Her Pretty Face by Robyn Harding

Author:Robyn Harding
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press

frances

NOW

The bland apartment building squatted on the edge of a busy street. As instructed, Daisy had found the address and texted it to Frances. She parked her car, grabbed her purse and a canvas shopping bag filled with supplies, and hurried toward the four-story structure. The main door of the dated building was propped open; someone was moving in or out, or having furniture delivered. A midsize white moving truck took up two spaces out front. Frances walked past the two men lugging the pieces of a couch or a bed in a massive cardboard box, and hurried inside.

She took the stairs. She didn’t have patience to wait for the small, rickety elevator. Her heart pounded as she climbed—exertion and nerves. What would she find when she reached apartment 308? Was Daisy okay? Was she alone? Was Frances putting herself in danger, too? She should have called Kate. Or Jason, for backup. But she had promised to help the troubled girl and she would. Emerging into the musty hallway, she hustled to the door.

Frances knocked loudly. “Daisy, it’s me,” she called through the flimsy wood. “Let me in.”

It took a few seconds, but the door opened, revealing the teen. The girl was pale—almost green—and smelled of alcohol and sick. Her posture was hunched and pained. She stepped back, allowing Frances into the apartment.

“Are we alone?” Frances asked, surveying the room. It was a furnished apartment: standard-issue hotel furniture and artwork. No personal touches.

“Yes,” Daisy answered in a small voice.

“Are we safe?”

The girl nodded. “David’s my friend. He’s not dangerous.” Then her face crumpled. “At least, I don’t think he is.”

Who the hell is David? How did you meet him? What are you doing, alone and hungover, in his apartment? But now was not the time for an inquisition.

“I brought supplies,” Frances said instead, digging in the bag. She extracted a bottle of electrolyte drink and a small container of antinausea pills. “This will rehydrate you and stop the vomiting.”

Daisy accepted the drink and removed the lid with shaking hands. She put the bottle to her lips as Frances watched her.

“Oh god,” the girl muttered, as her stomach lurched. Pressing the bottle into Frances’s grip, she scurried down the hallway.

“Daisy, we should go!” Frances called after her, but the sound of the bathroom door closing drowned out her words.

Frances moved into the galley kitchen, opening cupboards and drawers, searching for a clue to David’s identity. The man could be a pervert, a pedophile, a human trafficker. And he could return at any moment. Frances wanted them both gone before he did. The kitchen proved to be fully stocked with cooking supplies and utensils, but devoid of any personal effects. Even the fridge was bare but for two bright pink vodka coolers and a few beers. Wedged between the fridge and the microwave, she found a plastic binder full of takeout menus, the apartment’s address written prominently on the front page in blue ink. That was likely where Daisy had found the digits she had texted to Frances.

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