She unlocks the front door, and Malia sweeps into the store, with her silver-streaked dark hair in a long, thick braid down her back, wire-rimmed glasses, and an enormous woven tote bagwith wooden knitting needles poking out of it. She’s carrying a ceramic plate covered in foil.
“Girls,” she announces, delighted, “I baked some cookies. Adelaide, sweetheart, you came back! My goodness, you look thin. Have you been eating?—”
I laugh and take the plate. “I’m maybe just a bit stressed, but okay.” She pulls the foil back to reveal sliced fruit in my hands. “These look divine.”
“My mother’s recipe, you must have two. Where’s Priya? I have news.”
“Oh, she’s going to be a bit late,” Clio answers, then grabs a cookie. “What’s the news?”
Malia sets her tote down on the snack table with a decisive thump and rummages inside. “I spent four hours at the library yesterday going through microfiche. You will not believe what I found.” She produces a printout and holds it up in front of her like a magician revealing a card.
“A photograph of our Rebecca with who I think are her kidnappers.”
Everyone stops.
Rebecca Hana is the case the group has been working on. I know the basic outline of the young woman who disappeared from a parking area. Aura, Malia, Clio, and Priya have been slowly, stubbornly, amateurishly trying to see if the police missed anything, because this is what they do with their Tuesday nights.
Clio takes the printout with both hands and stands under the nearest lamp to study it. I move behind her shoulder to see.
The photo is black and white, pretty clear for a newspaper scan. A crosswalk at night. Four figures crossing it at an angle, caught mid-step by a photographer who was probably shooting something else entirely and happened to capture them in the frame.
The figure in the front is a young woman. Curvy, shoulder-length dark hair, a light jacket. Her head is turned slightly, as if startled by something to her left.
Around her, three men.
They aren’t touching her or restraining her, yet the geometry of their positioning is exact. One to her left, one to her right, one behind her. The posture of all three is identical. Relaxed, alert, centered, the specific stance of people who are ready without looking ready.
The streetlight above the crosswalk has caught the side of one of their faces, and the material of it is throwing off a small, specific glint.
Not skin. They’re wearing black masks that sheen in a particular way.
Something cold pools in the base of my spine and spreads out.
I step around Clio’s shoulder and take the paper from her hands and move it directly under the lamp.
Three men. All three in masks. Contoured, close to the face, featureless, just the thin slit for a mouth, two dark holes for eyes, and two pinpricks for the nose. The streetlight hits the one in the middle at exactly the angle that makes the fabric go greenish, like a dragonfly-wing, the same trick of the light I saw this afternoon from a different angle in a basement I was not supposed to be in.
The blood in my arms goes thin. What are the chances it’s the same kind of mask?
My attention moves to their bodies, their hair covered by the hoods they wear.
The tallest one is behind her. Broad through the shoulders. Long lines. He’s standing slightly apart from the other two, not obviously, but enough, the way you can tell when a personprefers to stand apart even when they’re functioning as part of a unit. North stands like that. All the time.
The one on her left is bulkier. Thicker through the chest and the arms even under a dark, long-sleeved sweatshirt, his hands loose at his sides, reminding me way too much of Luca’s form.
The one on her right is leaner and seems to be walking with half a step of extra looseness in his hips. Just like Ace.
The paper is rattling in my hands. No, this can’t be true. It makes no sense. Why would they be in this photo with the missing woman? Yet my stomach hurts so much right now.
“Adelaide?” Clio’s voice closes in.
I can’t form words. Instead, I grab her arm and pull her two steps away from Malia, who is still rummaging in her bag for something, oblivious, and I bring my mouth to Clio’s ear. “Clio. Clio, listen.”
“I am.”
“These are the same masks, exact finish with the way the light catches them. I’m telling you, I swear on my life, these are what I touched this afternoon in the guys’ basement.”
“Are you sure?”
