Page 110 of Kiss Her Goodbye

“I am not too tall,” Zahra speaks up.She regards us with her solemn gray eyes.

“You, my lovely, are too perfect to be anyone other than Zahra.And I think you are tall.Ginormous, in fact.A giant towering beast of a child with the best taste in cookies.”Genni ends her spiel by popping a frosted bunny into Zahra’s hand.Zahra obliging shoves it into her mouth, with a smear of hot pink icing across her lips.

“I’m not sure…” Daryl again.

“Yes you are.You just don’t like it, that’s different.”Roberta is eyeing him sternly.

Genni and I quickly busy ourselves with random tasks, Daryl’s discomfort too hard to take.

“Come on,” Roberta murmurs softly.“We both know I can be selfish.And sometimes… maybe even cruel.”

I grab the glass dish off the floor next to Petunia.Genni starts rinsing frosting bowls.

“But I never back down from a fight.You know that, Daryl.You know I got this.”

“We’re not even sure how many of them there are.Or how heavily armed, or well trained.”

“Then I’m glad you have my back.”

“I’ll tell your brother.”

“Then I’ll have this conversation with him, as well.Still won’t change anything.”

“We don’t even know if this will work.They might not be watching.They might not take the bait—” Daryl sounds increasingly desperate.

“They will.They have to.We’re running out of time.Daryl, we got this.It’s just a different kind of dance.”

Daryl’s shoulders come down.For a moment, he appears so crushed, so hopeless, I genuinely feel for the man.Despite Roberta’s big words, what we’re about to do is very dangerous.

Disguising Roberta as Sabera to lure known killers onto Bart’s estate.Giving away our one safe location in order to ambush the abductors and demand they lead us to Aliah.Can you negotiate with men who think nothing of torturing someone to death?Can we possibly end up with Farshid himself and get him to tell us everything?

Can we save Sabera?

The last time I played for stakes this high, rain was coming down in sheets on a tropical island, gunfire had already erupted, and I’d just come face-to-face with a severed head.Before that night was through…

In the past, I’ve worried about my job’s toll on me.I don’t know how to compartmentalize; I don’t have a trained detective’s battle-hardened worldview.From the very beginning, I gravitated toward missing persons because I know I’m not cut out for murder and mayhem.Yet lately, too many of my cases have turned bloody, and I have the nightmares to prove it.

Now I’m forced to wonder if my job is not only a threat to me but also a danger for others.Who am I to decide who lives or dies in the hours to come?Because in my bones, I already know this to be true.We can plan, strategize, hope, dream, but given the body count thus far, this will end violently.

And here I am, pulling the strings.

A woman with no formal investigative training.

Who barely eked out a high school degree.

Who has spent most of her life drowning in a bottle.

Forget being self-destructive.Am I now actively damaging others, as any official law enforcement expert, including Detective Marc (let alone a certain sexy Boston investigator), would have claimed?

On the other hand, who else is there?A local Afghan woman has been missing for weeks.Her husband has been tortured to death, her child nearly kidnapped, and her closest friend abducted.The powers-that-be are already overworked and disengaged.Which leaves me and the other misfit toys—a dream team comprised of a recovering alcoholic, ex-con limo driver, ballroom dancing parole officer, and transgender cook.

Maybe it’s a sad state of affairs that this is all who standsbetween Sabera and certain doom.Or maybe it speaks to the higher power of the universe that total strangers care that much.

I want to believe in the positive, but, mostly, as I look at the people around me, I wonder:

How many times can I cheat death?

And how many times can the people I befriend survive?