Trafficked by Kim Purcell Page B

wanted to collapse on the musty-smelling sofa in the garage, but there was something she had to do first. She’d stayed up an extra hour to make sure everyone was asleep.
    There were no sounds coming from the bedrooms upstairs. It was safe. She reached under the sofa for the packing tape she’d hidden earlier in the day and then crept across the garage. After Lillian had told her that she really didn’t like playing with the children’s toys, Hannah had decided the toy area would be the best place to hide something. Everywhere else was risky because everything was super organized, but Lillian didn’t like to come in here. Toys made her cringe, she’d said, and not once in the last week had Hannah seen her sit down on the floor with Michael to play with him.
    Hannah took a small board book called
Goodnight Moon
from the bookshelf, taped the passport in the back, and closed the book. Nobody would ever guess it was where she’d put her documents. She lifted the seat of a fire engine riding toy, which Michael never rode because the wheels didn’t work, and placed the book inside with a small ball on top to grab Michael’s attention if he ever looked there.
    Was that a creak? She listened, holding her breath, but didn’t hear anything else. She wished she could lock the door to the garage.
    Now she had to get rid of the money pouch. If Lillian found even that, she’d know that Hannah had been lying. All week, Hannah had been terrified her shirt would come up while she was cleaning and someone would see the strap. She opened the door to the garage and tiptoed past the washer and dryer, then peeked around the corner, down the hall. The house was quiet. All the lights were off. As long as she could make it to the kitchen, she’d be fine.
    She took off her slippers and held on to them while she slid down the dark hallway in her socks. In the dark kitchen, she dropped the money pouch into the garbage under the sink.
    There was a creak, the sound of a footstep on wood. She smelled the vodka on Sergey’s breath and his overly strong sports deodorant. She spun around. He stepped into the kitchen, from the dining room, wavering a little.
    He gripped the wall. “You are working in the dark?” he slurred.
    Immediately she thought of her socks and how she’d taken off the slippers to be quiet. She put them on the ground and stepped into them, figuring he wouldn’t notice since he was so drunk. “I’m almost finished.”
    He flicked on the switch and stared at her, as if she’d startled him. “You look so much like—” he slurred, stopping suddenly as if remembering himself.
    â€œWho?” she asked, thinking he was acting strangely.
    â€œNobody,” he murmured. “Just someone I knew in Ukraine.”
    A lot of Ukrainians looked like Moldovans if they had Russian in them, but Hannah knew she looked more Moldovan than Russian, even though she was three-quarters Russian, one-quarter Romanian. Her grandfather on her mother’s side had been Romanian, and that was perhaps the reason her olive skin tanned so well, rather than burning like Katya’s, though the bright green of her eyes came from the Russian side. Her mother, her uncle Vladi, and Babulya all had the same eyes.
    Sergey stepped back into the dining room, where she heard the glug of alcohol being poured. She hated that sound. It reminded her of the man her father had become. The brandy her father used to make from sweet beets would fill their house with a rotting, sour odor that she’d never forget. More than once, the pressure cooker he’d rigged to make the alcohol had exploded and burned him. Her mother used to treat his wounds with a leafy plant called plantain that she found in the woods near their apartment on the edge of Chişinău, but Hannah wouldn’t have anything to do with it. She thought the pain served him right.
    Hannah heaved the garbage bag