Deep Hurt - Eva Hudson Page 0,2
Bureau for more information, Svetlana hung up without bothering to say goodbye. Ingrid marched back into the apartment, threw her cell phone on the couch and headed for the bathroom. She hoped the sensation of hot water pummeling her skin and flattening her short hair against her scalp might banish the distressing conversation with Svetlana from her mind.
But instead it gave her time to think. And all she could think about was Megan Avery.
Megan at fourteen, the way she’d looked when Ingrid last saw her: flushed cheeks, sparkling eyes, a little breathless maybe, as she and Ingrid hurried from the carnival to return home before their curfew at ten. Ingrid walked as fast as she could, Megan struggled to keep up. Like Ingrid, she had carried quite a few extra pounds right through her puppy fat years and into her teens. Megan’s mom liked to cook and enjoyed spoiling them. Ingrid never complained. She took after her father when it came to her appetite. Svetlana had always eaten like a bird. Another memory popped into her mind: Svetlana poking a talon-like finger into the soft flesh of her upper thigh, a disgusted look on her face, her voice shrill and harsh as she told her just how lazy she was.
Ingrid scrubbed shampoo into her scalp with both hands, her eyes squeezed tight shut, and started humming some dumb pop song she’d heard on the radio the day before. Anything to shut out the other sounds that had started play in her head: the high-pitched and slightly out of tune carnival steam organ melody, the distant screams of the people on the roller coaster. She hummed a little a louder. Then the shampoo reminded her of the sickly sweet smell of the cotton candy they had eaten. It was an aroma she’d tried to avoid ever since. It brought on the rush of memories faster than anything else.
She quickly rinsed out the suds and turned off the shower. She stepped out of the bathtub and stood dripping on the floor. Disoriented for a moment, she’d forgotten where she’d left her bath towel. In that instant she was back in the bathroom of her childhood home.
The house that was only thirty miles from where those women were found. So close to where Megan had been taken. Was it possible she could still be alive? For years Ingrid had held on to that hope. It was the reason she’d been so determined to join the FBI. After Megan disappeared, everything Ingrid had done had been carefully planned to get her another step closer to her goal. She worked hard in high school and college, got herself fit, made endless sacrifices in her personal life, until finally she was accepted into the Academy at Quantico. She had dreamed of heading up her own team and one day tracking down the man who’d snatched away her best friend. A tiny part of her also harbored the fantasy that somehow Megan was still alive and Ingrid would be the one to liberate her from her prison.
But over the years she’d slowly begun to realize what a forlorn hope it was, that in all likelihood Megan had been abused and murdered within hours of being abducted. And in time Ingrid had learned how to live with that realization.
After her conversation with Svetlana, a glimmer of that same hope had come back to torment her. She was compelled to find out anything she could about this latest case for her own peace of mind: not just because her mother had asked her to.
Just forty minutes after stepping out of the shower, Ingrid was making her way from the basement parking lot of the ugly six-story concrete building situated on the western side of Grosvenor Square in Mayfair to the FBI’s Criminal Division office on the third floor. She had extra purpose to her step as she hurried along the rosewood-paneled corridor. When she reached the twenty by thirty foot, low-ceilinged room, she was surprised to discover it was empty. Jennifer Rocharde, the administrative clerk and currently the only other member of the Criminal Division team, wasn’t sitting at her desk.
With Jennifer out of the way, Ingrid considered calling Mike Stiller, her most reliable contact within the Bureau. But it was still only four-thirty a.m. on the East Coast. Mike was keen, but even he wouldn’t be working that early in the morning. She didn’t want to leave him a voicemail message—her request for information would need careful handling.
For