Love Inc: Taming Cross Part 2

His face is stern. "Keep this to yourself, Cross. And don't ask me for anything else-ever."

"Whatever," I mutter as I walk out.

I make it down the front porch steps and to my bike before the pain is bad enough to bring me to my knees. Sometime later-minutes? hours?-I feel a gentle hand on my back and look up, praying for Renault. Instead it's a Southeast Asian man with kind eyes wearing a butler's suit.

"Can I help you, Sir?"

I take the hand he offers and use all my willpower to get back to my feet. I grab onto my bike's seat. "Where's Renault?"

"Renault DeFritsch?" The man's eyes widen. "He died four months ago."

That's the last thing I remember clearly before waking up on my bed a day and a half later. I lie here for a moment, breathing deeply, wondering if there's anyone on this G.o.dforsaken planet more miserable than I am.

One name comes to mind: Meredith Kinsey.

CHAPTER FOUR.

The Sisters don't think the bombing was for me, but I know it was.

I know Jesus Cientos, and I know his tactics. The man is a pyromaniac. He has a love affair with hand grenades. He has half a warehouse filled with nothing but grenades, manufactured for the U.S. Military, smuggled into Mexico by Jesus's soldiers. I've seen the explosions before, a few times. I've watched them from behind the bullet-proof windows of Jesus's silver Escalade. I've watched them rip apart half a house, even seen the ma.s.sive fireball from an exploding gas station.

Juan and Emanuel are the surprise. That Jesus would his nephews out so young. That they would agree to target me. I should know better, but my heart makes it hard to accept.

The explosion on the west side of St. Catherine's killed a woman. Her name was Henrietta, and she was walking on the gravel path beside the clinic, toward the market on Flag Street to buy food for her twelve-year-old son.

I think about her, about Juan and Emanuel and Jesus, as I lie on my cot at night, in the wide, hot, high-beamed attic where I sleep beside Sister Mary Abalitta. The sounds of Sister Susan snoring, of Sister Daniella turning the pages of a paperback under the covers, of the box fans spinning in the two pushed-open windows...they ought to be familiar, soothing, but after what happened yesterday, nothing can soothe me. I clutch my rosary and pray to Mother Mary for strength. I should talk to Sister Mary Carolina again; she didn't believe me the first time. She is too good to give me up, and I'm too afraid to leave the clinic.

I wonder, as the sun comes up, what Jesus will do to me if he gets his hands on me. It wouldn't be s.e.x-that much I know for sure-but it could easily be something worse. I hurt his pride and his reputation when I ran, and I guess it's still hurting, even after almost nine months. That's the only reason he would strike now. Here. At the one place in the state of Durango that all of the cartels have promised to protect.

I curl over on my side and listen to the thunder rumbling in the distance.

CHAPTER FIVE.

I haven't seen Suri since three nights ago, but Lizzy's been here twice. The first time, I guess I was in my pain trance, the one I learned from Akemi, a Zen master in downtown Los Angeles, during my fight with Dilaudid. The second time was a few minutes ago. She left a note on the door and texted me the same thing: Cross, quit hiding from me. I want to talk.

I feel like an a.s.shole for not calling, but I know I won't-not yet. I don't want to talk about what happened the other night with Suri. I don't want to talk about what happened with my parents, or about Renault. Don't want to talk about Cross Hybrids or Hunter West or the wedding.

I have enough conscience to feel guilty for neglecting both my longtime friends. Suri deserves an in-person apology, and Lizzy deserves some face time. I just don't know what to say to them. Suri, for all the reasons anyone would guess, and Lizzy because...f.u.c.k, I don't know. She's living in some wedding fairy land, while I'm in bike shop purgatory. It's not that I'm not glad for her. I am. I'm glad she's getting the happy ending she deserves. I just don't feel like I have a lot to offer anyone right now, and besides that, it's too much effort.

I wait around the house another twenty-four hours to see if I get another pain attack. Another neuralgia episode, as they're really called. When nothing new happens and I don't feel quite as tired, I get back on the Mach and ride over to the local library. I'm glad that I'm at least having an easier time of it today.

I used to have wireless internet at the shop, but I didn't pay the bills while I was in rehab and since coming home, I haven't felt like getting it turned on. What's the point? I pretty much know I have a pile-up of work orders, people wanting custom jobs, and I also know I'm not open for business at the moment.

I feel a little tug of guilt as I get off the bike and stride up the stairs of the two-story brick building. It's true, I miss working on bikes-and the money-but I can't do it one-handed. Not without some help. And help would lead to pity.

I pay one dollar for a temporary library card and sit down at one of the black plastic computer desks on the back row. I pull my little photo out and put it on the table. I haven't looked at it but once or twice, just for a second or two as I loaded and unloaded it from my pockets, but here under the fluorescent lights, something about her face strikes me, like a chime inside my chest. Missy King. Meredith Kinsey. The mistress. The wh.o.r.e.

Her smile looks genuine. It makes her green eyes tilt up at the edges. Her pinkish mouth looks innocently happy, slightly playful, and very familiar, as if she knows the photographer well; as if they're friends. I scowl down at the image. This girl looks young. Eighteen at most. I wonder, not for the first time, if my father made up the name he gave me. This girl, with her prim white b.u.t.ton-up blouse and straight white teeth, is probably the daughter of a California senator.

Pecking at the keys with the fingers of my right hand, I search the name. Within milliseconds, links appear. The first one grabs my attention: Meredith Kinsey Managing Editor, The Red & Black.

I squint. Clearly, that one's not my girl. Missy King was a high-priced prost.i.tute, not a journalism student.

I click on the second link and find 'Meredith Kinsey' on a list of University of Georgia, Grady College scholarship recipients. She's there not once, but three times: William Dale Tichenor Scholarship for Excellence in Journalistic Writing, Sean Love Scholarship for Dependability and Service, Gloria Stamps Scholarship for Excellence in Academics.

I snort a little, drawing a glance from the punk a.s.s kid beside me. Yeah, this can't be her.

Back on the main page, I try a few other links, wondering why the h.e.l.l I didn't ask my father where the girl was from. Couldn't have been Georgia. I find another Meredith Kinsey: award-winning quilter from Salt Lake City. Her web site features a picture of a gray-haired woman with a bowl cut.

The next link takes me to Meredith Kinsey, singer/songwriter. I get excited about this, but then I notice she's in Ireland-and just updated her blog with new lyrics today.

I sift through Meredith Kinsey, freelance writer for an Atlanta home brewery magazine (probably the college kid after college); Meredith Kinsey, high school gymnastics star in Boise, Idaho (photo shows a girl who can't be older than ten); Meredith Kinsey, harpist in Knoxville, Tennessee (tall with a bird-like nose, which my father would hate); Meredith Kinsey, dead at age 86 in Kansas City, Kansas, and another dozen or so Meredith Kinsey's before I get to almost an entire page of links that direct me to The Red & Black: award-winning college newspaper at the University of Georgia, operating independently without the use of student funds since 1980.

Woop de freaking hoo.

I sigh and click on one of the links, because it's dated two years before my Meredith Kinsey disappeared, and it looks to be a rant about the horror of beauty pageants. I skim the piece, finding that this particular Meredith Kinsey objects to pageants on the grounds that they objectify women; she compares the women in their swim suits to cattle at an auction. Another snort, followed by a rub of my eyes. Definitely not my Meredith.

Except...there's a small square picture in the middle of two columns of text, and the face is identical to the one in my picture.

Meredith Kinsey, college feminist.

Holy s.h.i.t.

I spend the next hour looking for more information, trying to figure out how a college student with strawberry-blonde hair, twinkling green eyes, and a wide smile turned into Missy King, governor's mistress and small time extortionist-turned-s.e.x slave.

I click on every link I find, reading through a couple of her news stories and one more opinion piece ("Holiday Celebrations Can Be Inclusive And Traditional") before the timer on my screen flashes, and I'm forced to give my computer to a woman who's wearing a skirt suit and typing on her Blackberry. I pay three dollars for a permanent card, which will buy me unlimited time tomorrow, and head out into a drizzling rain.

The photo my father gave me is tucked into a little pocket on the inside of my beat-up jeans, but I can see her face as I roll down the streets of downtown Napa. The bike's tires make a shhh sound, tossing up a spray of rainwater that makes my ankles cold and chills my feet through my boots.

I don't get it. Is this some ruse my father cooked up? Why would a girl with a college degree-and no student loans-turn to a life of prost.i.tution?

I know what they say. People like Lizzy. "The girls choose to be escorts. It's their choice, Cross. Smarter than giving yourself away for free, huh?" Marchant fed me even more cliche lines: They're stakeholders, some of them have stock portfolios, working on college degrees through the University of Phoenix, la da da.

I bet most of them don't have college degrees. I bet they didn't get into the whoring business just for giggles.

As I fumble for the garage b.u.t.ton with my elbow, pressing into the pants pocket where I keep my keys, I feel the familiar sting of guilt. Whoever she is, Missy King deserved better than what she got. And as far as bulls.h.i.t goes, I'd have it coming out my ears if I didn't admit that it's my fault n.o.body went after her. I could have told somebody. I should have.

Instead, I tried to forget about her. I told myself it wasn't my business. That she was already out of reach.

It might have stuck, if I hadn't been taken to Mexico myself and watched as my best friend was on the auction block. Ever since that day, it's been under my skin like a bad rash. Missy King was just as helpless as we were.

And for all my lofty thoughts about desperation and how escorts have no other options, I want to believe that Missy King is not Meredith Kinsey. I want to believe that Missy was a s.l.u.tty girl who wanted to drive a shiny red Porsche and wear expensive jewelry. A girl who, just like me, was giving it away to anyone who asked and figured, why not charge?

If I let myself believe that this girl-the one inside my pocket, with the happy eyes-is somewhere down in Mexico, I'll go f.u.c.king crazy.

The next morning, I wake up early, take my time shaving, and ride back to the library. I take the third-to-last seat in the computer lab, and by the time I'm ears-deep in a story Meredith Kinsey wrote about date rape, a pair of teenage lovebirds come in and take the seats on either side of me. As I lean in to the computer, they lean around me, laughing about something they saw on Facebook. For some reason, their whispers p.i.s.s me off. I glance at the dude, giving him more of an evil eye than I intended. He looks like a kid: seventeen, eighteen? If Meredith started college at eighteen and that was almost eight years ago, that means she's twenty-five or twenty-six now. That means the year that she was twenty-three-my age, Suri's age, Lizzy's age-she was on her way to becoming a s.e.x slave.

My desire to know what happened to her amps up a notch, so much so that my hands feel sweaty and my temples throb. How did she get to Vegas? After another hour of searching, plus some credit card fees paid to various databases, I find a missing person's report filed a little over four years ago-or rather, I find her on a list of missing people. I can't get any information about her specific report unless I travel to Georgia, and that would waste too much time. A few minutes later, I'm surprised when I come across a news brief in the Atlanta Journal-Const.i.tution. It mentions that police are looking for twenty-two year old Meredith Kinsey of Albany, Georgia, for questioning in relation to the arrest of Sean Tacoma. This makes me feel almost sick with curiosity.

As I print off a few more of her stories, it dawns on me that maybe it's not just curiosity that makes this feel so urgent. So...personal. From the looks of things, Meredith Kinsey had a pretty violent fall from grace. I had a fall, too, didn't I? Went from the only child of California's governor-charming and wealthy, with a world as wide as Hargrove Day School and the privileged, sheltered social circles of Napa-to disabled, disinherited f.u.c.kup who can't even work.

It makes me feel weird about myself. Like I don't even know who I am. And for some reason, that makes me want to understand who Meredith Kinsey is. I want to know what happened to her. Maybe I just want to see someone else's route to ruin.

I shove her stories into my back pocket and speed back to the shop. On the way there, I picture myself in a police station, ratting out my father. I grit my teeth. I'd probably get prosecuted for sitting on what I knew this last year, but I could do it. I still have some of the e-mails I found on my father's computer, between Priscilla and Jim Gunn, and between Priscilla and my father. Not all of them, but enough that even if he avoided prosecution, he'd be ruined.

The question is: Should I? If I were to tell the cops, would anyone actually go rescue 'Missy King'? As far as I know, there's no organization actively sending people out to look for s.e.x slaves. Some of the authorities investigate, yeah, but that seems to be it. n.o.body's going to jump onto their bike and just go searching through Mexico. Not for a former escort. Not for a married man's mistress. The legal system is f.u.c.ked up, and people like 'Missy King' usually don't get justice. People like Meredith Kinsey: pretty, educated, scholarship-getting girls whose families file missing persons' reports... Now that's another story. But I can't actually prove that Missy King is Meredith. Not yet, anyway.

As I wait at a red light under the dim midday sun, I tick off the verifiable information I know about 'Missy'. Former Vegas escort, working at the Starry Sky Brothel on the Strip and rumored to be the governor's mistress. This 'Missy', mentioned in only one gossip column on a local, Vegas blog, was supposedly "exclusive, in a Kingly way", which I a.s.sume was meant to allude to her relationship with my father. I know, based on what the Love Inc. shrink told Lizzy, that Missy King was liked, and that some of the Love Inc. girls missed her, and felt like not enough had been done to find her.

Jim Gunn's cousin was a detective in Vegas; still is. Hunter West told me one of the detective's buddies pulled the Missy King case. I'm not sure if it's true, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was.

I roll into the garage and lift my left arm out of its leather band. And for the first time since the wreck, I feel s.h.i.tty about my hand for a reason that has nothing to do with me. If I wanted to go look for Missy King, or Meredith Kinsey, or whoever the h.e.l.l the missing woman really is, I'd probably get my one-handed self shot.

I swing off the bike and feel the curtain of darkness drop around me, enclosing me inside a box of dread. Then I look up and spot Lizzy in front of the door that divides the shop and garage.

"f.u.c.k."

Lizzy grins evilly and holds up a garage remote. "Bet you forgot who watched over the shop while you were sleeping, bro."

"I didn't forget," I mutter as I bridge the gap between us. I reach for a strand of her long brown hair and tug it, out of habit. "Just didn't figure you'd go sneaking around like a cat burglar."

Lizzy curls her hand. "Meow."

I brush past her and open the door to the show room. She follows me inside, but instead of going upstairs, to the site of the Suri disaster, I slump down into one of the leather chairs beside a restored, hybrid-ized 1967 BMW R 69S. I reach into an old-school Coca-Cola cooler beside the chair and pull out a gla.s.s bottle of Sunkist, which I tuck into the crook of my left elbow. Then I grab a Dr. Pepper.

Lizzy stands in front of me with her hands on her slim hips. She reaches out and grabs the Dr. Pepper, but she doesn't open it.

"You know why I'm here, C."

I widen my eyes in feigned drama and hold out both hands. "Let me guess: It's an intervention."

"You could call it that." She nods, looking shrewd with black Aviators propped up on her head. And hot in tight blue jeans and a jade green t-shirt, with diamonds winking in her ears.

I push up the sleeve of my battered b.u.t.ton-up, so she can see the permanent skid mark scars inside my elbow. "Too much H?"

She shakes her head. "Too little C." She narrows her eyes. "I can see you've shaved, and I support that. You went out somewhere, on a bike no less, and I support that, too. But seriously, Cross, I want to know how you are, because Suri's worried about you and I am, too."

Right-so this is about Suri. I rub my eyes, but I can't complain much. I should have known a long time ago she was getting too...caught up. Lizzy even told me that she was, on the drive to the vineyard on the day that we got hauled off to Mexico. But I didn't believe her. And after that day's adventure, I kind of forgot about it. Selfish, thoughtless Cross. I let Suri get and stay close to me, and then I let her lay it all out on the table before I sent her away with her tail between her legs.

Through the web of my fingers, rubbing my eyes, I see Lizzy sink down to the polished cement floor and cross her legs. Looking up at me, she says, "It's not your fault she didn't see straight. She shouldn't have thought you felt the same way just because she hoped you did. She's not upset with you. She's upset...with herself, I guess."

I cross my arms loosely over my chest. "That why she hasn't called?"

Lizzy nods.

"She ever gonna call?"

She nods again. "Sometime. Probably soon. I think she's just embarra.s.sed."

I snort. "No need for that s.h.i.t. We're all friends, aren't we?" The question comes out sounding kind of like a jab. I feel like a five-year-old, but the truth is, it bugs the s.h.i.t out of me that Lizzy's just a few weeks away from walking down the aisle to marry Hunter Player West. Instead of being my friend, she's going to be some other dude's wife. I know it's immature and patriarchal and whatever else, but it rubs me the wrong way.

Lizzy makes a tsking sound. "I sense some bitterness." And then, in all seriousness: "Really, Cross. You still don't like him, do you?"

I stand up and start pacing like a caged lion. "You tell me he's a fine guy."

"But you don't believe me."

"So what, Lizzy? I'm gonna forever hold my peace. Isn't that what matters?"

She stands up, coming over to me, but instead of hands on hips this time, she wraps her arms around her waist. "You know that's not what matters. Cross, we're family. I don't want you to be unhappy whenever you think of me. I want our friendship to stay strong." She exhales, looking miserable. "If there's something I can do, something that will make you feel more open to-"

I toss my arms out. "There's nothing you can do, Lizzy. You've done nothing wrong. Neither has West, at least not to me. And before you ask, I'm fine about the money thing."

Lizzy sold her virginity at a brothel in Vegas so she could help pay my medical bills after my motorcycle wreck. Don't worry, the story had a happy ending-for her, at least. Hunter West, her soon-to-be hubby, was the highest bidder.

She did this while I was in my coma. When I first woke up, I was p.i.s.sed, but I've gotten used to it now. I can't change it, so I tell her, "I will always love you for it, end of story."

Lizzy comes a little closer, and I can smell her lotion: gardenias and maybe roses. I stare into her face, so different than it was before my wreck. She looks thinner... Less like the grown up Lizzy I knew and more like the girl I knew in high school.

"It's okay, Liz. I'll learn to like West. I can even show him how to fix that banged up Roadster he's got in the garage." I paste a smile on, hold my arms out, so she comes in for a hug. "BFFs?"

"BFFs," she says warmly, pressing her cheek against my chest.

I open my eyes and pull away first, then walk back to my Sunkist and ease down on the floor. I motion to the chair. "Sit down and stay a bit."

And Lizzy does. We talk for two hours-longer, I think, than we have since before the accident. We talk about everything but the pain attacks; she doesn't ask, for once, and I don't tell her that they're getting worse.

I wait until she's almost out the door to drop the bomb: "Wanted to mention I'm going down to Mexico."

Her eyes pop.

I shrug one shoulder. "Biker thing."