“We’ll discuss it on the way to pick up Boyan Fell. He was where you were headed next, no?”
Her face flashed with uncertainty, eyes sweeping the street, my car, me, and back toward the youth center.
“The car’s not going to eat you, Ms. Burch.”
She grumbled a bit and cursed my name, but gingerly chose to sit in the front passenger seat, each movement slow and pained.
“Good choice.” I walked to the driver’s seat and sat.
As the passenger door clamped shut and Ainsley adjusted her seat, Ricco’s disgruntled face took over the rearview mirror while he tried to get comfortable with the minimal legroom in the back seat. I put in directions to the community center, whereRicco said she picked up her foster brother every day during the summer break, and put the car in drive.
“Why didn’t you buy yourself some clothes with the money I gave you?”
“I did.” She crossed her arms. “You just ripped one.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
She growled a shriek. “I spent it on food, okay?”
“All of it?” She wasn’t skin and bones, but compared to her photo from a year ago in the file that Vinny gathered, she was gaunt and getting close.
“The first hundred. The other two were stolen.”
My tightening fists squeaked over the steering wheel leather. “Who?”
“What does it matter? It’s gone.”
“Your foster parents? They don’t feed you. They beat you, and then they steal from you?”
“I don’t know if it was them.”
“Who else but—ah, the older foster brother, Micah.”
I could feel those innocent little eyes on me. “How did you—? Don’t hurt him. He’s had a crappy hand, worse than I think I know about. Maybe he needed the money.”
“More than starving kids? You need to be more aware.” I flicked her cheek, snorting as she grimaced. From Ricco’s reports on the seventeen-year-old boy’s comings and goings, the crew he hung out with was robbing homes a few blocks from where Ms. Burch and he lived. It wouldn’t be long before they were caught and sentenced. “He’s headed for jailtime soon if he’s not careful.”
“Like you, then?”
Cheeky little pest. “You wish.”
“’Course I do. Helps me sleep at night.”
It was the first time I’d seen her smile. It made her look younger, freer, and in need of far more protection than a simplecheckup after a beating. A fierce guardian instinct flared inside me. The need to shield her. To save her. To protect whatever was left of her innocence. A feeling similar to what I had felt all these months searching for my sister.
“Why do you let them hurt you?”
“You think I haven’t tried to fight back? You think it’s that easy?”
I parked the car in the community center parking lot and faced her. Anger and sorrow were furrowed into the grooves of her forehead. Determination and fear quivered in her tense jaw, while hurt and the promise of hope haunted her deep brown eyes. So much raged within her that I understood and had seen before. Every child deserved the best chance humanity had to offer. That didn’t mean they got it.
“Why are you here? Why bring me”—she gazed around and reared back, only now realizing we had arrived at her foster brother’s youth center—“here?”
I didn’t have an answer to give, other than I felt invested in her story. How many people let life-altering events beat them down? But this girl fought back—foolishly, arrogantly, and in a way that would have gotten her killed with anyone else. It was brave. It was foolhardy. Most of all, it was admirable.
She dug her clenched fists into her lap, letting out a high-pitched growl. “You’re enraging, you know that? Seriously, who fudged up your brain so much for you to become this cruel, manipulative, heartless murderer?”
I sniggered. “We are what we are made to become.”
