Mia

Ten

Pierce

I gave her one week. The texts were still sent, mostly to see if she’d respond, but she didn’t. I wondered if she cared that I wasn’t at the school, which made me then feel like a whiny p***y. The rest of the week was spent driving from factory to factory, searching out old buildings and newer businesses, and getting caught up on my other cases.

            Four of the locations were suspicious, so I wrote them down and did some more digging at the office, which helped me narrow it down to two places, one I was almost certain of, simply because the surrounding fence seemed over the top for a garment manufacturer. But I still had a s**t ton of scouting to do. We couldn’t just rush in guns blazing. Whoever the boss was, he was a genius for having teens work for him, since he wouldn’t be risking bringing in someone like me to work for him. 

            With Sunday approaching, I was on a mission to confront Mia. Deciding whether my job was more important than saving her was a priority. The idea and the reality of saving her were two very different things. 

            When I parked down the street and walked in the moonlight and drizzle to her house that Sunday night, my heart pounded in my chest. I still didn’t know what to do about my job. There were tons of drug rings the police knew about and let continue or let people off the hook because they needed to catch the boss still, but I didn’t know if I could make this slide for her. 

            Either way, I needed to see her. Needed to know she was okay, having let my imagination get the best of me every time I thought about her meeting this boss.

            Leaning against that tree below her window, I texted her for the millionth time that week. 

            Me: Can you come down? 

            Minutes ticked by while I stared at her window, thinking she would continue ignoring me. I was so focused on her window, I didn’t notice her walking around the corner of the house to where I stood, her sandals crunching over the gravel. She wore jeans and a sweater that reached her knees, even though it was a pretty damn warm evening. Her long, blonde hair was in a giant bun thing on top of her head. 

            “You know, it’s still creepy when you’re just standing out here,” she said, coming into the moonlight. The sass didn’t reach any part of her. I would have snapped at her or shaken her, if she hadn’t looked so worn, so lifeless. She was still dealing, and it was eating her alive. 

            “I figure you still don’t want your family asking questions as to why I’m hanging around.” I kept it as light as possible. 

            She had ignored me for over a week. I had gone insane that day she told me to leave her alone. The hole in the wall of my kitchen was proof of that. I had been standing there about ready to call in all my favors to get help finding her when she finally texted me. It wasn’t gone. That night, that entire day was still very, very fresh. It was a day I had imagined horrible things being done to her. 

            “No, I don’t,” she said, wrapping her arms around her middle. She stared past me off in the distance. “Can we get some ice cream?” she asked, making my chest tighten. 

            “Of course,” I replied before leading the way to my truck. 

            If I had said anything else, I may have ended up putting my foot in my mouth. I cared way too much for the girl. Demanding to know what happened wasn’t going to work. Whatever had happened broke something inside her, making her more fragile than even the last time I saw her. Any wrong move on my part would make her close up. The fact she had come down and had asked to get ice cream was monumental. 

            At the lookout with cones in hand, we were back on my tailgate allowing the rain to drizzle on us. She hadn’t said a word during the drive. This close to her, I noticed her sunken eyes and sallow skin; it almost had me crushing my cone in my hand. 

            “I don’t want to talk about it,” she whispered, staring at her melting cone that she hadn’t touched yet. 

            A deep breath was essential. Did she not understand? Did she not realize I might torture Kenny, simply to find out what happened there, what happened over that week?

            “Mia.” Another deep breath. “If you could—”

            “So where have you been all week?” she interrupted.

            My eye twitched. What the hell was I going to have to do to get her to open up? “I had to do actual work, rather than babysit f*****g teenagers all week,” I said in a pretty rude tone, my patience gone. 

            An entire week had passed of her going about her day to day while ignoring me. I had never in my life cared so much for anyone aside from her brother and my dad, and she didn’t give two shits to put my mind at ease or to share whatever horror had happened, simply because of my career choice, because of my “cop” title.

            Being soft and coddling was not working. 

            With a nod, she hopped from the tailgate and chucked her cone off the cliff. Despite ruining a perfectly good ice cream cone, she had a damn good arm.

            Remaining on the tailgate, I took a lick of mine to mask my fury. “If you didn’t want ice cream, why the f**k did you ask for it?” I kept my tone even while continuing to stare at the lights below. 

            She stood in my view but a good three feet away, blinking slowly. “Take me home,” she ordered, and I snapped, hopping off the tailgate, my cone dropping to the ground. When I went to grab her shoulders, she jerked out of the way, her face contorting into this awful pain I couldn’t withstand. “Don’t f*****g touch me,” she snarled, wrapping her arms around herself again. She shoved around me, speed walking back toward the road. 

            My heart went with her, ripping and breaking along the way. I jogged to catch up. Barely touching her elbow caused her to spin around to glare at me. “Where are you going?” I demanded. 

            “Home. If you’re going to be an asshole and snap at me, I can find my own way.” 

            “That’s like twenty miles, Mia.” 

            “So?” She looked around us. “This was a mistake. I thought it would be good, but it can’t be.” Her gaze snapped to mine. “You have a life, like an actual adult life with a house and a job and stuff. And you’re a cop. I can’t have anything to do with you. I can’t expect you to put it all on the line for me, a ‘f*****g teenager.’” 

            “You don’t get a say in what I do with my life!” I yelled the loudest I could, but she didn’t flinch or run away, so I lowered my tone a little. “What I decide to do with everything you’ve given me is up to me. If I lose my job over it, f**k it. I haven’t been able to save anyone in this mess. The drugs are still at the high school, and there’s still plenty of you dealing, all because I haven’t been able to find the boss and the operation.” I paused, rubbing my hands over my head when her face took on a look of pure horror at the mention of the boss.

            “Mia, please. Please, for the love of God, tell me what happened.” I held my hands out, about to fall to my knees and beg. 

            She just stared for the longest time before looking over the cliff. “It wasn’t nearly as bad as you’re thinking.” She glanced back at me, and my heart squeezed. How this one girl could reduce me to this begging p***y was something I would have to ponder long and hard one day. “I met him. Noah, the most terrifying man I’ve ever met.” She looked away again, and I filed the name away for later use. “He had one of his guys feel me up, checking for wires or something. Then he threatened me. Told me some sick story about killing his dog the third time she ran away, and he said if I kept trying to get out, he would cut my family into pieces and feed us to his new dog.” 

            With another pause, she wrapped her arms around her middle again while I vibrated with disgust and rage and sorrow. Telling stories like that was a common manipulation tool, but they were often true. One thing was for certain, if I ever came face-to-face with the guy who frisked her, I would snap his fingers off and feed them to him. 

            No wonder she continued dealing; the guy scared the s**t out of her. 

            When she met my gaze again, she took a deep breath. “He touched me.” She swallowed, and my heart cracked while the fury roared inside me to take vengeance for this amazing girl. My ears rang. 

            “Mia,” I whispered, sounding the complete opposite of the storm raging inside me.

            “Not like that,” she snapped, dropping her arms to her sides. “He grabbed my face is all. And I felt so… so small and idiotic and… dirty afterward. He made my skin crawl. And then Kenny told him he thought I had a new boyfriend, because he saw me texting you, and for a moment I was terrified.” 

            Her lip quivered as she drew in another deep breath. Not wanting to interrupt, not wanting her to close up again, I just waited. She rubbed her hands over her face and through her hair with a heartbreaking groan. “So f*****g terrified, Pierce. That he would do something… like what you’re thinking, to reprimand me for not f*****g his nephew anymore. When he didn’t, I about died from relief, but I wanted to murder Kenny for that. It just showed me how awful he really is. Because he knew, he knew there was that possibility, and he didn’t care. He didn’t care what could happen to me.” 

            Closing her eyes, she quietly sobbed. After a minute of getting the trembling under control, I wrapped her in my arms. Her sobs grew louder, ripping through me. This girl trying to hold an ugly world on her shoulders owned me… She had no idea. She was right about Kenny, that he was the worst of the worst, and he had moved to the number one spot on my kill list. 

            My fingers grazed her neck, me wanting to comfort her in any way possible. When her sobbing calmed down, something she said clicked in my head. I pulled back, and she looked up at me with huge, bloodshot eyes, her cheeks red and splotchy. The urge to kiss her was overwhelming. 

            Information first. 

            “Did you say his nephew?” She tilted her head, a brow hitched up. “Kenny is his nephew?” 

            “That’s what Noah said.” She shrugged. “He said, ‘Being my nephew’s f**k buddy isn’t in the job description.’”

            That was my key. I didn’t have to involve Mia at all. I could find the guy through Kenny, and they would never know where I initially got the info. 

            “Pierce,” she whispered my name, causing my gaze to snap to hers. “Help me get out. Please.” 

            With my thumb, I wiped away her tears. “I can take you into the station, we can figure something out with protective custody.” Her frown deepened, and I sensed her walls were about to come up. I could feel it. Gripping the back of her neck, I glared. “Don’t close up. It was just an option. And a safe one at that. We aren’t the bad guys.” 

            “Yes, but there’s the politics, like you’ve said, and how can you know for sure someone at the station isn’t in on this?” 

            “This isn’t some Hollywood show, Mia.” I rolled my eyes, dropping my arms, but sighed when she raised her eyebrows. Hell, I missed that look, that challenging glow in her crystalline eyes. “But you could be right. I don’t know how to do this without someone getting hurt.” 

            She chewed on that full bottom lip and nodded. “I know I’ve f****d up and I can’t be picky, but I just… I just want to leave. I want to disappear on my own and be done with it. No one ever has to know you were involved with me. I mean, I understand if you don’t even want to help me, but I want to leave.” 

            I rubbed my hands over my head; there was no way to clear it. She fogged it up completely. And she was finally asking for the help I had offered. Didn’t that mean I needed to do as much? “I will help you, but it may take some time. It can’t be like tonight. We have to have an actual plan and a place for you to go. And money… I can take some from my savings, but—”

            “I can handle that part,” she whispered, and I understood; she had been setting all her earnings aside for this moment. But how could I condone her using drug money? The same way you condoned the rest of it, shithead.I just nodded along like an i***t. “I want to leave before prom. They expect me to keep going, but I can’t do prom. I won’t.” 

            “Okay. We’ll figure it out. But you can’t close up again, Mia. You can’t freeze me out every time you get scared.” Another nod from her. “I’ll take you home now, and we can talk this over later,” I offered, even though I wanted more time with her. If I didn’t distance myself some, this was bound to end in a mess when she disappeared. 

            When she shook her head, I raised my eyebrows. “I just want to chill here with you for a little. Soak up the moonlight, get some peace. Holding that all in, not seeing you for a week, wore me out mentally.” 

            Yup. I was f****d. This other side of her. This sweeter, more vulnerable side was a force to be reckoned with.