“Yes.” Irina didn’t break eye contact, but her gaze was sad. “I looked you up.” One side of her mouth lifted. “I’m nosy, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
Liza laughed, surprising herself. “I’m shocked, Irina. Shocked, I tell you.”
Irina had the good grace to look a little shamefaced. “But not angry?”
“Of course not. You welcomed me into your home on the invite of another. I would have checked me out, too. Just to be sure I wasn’t a threat. Especially now.”
Irina’s blond brows lifted and Liza’s heart sank. The expression the older woman wore was too knowing and Liza mentally backtracked, trying to figure out what she’d said.
Of another.
Shit. She should have said Tom’s name. But it hurt to even think it. Saying it aloud . . .
Still. Shit. Irina started to open her mouth, but Liza raced on, unable to change the subject fast enough.
“Anyway, Lindsay, my sister, she sacrificed a lot for me to stay in school. She wasn’t much older than I was and she’d quit school to take care of our mom. Mom hated it, but . . .” It hurt to think of her mother and sister, too, but it had been eight years since her mother’s death and seven years since Lindsay’s murder. Her grief had softened over time. “Mom was too sick to fight Lindsay, and Lindsay was stubborn. More than me, even,” she added lightly, then swallowed hard when tears clogged her throat. I guess it hasn’t been long enough after all.
“She was murdered by a killer who preyed on prostitutes,” Irina said. “I read about it online.”
“She was. She worked the streets to pay our rent and buy food. I wanted to get a part-time job, but she wouldn’t let me. Said she wanted me to stay in school, to become a doctor or a nurse to help other people’s mothers. After Mom died, Lin got a job cleaning office buildings at night. She never told me that she’d lost her job, so when she didn’t come home one night . . .”
“You were still in high school.”
“A senior. I thought my worst problem was keeping my A in AP English. Then she didn’t come home and I didn’t know what to do. When I called the cleaning company, they told me that she’d been laid off months before.”
“How did you find out about the prostitution?” Irina asked, her voice so incredibly gentle.
Liza closed her eyes, not wanting to think about those days. “I went to file a missing-person report at the police department. They pulled up her arrest record.” She drained the rest of her tea and let out a harsh breath. “So I went looking for her.”
Irina’s eyes widened. “You went looking for prostitutes? How did you know where to go?”
A chuckle tickled her throat as a memory resurfaced, unexpected yet welcome. “That’s what Tom said. I met him during that time. He got his friends involved in searching for Lindsay.”
Irina’s brows drew down in a frown. “You met Tom Hunter while looking for prostitutes?”
The chuckle became a belly laugh, long and loud and far more cathartic than it should have been. “Oh no,” she said when she caught her breath. The very idea of straitlaced, Dudley Do-Right FBI Special Agent Tom Hunter looking for a hooker . . .
She wiped the tears from her eyes. “God, that’s too funny. No, he wasn’t out looking for a hookup. It was the next day. He’d come to my school to tell the jocks to stay in school. He was already a college basketball star by then, so I guess the administration hoped the kids would listen to him.” She sobered and sighed. “I was skipping the stay-in-school assembly to go back to the police station, because no one on the street had seen Lindsay. Tom left the assembly, literally ran into me, and my school papers went everywhere.”
“He helped you pick them up.” There wasn’t even a question in Irina’s voice. Tom Hunter was a gentleman. A truly good man.
“Of course he did,” Liza said, unable to keep the trace of bitterness from her voice and hating herself for it. It wasn’t Tom’s fault that she’d developed an impossible crush. Nor was it Tom’s fault that he didn’t feel the same way. “He saw the police report on Lindsay. He took me to a detective friend of his, and she was instrumental in finding Lindsay’s killer.”
Irina was studying her too closely. “That’s how you became friends? You and Tom?”
“Yep.” And Liza was finished talking about Tom Hunter. “But back to your original question. Lindsay is the main reason I’m going to nursing school. She sacrificed too much for me not to.” She checked the time on her phone, abruptly realizing that Abigail should have been back with her brush several minutes ago. “Where is Abigail? I hope she’s all right.” She started to get up, but Irina motioned at her to stay put.
“I’ll go find her. Have some more tea.” Irina pulled a muffin from a basket on the table and plated it for Liza. “Eat. It’s got no raisins. I made the batch especially for you.”
“Thank you, Irina,” Liza murmured, touched. She thought she’d managed to hide her aversion to raisins from the woman, but she should have known that Irina missed very little.
“You’re important to us, too, Liza,” Irina told her. “And at some point, when you’re ready to talk about what Tom Hunter did to hurt you, I’ll be ready to listen.”
Then she was gone, calling Abigail’s name a split second before there was a shout and the thunder of running feet above Liza’s head. Liza ran from the kitchen, ready to do whatever needed to be done to help, but ran into Mercy Callahan as she came down the stairs.
Mercy’s face was puffy, her eyes red and swollen. Liza took one look at her, then opened her arms. Mercy immediately accepted, huddling close as she shuddered out a harsh breath.
“Hey,” Liza murmured, stroking Mercy’s sleek hair. “What’s going on?”
She’d seen this woman under the most stressful of situations for a month, but she’d never seen her cry. Not like this.
“I scared her,” Mercy sobbed. “Abigail, I mean. I was on a call with my therapist and when I finished, I just sat there and cried. But I heard you come in and knew I needed to hurry to get Abigail to the eye doctor, but then I heard someone else crying. I opened the door and she was sitting on the floor.”
“Oh no,” Liza breathed. “What did she hear?” Because the horrors that Mercy had experienced were nothing that anyone else should ever hear, especially not a child Abigail’s age.
“That was what I first thought—that she’d been listening in. I . . .” Mercy’s body shuddered as she sucked in great, gulping breaths. “I yelled at her. Asked her what she was doing there. Accused her of spying on me.”