Vanish: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

face, and he was angry. A girl like that is bad for business, so she is being sent back to Ukraine. That is what the Mother told us last night, when the girl did not come back to the room.
    That, at least, is the story.
    “Maybe it’s true,” I say, and my breath is a puff of steam in the darkness. Olena and I are once again sitting on the roof. Tonight it sparkles like a frosted cake under the moonlight. Last night it snowed, barely a centimeter, but enough to make me think of home, where there has surely been snow on the ground for weeks. I am glad to see the stars again, to be sharing this sky with Olena. We have brought both our blankets outside, and we sit with our bodies pressed together.
    “You’re stupid if you really believe that,” says Olena. She lights a cigarette, the last one from the party on the boat, and she savors it, looking up at the sky as she inhales the smoke, as though offering thanks to heaven for the blessings of tobacco.
    “Why don’t you believe it?”
    She laughs. “Maybe they sell you to another house, or another pimp, but they don’t ever send you home. Anyway, I don’t believe anything the Mother says, the old whore. Can you believe it? She used to turn tricks herself, about a hundred years ago. Before she got so fat.”
    I cannot imagine the Mother ever being young or thin or ever enticing a man. I cannot imagine a time when she was not repulsive.
    “It’s the cold-blooded whores who end up running the houses,” says Olena. “They’re worse than the pimps. She knows what we suffer, she’s done it herself. But all she cares about now is the money. A lot of money.” Olena taps off an ash. “The world is evil, Mila, and there’s no way to change it. The best you can do is stay alive.”
    “And not be evil.”
    “Sometimes, there’s no choice. You just have to be.”
    “You couldn’t be evil.”
    “How do you know?” She looks at me. “How do you know what I am, or what I’ve done? Believe me, if I had to, I’d kill someone. I could even kill
you.
”
    She stares at me, her eyes fierce in the moonlight. And for a moment—just for a moment—I think she is right. That she
could
kill me, that she is ready to do anything to stay alive.
    We hear the sound of car tires rolling over gravel, and we both snap straight.
    Olena immediately stubs out her precious cigarette, only half smoked. “Who the hell is this?”
    I scramble to my feet and cautiously crawl up the shallow slope of roof to peer over the edge, toward the driveway. “I don’t see any lights.”
    She clambers up beside me and peeks over the edge as well. “There,” she murmurs as a car emerges from the woods. Its headlights are off, and all we see is the yellow glow of its parking lights. It stops at the edge of the driveway, and two men step out. Seconds later, we hear the door buzzer. Even at this early hour, men have their needs. They demand satisfaction.
    “Shit,” hisses Olena. “Now they’re going to wake her up. We have to get back to the room before she finds out we’re gone.”
    We slide back down the roof and don’t even bother to snatch up our blankets, but immediately scramble onto the ledge. Olena slips through the window, into the dark attic.
    The doorbell buzzes again, and we hear the Mother’s voice as she unlocks the front door and greets her latest clients.
    I scramble through the window after Olena, and we cross to the trap door. The ladder is still down, the blatant evidence of our location. Olena is just backing down the rungs when she suddenly stops cold.
    The Mother is screaming.
    Olena looks up at me through the trap door. I can see the frantic glow of her eyes in the shadows below me. We hear a thud, and the sound of splintering wood. Heavy footsteps pound up the stairs.
    The Mother’s screams turn to shrieks.
    All at once, Olena is climbing back up the ladder, shoving me aside as she scrambles through the trap door. She reaches down through the opening, grabs the ladder, and pulls. It rises, folding, as the trap door closes.
    “Back,” she whispers. “Out on the roof!”
    “What’s happening?”
    “Just
go,
Mila!”
    We run back to the window. I am the first one through, but I’m in such a rush that my foot slides across the ledge. I give a sob as I fall, clawing in panic at the windowsill.
    Olena’s hand closes around my wrist. She hangs on to me as I dangle, terrified.
    “Grab my other hand!” she whispers.
    I reach for it and she pulls me up, until I