She still wasn’t talking to me.
I’d tried having my men trail her because that was our original agreement. But she wasn’t even having that. She ditched them. Shekeptditching them.
I checked my phone.
Her latest shift at the foster center was ending soon.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Blake
“Satya, it’s late. Is your ride here? Are you taking the train? I know you’re not a fan of riding the train so late. We can send someone with you.” The other staff member was frustrated. It wasn’t apparent in his voice, but any foster kid was trained to hear the slightest intonation. This staff member was tired and stressed. I got it. We all had our problems, and I couldn’t even really blame him for missing whatever was going on with Satya. She was fifteen and had started coming because she was friends with Cap from school. She was also quiet, so she got overlooked sometimes.
At first she only came when Cap and Malik were here.
Then, she began coming a few times when it was just Malik.
This last week she’d been coming alone. She showed up at different hours, but she stayed every day until we were closing. Tonight was the first night she wasn’t moving fast enough for my coworker. I got why he was slightly annoyed. We couldn’t do our last round of checks until everyone was gone. It was against policy.
The environment was theirs, and they were free not to feel rushed to leave for a reason. A lot of that was maintaining a safe place for them;that meant free of everything, even the miniscule action that might be interpreted as “they don’t want me here.”
I got it. Shepherd, my coworker, I don’t think he did.
He was a good guy, and his intentions were solid. He wanted to make a difference in social work, but I could tell that even though his family had been one of the good ones for fostering, he’d never been in the system himself. Some got it. Some didn’t. I envied the ones who didn’t.
And he wasn’t getting it tonight.
Satya wasn’t saying anything, but Satya never said anything. She was a good kid. Did everything asked of her. Followed all the rules, but her not leaving when we first said we were closing, that was enough to send off a red alarm.
I eyed her, not sure how to proceed at this moment. If I went by the book, I should be opening a dialogue between us. I was supposed to be asking if she felt safe to go home, etc. That would trip Shepherd’s own alarms, but Satya knew how to lie and cover if she wanted. She was too smart. If I opened that conversation with her, she’d lie, and she’d lie convincingly.
She would probably even stop coming to the shelter because she knew Shepherd would be watching her closer than normal. And, well, I didn’t have it in me to give a fuck about what the policies said to do.
I wanted to help her now, not in four months or four years, or when it would be too late.
With that decision made, I waited until she left and went over to Shepherd.
“Hey,” I said under my breath. “Could you cover me? I just checked my phone, and my roommate had to go back to the hospital.”
His eyes widened, and he stood up from where he’d been bending to pick up some of the puzzle pieces that’d fallen to the floor. “Oh, no. Yes. Of course. I got this. Go. Make sure he’s okay. He’s the one who was shot, right?”
I nodded.
He knew about Marshall.
He just didn’t know that Marshall was currently with his family.
It was a good lie. Satya wasn’t the only one who knew how to lie.
“Thanks so much, Shep. I’ll owe you.” I was already grabbing my coat and phone. My keys and everything else I needed were inside my coat.
The first week Creighton kept sending his men to trail me, and I’d meant what I told him. I wanted space. I needed space. That meant his little spies, too, so I’d taken to not bringing a bag with me. It was easier to ghost them if they decided to try and wait me out. That was last week. This week, someone was trailing me, but they stayed so far back that when I tried catching them, they eluded me. I never saw their face. There was no indication I was even being followed, but I knew my body. It was Creighton.
To his credit, when I started trying to catch him following me, he would leave me alone. It was always a mindfuck because sometimes I wondered if it actually was him following me or if I was just hoping it was him.
Either way, I didn’t have a bag with me to grab, and as soon as I got outside, I was able to see Satya taking a right turn when she should’ve been going left. I hotfooted it after her.
I knew after the first block, she had no intention of going to her foster home. After five blocks, I started to get an inkling where she might be going, and I didn’t like it. There were a couple vacant buildings in this area. Of course, they weren’t really vacant. Just no one officially lived there. She ducked into one, and I cursed under my breath.
