tragedies and try to pick out my own.

Then Detective Lopez sets down the
boxes on the table in front of us, and gives me a kind smile.

“Take your time,” he says. “These
are the NYC Jane Does who match your sister’s physical description, age and an estimated
disappearance date around October 15
^th
, 2009. We’re lucky she’s a
redhead, that really narrowed it down. I’ll have Smith bring you some coffee.”

He withdraws like a shadow, leaving
me staring at this mountain of information. Knox grabs a binder from the box
closest to him, giving me a wry and reassuring smile.

“I’ll start on this side, you start
on that side. I saw your family portrait, and I’ve stared at your face more
than I’d like to admit. I could recognize your sister if she’s here. I know
this won’t be easy, but this is the only way I could think of to narrow down
our next set of choices. You can do this, Rusiko.”

He is being as kind as is humanly
possible, and he is right.

I force myself to remember this, to
stifle my urge to lash out at him, to take out my panic and fear on the nearest
living person. The sound of my family nickname on Knox’s lips makes my heart
jolt, but not even that can unwind the spool of dread in my gut that has me
coiled and ready to snap.

“Thank you,” I whisper. It’s all I
can get out.

Then I turn to the first box.

I am not strong. I am not strong
enough.

“You can do this,” Knox whispers.

He is right.

I can do this.

I have to do this. My fingers are
already trembling as I reach for the first binder and open to the first
inserted page. It’s a photo of a dead girl, a young girl with reddish hair and
a gunshot wound in her chest. It looks like my sister, but it is not my sister.
I sigh, relieved. Until I remember that it is somebody else’s sister, somebody
else’s daughter.

But I can’t think like that. If I
think like that I’ll go crazy. I just need to focus, to concentrate on the
good: it’s not Sunny. It’s not Keto.

I can do this. I can do this.

Beside me, Knox is flipping through
the pages quickly and efficiently. He’s got a keen eye, a level head. I envy
his ability to detach, to focus. That is what I need to do. I take a deep
breath and remind myself that this is my life’s mission. I need to do this to
complete my mission. I need to know, before my time is up.

“Jesus,” Knox whispers, wincing. “What
the hell is wrong with this world? I can’t believe all these poor girls.”

Someone brings coffee and sets the
mugs down in front of us. I don’t look up.

Another page. Another photo.
Another girl. Pages and pages.

The next binder. The next. How
many? How many missing daughters, how many Ketos are there? How many women have
been lost, how many families shattered?

“This isn’t right,” Knox mutters.
“This just isn’t how it should be.”

The coffee is refilled once, twice.
Three times.

It takes so long, each picture
feels like an hour of agonizing debate, of trying to imagine if that could be
her, of deciding, no—it’s not Keto. It’s not Keto. She’s not here. She’s not in
this book. Maybe the next book, the next picture. No. Not Keto.

Keep going. Keep going, Rusiko.
Do not give up.

Lopez checks on us, removes the box
of photos we have finished looking through, then another box. We are on the
last box.

Now I am jittery from caffeine and
hope. There are only two binders left in the third box, and we haven’t found my
sister’s face.

Now then there is only one binder
left.

A new feeling begins to creep up my
spine, and I feel my cheeks flooding with heat. It’s as if my body knows when
Knox is looking at me, as if I have a sixth sense attuned just to him. He has
closed his last binder, and is watching me like a hawk.

Focus, Rusiko. Don’t look at him
yet.

I force myself to finish going
through every last page of the binder before I close it with quiet thump and
stack it neatly back in the box. Then I put my hands flat on the desk, stare at
my empty coffee cup. I hardly know how to sort through my feelings. I hardly
know how to function as a person, after looking at all those faces, all those
tragedies.

“I feel so…guilty.” Knox says, as
if in answer to my own thoughts.

“Why should you feel guilty? You
didn’t kill anyone.”

Even as I say it, I realize I don’t
know whether or not it’s true.

Knox’s voice sounds strained. “I
never killed a woman. But, fuck. I never really looked out for the women I’ve
known. Never let myself care. Some of these files, some of their stories…it
could have happened to any of them, the women I’ve…I certainly didn’t ever
protect anyone. Help anyone. I certainly never stopped anything like this from
happening. I figured their lives weren’t my problem. I’m just as guilty as if
I’d been an active part of something like this.”

To my shock, he is crying. Not in a
dramatic way—in fact, he stands and turns away from me to look out the window.
But I hear his breath catch and his voice flatten out and see him silently wipe
tears from his face as he stares into the afternoon light slanting through the
blinds. His back is rigid, but somehow the moment feels intimate. He’s letting
me see more than I think probably anyone else ever has.

More than ever I want to know about
him.

More than ever I want to trust him.

More than ever I want him to let me
in.

But I don’t know what to say. Maybe
he is right, maybe he has been a monster to every woman in his life. How should
I know? Maybe he is guilty, maybe he has hurt women or, just as bad, allowed
them to be hurt. After all, we met because he was willing to use me. Try as I
might, I can’t forget that. He was willing to use me, and the only reason I am
still here with him is because I turned that around and used it to my own
advantage. We’ve been using each other since we met. What a fine pair we are,
both of us only caring by mistake. It seems like our paths have only become
intertwined as a matter of accident, against both of our wills.

Maybe everything I think I feel
about him is a lie. Maybe he is an animal.