Forsaken (12 page)

“It’s all right. They can stay.” Simon picked up the envelope.

Harrison held up his hand. “I don’t think you should—”

Simon turned the envelope upside down and shook the contents out onto the table. A piece of white notebook paper and two zip-top bags fell out. Elise leaned
over Harrison’s shoulder and squinted to see what was in the bags.

Just as I moved around the table to see, Elise screamed. Simon turned away for a moment, giving me a clear line of sight. In one of the baggies was an emerald ring.

In the other was a human finger.

SIMON DROPPED THE BAG on the table and put his head in his hands. Elise ran to the couch and buried her head in a pillow. “What kind of animals would do this to a teenage girl?” Simon looked up at Harrison. “They will rot in hell for this.”

“I’m sure that’s true, but before they get there, I want to make certain they rot in jail. Can you absolutely identify the ring as Kacey’s?”

Simon nodded. “I gave it to her for her birthday. If you look inside, there’s an inscription. It says
Love, Dad
and has the date.”

Harrison used a handkerchief to take the ring out of the baggie. He studied it and put it back in the bag.
“The inscription is there. I’ll send the evidence to the lab. We’ll be very careful with it, I promise. We’ll get it back to you as soon as we can.” He looked at me, and I knew he was talking in particular about Kacey’s finger.

Simon lifted his head. “No, don’t take it yet.” He picked up the bag that contained the finger. “Please, can you give me a minute?”

Harrison reached into his pocket and removed a pair of latex gloves. “Sure. Just put these on, please. I understand it’s tough, but everything is evidence. I know you want to get her back.” He placed the gloves on the table in front of Simon.

Simon picked them up and looked at them for a moment. Then he slid them on.

Elise, her eyes red and swollen, walked from the couch around the table toward the suite’s kitchen. Harrison followed her. Before he turned the corner, he said, “Just one more thing.”

Simon looked up. “What?”

“I’m going to need you to check your e-mails as soon as possible.”

“Why?”

“The note. It says they will e-mail you. That’s how we’ll learn what they want.”

“I can check the e-mails,” Elise said. “I’ll get my laptop from my room.” She headed for the door and looked relieved to be escaping. Harrison went into the kitchen.

I don’t know why, because I hardly knew him, but I stopped next to Simon and put my hand on his
shoulder. He winced. Then he tilted his head and looked into my eyes. “Thank you,” he said. I wanted to cry.

He put his hand on mine. I knew he wanted to touch Kacey, not me, but I was there and she was not, and at that moment the touch of a stranger must have been better than no touch at all. I let him hold my hand—and I did cry. But I cried as quietly as I could, because it was his moment to hurt, not mine. Eventually he nodded, and I understood it was time for me to leave.

As I walked toward the kitchen, wiping my eyes with my fingers, I heard him open one of the bags. I looked over my shoulder. He’d removed Kacey’s finger from the plastic bag. It had been cut cleanly, just above the second knuckle. The skin was already darkening. He turned it over and over, studying it from every angle. He nudged it into his palm and touched it lightly, then stroked it with his fingertips, as if it were still attached to her hand and she were sitting right beside him.

I felt guilty for watching, and I started to turn away. Before I did, Simon lifted Kacey’s finger and pressed it to his cheek. He held it there for a long time. Then he began to sob.

BY 10 P.M. ELISE had been sitting on the couch for a couple of hours and had barely taken her eyes off the laptop resting on the coffee table in front of her. Simon had been in the bedroom alone since he returned the evidence to Harrison. I sat in an upholstered wing chair, flipping through the pages of one of the hotel’s promotional magazines about Chicago. The room smelled like burnt coffee. I wanted a drink of something far stronger.

At the desk in the corner, Harrison hunched over a report that had been delivered to him a few minutes earlier. From time to time he scratched something onto the paper with the hotel’s ballpoint desk pen.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Elise lean forward and peer at the computer screen. “This may be it!”

Harrison and I hurried over to the couch. Simon rounded the corner from the bedroom. In three long strides he was at the coffee table. Elise stood and moved out of his way. He leaned over the laptop, clicked open the message, and scanned the screen. After a moment he shook his head and toggled the message to the beginning. He read it again, then sat on the couch.

“What is it?” Harrison said. “Is she all right?”

“They have a demand. If I meet it, they say they’ll let Kacey go.”

Harrison walked around the coffee table and squinted at the laptop. “What do they want?”

Simon rubbed his hand over the bald crown of his head. “They want me to make a statement on international television this Saturday at the Celebration of Hope in Dallas.”

“What statement?” Harrison said.

Simon leaned back on the couch. “They want me to deny that Jesus is the Son of God.”

FIFTEEN MINUTES AFTER READING the e-mail, Simon paced near the windows of the suite. “If I don’t say what they want me to say, they will kill Kacey. If we try to find her and rescue her, they’ll kill her.” He stopped, and the muscles in his neck strained until they
practically throbbed above the neck band of his T-shirt. “What she must be going through . . .” He clenched his fists. “If we find them I swear I will kill them with my bare hands. I will pummel each one of them until they’re dead.”

Harrison frowned and took a step toward Simon. “I feel the same way, believe me. We’re going to do everything we can to—”

Simon spun around and kicked one of the dining table chairs. It smacked against the table and fell backward onto the carpet. “These people talk about religion. This has nothing to do with religion. That’s a charade! They’re thugs—nothing more than a street gang with a pious-sounding name.”

“You’re exactly right,” Harrison said. “Religion is a tool for them. It’s an excuse to do whatever it takes to achieve their political goals.”

“But what sort of a tool?” Elise said. “If you go on television and say what they want you to say, it will all come out afterward. Everyone will know. They will be vilified the world over for this, even by Muslims.” We all turned and stared at her. She’d hardly spoken all day. She blushed, and her voice lowered. “What can they possibly gain?”

Harrison’s eyes narrowed. “You’re looking at it from the wrong perspective. These people are fanatics. They don’t care how 99 percent of the world reacts.”

“But that doesn’t answer my question. What do they gain? Any statement by Simon would be meaningless under these circumstances.”

“Meaningless to the West, maybe. But with respect to their target audience—the others who think as they do—it would be a public relations bonanza. It would be viewed as a demonstration of our weakness and their superiority.” Harrison turned his palms up. “To borrow a political phrase, they’re playing to their base.”

Elise’s voice gained strength. “How can that be? Whose weakness would it demonstrate? Simon’s? Why would they care about that?”

He wagged his finger. “Not just Simon—the West, Christianity. To them, we’re the enemy. All of us.”

What Elise said made sense. I was about to interject that I agreed when Simon threw up his hands. “Would you two stop it?”

Elise’s face flushed. She leaned back on the couch, and Simon walked toward her. “This is philosophical drivel. What difference does it make? If I don’t do as they say, they’re going to kill Kacey. That’s the only thing that matters.” He turned his back on her and looked at Harrison. “Can we negotiate with them?”

Elise’s shoulders drooped. She sank lower into the couch. I wondered whether it was possible for any human being to appear more drained of self-confidence. For an instant I was angry at Simon for treating her so dismissively, but I caught myself. Who was I to judge him under these circumstances?

“We can try to negotiate,” Harrison said. “We will try. Maybe we’ll even find them before next week—find Kacey and get her back. That’s the result we want, but there are no guarantees.”

“If you go after her, they’ll kill her.”

“We wouldn’t move unless we felt there was a high probability of getting her out alive.”

“High probability? What does that mean?”

Harrison shoved his hands in his pockets. “Why don’t we wait and see if we can locate her before we get into a guessing game about whether we can get her out safely? A lot of it would depend on the circumstances. We have no way of knowing what those would be.”

Harrison’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and held it to his ear. After a moment he nodded. “Yes . . . read it.” His eyes narrowed. “Read it again . . . thanks.” He flipped the phone shut.

Simon cocked his head. “What was that?”

“We don’t have to wait for word of this to get out. They’ve posted it on their Web site in Arabic. I just got the translation. They want everyone to know exactly what’s going on, exactly what their demands are.”

“They’re lunatics,” Simon said.

“You give them way too much credit. They’re not crazy. They’re no different than any criminal organization. They get their way through murder and intimidation. They’re corrupt and ruthless, nothing more and nothing less.”

“If Simon does what they say, do you think they will keep their word? Will they really release her?” Elise watched Simon out of the corner of her eye as she spoke.

“Yes, will they make good on this if I do it?” Simon said. Elise appeared relieved that he hadn’t snapped at her again.

Harrison ran his hand through his hair. “There’s no way of knowing for sure. My strong hunch, though, is that they will. Now that they’ve gone public with this, they won’t have much choice. In their warped world, it would be a matter of honor. They told you they would do it, and I think they will. After we’ve gotten more research on them, we’ll be in a better position to evaluate it, though.”

Elise leaned forward, seeming to have regained her confidence. “Then it’s great news. You’re going to get Kacey back.”

Simon stared at her. “Great news? Are you sick?”

Her shoulders sagged again. “That’s not what I meant.” She squinted up at him, as if searching for a clue to what he wanted her to say. It was painful to watch.

“Don’t you understand the significance of what they want me to do?” His jaw muscles clenched with each word.

“Yes, of course. But you will do it, won’t you? You just say it one day, get her back, and then go on television the next day and retract the whole thing. Everyone will understand.”

Simon scowled at her. She shrank back on the couch. In a voice barely above a whisper she said, “You can’t let her die.”

Without another word, Simon turned, walked into the bedroom, and shut the door.

Elise’s eyes remained fixed on the door. She reached up and straightened her hair, then put her hands back in her lap. A cab horn honked on the street below, and
somewhere in the distance a siren blared. I looked at Harrison. He was staring at his shoes. Elise continued to watch the door, but it didn’t open. After a few more moments, she straightened her back and stood. Then she picked up her purse from the couch and, without a word, walked out the door of the suite.

Harrison motioned with his thumb toward the door. “Do those two have something going on?”

I shrugged. “I’ve only known them for twenty-four hours. My read is that she wants to.”

He smiled. “Maybe so, but I sure don’t think he does.”

“Right now it’s the farthest thing from his mind, don’t you think?”

He shook his head. “Of course. I should never have brought it up.”

“I didn’t mean to sound self-righteous. I’ve been wondering the same thing.”

Harrison walked back over to the desk where he’d been working.

“Do you think you can find Kacey?”

He leaned on the desk and lowered his voice. “Honestly? She could be anywhere. We’ll need a lucky break.”

I looked at the bedroom door. Simon was almost certainly praying for Kacey. In fact, millions of people all over the world must be praying for her. On the other hand, millions had undoubtedly prayed for Simon for years and this is where it got him. When I thought of Kacey—how alone she was and how terrified she must
be—I felt sick to my stomach. I resolved at that moment that I would pray for her too. My prayers probably wouldn’t count for much, but they weren’t likely to hurt. And Kacey needed all the help she could get.

BY MIDNIGHT SIMON STILL hadn’t come out of his bedroom. With no pressing reason to disturb him, Harrison decided to go back to his room and get a few hours of sleep. As he walked out the door, I hit the mute button on the TV and turned it on one more time to see if the news had picked up the story of the kidnappers’ demands.