20. Just lose it
Chapter 20
Just lose it
LETTIE
A s soon as Tomer excuses himself to see Boss Dad, I put my hands up in the shape of the letter T . “Whoa, there. Time out.”
Mia and Klein freeze in place, eyes widening in shock.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt y’all’s performance. Riveting shit, really. You should take the act on the road someday.” I fix my sights on Mia. “Before Tomer returns, I need to ask you about the uh...” I lower my chin to my chest and telepathically implore her to finish my thoughts. I don’t know if Klein knows about the email from Viktor, but I bet he does.
“It’s okay, Lettie. I told him about it.” Mia jabs her elbow toward her boyfriend. “Only the two of us know.”
“For now,” Klein amends. “I’ll be honest with you, Lettie. I’m not on board with hiding shit from him. Especially when it comes to Viktor fucking Lenkov.”
I blink twenty-seven times at him in Morse code, telling him to shut the fuck up.
Just kidding. I don’t know Morse code. It would be cool if I did.
However, I did blink at him a lot because I don’t know what to say. He has a point. Why hide communications with the enemy from Tomer when he’s essentially in charge of this shit?
Yet I cannot let him see those photos.
Random thought. Morse code is another skill that would have been more helpful than square dancing. But I digress.
I’ll figure out what to do about Klein later. For now, I focus on Mia. “Did you figure out what to do with the email? Can you make it disappear or whatever?”
Aside from avoiding staying alone in the bunkroom where my worries could fester, I came up here to ensure Mia didn’t tell Tomer about the email.
She pulls a chair out, wordlessly sitting beside me. Cupping her hands over mine, she locks me in her gaze. With a voice dripping in kindness, she says, “Lettie, I’ll do what I can to protect him from seeing those photos. But I need to tell him about the email. Hiding it would be a disservice.”
Ready to plead my case, I start, “But?—”
She cuts me off, squeezing my hands and sharpening her stare. “I cannot hide a clue this significant from him. Not for this case. And certainly not one pertaining to Viktor or you.” She angles her head slightly. “At least, not indefinitely.”
I bite my tongue and seal my lips, intent on hearing her out.
“This email needs to be an item on the whiteboard. It factors into the bigger strategy, and we need to analyze it for technical forensics. At some point, I may need his help with that.” She exhales pointedly, making it clear this decision isn’t one she’s made lightly. “More importantly, it’s evidence. Not only proof of the horrific crime that happened to you, but the photo of the text implicates him in Yev’s murder. If I can prove Viktor sent the email to you, it gives us even more ammunition to get him thrown in prison forever. Murder charges carry longer sentences than sexual assault and trafficking.”
“Can’t you just take out the photos of me and leave the rest of it? Those pictures aren’t necessary because I could testify against Viktor in court.” I stifle a gag at the sound of his name on my lips.
Mia shakes her head while I rattle on, so I switch gears and attempt to reach her compassionate side instead. “If Tomer sees those photos, it’ll destroy him. I cannot do that to him. Not again. You should have seen him when he saw the video of Yev hurting me. It broke him.” My words get stuck in my throat, so I pause to swallow them. “Please don’t do this to him. He’s so happy now. Please . I’m begging you.”
Mia’s chin wobbles, and her eyes search for Klein as if he’s the strength she needs.
He takes the seat on the other side of me. “Lettie, we fully understand what you’re saying. And believe me, we don’t want him to hurt either. But this... well, it’s not that simple. Mia and I already discussed modifying the email. We can’t do it.”
My gaze darts between the two of them. “Why not? Aren’t you like... super hacker people?”
Manipulative? Maybe. But desperate times call for desperate measures. Therefore, if I see a straw, you can bet both your ass cheeks I’ll be grasping at it.
A sad smile tugs at Mia’s lips. “It’s not that I cannot physically alter the email because I could. With my eyes closed. But modifying evidence for a case of this magnitude isn’t wise. If they find our digital footprint on there, it’ll be thrown out immediately. Then it’s useless.And besides, everything he said in the email is connected. If I took out the photos of you, then the verbiage he included wouldn’t make sense. Plus, any modifications I make will render anything we find on his computer invalid. We need the sent copy and received copy to be exact matches; otherwise it’s shit. The entire email needs to stay intact.”
“Then don’t use the email at all. Surely, there’s other evidence. Right?” My voice trembles, replete with fear over the idea of Tomer having to look at photos of the first time I was assaulted. “Do you really need this?”
Neither of them answers right away. The whir of the computer fans is the only sound while I await an answer.
Her grip on my hands loosens as she leans back in her chair. Through perfectly rounded lips, she exhales. “Lettie, we don’t have enough on Viktor without this. Not yet.”
My eyes search the whiteboard where so many things have been checked off or completed in the Trafficking column. “How can that be?”
One of those people they’ve arrested must be willing to stand against Viktor, right? And I bet there’s tons of digital evidence or a paper trail. Something. Anything .
Klein raps his fingers on the table in a soothing pattern. “We have no concrete evidence to tie Viktor to the trafficking. He’s a masterat covering his tracks. And not a single person they’ve arrested will name him as leading the ring.” He bangs his fist lightly against the table. “Not a damn one.”
“Except Yev,” Mia adds. “And he’s not talking to anyone.”
“Not anymore,” Klein adds morosely.
Wait, wait, wait.
My spine stiffens, lurching my back off the chair. “What about Savin?”
Mia screws her lips over to the corner of her mouth, her eyes looking anywhere but at me.
Oh shitake mushrooms. What else is wrong?
“What is it, Mia?”
She puffs up her cheeks around her tightly sealed lips. There’s a slight shake to her head.It’d be adorable if I didn’t need her to spit out whatever she’s holding back.
Klein answers for her. “That’s what the video call with the feds was about earlier.”
My chest constricts, making oxygen harder to come by. “ Oh no. What happened to them? Please, tell me they’re okay.”
His throat bobs. “They lost them.”
“Lost them?” I parrot, my voice shrill. “What do you mean they lost them? They who?”
He folds his hands outward, flashing his open palms. “The feds. WITSEC. They lost Savin and Tasha.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Boss Dad just got the message from them this morning. About the dolls. The butterfly cocoon thing. How did they lose them that fast?”
I’d like to ask how they lost two grown humans to begin with, but I was lost quite easily myself once. So I’ll keep my snark to myself.
Mia finally rejoins the conversation. “Sure, Boss received the message this morning, but Savin and Tasha relayed it to their WITSEC coordinator yesterday.”
Suppose that makes sense.
I hate to ask this next question, but I need to know. “They don’t think they were... murdered, right?”
Klein rolls out his neck and shoulders. “No. They escaped or fled. They left a Dear John letter for their WITSEC coordinator.”
I bing-boing my eyes between them. “Who is John, and what did the letter say?”
Mia twists her hair into a messy bun while explaining, “It’s an expression. Before your time. Now I feel old, so thanks for that.” She bares her teeth at me facetiously. She’s adorable. “Essentially, they didn’t feel safe testifying against Lenkov anymore. They said they were going into hiding and wished everyone well.”
With his eyes glazed over as if deep in thought, Klein muses, “It’s almost as if they waited until they got that message to us before making their escape.”
My hands flop onto the table, palms down. For once, my knees are perfectly still. “Well, I guess that’s it then. We have to use this email, huh?”
Especially since I haven’t let the cops know about Viktor yet.
Mia clears her throat, shifting in her chair and fidgeting with her blouse. She seems uncomfortable in her skin, which is unusual for her. “Lettie, can I ask you a question about the email from Viktor? Or would it be too upsetting?”
I roll my shoulders back, injecting confidence into my frame. Just like Papa always told me—fake it ’til you make it.“Ask away, Mia.”
She licks her lips and lowers her volume. “Can you clarify what Viktor meant in the email when he said to share it with the one who has your eyes? Was he referring to Big Al?”
Some of the stifling panic I felt earlier threatens to return, tickling at the edges of my frayed nerves. To quell it, I take three deep breaths and focus on the feeling of the worn carpet under my shoes, the chair beneath me, and the sounds in the room.The panic slowly ebbs, a lightness returning to my mind.
Steadier now, I answer, “Yes. He said I had my father’s eyes. He made a big deal about it as he...” I force a swallow and another deep breath. “Well, you know what he did to me.”
She reaches over the table to rub my arm in short, soothing strokes. “That’s what I figured. I’m sorry. I needed to confirm whether we were missing something that could factor into the investigation, like another person.”
Wringing my hands, I make a last-ditch plea. “Is there really nothing we can do to keep the email away from Tomer?”
Mia shakes her head in a slow, long arc. “I’m sorry, Lettie.”
Oddly, I don’t feel shame or embarrassment over Klein and Mia having a glimpse at the worst moment of my life.
Of course, I wish those photos didn’t exist. For that matter, I wish the whole experience never happened. I don’t particularly like that these people who I’ve come to know have witnessed something so horrific and personal.
And yet . . .
The prevailing emotion is a throat punch of hopelessness because Tomer will see it. He’ll know Viktor’s taunting triggered my panic attack. He’ll have yet another visual of my trauma to haunt him.
With my whole heart and all my being, I long to protect him from this.
Unfortunately, I can’t.
He’s come so far and healed so much. The idea of him suffering further because of that sick monster claws inside me.
I’m powerless to prevent his continued agony.
My heart thuds dully in my chest, thick layers of defeat muting the sensation of each beat. I press my fist to my closed lips, holding back a wail of frustration. Tears build behind my eyes, stinging my sinuses while a sagging sensation falls over my entire body, inside and out.
“Lettie, listen.” Klein rubs my upper back. “We’ll wait to show him the email for another day or two. In the meantime, Mia’s going to do her thing, analyzing it and shit. When we show him, we’ll use a copy with the photos of you redacted. He’ll understand why.”
My eyes stare off in the distance, focusing on nothing. “What’s the point in waiting?”
“We need to see if we can find something to directly tie the email to Viktor first. Additionally, maybe whatever is on the other end of the email address from inside the Russian doll can help us implicate Viktor. If we find more compelling evidence, we might not need the email as badly.”
The silence grows stale. There’s no sense begging them. They’d spare him if they could.
As much as I’d love to cling to the hope that they’ll find something more important to take Viktor down, thus rendering the email he sent useless, I won’t be holding my breath.
Instead, I offer up what I can to help matters. “I suppose I’m the one who could link Viktor to today’s email since he was the one who mentioned the matching eyes thing to me.”
“Speaking of that,” Klein starts, his tone leery. “You and Tomer need to discuss amending your witness statement. You should probably loop in Boss since he’s the one with the tightest law enforcement connections. Currently, they don’t have you putting Viktor at the house.”
“Tomer told me to hold off on amending my statement for now since it’ll seem like you guys fed it to me.” Resting my elbows on the desk, I bury my face in my hands. “I’ll talk to him about it tonight. Should I mention the email then too? Get it all out at once?”
“It’s up to you, sweetie.” Mia taps my forearm, gently pulling my hands away from my face. “Related... we haven’t told Boss you didn’t name Viktor in your statement, nor why that might be the case. And he hasn’t noticed either. He’s been focused on some of the other columns on the board, letting us run with the trafficking.”
I inhale briskly through my nose, causing a slight hissing sound. My pulse begins hammering wildly, like a drum speeding up. “Can we not tell Big Al for now? Until I figure out what to do about my statement?”
Mia opens her mouth to answer but quickly shirks backward as if rethinking her response.
I add some reasoning to my request. “It’ll hurt Boss Dad if I have to explain why I didn’t tell the cops about Viktor.”
“Why didn’t you tell the cops?” Klein asks, his voice soft and reassuring.
“I was protecting Tomer, and in a way, protecting my papa’s legacy. You see, Viktor told me I was taken because of Tomer and”—I put up air quotes—“my father. More so, my father. At the time, I didn’t understand what he meant and had no choice but to think my small-town grandpa had somehow gotten mixed up with the mafia. But now, it’s clear I was abducted and assaulted because of my birth father, and to a lesser degree, Tomer. Viktor sort of threw that on at the end like it was some bonus.”
Klein glances at Mia. “Boss doesn’t need that on him right now.”
“Agreed.”
Thank goodness. I can’t protect Tomer, but at least I can protect my birth father.
As that thought permeates deeper, my breath leaves me in a rush.
Well, I’ll be a so-and-so.
Here I am, considering holding back the truth from the man I love because I want to protect him. Same as Tomer did for Boss Dad all along. Until the lie spiraled away from him. Then he held it back so he wouldn’t hurt me.
I didn’t need the reminder of how he must have felt all those months and years. Yet I got one all the same.
My soul cries for him.
I stretch my lungs with another deep breath, letting the oxygen fill the painful cracks inside me.
No sense in spending more time dwelling on the dark. Gotta get back to the task at hand.
Rubbing my palms together, I twist to face the easel. “Where were we with this mess? And speak slowly. The only exposure I’ve ever had to this Greek mythology was the movie Hercules . And all I recall from the film was his impressive biceps and calf muscles. I suspect the little old Russian dude’s tale doesn’t touch on that. With my knowledge baseline out in the open, let’s get to it.”
Digging into this is precisely what my brain needs to distract me from dark thoughts.
Neither of them resumes their storytelling, so I snap my fingers. “Whatcha waitin’ for? Let’s all go tumblin’ down the Greek rabbit hole.”