Girl, 11 by Amy Clarke (grave mercy TXT) 📗

doing the Justice Delayed podcast without it. On the other, she had nearly cost the girl her life and shown she could have blinders on when looking at certain kinds of cases. But that was more than five years ago, and even though she had recorded a monologue about it, Elle hadn’t found the right episode of the TCK case to include it in yet. If she was being honest with herself, she probably never would. It didn’t fit the narrative.

She put her elbow up on the car door and rested her forehead in her hand, squeezing her temples with thumb and middle finger. Her pulse throbbed against her fingertips.

“Are you okay?” Martín asked as he pulled into their driveway. Once the car was in park, he reached across the center console and put his gloved hand on hers. “Hey, Elle? What’s wrong?”

She shook her head, blinking again. “Nothing. Let’s just go inside. I need to sleep.”

“What happened at the station, querida? Tell me.”

“Nothing.” Opening the door, she stepped out onto the icy driveway and made her way to the front door.

Once inside, Elle hung up her scarf and coat, knocking her boots on the rug before taking them off.

Martín kept his on but handed her the keys to his car. “I’ll get a taxi in so you can have the car. We’ll pick yours up later.”

“Thanks. Sorry for making you late,” she said.

“It’s okay, I told them I would be. I knew it must be serious if Ayaan called me.” He reached up and cupped her face with his warm hands. “Your eyes are red.”

“I haven’t slept.”

He looked like he wanted to say more, but after a moment, he nodded. “Okay. Go to bed, amor. The case will still be here after a few hours of rest, and you can’t help that little girl if you can’t think.”

She blinked away a fresh batch of tears. “Are we good?”

Rather than answer, he tilted his head and pressed his mouth softly against hers.

“Good,” she murmured, too exhausted to say anything more. She started up the stairs to their bedroom.

“Elle,” he said.

“What?” She looked down at him.

Martín folded his arms across his chest, gazing up at her with the crease between his eyes that he got when he was stressed. “I believe you.”

“What?” she said again, this time in a whisper.

“I can tell there’s something you’re not telling me, and I don’t know why. But I need you to know that I have your back, no matter what.” Martín took two steps up to get closer to her. “No matter how outrageous it sounds, remember that I will always believe you first.” He leaned in, kissed her cheek, and then walked back down the stairs and out the door.

21

Elle

January 17, 2020

She was in the room again. The gray sheets were rough under her fingertips as she lay flat on her back, blinking at the mold patches on the ceiling. He hadn’t come to get her for more than a day. All her water was gone, and her stomach cramped with hunger. It made her . . . want to see him. Even though she knew what he’d make her do when he came back.

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, it was getting dark, the scrap of weak sunlight that came through her one small window disappearing like a dying flashlight. She could barely see the ceiling anymore.

Then he was in the room with her, thick arms and torso making a striking silhouette in the fading light.

The man sat on the bed, but her limbs were pinned down, frozen, as he leaned over her. He moved the thin blanket off her, examined her scabbed knees. She wanted to tell him to stop. She wanted to beg him for a drink of water. She wanted him to leave her alone.

She didn’t want to be alone.

In the gloaming, his face was a blur of indistinguishable features.

His fingers trailed up from her navel, across her sternum, and then landed on her throat. He pressed down, and this was new, this pain, this force he hadn’t used before that made it hard to breathe. She gasped, and it was tight against his palms, limited in a way her breathing had never been, and her chest clenched painfully.

“Please.” Her whisper was ragged in the cold air of the room. “Please.”

Elle jerked awake and sat up, her fingers throbbing against a pillow she had in a stranglehold. She dropped it as if it was on fire, pushing herself out of bed onto unsteady feet. The room was dark, and it took a moment to place where she was in time. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but something felt off. Something had happened.

And then it hit her with a sudden shiver of anxiety: she was supposed to pick up Natalie from piano lessons today. The black clock with big red numbers on Martín’s nightstand told her it was 5:22.

“Shit!” Her phone was nowhere to be seen. She ran down and rifled through her purse—sure enough, she’d missed seven calls from various numbers and had three texts from Natalie asking where she was. Even though Elle was only twenty minutes late, the first message from Natalie was from nearly an hour ago, just after she would have gotten off the bus in front of Ms. Turner’s house.

Something was wrong.

After shoving her feet into her boots and grabbing the nearest winter coat, Elle ran out to Martín’s car. She didn’t have time to let the engine warm up, and the car screeched in protest as she reversed out of the driveway. As she drove toward Ms. Turner’s house and the setting sun, Elle called Natalie’s phone. It went straight to voicemail. Once she got to a stoplight, she sent her a text.

ON MY WAY. I’M SO SORRY.

The light turned green, and she gunned the engine,