Say Goodbye by Lisa Gardner Read Free Book Online Page B

again. This time, Delilah didn’t try to stop her, just crossed her arms over her chest with a look of resigned hurt.
    It wasn’t until Kimberly stood that Delilah spoke again.
    “How far along?”
    “Pardon?”
    The girl was staring at Kimberly’s stomach. “When’re you due?”
    For a moment, Kimberly was nonplussed. Then she caught herself. She was at that point now where other people were bound to notice. She said, “Summer.”
    “You feel okay?”
    “I feel fine, thank you.”
    “Smells bother me,” the girl said matter-of-factly. “I get tired, too. But I keep away from the alcohol and the drugs. Just because I hook for a living doesn’t mean I don’t want better for my baby.”
    The girl let her jacket slide open, and for the first time, Kimberly saw it, the tight, rounded abdomen, not so different from her own. Delilah reached for Kimberly’s mini-recorder, picked it up.
    “Can I take this?”
    “No. Government property. Gotta buy your own.”
    Delilah put it back down. “But if I can get more information from Spideyman, maybe get him saying something about Ginny on tape, then you’ll help me?”
    Kimberly was still staring at the girl’s belly. She was suddenly sorry she had come down to the Sandy Springs PD. She didn’t want to be handling a young, very vulnerable, pregnant hooker.
    Her business card was still lying on the table. Finally, she picked it up and wrote her cell phone number on the back.
    “If you get him on tape, call me at that number.” Then, not really as an afterthought: “Delilah, be careful.”

FIVE
    MY OLDER BROTHER USED TO TELL ME, “DO AS I SAY, OR THE Burgerman will get you!”
    “There is no such thing as a Burgerman,” I would shout back.
    “Sure there is. He’s big, seven feet tall, dressed all in black. He enters the rooms of all the naughty boys in the middle of the night, snatching them out of bed and taking them off to his factory, where he grinds them into burgers and sells the meat to grocery stores. All the cheap stuff that’s turned brown in the meat market? That’s naughty-boy burgers. You can ask anyone.”
    I didn’t believe him until one night I woke up, and the Burgerman was standing at the foot of my bed.
    “Shhhh,” he said. “Don’t say a word, and maybe I’ll let your family live.”
    I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t move. I just stared at this large hulking form, nearly seven feet tall, all in black. I couldn’t believe my brother had been right. Then I started to shake, and my heart started to pound, and I think I wet the bed.
    “Move!” the Burgerman demanded harshly. “You wanna save your family, boy, then get your scrawny ass outta bed.”
    But I couldn’t move. I could only shiver uncontrollably.
    He tossed back the covers. He grabbed my arm and yanked me to the floor, his fingers digging into my upper arm. He twisted my shoulder and it hurt.
    My legs followed him on their own, I swear that’s how it happened, because surely there was no way I
wanted
to go with a man like him.
    In the hallway, he paused as if to get his bearings. I could see the cracked door of my brother’s room, just two feet away. I could hear the sound of my father snoring one room beyond that.
    Scream,
I thought.
This is it. Do something.
    In the dark, I could feel the Burgerman appraising me. He didn’t seem panicked or even alarmed.
    Instead, he smiled, a flash of white in the dark.
    “See, boy. See how much they care about you? I’m about to ruin your goddamn life, and your family can’t even be bothered to wake up for the event. Remember this, boy. You mean nothing to them. As of this moment, they no longer exist.
    “You belong to me.”
             
    He took away my clothes. Tossed me facedown on the bed. I fought as much as a nine-year-old boy can fight, my face pressed into the mattress, my lungs screaming for air. I thought he would kill me. Maybe I prayed he would once he was done.
    But he rolled over. Smoked a