The question ran through my mind again. Who the hell was this chick?
And why wasn’t she pushing harder to get away from us? I’d been prepared for that, and she obviously didn’t trust us any more than we trusted her… but she hadn’t come out of the room demanding to leave immediately. She hadn’t even taken me up on my supposed offer that she could walk away right now, although maybe that was because she could tell she wasn’t in any state to make it very far on her own.
She took another deep swig of her drink, likely in an attempt to jar her into alertness. If anything, it’d have the opposite effect.
Her body started to sway, and her spine went even more rigid. She was definitely noticing that she wasn’t at her best. I could read that much in her posture.
After taking one last gulp from the mug, Dess pushed herself to her feet. She held her legs tensed, managing to keep her balance despite the toll the sleeping pill must have been taking on her senses. “You know, maybe I do need to get some more rest. Thank you again for the hot chocolate.”
“Get as much sleep as you need,” I said, and Julius nodded.
She strode stiffly but quickly back to the bedroom where we’d set her up, just barely keeping it together. I still caught her teeter just as she reached the doorway. She kicked the door shut behind her.
I’d bet she’d flopped right down on the bed the second we couldn’t see her. She’d been trying to keep up a front of being in control, but she’d be out like a light in a matter of minutes. Those pills were potent stuff.
Blaze started tapping away on his phone. Talon sighed, shaking the tension out of his stance and looking more like the imposing but not outright murderous guy he normally was—when we weren’t out murdering people, at least.
Julius waited a few minutes and then went to the bedroom door. He opened it a crack. “Dess?”
No answer. He stepped inside, and I heard the rustle as he must have given her a shake. He came back out, shutting the door again, and rejoined us. “She’s dead to the world. What did you make of her?”
My stomach sank before I answered. “I got next to nothing,” I had to admit. “She’s intimidated by kindness more than hostility, which might make sense if the abusive boyfriend story is true, but I couldn’t even tell for sure about that. She didn’t respond in a typical way to just about anything, but it was all in different atypical ways.” I raked my fingers through my hair in frustration.
“Fuck.” Julius rubbed his hand over his face, looking equally annoyed. And there was no one to blame but me. “Do you think she was lying about everything?”
“I don’t know. If she lied, she’s a great liar, but she didn’t say anything in a way that screams ‘truth,’ either. It could have all been a lie.”
“Or it could have all been the truth,” Blaze put in.
“Yeah, that too.”
Talon didn’t seem to react to the news, which was par for the course, but both Blaze and Julius looked uneasy.
“At least we know her full name now,” Blaze said, turning back to his phone. “Here we go. Dess Parker. It’s pretty uncommon, I think—yeah, there’s her driver’s license photo.”
He showed us the image on his screen, which was unmistakably the woman currently sleeping in the other room, maybe a year or two younger. I was hit by a jolt of surprise. Somehow I’d assumed she’d given us a fake name.
“Twenty-two years old,” Blaze said, flicking through the various files he’d brought up. “No criminal record. Brief stint working for a clothing store downtown. Has a credit card that’s always been paid off on time. Went to elementary and high school in the city but no sign of a college education.” He frowned. “This is… this is weird.”
“What’s so weird about any of that?” I demanded. “Lots of us aren’t brainiacs who jizz at the idea of sitting through years of boring lectures.”
Blaze rolled his eyes at me and waved his phone, his leg swinging in his usual fidgety way. “That’s the thing. There’s nothing remotely weird in here. It’s all very basic, very typical… I don’t know. It just feels too clean to me.”
“Are you suggesting she’s got an entire history of false documentation set up?” Julius asked with a tone of disbelief.
Blaze held up his hands in surrender. “I don’t know. Nothing about any of this looks faked either. Usually I can spot a clue or two. I guess if she’s been under a boyfriend’s thumb for most of her adult years, she just might not have been interacting with the outside world much.”
Was it really possible that we’d kidnapped an abused woman fleeing a monster, a victim who’d just happened to end up in the wrong place at the really wrong time?
Before that question could sink in, my phone buzzed. I pulled it out of my pocket and checked the ID. My back drew a little straighter. This might be a problem too, but it was a problem in my usual wheelhouse.
“It’s the client,” I said. “I’ll take this outside.”
Julius motioned me onward. He knew as well as I did that we didn't want to take any chance at all of Dess overhearing this conversation.
I went out the door and up the steps to the scruffy enclosed backyard. Julius and Talon had built an arching greenhouse-like roof over it which I appreciated year-round for the privacy it offered, though especially during the colder winter months. During the summer, we kept a couple of panels propped open and a fan going to circulate the air. The yard was still a bit sweltering.
As soon as I’d stepped outside, I cleared my throat, deciding on what persona I’d use for this call. I always dealt with the clients, and I never used the same voice or demeanor more than once. The less our clients knew about us, how many people we had working for us, and who those people might be, the safer we stayed. We couldn’t work in the shadows if they knew much more about us than our group name.