Nena nodded again.
“They found Georgia’s cell phone in someone’s backyard, and she told them she ran from the assailant, was picked up by your neighbor who brought her here.” Elin slipped her hands into her pockets, yawning.
“Did she tell you what happened to her?”
“Said she ran and Oliver chased her through the neighborhood. She thought she lost him by hiding in a doghouse.”
“But he found her.”
Elin’s eyes were red rimmed. “He found her and brought her to Paul.”
Nena inclined her head toward Cort’s closed door. “How much does he know?”
“Everything. I know you said to explain things to him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. So the kid did.”
Nena waited a beat, unsure if she wanted the answer to the question she was afraid of asking.
Elin gave her a sympathetic look. “He’s just angry right now. And in shock.”
Nena mustered up a wry expression. It seemed her brother was not the only family she’d lost that night.
Her sister yawned again, and Nena suggested she head home and call their parents to let them know everything was fine. Nena was exhausted, too; the adrenaline was long gone. The pain from her injuries came at her like a truck. If they’d let her, she could lie on the hospital floor for a week. However, there was one more thing she had to do.
Nena limped to Cort’s room, gingerly holding her stab wound. She waved away offers of assistance from the hospital staff who saw her. She would be fine, and she didn’t want to answer questions. She stood in the doorway, waiting until Cort and Georgia noticed her, ignoring the officer assigned to protect them as he tried to tell her she couldn’t be there.
“She’s okay, Bill,” Cort said, locking eyes with her. “Thanks.”
She waited for Cort’s next move, but he only stared at her, a storm gathering behind his eyes.
Georgia pointed the TV remote she’d been holding to turn the volume down, her eyes anxiously ping-ponging between Nena and her father.
81
AFTER
Nena broke their three-way stare, hoping she could make it through the moment she’d have to pay the piper with Cort.
“You are unharmed?” she asked.
Georgia nodded vigorously while her father countered with, “What happened to the man who took Peach?”
“Dead.”
They looked at her. Georgia already knew, having passed Ofori on her way out of the house; Cort looked as if he were about to be sick.
“This is like a fucking movie,” he fumed, grimacing as he tried to adjust himself in the bed.
Nena said, “You two are no longer in danger.”
“How big of you,” he snapped, his face screwing into unrestrained anger. “Aren’t you like an assassin or something? It’s what Peach says. Hell, come to think of it, it’s what you’ve been saying the entire time I’ve known you. And here I thought you were joking.” His voice was gaining strength. “That’s your job, for real? To go around killing people?”
“Not good people, Dad,” Georgia quipped.
That wasn’t true, Nena thought. They weren’t always bad people. But she wasn’t about to correct the girl now.
“Peach, be quiet.”
“Something like that. Yes,” Nena said carefully.
Cort narrowed his eyes. “And it’s true you killed two guys the night you brought Peach home?”
“I told you, Dad, they were gang members who were trying to kill me. Nena saved my life.”
Cort’s nostrils flared. He turned slowly to his daughter. “Georgia.”
Nena had never heard Cort speak to his daughter so sharply and full of barely restrained anger. Misdirected anger. It was her Cort was really angry with. Her who’d betrayed him. Georgia must have known not to push him, because she quickly snapped her mouth shut.
Nena said, “It’s true.”
Cort deflated, looking so hurt Nena’s heart broke with him.
“I thought we connected,” he said. “I thought you were opening up to me that night at the beach.”
She stepped forward. She wanted to go to him so badly. She wanted to touch him. “We have. I did.”
“I thought you trusted me.”
Nena hesitated. “Trust is not why I didn’t disclose that part of my life, Cort.”
“Then what was it? Because my fourteen-year-old child knows more about you than I do. She may know the most important thing about you that I should have known.”
“She only knows by chance. Only because she was there, not because I chose to tell her.”