The guys stood frozen for a moment, not expecting the view. They weren't expecting her apartment to be the entire 17th floor, either.
It was bright: lights reflected off the stainless steel kitchen appliances to the left, separated from the spacious living room by a bar with a granite counter and wooden barstools. The floors were oak hardwood. The living room had 2 deep cherry red suede couches placed in front of one of the largest fireplaces the guys had ever seen, with an even larger TV mounted above it. Candles flickered on the mantle. More candles flickered on the low square glass table next to coffee table books of New York City photography, fashion, and vintage.
Behind the couches was a glass dining room table set for eight, with chairs the same color red as the couches. A crystal chandelier hung over it, and the entire wall on the right side of the room was mostly made of glass, giving a stunning view over Central Park and the Upper West Side beyond it. The city lights from here were beyond description, better than any movie that had ever tried to capture the life of New York. The enormous window continued through the corner of the apartment, and in the back corner was a spiral staircase.
The guys looked around anxiously, hoping to God they were in the right apartment suite, and too nervous to step out onto the wooden floor. But Racetrack stepped out first, seeing something on the kitchen bar. He picked up a newspaper, reading the headline to himself.
He turned around, meeting Jack's intense gaze. The guys stayed still in the elevator, Snoddy having to hold down the Door Open button, the elevator dinging quietly.
Race held up the front page of the Arts section of the New York Times, a center picture of a woman with red curly hair, bright blue eyes and a knockout smile staring out at them. The headline read "Most Powerful Woman on Broadway".
"The papers were cheaper in 1900," a woman's voice echoed.
Every head in the room jerked up to see her, standing at the head of the dining room table, staring at them. She was younger, just as David had described her. They had looked up her pictures on David's computer, seeing that wide familiar smile they loved, the smile that put them at ease. She looked the same, except there weren't as many laugh lines. She wore a white sweater that hung off her shoulder and white leggings. Her curly red hair was up in a messy bun, a few curls framing her face. Her eyes were glassy, but she didn't allow the tears to escape. She appeared cool as a cat.
"Hi, Race," she said gently.
Race had dropped the newspaper and stared at her.
She looked them over for a moment, all crammed in the elevator. Her face radiated a calm joy, like the breath of relief after watching a car accident and seeing everyone unscathed.
"You're…you're all grown up," she said. "You look...all the same. So strange," she smiled. "So wonderful. You must be…twenty-one? Twenty…"
"Twenty-three," Jack said.
Medda's eyes flashed to Jack's face and her breath caught.
"Hi, Medda," he said.
She didn't smile but she looked as if she was reliving a beautiful dream.
"Hello, Cowboy." Her strong gaze didn't waiver but her voice revealed her internal struggle to stay calm.
Jack left the elevator and crossed the room slowly, his eyes never leaving her face. Her expression was a mix of joy, sadness and fear. He stopped in front of her. The top of her head met the bridge of his nose.
He remembered the first time he had ever seen her, on stage, and later backstage when his father introduced him to her. She was younger then, and she looked like that now. For a moment, he felt like a boy again, looking into her blue eyes.
She smiled, breaking his heart.
"It's really you," she smiled. "I thought I was having another dream…waiting to hear my alarm clock."
Her brows furrowed and she leaned around Jack, looking at the others, "You know those things are a pain in the ass?"
The boys laughed without thinking, their muscles loosening. Jack smiled and laughed too, for the first time in days.
Medda gripped Jack's arm with her right hand, and held out her left to the boys, who finally left the confines of the elevator. They kissed her cheeks, laughed as she touched their faces, and she lit up as brightly as the city, her smile the biggest they'd ever seen. She kept shaking her head in disbelief.
"It's you, all of you," she said. "You're here," she whispered. "David, my dear David," she took his face in her hands. "I thought you weren't real this morning."
David smiled, "I thought you were gonna faint in the middle of the street."
The guys' laughter filled her apartment, the most beautiful sound she'd ever heard. She was happily overwhelmed by them, her hands not moving fast enough between them.
"Race, Specs, Mush, Spot!" she laughed as Spot held out his arms, his eyebrows raised.
"Ya favorite," Spot said coyly.
Race rolled his eyes and Medda laughed, hugging them both.
Her hands continued down memory lane, her eyes overjoyed as she looked at each of them. "Bumlets, Snoddy, Boots, ah! Brave, fearless Boots."
"He drives a taxi," Snoddy said. "He needs ta be fearless."
They laughed louder and they stood there for a few more minutes, lost for words, only wanting to look at each other.
"What…wait," She looked around them again and again and Jack knew who she was looking for. His smile faded.
Panic flashed over her face. "Where's Kid Blink?"
The boys fell silent, looking down, or out the expansive window behind them.
"You...haven't found him?" she asked gravely, her blue eyes striking in their sudden grief.
"No," Spot answered after a moment. They all knew Jack didn't want to talk about Kid.
"Not yet," David added.
She nodded, understanding the pain in their expressions.
"Man, I know that feeling," she said, after a moment, her eyes still lingering over their faces. Spot's bright eyes, Mush's beautiful smile, David's curly hair... "That feeling, right there in your eyes. I can't begin to tell you how long-how long I've waited…for…anything. I thought..."
She covered her mouth, her eyes exposing her heartbreak. Jack reached out quickly, wrapping one arm around her shoulders.
"I thought I was alone in this crazy strange world," she said.
She sniffed and pulled away from Jack, dabbing under her eyes. She still wouldn't cry.
"Still the toughest broad I know," Jack said, smirking.
Medda's eye cut to him, smirking back.
"I'm a business tycoon," she said thickly. "An emotional woman is bad for business. And here you guys come in here and threaten to reduce me to a puddle."
The guys chuckled at her.
"Here, sit down Medda," David said, pulling her to the couches.
They gathered around her, sitting on the couch next to her or on the floor. There wasn't any amount of awkwardness. They automatically clung to each other, like lifelines they thought they had lost. Even in this incredible apartment, it was like being in her apartment above her theater.
They waited, watching her as she said cross legged. She laughed looking at all of them crowded on her rug.
"You're all so big! So strong," Medda winked at Specs, making him blush and the others laugh.
"We're in construction," Mush said. "Well, most of us."
"I sells cars," Spot said proudly.
"Hot cars," Race corrected.
Spot whipped his head around, glaring at Race. Race only tipped his head, pulled out a cigar from his pocket, and popped it between his lips.
Medda laughed with them and then looked at Jack next to her, falling silent as she looked at him, laughing with his friends. He looked like a man.
"You look so much like your father," Medda said gently.
Jack's head jerked up at her words, seeing the soft smile on her lips.
"It's a good thing," she said with another wink.
He laughed again, dropping his gaze as he ran his fingers through his hair.
"Medda," David began slowly, taking a deep breath and releasing it, unsure of how to start. He shook his head, "What happened?"
Suddenly, the air hummed between them with intensity and urgency, and the guys pulled closer to her instinctively. Finally: another piece to add to the puzzle, a side of the story they didn't think they'd get.
Medda stiffened as if she were having a migraine, her eyes closing as she tried to remember.
"I can only...tell you what I know," Medda said slowly. "But I still see it all...our time is still the freshest in my mind...maybe because I think about it the most. Not a day goes by..."
She opened her eyes and looked at Jack's dark gaze.
"Not a day went by that I didn't think of you, all of you...For 17 years I thought of you every day… my Newsies."
Jack swallowed, his skin crawling at the word. They hadn't called themselves by that name since…
Medda took another deep breath, easing into her memories.
"From what David described to me this morning...I… "woke up" when I was 25 years old. I woke up in my body but with a different name, with different memories. I knew where I was…but I was lost, too. New York…is so much different now."
"Ya tellin' us," Boots muttered.
Medda looked out the window, smiling in amazement. "It's beautiful, it's crazy…it's unlike anything any of us could have ever imagined…I struggled to understand what was happening to me…what had happened to me…
"I went through…a deep depression. Why was I here? Where was… everyone else? I didn't have any answers. I didn't know what to do, who to talk to. But one day it occurred to me-to look for you," Medda looked at the guys on the floor in front of her; Bumlets, David, Specs, Snoddy, Boots.
"I never thought I would find you," she looked at Race and Spot, standing at the end of the couch behind Mush who sat next to her. She smiled, "But I had to try."
The glassy look in her eyes seemed permanent, Jack thought; like the tears had been there ever since she woke up and weren't likely to go away. She locked them tightly away, but the tears shed for the lost years together would always be there.
"I got back into theatre, which helped to distract me during the day," she said happily. The guys smiled. "I went to audition after audition, and I changed my name. I used to be Courtney Biggs."
She stuck out her tongue and they laughed harder, loving the familiar charm of her smile.
"I became Camille Larkson, and that made me feel better too. I made shows, got on Broadway, and my artists' heart was alive. I knew things at 28 that actors and dancers didn't know at 40. I knew the business and I knew how to work it. But by night, I went to every public and university library archive in the city, looking for anything and everything I could find."
She hesitated, her expression wavering as her eyes cutting to David, "How much do you know…about what happened to you boys in 1901?"
The boys' lungs froze in mid-breath, the faint distant noises of the city below the only sounds in the apartment, echoing softly. David's eyes jumped up to Jack and their anxious and startled expressions mirrored each other.
"We…we don't know much about what happened," David looked back to Medda, his words careful and slow. "We…some of us, have dreams…we try to make sense of them. Like Jack-"
"I dream I'm in a jail cell," Jack said quickly, his dark eyes even with Medda's. "I have the same dream 'bout every week. I'm in a jail cell goin' mad."
Medda's face paled.
"I almost didn't want to find anything in my research," she said, her voice far away. "I was afraid of what…"
She shook her head of the thoughts and got up. She crossed to the other couch, pulling a banker's box from between the couch and the window. The box overflowed with both copied pages and actual clippings of newspapers. She kicked the box several times with her foot, sliding it between the guys.
They shrank away from the box as if it would attack them; attack them with the knowledge of what they had wanted to find when David went to open his computer…
But most days they went to the videogame consoles, went out to dinner at their favorite bar down the street and around the corner, or simply sat around with beers in their hands talking and laughing about the good times of the old days. The thing was, David mostly researched how to find Ira and Kid. Because even though they didn't say it, they all thought it: they didn't want to find out how they died.
Medda looked up at Jack, her eyes bright with a strange hostility, "There. In that box is all the world had to tell me about Jack Kelly and the Newsies of New York in 1900. That box told me how each of you lived and died. And I never-"
She gasped, covering her mouth as she looked away out the window, watching the city lights over the park.
"I never found anything…on her," she shook her head, her hands flying up to fix her messy hair, trying to distract herself, something she must have learned to do well over the years when the memories became too much. But she couldn't stop the fresh tears. Thinking of her…of Ira, was too much for Medda to suppress.
"I never found anything on her," she said again, shaking her head.
David shot up and his words flowed quickly, "Medda, we found her. We saw Ira today, she's here."
Medda's head whipped around to look at David, then to Jack. Her startled blue eyes were intense on his face. "What—when? How? Where is she? Is she alright?"
"She's a student at NYU," Mush said quickly, trying to calm her. He smiled, "She's studying dance, Medda. She's here, in 2016."
Medda put her hand over her chest, trying to breathe. She looked out the window again as if she would see Ira amongst all the buildings of the sprawling city.
Jack looked away. He didn't understand why he detested the look of hope in her expression.
Medda looked at Jack. "You saw her?" she said breathlessly.
Jack glanced up, nodding solemnly.
Medda's brow drew together, questioning him. "I know that face. What's wrong?"
"Nothin'," Jack stood and went to the dining room table, putting his hands in his pockets as he looked out the window to the park and the city beyond it.
David watched Jack and spoke carefully, "She doesn't know." He met Medda's confused eyes. "Ira hasn't woken up…yet."
Jack shuffled his feet, feeling his blood pressure climb, his arms and neck burning. He could see her clear as day in his head, walking towards him, walking past him, hearing her voice without its Russian roll. Her face…
"She looked right through me taday," he said roughly, the glass fogging under his breath.
The guys looked up at him. Jack had been so quiet ever since he'd seen her. He'd act normal one minute but they could see it in his eyes, burning under the surface…irritation, anger. The same look he had back when he and Ira fought like crazy. Except then he was at least happy, even if he didn't show it. Now, he just looked miserable.
"Jack, why didn't you talk ta her?" Mush asked innocently.
Race shot Mush a dark look. And Mush shrugged, scrambling through his words.
"What! I mean-Ya went after her, Jack, I thought ya would've-"
"And have her look at me like a stranger again?" Jack said, turning to face his friends. His eyes were dark, like they always are when he's pissed. "Nah, I had all I could take taday, thanks."
"But she's here," Medda said dreamily, a small smile tugged at her lips. "That's enough for me. And she's dancing again..."
The guys smiled a little, thinking of the last time they saw Ira dance on Medda's stage, the way Medda used to look at Ira, on and off stage. Medda had taken Ira under her wing, had fought for her as she healed, physically and emotionally. Medda loved her Newsies, but Ira was like a daughter to her.
"We're keeping an eye on her," Boots said, giving the woman a wise nod. "Don't ya worry, Medda."
"Yeah," Snoddy agreed, clapping Boots on the shoulder. "We're on it."
"So… what do we do with this?" Specs said as he nudged the ominous box with his shoe. "I mean…do we wanna find out, guys? Do we wanna know if we went out in a blaze of glory?"
"I think we'd remember if we did," Race said incredulously.
"But we don't," Spot interjected, crossing his arms. "We don't rememba anything. And I wanna know why."
Jack left the window, striding over to the cluster of guys to pull out the first page from the box. He unfolded it wordlessly, his eyes scanning the headline.
NEWSIES GO ON STRIKE
"This is gonna take a minute," Race sighed as he ran his fingers through his dark hair.
Medda went to Jack's side, looking down at the clipping. She smiled a little.
"You must be a little excited, Cowboy," she looked up at his stone-like face. "You found her. Just like you said you would back in 1901. You found her."
Jack thought for a moment before nodding, determined. "I'll make her remember, Medda. I'll make her remember…everythin'."
She squeezed his hand, "I know you will."
"'ey, it's our picha!" Spot yelled, waving a copied page of their very first headline story. "Man, we were kings!"
Medda laughed, leaving Jack's side to sit on the floor with the guys. Jack sat on the couch, next to Mush. Mush clapped his hand on Jack's shoulder, sharing a glance between each other.
The guys went through clippings about Medda and Irving Hall, the Newsies' strike. Then they got to the clippings about Garrison Rockefeller, and his trial for sex trafficking and illegal narcotics, a branch of crime that was beyond their knowledge at the time.
"I hate his fuckin' mug," Race spat, reading the article about his engagement to Joe Pulitzer's niece, the same article Ira had taken from his hands when he had first read it... Chills went down his spine and he had to put the paper down.
Such a strange feeling, knowing she was here in 2016, but remembering her as a ghost…
The guys each had a paper in their hand, but the one Mush grabbed had what they were looking for.
"'ey…'ey guys look at this one."
Medda's good humor had faded slowly as she had watched them go through the box, their laughter decreasing as they dug deeper. And now as she watched Mush, she knew they were about to discover their past…and the blood that went with it.
Her heart broke, even though they were right in front of her, it was like they were fading away, dying before her eyes.
She remembered the day too, the day they had…
"I need a drink," she said, rising from the couch. "Or maybe the bottle."
The guys all agreed in chorus, and she went to her liquor cabinet, fleeing the living room. She didn't want to hear it again.
Mush's face paled. "It's about Jack."
Jack stiffened next to Mush, his dark eyes were shadowed under his furrowed brow. He couldn't look at the paper, he only stared at David's right knee in front of him.
"Alright Mush…just read it," Snoddy said anxiously.
"Give it to us straight," Boots encouraged.
Spot and Race leaned in, their eyes trained on their friend's face.
Mush read aloud slowly, tasting each word, unable to comprehend and believe the bold words on the page.
"April 16, 1901, Francis Sullivan, newsboy and leader of the Newsie Strike of 1899, incarcerated for the murder of Elizabeth Rockefeller, wife of Garrison Rockefeller, and niece to Joseph Pulitzer. Sullivan also goes by the alias… Jack Kelly."
Everyone couldn't move or blink. To say that the story took them be surprise was an understatement. Jack's fists balled up tight.
Mush looked up at Jack, "THIS IS HORSE SHIT!"
They erupted like volcanoes, shouting and ripping at the paper, trying to read the rest over their rising anger.
"The fuck you ever killed her!" Snoddy shouted.
"The fuck he ever killed anybody!" Racetrack boomed.
"'Sullivan stood trial for one day before being sentenced to life in prison'… they didn't even give you a full paragraph, the rest is about that weasel fuck Garrison!" Mush shouted, the upset expression on his face only solidifying Jack's silent fury. He still couldn't comprehend…
Jack ripped the paper away from Snoddy, reading the short paragraph himself. It said he had snuck into the Rockefeller house, shot Garrison's wife in their bedroom, and was arrested the next day at the lodging house.
"That's not even what happened!" Boots shouted. "That bitch killed herself at tha docks tha same night-"
"Tha same night Ira disappeared," Spot finished, his eyes looking up at Boots.
Jack's body was on fire, his blood boiled in his veins. Before, he had had no memory of any of this. Now he heard the smack of a mallet, the slam of iron bars, the shouts of people in streets. He remembered now. A cold sweat beaded all over him. He had been framed.
"Ya think…" Mush said slowly, his heart still beating away like mad. "They were all in on it?"
Medda had stopped making drinks in the kitchen, listening.
"They had enough money to do whateva they wanted," Snoddy said gravely. "Even change history."
"Garrison…" Specs breath was shaky. "Killed them both?"
"Let's not egt ahead of ourselves," David said calmly, holding out his hands. "We're just finding out what happened to us…let's start there."
Boots pulled out the next paper and Race went for the one after.
Boots read, "It's a jail record…'Francis Sullivan, deceased September 21, 1901, self-inflicted."
"Suicide," Medda said emotionlessly.
The guys turned to look at her. She was making Manhattans at the marble topped bar, her expression cold on her warm face.
"They recorded it a suicide when not two months earlier in the same records a man was hired on as a guard who I know for a fact was one of Garrison's boys."
She slammed down the steel mixer, bracing herself against the bar. She looked up at Jack's steely face.
"You were murdered in the middle of the night, Cowboy. By a coward who was across the city. And your life ended in a jail record."
Jack couldn't speak, couldn't come to terms with it…He didn't have a chance of seeing it coming. What chance he had had was taken away the moment they had rescued Ira from the Underground. Ira had been right: Garrison said he'd kill him, and he had been a man of his word.
"He killed her, too" Jack said. He stared out the window again, seeing his friends' reflections in the glass, looking at him. "He killed Ira." Her name burned him as it escaped his lips.
His anger was almost too much to bear.
"He killed all of us," Race said, reading a new clipping. "'Newsies Slaughtered in Gang Fight', November 25, 1901."
Medda was still in the kitchen, listening to the silence shared between them, their mourning. Death was something the Newsies had never feared, because they had never thought of it. Death wasn't given a chance to thrive in them, because they fought it every day; fought it to the point that they had felt nearly invincible. They had lost their leader and their lives all in the same year.
"Our lives…summed up in five words," Mush said slowly, his eyes beyond sadness as he looked up at Race and Spot.
"'Newsboys were found early morning on November 24 in an alleyway near Irving Hall. The other participants were not found...'," Race grimanced. "Three guesses who...'Records from the Newsboy Lodging House helped to identify the bodies...' it lists our real names...fuck, everyone is this room...Kid Blink too."
"Fuck," Bumlets muttered, hanging his head.
"Not David," Medda said.
David's head shot up, looking at Medda as the guys looked at him.
"You weren't there that night. You were with your family."
David looked lost, trying to sift through his memories of the past...trying to remember. He remembered many nights with his family, even more with the Newsies...
"You went off to law school the following year," Medda said sadly. "And you were determined to have Garrison put away. You were murdered September 10, 1903 on your way home from my theatre. You and I used to meet almost every night, trying to build a case against him while you studied. You were so determined."
David looked away, his jaw clenched tight.
"Still fought for us," Boots said as all of them looked at David with respect in their eyes.
"Wouldn't expect anythin' less," Spots said.
David shook his head, "I only wish I could've died fighting beside my brothers."
Mush put his hand on the back of David's head, Snoddy and Specs squeezed his shoulders. Medda, still in the kitchen, had turned her back to all of them.
"We're alive now," Jack said slowly but firmly, looking at the guys around him.
They looked up at him as if he were pulling them from the water they were drowning in.
Jack couldn't stand this, didn't want to see his friends get stuck on their past…on their death dates. The look in their eyes defeated the life and laughter that had been there so many times, before Garrison took it away. Jack had been so lost in his own confusion and depression that he'd forgotten he was still looked up to, still their leader. He had to snap out of it, he had to remember who he used to be.
In 2015, they had a second chance.
He stood up, looking at all of them. "We're alivenow. For whateva reason, we're alive. We came back from wherever, we've found each other, and soon we'll find Kid. This is…a second chance ta live. We gotta do right this time."
The guys' faces changed before him, agreeing with him and feeling the most empowered they had felt since waking up to this new world. Jack looked at David, seeing him smiling.
"I'll cheers to that," Medda said as she came back to the couches, carrying a tray full of glasses with pinkish red liquid in them. "I think this is an appropriate time to drink our sorrows away. And get that box outta my sight."
Mush and Specs quickly collected the papers and shoved the box into the elevator as Medda set the tray down on the square glass coffee table. They would throw the box away when they left.
Medda laughed as they all enjoyed their Manhattans, Spot and Race doing a thorough job of cheering everyone up.
"I wanna know why we look exactly tha same," Spot said loudly. "A few inches talla, is that so much ta ask for?"
"Such a curse, bein' stuck with that ugly mug a second time," Race said, sipping his drink.
It spilled on his face when Spot slapped him up side the head.
The guys laughed, and David fought to speak over them, "Guys I told you about reincarnation, there are theories and instances that prove it's possible-"
An orange tabby cat jumped up from under the sofa, spooking the guys. The tabby curled up in Medda's lap, and a black cat appeared on the back of the couch behind her head.
Medda stroked the tabby's ears.
"The black one is Jack," Medda said with a smirk, glancing up to see Jack's eyes roll. The guys laughed.
"This one," Medda kissed the tabby's head. "Is Kid."
Sadness fell over them and Medda looked up, sighing.
"Well we're out of alcohol and we still need to cheer the hell up. Time for cheap Chinese."
The guys laughed and Medda unfolded her legs from the couch, her cats following her as she went to the kitchen.
"Medda, can I use your laptop?" David asked as he went to the dining room table, reaching for the device.
"I never use the thing, do whatever you want with it," Medda said as she held her cell phone between her ear and shoulder. She was gazing into her monstrous fridge. "I lied boys; I have beer."
The boys whooped and hollered, flooding into the kitchen as she pulled out six packs of tall boys.
"Gotta love a woman with beer," Spot said, squeezing Medda's shoulders.
Medda laughed, looking into the living room where David and Jack were sitting on the couch, staring at the laptop in David's lap.
"What are you two doing? I have beer and they stay over there! Yes, hi, I'd like 5 orders of chicken fried rice, 40 egg rolls, 40 crab Rangoon, and 3 orders of sesame chicken…"
Race's eyes rolled back as he swallowed a gulp of beer, "I love this woman."
"To tha best broad on Broadway," Boots said, raising his beer. The guys shouted and cheered their bottles.
The guys laughed and David looked up, smiling.
"Just thought you'd like to see Ira, Medda."
Medda took the phone away from her ear slowly as she looked at the laptop far away in the living room, the light blue screen glowing. Jack smiled at her gently as she left the kitchen, walking as if she were in a trace. Her left hand clutched at her stomach and her right at her heart, holding herself together as she approached the back of the couch, looking between Jack and David's heads, both of whom were looking at her.
The guys from the kitchen followed, standing next to the couch so they could see the picture and Medda's face. They smiled sadly at her expression when her eyes landed on the Facebook picture, seeing Ira's headshot; her cool gaze and coy smirk sucker punched them all in the stomach.
Years of heartache, years of sleepless nights and years of haunting memories sprung to Medda's eyes, unable to hold them back like she'd been doing all night. Tears fell down her face as she looked at the young woman, her face all too familiar, so familiar that it pained her to look at it. She took a breath but it sounded like a strangled sob. She covered her mouth, trying to hold the rest of herself together as she looked into those cold gray eyes, gray like the sea.
It was the first time she couldn't hide the emotions storming inside her, but the guys understood: seeing Ira was like facing a magnet, pulling out every bit of misery and sheer joy they'd ever felt.
Medda almost looked frightened.
"She-" Medda shook her head and closed her tired eyes, trying to catch her breath. "She looks-"
"We know," Spot said, putting his arm around the woman's shoulders.
"She looks exactly tha same, too," Mush said, looking away from the computer.
Medda swallowed and spoke carefully, "She…doesn't have the scar above her—her left breast anymore."
Medda turned away, her face tightening up as she tried to fight the new wave of tears.
After studying her picture a thousand times, Jack had noticed it too. It was Ira's body, but it was like it had never been touched…no bruises shaped like fingers, no scars.
The image of her broken body flashed in his mind and he stood up, walking away to the window to hide his eyes from the rest of them.
Medda went to Jack, gripping his arms.
"Jack, it's a second chance. Just like you said."
Jack saw her lower lip tremble in the window reflection.
"She has a second chance," Medda said gently, looking out the window to the busy city streets, lights from cars crawling across the dark lines.
"We don't even have a plan yet," David said, putting the laptop on the coffee table. "We only found her today. We don't know what to do."
Jack sighed, rubbing his hand over his face. He was exhausted.
Medda turned to the guys, their eyes eager at the fresh look of determination on her face as she wiped away the wetness from her cheeks.
"We don't do anything," she said at last, her voice steady. She glanced sideways at Jack and his eyes questioned her.
"But you have a lot of work to do, Cowboy."
