Free Don't Let Go by Skye Warren

I’m cutting you off a second longer.”
    The woman, Mia Martinez, peeked around the man’s shoulder, an amused expression on her face. “Now that you’ve negotiated for my time, could I make one small request?”
    Something flickered in Martinez’s face at her words. Negotiated for my time could have a different, darker meaning in Laguardia’s circles. Had she been pimped out? Passed around? If so, it would make sense she’d be sensitive to things being decided for her. But if Martinez regretted his heavy-handedness, he didn’t show it. He’d do anything to keep her safe, I realized, even hurt her.
    Martinez murmured for her ears only, but I still heard him say, “You don’t have to talk to them at all, if you don’t want to. I can send them away.”
    “No,” she said. “I want to. They should know what they’re going to be facing. But…only the girl. Okay?”
    “Done,” Martinez said.
    She sent Lance an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. It’s nothing personal, just that—”
    Lance cleared his throat. The tips of his ears turned pink. “You don’t have to explain, Mrs. Martinez. Our goal as agents is to make you comfortable.”
    Right out of the student handbook, kids.
    Mia led me to a picnic table in their backyard. We left the men up front for what I imagined included a lot of glaring and posturing. In the shade, I got a better look at Mia. She was younger than I’d expected. I pictured the file…she would be twenty-eight, with wide eyes and porcelain skin that hinted at twenty.
    But her eyes told a different story. She could have been ancient for all the weary knowledge in her eyes. It was a strange juxtaposition, one I recognized from Hennessey. I wondered how much they had in common. Another pang of guilt hit me. He should be here with me, interviewing her right now. He would know the right questions. Unlike me.
    “Mrs. Martinez,” I began.
    “Mia,” she corrected. “Please. I’m not so formal among friends.”
    She was putting me at ease, and it worked. A slight blush heated my cheeks. She was really far too subtle for a guy like Laguardia, except she’d stayed with him for so many years. And then I knew what to ask.
    “How did you meet Laguardia?”
    She slanted me a look, as if trying to gauge my sincerity. I kept my expression still and open, because I was sincere. Unlike Hennessey, I wanted to understand the man behind the proverbial Wanted poster.
    “He picked me up off the street,” she said finally. “I was young. Too young. He gave me food, clothing. Medical attention. Education. I would have died out there, starved or been beaten to death by a guy three times my age. But he took me in.”
    He sounded like a saint. But we both knew better. “And he had sex with you.”
    She nodded, unsurprised at the dark turn of the conversation. “He had sex with me. At the time, it seemed fair enough. Like payment. Nothing is free on the streets.”
    “You said at the time. How do you see it now?”
    “I’m not sure…” Her lips pressed together. “You’ll probably think I’m romanticizing it, and maybe I am, but I felt like we understood each other. It’s not easy, in that life, to open yourself up to someone, to become vulnerable. Even sex isn’t always intimate.”
    “But between you it was?” I couldn’t hide the doubt from my voice.
    “Between us, everything was intimate. And nothing was. I’m sorry I can’t explain it better. I recognized the same darkness in him as I had in myself.” She paused, twirling a leaf on the knotted wood table. “Did you know my father sexually abused me?”
    The question flashed through me, a painful burst of light in the dark, even though I’d known that already. It was hard to imagine that on top of whatever abuse she’d suffered with Carlos. It changed a person, to look evil in the face at so young an age. I should know. But maybe they weren’t so different, flipsides of the same coin. The criminal and the victim. The aggressor