Vanish

“Your first week, and already you’re sore?” The Mother snorts. “Get used to it.”

The other girls are all staring at the floor, or at their hands, avoiding my gaze. Only Olena looks at me, and in her eyes I see pity.

Meekly I follow the Mother out of the room. I already know that to resist is to be punished, and I still have the bruises from the last time I protested. The Mother points to the room at the end of the hall.

“There’s a dress on the bed. Put it on.”

I walk into the room and she shuts the door behind me. The window looks out over the driveway, where a blue car is parked. Bars cover the windows here as well. I look at the large brass bed, and what I see is not a piece of furniture, but the device of my torture. I pick up the dress. It is white, like a doll’s frock, with ruffles around the hem. At once I understand what this signifies, and my nausea tightens to a knot of fear. When they ask you to play a child, Olena warned me, it means they want you to be scared. They want you to scream. They enjoy it if you bleed.

I do not want to put on the dress, but I’m afraid not to. By the time I hear footsteps approaching the room, I am wearing the dress, and steeling myself for what comes next. The door opens, and two men step in. They look me over for a moment, and I’m hoping that they are disappointed, that they think I am too thin or too plain, and they’ll turn around and walk out. But then they shut the door and come toward me, like stalking wolves.

You must learn to float away. That’s what Olena taught me, to float above the pain. This I try to do as the men rip off the doll’s dress, as their rough hands close around my wrists, as they force me to yield. My pain is what they have paid for, and they are not satisfied until I am screaming, until sweat and tears streak my face. Oh Anja, how lucky you are to be dead!

When it is over, and I hobble back to the locked room, Olena sits down beside me on my cot, and strokes my hair. “Now you need to eat,” she says.

I shake my head. “I only want to die.”

“If you die, then they win. We can’t let them win.”

“They’ve already won.” I turn on my side and hug my knees to my chest, curling into a tight ball that nothing can penetrate. “They’ve already won…”

“Mila, look at me. Do you think I’ve given up? Do you think I’m already dead?”

I wipe tears from my face. “I’m not as strong as you are.”

“It’s not strength, Mila. It’s hate. That’s what keeps you alive.” She bends close, and her long hair is a waterfall of black silk. What I see in her eyes scares me. A fire burns there; she is not quite sane. This is how Olena survives, on drugs and madness.

The door opens again, and we all shrink as the Mother glances around the room. She points to one of the girls. “You, Katya. This one’s yours.”

Katya just stares back, unmoving.

With two paces, the Mother crosses toward her and slaps her across the ear. “Go,” she orders, and Katya stumbles out of the room. The Mother locks the door.

“Remember, Mila,” Olena whispers. “Remember what keeps you alive.”

I look into her eyes and see it. Hate.

TEN

“We can’t let this information get out,” said Gabriel. “It could kill her.”

Homicide detective Barry Frost reacted with a stu

“No one told us she was in there,” murmured Frost. “We had no idea.”

“We can’t let the media find out.”

Frost huffed out a shocked breath. “That would be a disaster.”

“Tell me who Jane Doe is. Tell me everything you know.”

“Believe me, we’ll pull out all the stops on this. You have to trust us.”

“I can’t sit on the sidelines. I need to know everything.”

“You can’t be objective. She’s your wife.”

“Exactly. She’s my wife.” A note of panic had slipped into Gabriel’s voice. He paused to rein in his agitation and said quietly: “What would you do? If it was Alice trapped in there?”

Frost regarded him for a moment. At last he nodded. “Come inside. We’re talking to the commodore. He pulled her out of the water.”

They stepped from glaring sunshine into the cool gloom of the yacht club. Inside, it smelled like every seaside bar that Gabriel had ever walked into, the scent of ocean air mingled with citrus and booze. It was a rickety building, perched on a wooden pier overlooking Hingham Bay. Two portable air-conditioning units rattled in the windows, muffling the clink of glasses and the low hum of conversation. The floors creaked as they headed toward the lounge.

Gabriel recognized the two Boston PD detectives standing at the bar, talking with a bald man. Both Darren Crowe and Thomas Moore were Jane’s colleagues from the homicide unit; both of them greeted Gabriel with looks of surprise.

“Hey,” Crowe said. “I didn’t know the FBI was coming in on this.”

“FBI?” said the bald man. “Wow, this must be getting pretty serious.” He stuck out his hand to Gabriel. “Skip Boynton. I’m the commodore, Sunrise Yacht Club.”

“Agent Gabriel Dean,” said Gabriel, shaking the man’s hand. Trying, as best he could, to play it official. But he could feel Thomas Moore’s puzzled gaze. Moore could see that something was not right here.

“Yeah, I was just telling these detectives how we found her. Quite a shock, lemme tell you, seeing a body in the water.” He paused. “Say, you want a drink, Agent Dean? It’s on the club.”

“No, thank you.”

“Oh, right. On duty, huh?” Skip gave a sympathetic laugh. “You guys really play it by the book, don’t you? No one’ll take a drink. Well, hell, I will.” He slipped behind the bar and dropped ice cubes in a glass. Splashed vodka on top. Gabriel heard ice clinking in other glasses, and he gazed around the room at the dozen club members sitting in the lounge, almost all of them men. Did any of them actually sail boats? Gabriel wondered. Or did they just come here to drink?

Skip slipped out from behind the counter, his vodka in hand. “It’s not the kind of thing that happens every day,” he said. “I’m still kind of rattled about it.”

“You were telling us how you spotted the body,” said Moore.

“Oh. Yeah. About eight A.M. I came in early to change out my spi

“Must have looked dead to Fire and Rescue, too,” said Crowe.

Skip laughed. “And they’re supposed to be the professionals. If they can’t tell, who can?”

“Show us,” said Gabriel. “Where you found her.”

They all walked out the lounge door, onto the pier. The water magnified the sun’s glare, and Gabriel had to squint against the brilliant reflection to see the rocks that Skip now pointed out.