The Girl and the Unlucky 13 (Emma Griffin™ FBI Mystery) Read online

  THE GIRL AND THE UNLUCKY 13

  A.J. RIVERS

  Copyright © 2021 by A.J. RIVERS

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Author’s Note

  Staying In Touch With A.J.

  Also by A.J. RIVERS

  Prologue

  Remember who you are.

  Remember where you come from.

  Always remember.

  Nothing will ever matter more.

  She kept the words running through her head as she made her way across the coarse, dry grass. The sun dropped toward the pale blue horizon as if it was sagging under the heat of the day. It stung the back of her neck; made sweat drip down in beads that rode the ridges of her spine pressed up against skin pulled taut over her bones.

  She couldn’t let it slow her down. She was exposed. The field stretched around her at every angle. Her tunnel vision made it feel as if it went on forever. There was nothing else but the grass, made crunchy and painful against her feet by that brutal sun.

  Remember who you are.

  Remember where you came from.

  Always remember.

  Nothing will ever matter more.

  The words kept running through her mind and occasionally tumbling down into her mouth. The further she made it away from the building behind her, the faster the words fell through her throat to become sounds dropping from her lips.

  The sun was trying to do to her what it had already done to the building. Once-pristine bright white paint shriveled in the unrelenting glare until it curled in on itself and flaked away, exposing the wood beneath. Shutters that had been deep, rich black now looked rubbed with charcoal, barely clinging in place on their hinges.

  It wanted to dry her up and break her down. It was in good company.

  Remember who you are.

  Remember where you came from.

  Always remember.

  Nothing will ever matter more.

  That was true. Nothing had ever been as important as grasping hard to those thoughts and keeping them tight against the hollow of her chest. She scraped the corners of her mind and brought out everything she could.

  Red.

  Leona.

  Fireworks over the picnic grounds.

  A black cat and a pink sweater.

  Sandcastles connected with a path of shells and surrounded by a deep moat.

  Lemonade.

  Pumpkin pie.

  Those words would protect her. The field wouldn’t swallow her up if she kept saying them. She would never have to see it again. Not if she didn’t want to. Not without her say. Never again would people take her mind from her; make her mind their own. Never again would she let anyone tell her who she was. Where she came from.

  That was for her to say now.

  She wasn’t theirs. She was her own.

  If she could get through the field. If she could get out of the sun.

  They were behind her somewhere. She wouldn’t look over her shoulder to see if they were coming. She wanted to listen for the sound of their feet on the dry grass, but she stopped herself. If they were coming for her, let them come.

  She wouldn’t cower. Not this time.

  This time, she knew who she was. She knew where she was going.

  She only needed to get there.

  Time passed, but she didn’t know how much. The sun was traveling down the second half of the sky. The white-hot pressure of the temperature had broken, breathing softer on her skin as she made her way beyond the fields and onto a road. She’d seen the road before. She didn’t know what it was called or which direction she was going, but it would bring her somewhere. From there, she would find her way.

  Night came, bringing with it the same fear it always did. Only this time there was nothing to fulfill it. It was shadow fear, the kind cast by something horrible but that could only darken her eyes and make her skin tingle. It couldn’t touch her. Nothing could. Not anymore.

  She fought the fear with more of the tumbling words.

  Remember who you are.

  Remember where you came from.

  Red checked curtains pulled back with a wide red ribbon.

  The favorite blanket. Beautiful shades of cream and taupe folded over the arm of a chair. A book hidden in the folds.

  Banana splits with extra pineapple.

  Paul Charles Middle School. Soccer Field. Noon.

  She walked through the night until she couldn’t move her feet anymore. Until she could do nothing but sink down onto the ground and feel grateful that some of the day’s heat still warmed the moss and soil beneath the trees. She’d ducked away from the road when piercing headlights caught her eyes, but none stopped.

  The morning had to catch up with her. She was already moving again before the sun lightened the path in front of her. She walked by the force of sheer will rather than memory. She didn’t think she had come this way before. Maybe she had.

  A car slowed beside her. She wouldn’t let herself be afraid to look through the window. That fear belonged to them. It wasn’t hers.

  The face that stared back at her didn’t register. She hoped she’d never seen it. She climbed into the seat beside the driver and closed the door, blocking out the world behind her.

  Paul Charles Middle School. Soccer Field. Noon.

  She closed her eyes to feel the wheels move beneath her. It felt as if they were creating the road. As if nothing was there until she was.

  They could only take her so far, but it was far enough. Any distance was far enough.

  She was drawn across softer grass, toward the tall chain-link fence in front of her. A sea of red lay just beyond. One hand wrapped around the metal, gripping until the uneven edge cut into her skin, she leaned forward to rest her head against it.

  She released years of held breath.

  One

  Four weeks earli
er…

  Leaning back in my office chair, I intertwine my fingers behind my head and close my eyes. It’s been a long couple of weeks and I’m lost in thoughts about a case that won’t leave me while I prepare for undercover work in the days ahead.

  “Am I interrupting?” Sam’s voice comes from the doorway.

  I straighten up and look over to where he’s leaning in the door, a smile on his lips as he watches me.

  “Of course not,” I grin.

  He walks into the office and gives me a kiss before setting a folder in front of me and tapping it with his fingertips.

  “What’s this?” I ask, turning the folder toward me and opening it so I can look at the documents inside.

  “We identified her,” he says just as I’m looking at the first picture.

  It’s an image that I’ve seen many times before by now. One that is etched in my mind. The body of a girl curled in the corner of a cavern, wearing one shoe. The other shoe had already been found long before.

  “The girl in the cavern?” I ask. “With the shoe?”

  Sam nods, leaning back against the edge of my desk.

  “Her name is Delaney Mendoza. She was twelve years old. She wasn’t from the area. She had been abducted two states over and brought to Sherando Ridge,” he tells me.

  I can hear the emotion in his voice. It’s hard to describe what it feels like to come to this moment. Finding a body is a moment that changes you. I’ve encountered dozens of bodies in my years of service to the FBI. There’s a point when you’re able to turn off the humanity of it for long enough to get through without the trauma.

  Rather than seeing the blood, the gore, the tragedy of that life being ripped away, I see a puzzle. I’m able to remove myself from that harsh truth enough that I can push forward through the details and find out what happened.

  It’s harder when there’s no name. When I know who the person is, or at least have some way to identify the victim, it’s a stepping stone. That information is valuable to understand what happened. It gives me the focus to work through the case. That’s when the humanity returns. Once I’ve processed the scene and started working through the puzzle of understanding what happened, knowing who the person was drives me.

  When I don’t know, there’s a hollow feeling. It’s still a person, a human being taken from life, but without that name, that connection to the life he or she lived. It’s deeply sad and infuriating at the same time. The entire concept of murder is so arrogant. So unbelievably entitled. To believe yourself so important you have the right to determine another person’s life and death, just on a whim, is something I can’t understand. It completely disgusts me.

  I’ve been put in positions when I’ve had to take the life of another human being. But it’s never done lightly. It wasn’t because I just wanted them to die, or thought it would be a fun, thrilling way to pass the day. It was a necessity. I never once endowed myself with the right to destroy that life, or thought to myself that it was perfectly fine that I did. Just because those deaths were justifiable and essential to my own survival, the weight of those moments never escapes me.

  Finding a body and not having an identity to attach to it is painful, sad, angering, and frustrating. But then there’s a strange reversal when the body is finally identified. There’s happiness and relief, but there’s also a renewed sense of sadness and finality. You finally have a name and a face. A life to attach to that body. And the sense of grief, that this victim has gone without those things and without true mourners, can come down hard.

  There’s a picture of Delaney in the folder and I look down at a pretty girl with big eyes and a smile on her face that said she believed the world was at her feet. She was only twelve years old. A little girl with so much life ahead of her. Then someone snatched it away. The very worst type of entitlement. The kind that says a child is his to hunt, and if he can catch her, his to keep and use as he pleases.

  Even I have a hard time pushing away my rage at those monsters.

  “What’s going to happen to her?” I ask.

  “Her family will need to be contacted,” he says. “Then we’ll decide from there.”

  “I’ll do it,” I say. “They should hear it from me, because I’m the one who found her.”

  “That would be great,” he says. “I think it’ll be comforting hearing it from you.”

  It’s not an aspect of my job I enjoy, but one I take seriously. The responsibility of taking away the hope of a parent and replacing it with gut-wrenching despair and fury is a heavy one. These calls and visits never get easier. They are always painful and uncomfortable. But they aren’t about me. I’d rather they get the news from someone who cares, someone who has been a part of the case from the beginning than a generic officer who has no insight and no connection.

  It might not make that much of a difference. And I’ve had cases when the families were angry at me when I came to tell them. They felt I’d betrayed them in some way. But if there’s a single person I can make feel a little better in this horrible time, that’s what I want to do.

  Looking at the girl brings my mind back to the woods, and a phone call the police got when the news first emerged of the bodies rising up out of the lake.

  “Wait. If the body was Delaney Mendoza, what about Ashley Stevenson?” I ask. “Her family said she went missing five years ago and was in that area. They found a few of her belongings chained in the bottom of the lake.”

  “All the remains have been accounted for,” Sam says. “They’ve all been tested. Besides, her age doesn’t line up. She would have been thirteen five years ago. Much too young.”

  “So, she’s not on the campgrounds?” I ask.

  “No,” Sam clarifies. “Still missing.”

  Three days later …

  I uncross my legs and shift in the hard wooden chair. For a restaurant wanting customers to enjoy their meals, it is decidedly uncomfortable. But that doesn’t really matter right now. I’m not here to be comfortable. I’m also not here for the mediocre bowl of soggy pasta swimming in weak tomato sauce sitting in front of me.

  Shifting to the other side, I uncross my legs again and cross them the other way. I check my watch, noting the time, then pick up my phone and swipe through a couple of screens. I’m not looking at it. My focus is out of the corner of my left eye, to the shadowy back corner of the dining room. I’m waiting for the slice of light to come from the opening of the door there.

  I shift again and set down my phone. Every movement is carefully measured. I take a sip of water and swirl my fork around in my bowl, hazarding a bite so the waiter doesn’t come by again to check on me. He’s been hovering not too far away, trying to make himself look busy by rolling flatware in dark purple linen napkins.

  By the look of the number of tables in the restaurant, he just pre-rolled about three weeks’ worth of flatware. Maybe I’m missing something.

  What I’m not missing is the figures scurrying back and forth across the back of the room, moving in and out of the kitchen so fast I can’t even see their faces. That’s why I’m here.

  I shift again. I pick up my phone and scroll through. Not because I’m really looking at anything. In all honesty, I’m flipping through the weather and caught up with some nonsense complaints on a write-in advice column. The point isn’t entertainment. Two other agents are watching me. Every movement I make means something to them.

  This case has been hanging over me for the last two months. I started as a consultant, just helping with research and giving insight from experiences I’ve had with other cases. But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, and the further it progressed without resolution, the more I needed to step up.

  It’s not the rest of the team’s fault. They weren’t doing anything wrong, exactly. It was Creagan’s mistake to develop a team without anyone who had handled a captivity and forced-labor case. They aren’t easy. They’re gut-wrenching and infuriating, not the least reason for which being how hard they can be to pr
ove in court.

  This restaurant is a classic example of that. People want to think they’d be able to recognize it when other people are being held against their will and forced to do the bidding of someone else. In the simplest terms, slaves. The assumption is at least that the people being held involuntarily would do absolutely everything in their power to get out.

  That’s the thing people don’t understand. In these situations, the captives’ power is taken from them. What little they have left is only enough to keep their hearts beating and their lungs pumping air in and out. From the outside, there seem to be so many ways out. An open door. Dozens of people around them. Lights that go out at night. Phones.

  But those things don’t exist to the ones held captive.

  To them, doors could lead to terror, because at least they can see what’s around them where they are. It’s familiar. For all they know, a door could lead somewhere worse. They see people they can’t trust, because they once trusted a new face and it betrayed them.

  It isn’t that easy. And is the mistaken belief that it’s that easy is why people are left to suffer.

  Not on my watch.

  The information the team was able to collect was instrumental in uncovering how the owners of this restaurant weaseled their way into the lives of three people in dark, challenging times in their lives, then manipulated them into servitude. This isn’t the first time they’ve done it, and we have strong reason to believe there are others in various locations.