Cavanaugh Undercover. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ opportunity he got. For her part, rather than run away from home the way she’d been tempted to do more than once, Tiana had done what she could to protect her sister. She got between her father’s punishing hand and Janie time and again. Some of the scars didn’t heal.

      Harvey Drummond blamed both of his daughters for the fact that his wife had left him, disappearing one day while they were at school and he was at work. Sylvia Drummond had left nothing in her wake but a note secured by a fish-shaped magnet to the refrigerator that said “I can’t take it anymore.”

      The note had been written to him, but Harvey maintained that it was their behavior she couldn’t take, hers and Janie’s. He took his rage out on them every time he was drunk. Which was often.

      Tiana and her sister endured hell on a regular nightly basis.

      But once their father no longer walked among the living, life got better. Harder financially despite his pension, but better because she and Janie were finally allowed to pick up the pieces of their souls and do their best to reconstruct those pieces into some sort of workable whole again.

      But the years they had had to endure with their father had left their mark, affecting them differently. Tiana, always self-sufficient, became more closed off. More distrustful of any man whose path crossed hers. Any relationships that looked as if they might have some sort of potential she quickly shut down before they ever flourished.

      Janie, on the other hand, desperately craved attention, hungered for affection and was starved for approval—the three As Tiana called them—and looked to any man hoping that he would provide her with them. Janie, Tiana had asserted more than once, was far too trusting, while Tiana only trusted men to stir up trouble and make situations worse. She knew that she wasn’t being altogether fair in her estimation—but at least she was being safe.

      Tiana would have been the first to admit that their late father was good for one thing—he had, without really meaning to, provided her with valuable connections. Connections on the police force. While Tiana had never wanted rules bent in her favor, she wanted to make sure that they weren’t bent against her, either. All she had ever wanted was a fair shot at whatever she set her sights on. In this case, it was becoming part of the police department.

      Eventually, while taking college courses on her computer at night, Tiana joined the San Francisco police force, managing to impress them with her physical stamina—another unintended “bonus” of surviving her father’s brutal treatment.

      Once she joined up, it wasn’t long before she found her way to the crime scene investigative unit, a subject that had always fascinated her.

      Every penny Tiana earned that didn’t go to cover basic living expenses went toward Janie’s education. Her only request was that Janie attend a college within the state so she could keep an eye on her. Janie was very disgruntled at what she perceived to be a restriction. “You’re just like Dad,” she’d railed.

      The words cut her deeply, but Tiana had remained firm on this one condition. She had to since she felt that Janie, while not exactly outwardly rebellious toward her, was far too naive and prone to making bad judgment calls.

      Like the boyfriend she’d gotten mixed up with, a supposed senior at the same college that seventeen-year-old Janie was attending—the University of San Francisco.

      When she first met Wayne Scott, the light of Janie’s life, Tiana had felt really bad vibes coming from this man. The occurrence took her by surprise because she generally didn’t believe things like that were possible. There was just something about him; he was too verbally obliging, too ready to take her—Tiana—anywhere she wanted to go. There were a few times she could have sworn the college senior was actually coming on to her.

      Tiana tried as gently as possible to encourage Janie to see other guys. But for her sister, the sun rose and set around Wayne’s close-shaved head. Tiana instinctively sensed that the more she’d say against Wayne, the more Janie would defend him and dig in her heels, at the same time turning her back on the only family she had.

      So Tiana had kept her peace and even refrained from saying anything when it became apparent that Janie was cutting classes to hang out with this loser.

      But when one of Janie’s friends called to ask if Janie had quit college altogether, all sorts of red lights and alarms had gone off in Tiana’s head. When she asked around, it came to light that no one had seen Janie either in her classes or at the part-time job she’d gotten to help with her schooling expenses approximately two weeks ago. Sick with worry, Tiana only became more so upon learning that according to her roommate, Janie hadn’t been to her dorm room for those same two weeks.

      And no one had seen her boyfriend, either.

      Tiana immediately went into high gear to try to track down her sister’s movements and current whereabouts. Accessing local cameras around the college and the places that her sister had frequented had ultimately yielded eyestrain and nothing else. For all intents and purposes, both Janie and her boyfriend had completely disappeared from the San Francisco area.

      Tiana tried calling Janie on her cell phone both day and night to no avail. All her calls went straight to voice mail until finally, the metallic voice told her that the mailbox was full.

      Growing increasingly desperate, Tiana tried to get coordinates on her sister by using the GPS feature of her cell phone. That had eventually gotten her sister’s phone—abandoned in a Dumpster—but not her sister.

      “C’mon, Janie,” she had pleaded, glaring at the cell phone—an electronic fixture her sister would have never willingly thrown away. “Give me a clue, something to work with. Anything. Where are you?”

      And about that time the rumors regarding a white slave ring operating somewhere in the general vicinity, “recruiting” new faces or, more aptly, new bodies, began to circulate.

      The moment she heard, a cold chill had gone down her spine. And she knew, knew this was the direction she had to go in.

      Further investigation on her part pointed to the trail working its way down to the southern portion of the state. She had no jurisdiction outside San Francisco and she knew she’d be strictly on her own.

      But since nothing in the world was more important to her than Janie, Tiana did what she had to do. She requested a leave of absence and took off that very day, following the only lead she had—a confidential informant who owed her a favor since it was her work in the lab that had eventually cleared the man of some pretty nasty charges. The informant told her that Wayne was mixed up with the traffickers.

      When she was a kid, Tiana had prayed feverishly, seeking the help of a higher power. She had prayed that her mother would come back to take them away, out of her father’s reach. She also prayed nightly that her father would change, suddenly regret the way he had treated them and do his best to make it up to her and her sister. Finally, all but devoid of hope, she still prayed that someone, anyone, would come to their rescue.

      But their mother had never returned to take them with her, their father had continued to mistreat and abuse them—especially her—until the day he died and no one ever came to rescue them.

      A week after their father was killed, Tiana turned eighteen and she was the one who rescued Janie. She was the one who stood up and did what had to be done, taking care of herself and her sister. And, since none of her prayers were ever answered, she concluded that there was no one listening. So she gave up praying.

      She still didn’t pray.

      Faced СКАЧАТЬ