River of Glass by Jaden Terrell

a touch of cinnamon. Khanh picked at her food while the rest of us made stilted conversation. Thoughts of death hovered like another presence at the table. We might as well have set out another coffee cup.
    It was a relief when we finally pushed our plates away and retired to the living room to watch the news.
    Khanh said, “If Tuyet you daughter . . . you sit home, watch TV?”
    I picked up the Papillon and set him on my lap. “I want to see if there’s anything about your daughter or the dead girl on the news.”
    “Oh.” She tilted back in the lounger and curled her knees toward her chest, arms wrapped around her shins. The fingers of her good hand clasped her stump. “You do big favor, I too big hurry. I know.”
    Jay pointed toward the screen. “Look.”
    Ashleigh Arneau sat behind the anchors’ desk, a strained smile on her face. Beside her, looking young and fresh and chipper was the blonde woman I’d seen at the crime scene.
    “What does that look like to you?” I asked.
    Jay chuckled. “Poetic justice.”
    Neither Ashleigh nor her apparent understudy mentioned the murder. Old news now, especially with no breaks in the case. The new, hot news was another explosion, this one in East Nashville. Five dead, two injured. The photos of the victims showed glazed eyes and prison tats. This time, the message read: For Justice. No mercy .
    “My God,” Eric said. “He’s going to be a fucking folk hero.”
    “For a while.” I pushed out of the lounger and handed Jay the remote. “Until he kills someone who matters.”
    Khanh scowled at the screen. “Many police there.”
    I knew what she was thinking, because I was thinking it too. All the man-hours that would be going into finding the bomber.
    Hours that would not be spent finding Tuyet.
     
    Tuyet
    I n the corner of the shed, Tuyet scratched a line into the metal. There were five lines now, one for each day Dung had been gone. They looked like white hairs against the paint. Tuyet imagined her grandfather’s face when Dung handed him the photo, pink skin turning ashen, gray eyes widening in surprise. What is this? he would ask, and somehow Dung would make him understand.
    The doorknob rattled, and Tuyet dropped her hands to her sides and sidled back to her mattress. The other women in the room looked at each other, their faces sallow in the sooty light.
    The door opened, and the boss man strode in, Mat Troi and the tattooed man a step behind. The boss man’s jaw was taut, his lips thin and white. Tuyet’s throat tightened until her breath was a thread.
    Mat glanced in her direction, and she forced a smile, as if she still thought there was something special between them, as if she still found him beautiful. He didn’t smile back, but there was hunger in his eyes.
    The boss man said, “Dung is dead.” He reached into the jacket of his expensive suit and pulled out a photograph. A shiver started in Tuyet’s stomach, spread to her arms and legs. She wrapped her arms around herself to keep the men from noticing. “She betrayed us, and you helped her. One of you, some of you . . . maybe all of you. And by helping her, you made this happen.”
    He thrust the photo toward Hong’s face, then Weasel’s, then Beetle’s. Hong sucked in a sharp breath and curled her hands into fists. Weasel flicked a nervous tongue across her lips. Beetle stared at the picture with dull, flat eyes. He passed down the aisle between the mattresses, flashing the photo at each of the women, and stopped in front of Tuyet. Held the picture up to show the broken doll that had once been Dung, curled into a nest of plastic garbage bags. In bright red letters, someone had stamped: Police file—confidential.
    Tuyet’s eyes stung. She had not even known Dung’s name.
    “Look at the date,” the boss man said. “Five days ago. She didn’t have time to talk to anyone. She didn’t ask for help. So if you were thinking some white knight would come bursting in here to save your pretty