BoneMan's Daughters (3 page)

The phone was silent.

“Second week in September?”

“I think you’re right. That’s not good.” Patty clearly understood the importance of the issue, should it arise. But her appreciation
for all things pop culture, not the least of which was fame, outweighed her appreciation for leading two thousand red-blooded,
Texas-bred teenage boys in a cheer while wearing a miniskirt—though it had to be a close call.

“Forget homecoming. You’re going to be famous.”

Predictable.

“I’ll call you back.”

“Hold on, hold on! Where are you going?”

“I’ve got to tell my mother.”

Bethany hung up and flew down the stairs two at a time, spun around the railing at the bottom, and ran for the kitchen. She
slid to a stop in stocking feet and faced her mother, who was on the phone.

“Mom—”

Her mother’s hand flew up, palm demanding silence as she bore down on her own conversation.

“I got it!”

Her mother snapped her fingers and pointed at her face, scowling. Her way of saying,
Shut your mouth; can’t you see I’m on the phone?

Of course I can, Celine. Can’t you see that your daughter has something more important to say than anything you’re gossiping
about at the moment?

She didn’t say it, of course. Instead she crossed her arms and drilled her mother with a stare that Celine hated with a passion.

“They’re letting him out? He’s only been locked up for two years.” Celine walked to the far side of the kitchen to avoid the
heat of Bethany’s stare. Bethany stepped around the counter and waited, ignoring a quick glare.

“What about all the evidence? Surely they can’t just set him free on a technicality. You nailed that freak.”

Her mother was talking to Burton Welsh, the district attorney. Now there was an interesting thread in her convoluted web of
relationships. How Celine managed to work her way into the lives of such powerful people never ceased to amaze Bethany. Celine
should have been a politician.

She’d met the DA during his investigation of the BoneMan after the killer had abducted a girl from Bethany’s high school,
Saint Michael’s Academy, where Celine served on the PTA board. The rest was history, as they said.

Bethany slid to her right so that her mother could see her.

“What does this mean for you?” her mother asked, turning her back again. She had to be nearing the limits of her tolerance.

In a softer voice now, “It’ll be fine, Burt. Don’t let them back you down.” A pause. “I have to go, I’m sorry. My daughter
seems to think that the sky is falling.” She offered a short, forced chuckle. “I will. Good-bye.”

She clicked off and turned quickly, waving her cell phone. “How many times do I have to tell you how rude that is? Was I on
the phone when you crashed in here?”

“I got it.”

“I don’t care what you got, you’re not the only one who lives in this house. We share space, you and I. That means you respect
my space and I pay for yours, and we all know how expensive that can be. I swear, the next time you pull a stunt like that,
I’m cutting you off. You hear me?”

Bethany felt her face grow hot. Her mother could be such a child at times, a condition that had grown far worse over this
last year, while her father was off killing people in Iraq. At times like this Bethany wasn’t sure whom she resented more.

“Are you done?”

“I don’t know, are you?”

It was too much. She lost interest in sharing what might very well be the most important news in her short life with this
woman who called herself a mother.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Bethany asked.

“What?”

“In this space of ours, as you call it, you’re the parent. I’m the daughter. So act your age.”

Her mother blinked, but she always blinked to show shock, even though she was rarely truly shocked. It was like role- playing,
all a part of what made Celine the manipulating monster she’d slowly become.

“How dare you speak to me that way? I’m your mother!”

Bethany felt a knot building in her throat. “And I’m your daughter.”

They faced each other in silence, Celine with drawn lips, Bethany trying to hold back a torrent of repressed feelings about
what she summarily thought of as her abandonment.

Her mother was here, but never here for
her
. Always off chasing herself through a string of relationships with men, slaving to keep herself from adding a pound of unwanted
fat, regretting every day she lived because it brought her one day closer to forty.

Her father wasn’t self-absorbed. He simply wasn’t. His abandonment of them both hadn’t become apparent to her until she’d
grown old enough to piece it all together. He was clueless about both Celine’s unfaithfulness and Bethany’s need for a father.
She would settle for her mother’s selfishness over her father’s ignorance most any day.

Most. At the moment her mother’s complete failure to be a mother was pushing Bethany to the brink.

Her mother finally set the phone on the counter and turned her eyes away. “What’s so urgent, you little narcissist?”

“Forget it.” Bethany turned and walked out of the kitchen, eyes misted and blurry. At times like this hate wouldn’t be the
wrong word to express her feelings. She hated her mother for being her mother and she hated her father for not being there
to rescue her from her mother.

“So what, you’re just going to walk away now?” her mother snapped, following her. “Get back here.”

Bethany kept walking.

“Look, I’m sorry. Is that what you want to hear? This is hard for all of us, you know. You think trying to be a parent alone
is easy? You aren’t the only one Ryan left. Forgive me if I’m not perfect all the time.”

More manipulation, built on truths, used at the right moment to get the desired response. But Bethany had a hard time empathizing
with her mother’s incessant talk of being deserted by her man, particularly when she replaced him with other men, which she
had no difficulty doing. If anything, her father’s absence was a convenience for Celine, for her game.

It was Bethany, not her mother, who’d been abandoned.

Her mother suddenly gasped behind her. “You got the cover?”

Bethany stopped.

“You got the cover of
Youth Nation
, didn’t you?” The coldness in her mother’s tone had melted away.

Bethany took a deep breath and pushed back her anger. “Yes.”

Her mother’s feet quickly padded across the wood floor. “I’m so proud of you, angel.”

Celine’s hand touched her shoulder but Bethany pulled back. “Don’t call me that. You know I hate it.”

“Oh, get over yourself.” Celine hugged her.

Her father used to call Bethany “angel” when she was a young child. But in his leaving, he’d treated her like anything but
an angel and she resented the name. That her mother would choose the term at a time like this was criminal. Welcome to Mother’s
world.

When Celine pulled back, her eyes were bright, oblivious to her painful jab. “Why didn’t you tell me? When did you find out?
That’s wonderful news!”

Bethany didn’t bother answering the questions; they were placeholders, not notes of interest.

“How much are they paying?”

“Twenty thousand. They want me in New York in three weeks for a photo shoot.”

Wonder filled her mother’s eyes. “I am so proud of you.”

And for all of her antics, Bethany knew she meant it. This was why she would stay loyal to her mother.

“So you really think I should do this, huh?”

“Are you kidding? This is fantastic! Don’t you worry; I’ll be with you every step of the way. We’ll go to New York and we’ll
have a hoot. There’s no way you can waste this opportunity.”

“I might miss homecoming.”

Bethany could see the wheels turning behind her mother’s eyes. Not missing a beat, she said, “Don’t you worry, leave the coach
to me.” She headed back toward the kitchen. “You just stick with me, Bethany. We play our cards right, we’ll rule the world.
Which is more than I can say for the lame duck who calls himself your father.”

There was a time when Bethany would have objected with a comment about how he was still her father, but she’d forgotten how
she’d felt back then. She might not agree with the way her mother had conducted herself these past few years while Ryan was
off playing war, but she found herself wondering what it would be like to have a different father. One who cared enough to
participate in her life. Maybe that would have been the best solution for all of them.

Her mind flashed back to her mother’s phone conversation. “What was that Burt Welsh was saying?”

Her mother glanced back, as if undecided about telling. But she did.

“Some craziness about the BoneMan being released from prison.”

THE VOICE ECHOED around the edges of his consciousness, like a speaker in a murmuring crowd whose words rose above the cacophony
to be heard, if only barely.

“Wake… wake…”

An image of waves crashing to shore while Ryan and his younger brother, Pete, stood with their wakeboards, ready to rush into
the receding waters, joined the voice. Pete had been killed in a car crash ten years or so ago—had it really been so long?

Maybe he was dead.

“Wake up. Wake up!”

Something struck his cheek and the sting jerked him away from the murmuring crowd into a lonely, dark place.

“Wake up!”

Another hard slap chased away the darkness. The horizon turned red and he heard himself groan.

“Yes? Yes, you’re going to finally join us?”

His memory of the firefight lit up his mind like a bomb blast. The Humvees had been hit… he’d survived… the staff
sergeant had survived… he’d been struck and knocked unconscious…

He was alive and in the presence of someone who spoke with a heavy Arab accent.

“Open your eyes.”

His eyelids fluttered open to see a dimly lit room. The details fell into his mind; simple facts that painted a picture that
could only be interpreted in its entirety. No conclusion yet, no need to rush to judgment. Bad intel got more soldiers killed
than bullets.

Concrete walls. An old wood door. No windows. A metal table on his right, stacked with papers. He was seated in a chair and
his hands were bound behind him. One dim bulb hung overhead, shrouded by a green metal shade. An empty corkboard hung on the
wall directly ahead of him.

Three Arab men dressed in dirty tan slacks and shirts stood in the room. Two of them leaned against the wall and cradled AK-47s.
The third, presumably the speaker, paced directly in front of Ryan, one hand resting on his holstered pistol, the other limp
by his side.

So then he had been taken captive by what appeared to be three insurgents or terrorists who held him either deep within a
building, judging by the lack of windows, or underground, a more likely scenario.

Ryan shifted his arms, heard the chains around his wrists more than he felt them, and settled. To say that he wasn’t concerned
would have been a gross understatement, but he refused to allow fear to gain any foothold.

He was alive, which was far better than the fate the others had suffered. Or was it? They would either torture him for what
information he could give them, a thought that he shoved away, or they would use him as a political tool and eventually kill
him.

The man who’d slapped him leaned close enough for him to head-butt—clearly he’d been born a fighter rather than a thinker.
Ryan was a man of considerable size, weighing in at a hundred and ninety pounds, give or take, standing at just six feet,
and the navy kept him fit, but he’d never struck or taken a blow in his life.

“Can you hear me?”

The man’s breath smelled like clean dirt. Like most Middle Easterners, he valued cleanliness far more than your typical westerner—even
here in the desert, assuming he hadn’t been out long enough to have been driven to a city, the man would take care to bathe
each day. Ryan could still smell the soap on him.

He tried to speak but nothing came from his parched mouth, so he cleared his throat and tried again.

“Yes.”

“Good.” He closed the distance so that his nose came within inches of Ryan’s. He wore a beard and red-checkered headdress,
which placed him firmly in the camp of what most hastily called extremists. But the Middle Eastern psyche wasn’t so easy to
categorize. There were dozens of ideologies, each with its own long history, each with its own complaints, all with an understandable
perspective, if you looked at the world through the right lenses.

“You may call me Kahlid. And until I know your true name, I will call you Kent. You’re a race of Supermans, you Americans,
aren’t you?”

One of the men behind him murmured in Arabic, “And we are the Lex Luthor.” The other chuckled.

If they didn’t know his name or rank, they wouldn’t know that he spoke a fair amount of Arabic.

Kahlid, clearly not his real name, pulled back and placed both hands behind his back. “If you’re wondering, the rest of your
friends are dead. We were able to escort you away from the scene before the helicopters arrived. You’re now alone here with
us, for us to use as we see fit. Does this bother you?”

Ryan answered honestly, “Yes.”

“Good. Then I don’t mind telling you that we have the full intention of bothering you even more. Much more, I would say, judging
by your relative lack of concern.”

The man’s impeccable grasp of the English language, spoken without a hint of a British accent, meant he’d probably studied
at an Ivy League school in the States. Harvard or Stanford, perhaps. The education wasn’t surprising, but the fact that such
a valuable man would be involved in a simple hit-and-run outside of Fallujah was highly unusual.

Which could only mean that their mission hadn’t been designed as a simple hit-and-run.

A slight smirk crossed Kahlid’s face. “What are you, Kent? Hmm? An intelligence officer? Special Forces? Hmm? Why do your
eyes show no fear? Or perhaps you are stupid. Unfamiliar with the methods we use to press back the butchers who have invaded
our land.”