Chapter 2 - The Name She Buried
Thomas did not remember getting into the car.
He remembered the rain.
He remembered Rosa shivering beside him beneath a wool blanket Antoine had pulled from the trunk.
And he remembered the sentence repeating in his head.
You were never supposed to know who her father was.
"Where is the blue house?" Thomas asked.
Rosa pointed east.
"Near Mama's work. The one with the broken angel in the yard."
Antoine glanced into the mirror.
"Treme?"
"Drive."
The sedan cut through the flooded streets.
Thomas took out his phone and called Jacques.
No answer.
Again.
No answer.
That alone was an answer.
Rosa watched him carefully.
"Are you a bad man?"
Thomas looked at her.
Children asked questions adults spent entire careers avoiding.
"Yes."
She considered that.
"Mama said bad men can still choose not to be bad one time."
"Your mother sounds optimistic."
"She said she wasn't."
Despite himself, Thomas almost smiled.
"What is your mother's name?"
"Maya Williams."
Nothing.
Then Rosa reached under the collar of her hospital gown and pulled out a tiny silver pendant.
A blue enamel carnation.
Thomas's breath stopped.
The city vanished for half a second.
He saw a woman laughing on a balcony nine years earlier, holding the same cheap pendant between two fingers.
Mara Bennett.
A jazz singer with a sharp mouth, green eyes, and a habit of leaving before dawn.
She had disappeared after six weeks.
No goodbye.
No number.
No explanation.
Thomas reached for the pendant, then stopped before touching it.
"Where did you get that?"
"Mama."
"Has she always had it?"
Rosa nodded.
Thomas looked toward the windshield.
"Antoine. Faster."
The blue house stood behind a rusted iron fence in Treme. One stone angel leaned sideways in the yard, its face broken off.
The front door was open.
Thomas stepped out before the car stopped.
Two guards lay unconscious in the narrow hall.
Not his men.
Upstairs, something crashed.
Rosa tried to follow.
Thomas turned sharply.
"Stay with Antoine."
"Mama is in there!"
"And you running into gunfire will not help her."
"You don't know there's gunfire."
A shot exploded upstairs.
Rosa flinched.
Thomas raised one eyebrow.
"Now we know."
He climbed the stairs with his pistol low against his thigh.
At the end of the hall, a man in a gray suit stepped out of a bedroom.
Thomas fired once.
The man dropped his weapon and collapsed against the wall, clutching his shoulder.
Thomas entered the room.
A woman was tied to a wooden chair beneath a bare light bulb.
Her lip was split. One eye was swelling shut. Blood ran from a cut near her hairline.
But Thomas knew her immediately.
Nine years had changed her face.
Not enough.
"Mara."
The woman lifted her head.
Her good eye filled with something that was not relief.
Hatred.
"My name is Maya."
Thomas cut the rope around her wrists.
"Why does your daughter have your old necklace?"
"Because it's hers now."
"The clinic ran genetic tests on her."
Maya closed her eyes.
That was the moment Thomas knew.
Not suspected.
Knew.
His voice dropped.
"Who is Rosa's father?"
Maya opened her eyes again.
"The man who just spent four months letting his own daughter be used as a lab sample."
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