Felix tried to remember the details of Ella’s brother’s ordeal. He remembered hearing about it back then, but he’d had so much going on in the past two years there was no way he’d remember everything. He knew someone had been raped—Sonia. That much Nellie had refreshed him on just before he met Sonia. And that Ella had been someone in Sonia’s life who went on a mission to help give young girls like Sonia a fighting chance against a predator. He’d forgotten someone had actually died. And for some reason, when Nellie had mentioned one of Sonia’s relatives or close friends being on a mission to get the self-defense classes going, all this time he’d imagined it was an aunt or mom or something. Given Sonia’s age, he’d been expecting someone a lot older to be behind all this. But now Nellie was referring to her as so young.

“How old is she?”

“Gosh,” she said, opening the door to the room where the classes were taking place. “I’m not real sure, but I believe twenty or twenty-one.”

“Oh wow.” That was something he wasn’t expecting. “She’s just a kid then.”

Nellie nodded wide-eyed as if to say I told you so. It dawned on Felix in that instant that, when this first happened, Ella couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. He had to admit that was impressive. And now the girl wanted to start a huge breast-cancer awareness campaign and event. Okay, his curiosity about this girl was growing with everything new he learned about her.

They walked into the room where the current class appeared to be wrapping it up. Nellie looked around for a bit then walked up to the girl he remembered as Sonia standing with another girl. “Where did Ella go?”

Sonia and the girl with her turned to look at Felix. Sonia smiled timidly, and the starry-eyed look on the other girl’s face was one he was all too familiar with. So he smiled, nodding at both of them.

“She had to go,” Sonia said, glancing at Nellie then back at him.

“Go?” Nellie asked. “I told her I was bringing Felix in to meet her.”

“Yeah,” Sonia said, looking a bit regretful now. “I don’t know. She just said she had to go and that she’d text you.”

Nellie pulled her phone out of the holster and frowned. “Hmm.” She turned to Felix when she finished reading the text and exhaled, continuing to frown. “I don’t know what happened. She was here a few minutes ago when I told her I’d be bringing you over, and she said she’d wait. Her text didn’t say much else other than something came up. But you’ll be back again tomorrow, right?”

“Day after tomorrow,” Felix said, feeling a little disappointed, but he shrugged it off. “I’ll meet her eventually.”

They walked around the room as Nellie showed him some of the photos taken from previous classes. They’d apparently had a radio station broadcast from there because there were photos of a D.J. booth from one of the local radio stations.

Nellie pointed at the photos with the D.J. “That’s when we first announced the classes being offered. We offered the classes for free that first weekend, and man did we have a full house.”

They continued to take the small tour of the room, and then Nellie pointed at a photo of two girls on either side of a guy in a padded suit, the kind worn so all the women in the class could kick and punch him in the nuts. “That’s her.” She frowned, looking around at the other photos. “You’d think we’d have more of her up here.”

Felix moved in for a closer look. The first thing he noticed was she was small. The guy next to her in the huge padded suit likely dwarfed her, but the girl on the other side didn’t look as small. The second was what a nice smile she had. “That tiny thing put all this together?”

Nellie laughed. “That tiny thing has a lot to say, and she says it all with conviction.”

Felix took the moment Nellie looked away to sneak in another quick examination of “Mighty Little Ms. Ella.” Judging by the photo alone, Hector was right. There was nothing extraordinary about her looks, but there was something familiar about her. From what he was hearing, Felix hadn’t been too far off when he teased that she likely had a good personality or a strong and determined one according to Nellie. He found himself looking for more photos of her, strangely intrigued, though he was quickly distracted by a text from Adelina. He’d nearly forgotten that he’d told her he’d be in town for a few days.

Since he hadn’t known for sure what time he’d be done tonight, he hadn’t made any plans for the night. But since he’d arrived, Abel had invited him to come over to his place afterward and meet his month-old son.

Felix figured he’d kill a couple of hours at Abel’s, so he texted Adelina back quickly.

I’m busy until around 11pm tonight.

This could go either way and he really didn’t care. Truth was he was tired. If he ended up at home alone tonight, that was fine by him. He had some annoying meetings tomorrow morning and a call he had to take to discuss possibly presenting at the ESPY’s, one of the last things Preston had lined up for him before he quit or Felix fired him. That was a moot point and one he was done debating with Rene. Bottom line was he could use a night off from the extracurricular activities. His phone beeped just as he and Nellie started back to the signing area. He clicked on the text, curious as to whether or not he’d be having a quiet night tonight or not.

I can wait up if you wanna come by. I’ve been thinking about you ALL day.