“I could have helped you,” I said. “That’s why you were so invested in us girls, right? You were looking for her. I could have helped.”
“I didn’t want you to,” he said, so fiercely I blinked. Then, “That wasn’t why I was so invested, okay? Yes, I’ve been looking for her, but that didn’t have anything to do with us.”
Sadly, I thought it had everything to do with us. He never would have met me if he hadn’t been so bent on finding his sister. He wouldn’t have gone after the pimps…Henri, especially.
“Was she with Henri?” I asked, incredulous.
After a pause, he admitted, “I think so.”
So we were back to this. It was a small comfort that he didn’t feel romantic love for this girl, but she was his goal all the same. I was merely a means to an end. Something to use and discard. And he was just another man to use me. How unoriginal of him.
Well, far be it for me to let him down. “Tell me about her. Something other than the fact that she’s a natural blonde. Maybe I’ve met her.”
He scowled. “Stop it. Stop using that voice with me.”
“My helpful voice?”
“The one you use with johns. The one that sounds sweet and subservient, unless they know you. Then it says you despise them.”
I did despise him. I despised him for seeing me, for knowing me, exactly as he had so arrogantly claimed to in the alley.
“Fine,” I said brusquely. “This is me. My regular voice. My pissed-off voice, actually. Better?”
A smile tilted his split lips. “Better.”
“So tell me. Tell me about your sister.”
He sobered. “Blonde hair. Hazel eyes. They change by the light. Blue in the sun, brown in the dark. Five feet six, a hundred twenty pounds, although those measurements may be wildly different, even assuming…”
Assuming she was alive. “There’s no chance, then?”
His eyes grew distant. “It was so many years ago. Long enough to come to terms with it, long enough to give up the ghost. As a cop, I can figure out the facts, same as if it were a case. She’s likely dead. If she’s alive, she’s probably not in Chicago anymore.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because I’ve looked. Everywhere.” He ran his hands through his hair, then hissed out a breath as he found a sore spot. “I can’t let her go. I can’t shake the feeling that she’s here, right outside my grasp. But I have to accept that she’s gone. All I’m doing now is investigating her death. If she were here, and if she were alive, I would have found her by now.”
“There’s one other option you left out.”
Green eyes locked on mine. “What’s that?”
It occurred to me, because it hit upon my own hidden desire. If she was alive, if she was in Chicago… “She may not want to be found.”
Chapter Thirteen
Luke reclined on the chair, stress wrinkling the skin between his brows. I knew he was thinking about his sister. I wished I could help, though if I knew for sure she had overdosed or met some other grisly fate, I wasn’t sure I could tell him. It didn’t matter because his description of her matched half the prostitutes I’d ever met. Even Jenny, from the blowout at the corporate party, fit the physical description.
Except she was too young, and so was I. With the beginnings of leathery skin and crinkles at his eyes when he smiled, Luke was in his midthirties. At thirty, his sister would be ancient in the realm of prostitution. If I had met a woman that old working for Henri, I would have remembered.
But I hadn’t. “I’m sorry.”
“I know it’s too late to help her. I just wish I knew what happened to her. Then maybe I could…”
“Avenge her?”
His lids were hooded. “Maybe I could move on.”
A shiver ran through me, a sense of camaraderie. That was what I wanted too—for myself. Both of us were trapped by the ghosts of our pasts, him by his sister and me by my father.
“What then?” I asked. “Would you still work for the CPD?”
He shrugged. “Being a cop is all I know, but the only reason I became one was to find Daisy. I couldn’t get them to help me, to care about her. So I figured if I was on the inside, I could look for her myself. I didn’t understand then how many girls go missing, how little time there is. You can’t do this job and get choked up about every little injustice. I turned into the cops I hated. Putting in my hours and, at the end of the day, barely making a difference.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You did a lot for me. You were the one who convinced me to quit.”