Lost (21 page)

Part of me can’t wait for her to grow up and have kids of her own, so we can commiserate, talk about the bad old days when she was a teenage drama queen. Another part of me wants her to be ten years old again, the year of no hospitals when she was rediscovering the world, seeking approval and encouragement from me. Like I was a person who had valuable insights to share. Like I really and truly mattered. Whereas now I’m this fatally uncool, totally hopeless repository of embarrassment who has nothing to offer, whose role has been reduced to that of a housemaid—except no self-respecting housemaid would tolerate that level of scorn. A scorn that made my precious daughter think it was okay to keep so much of her life from me. Her thrill-seeking, death-defying life. Her own personal flyboy kind of life.

Talk about exciting—fast cars, motorcycles, airplanes, parachutes. An entire life kept secret from the tedious bore who does her laundry.

How could she? How could my little girl do this to me? It’s like all her life I’ve been saying the equivalent of
be careful crossing the street
and she decides to run out in traffic
just to spite me. Sticking out her adolescent, know-it-all tongue as the bus runs her down.

Okay, I’m a thousand miles from home, sick with worry, but I’m also really and truly pissed at my own daughter. This is where I’m at, mentally and emotionally: I want to rescue the little bitch so I can kill her myself.

Which is, of course, insane.

“Anything new?” Shane asks, making me jump.

“I don’t get how a guy your size can sneak up on people,” I say.

“Squeakless sneakers,” he says.

“Squeakless sneakers?”

“Hard to find but worth their weight in gold.”

“I’m really really mad at her,” I confess.

His big hand brushes his bearded chin. “Of course you are. You’ve a right to be. We get her back, you can ground her for a year.”

“Fern says I should chain her to a radiator.”

Shane gives me an odd look, and then it hits me.

“Oh my God, I can’t believe I said that! That’s what kidnappers do, isn’t it? Chain the victims to radiators.”

“We’ll find her,” he assures me. “You have my pledge.”

I believe him. But he doesn’t say whether she’ll be dead or alive. My first impulse is to burst into tears for the twenty-third time, but my tear ducts are empty, and wanting to cry just makes my eyes itch.

“You have your cell phone?” he asks.

I nod.

“I want you to put me on speed dial,” he says. “I’ll set mine to vibrate and if you see any cops or security guards heading my way, you hit the dial.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh,” he says. “Sorry. Forgot you can’t read my mind. Manning has a local motor vehicle registered in his name. A big orange Hummer, which ought to be easy to find. I’ll enter the garage beneath his building, locate his vehicle, and leave him a little surprise.”

“Oh. What kind of surprise?”

He holds up a Baggie with something small and rectangular inside, looks like a black electrical switch.

“Am I supposed to guess?” I ask.

“Sorry. It’s a handy-dandy GPS tracking device.”

“Something you got from the FBI?”

“No, ma’am. This particular model is readily available online. Magnetic mounted, motion activated. So where Manning goes, we can follow.”

“Is that legal?”

“Absolutely not,” Shane says. “That’s why you’re keeping an eye out for the cops.”

10. What Needs To Be Done

Far below, the wet street glistens like black glass. Traffic lights gleam in electric jellybeans colors, cinnamon-red and spearmint-green. Amazing how a little rain can make a city look all shiny and clean, especially at night. Air smells fresher, too, although a faint aroma of tropical funk remains. Eau de rotting vegetation, or maybe it’s something deeper, something more malignant, released from beneath the fragile ground by marauding bulldozers, probing shovels, long-forgotten sins.

Morbid thoughts. I keep waiting for Shane to emerge, figuring he’ll have to cross the street to get to Manning’s condo building, but either the big guy has an invisible cloak or he’s got a different route in mind. Should I call, check that
he’s okay? No, his instructions were very specific: buzz if the cops show. Most definitely he did not suggest that I call for a chat, or to make sure his cell is set on vibe rather than “Teen Spirit.”

I’ve seen that movie where the hero gets caught when his phone trills at exactly the wrong moment. Can’t let that happen. Randall Shane must be protected at all costs because he’s all I’ve got. The police in Long Island, the obnoxious FBI agent, they’re all just going through the motions, issuing bulletins and be-on-the-lookouts. The assumption being that yet another wild teenager has run off with her boyfriend. Big whoop, happens every day. Girls eventually come home or they don’t, it’s up to them, no matter what mom has to say on the subject.

And why exactly is this nonsense humming like a bad song in my brain, one of those stupid popzillas you can’t get out of your head? Because some tiny, miserable part of me worries that the worst may have happened. Okay, not quite the worst, not Kelly in a shallow grave, but Kelly involved in some sort of death-defying stunt, helping her flyboy hit up his dad for a few million bucks, just for the thrill of it. I’ll deny it to anyone who asks, Fern included, but the fact is that if circumstances are exactly wrong, if the temptation is too great, even so-called good kids like Kelly can suddenly go off the rails. Like all teenagers, she’s vulnerable to the impulsive, wouldn’t-it-be-cool riff that can lead, when things go bad, to prison or death.

When Kel started getting seriously mouthy, acting like a different person, I did a little Google search to see if childhood cancer had any long-term effects on behavior, maybe like post-traumatic stress disorder. Having cancer is certainly traumatic and stressful, right? Anyhow, that was my theory. Then I clicked on an article that had nothing to do with chemo or surviving cancer. It was a scary description
of what physically happens to the human brain during adolescence. According to the article, the brain starts shedding synaptic connections at about age twelve to fourteen. Synaptic connections are what enable us to think rationally, to process information, so why is the teen brain getting rid of vital connections? Because it’s preparing for the next big growth spurt, which results in the formation of the deep neurological connections that enable adults to make reasoned decisions. The article compared the teen brain to a plant pruning itself so it will eventually grow stronger. For a couple of crucial years, the adolescent mind tends to react emotionally—and often inappropriately—because the rational connectors are still in the process of forming. Which explains lots of things, from slammed doors and hysterical tears to kids who play Russian roulette with sex or, God forbid, actual guns.

What makes me think my own darling daughter might be capable of making a really bad decision? A decision that changes her life, or maybe ends it?
Because I’ve been there.
I was that girl. There were no glamorous flyboys in my life, no billionaire dads, but even so I had managed to screw up so badly that two lives were put at risk. And all because I surrendered to a crazy impulse on a moonless night.

My dark secret, you see, really is about darkness. Not metaphorical darkness, but real, actual darkness. A darkness so complete that the sultry summer night made me think I was invisible, invulnerable. Like whatever happened in that darkness did not count. And yet, of course, it did, no matter how hard I tried to deny it at the time.

What happened that night all those years ago, in the secret darkness, still haunts me. Makes me think crazy, frantic thoughts. Makes me ashamed to imagine, for even a moment,
that Kelly might behave as stupidly, as selfishly, as I had once behaved.

She’s better than me. Smarter than me. No way is she participating in some scatterbrained extortion scheme. Kelly didn’t come home because she
can’t
come home. She needs help. She needs her mother. Too bad her mother is weak and pathetic. Too bad her mother keeps falling apart.

“Mrs. Garner?”

Shane stepping out on the balcony, observing me with concern.

“It’s not ‘Mrs. Garner’!” I blubber. “I’m not married! I was never married! Garner is my maiden name, my father’s name.”

“Sorry,” he says. “I forgot. Why are you crying? Has something happened?”

Crying would be the polite description. Bawling my eyes out is more like it. Guess the tear ducts weren’t empty after all.

“She’s not me!” I blubber. “She’s better than me! She might run away, she might risk her own life, but Kelly would never, ever hurt another person! Not on purpose.”

Not sure how it happened, but I’m weeping into his big chest. Strong, gentle hands hold me tight but not too tight. I’m aware of the damp rain clinging to his close-cropped beard, and the newer dampness of my own tears.

“It’s okay,” he says, speaking in a craggy whisper. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”

I want, I want, I want—what do I want? Not sex, I’m wound way too tight for that, vibrating with the exclusive, overwhelming need to find Kelly. Plus the big guy isn’t really my type, not physically. Although that, I suppose, could change, given time and proximity. But no, the wanting is linked to something else, a deeper need, something that can’t
be satisfied by sex. What I want is something I can’t even articulate. Father, brother, protector, friend, my own personal superhero, all these things and more, all of it balled up into a need so powerful that I cling to Randall Shane like he’s the last man in the universe.

Bless the guy, he seems to understand that all the frantic clinging and weeping isn’t about getting him into bed. His hands never stray, never explore, and somehow I know absolutely that he’d never take advantage of my emotional state.

Instead he lets me cry, allows me to sob my heart out until there’s nothing left but hanging on. After a while he gently disentangles himself, heads into the suite. He locates the well-stocked minibar and returns with a bottle of Perrier and a glass filled with ice cubes the size of fat diamonds.

“Drink,” he suggests. “You need the fluid.”

“I’m really, really sorry.”

“Don’t be. Never apologize for being a good mother.”

That sets me back for a moment. “How do you know I’m a good mother?”

He shrugs. “I just do. Care to share?”

“Share?”

“What set you off. Something that happened when you were Kelly’s age.”

“I said that?”

“You implied,” he responds.

My knees suddenly go wobbly—I’m a puppet with severed strings, looking for a place to collapse. Shane leads me to a plush leather sofa, remains standing. “We’ll get to this later,” he suggests. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“What about them?” I ask, indicating the condo tower that looms over the hotel. Wanting rather desperately to change the subject.

“Mission accomplished, more or less,” he says with a grin. “If the Hummer, moves, it will inform my laptop, and you in turn will inform me.”

He sits me in front of his computer, shows me the software. The screen frames a map of downtown Miami, and on it the location of the tracking device pulses like an orange gumdrop. Looks very much like the navigation screen on Fern’s Escalade, the one that tells her when she takes a wrong turn. The one she yells at.

“If the vehicle moves more than three feet, two things will happen,” Shane says. “The program will bong until you click on this button, okay? Then you’ll call me. If you can’t get hold of me, just sit tight. The program will track Manning, show us where he goes.”

“I’m supposed to call you? But where will you be?

He shrugs, avoiding my eyes. “I’ll be, um, otherwise occupied for the next few hours.”

At first I assume he’s going to try and get some sleep, maybe take a pill, but that’s not it. He has another mission, a mission he’s not willing to discuss.

“So you want me to share, but not you? That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Fairness is not a factor,” he informs me, crossing his long arms over his chest. “Over the next few days there will be things I need to do—actions that must be taken—which are not strictly legal.”

“Like planting a tracking device.”

“Like that,” he admits. “Some of these actions, it’s best you have no knowledge.”

“But I want to help.”

“You are helping,” he assures me. “But when two or more individuals engage in a criminal activity, that can result in conspiracy
charges. Easier to prosecute and easier to prove than an individual action. We want to avoid legal jeopardy, if possible.”

“Criminal activity?” I ask. “Did you say ‘criminal activity’?”

“Break the law, you’re engaging in criminal activity. No point sugarcoating it.”

“What kind of criminal activity?” I ask.

“Best you have no knowledge. That’s the point.”

“Bad things?”

He smiles, shakes his head. “Not so bad. Not major felony. But if I happen to be in violation of a particular statute, it will be just me, do you understand?”

“Except for the GPS thing,” I point out. “I’m part of that conspiracy.”

“You are,” he concedes. “My apologies, but I can’t monitor the vehicle on my own. Not and do what needs to be done.”

“Okay,” I say, feeling completely spent. “You do your thing, I’ll do mine. Still want me to buzz you if the cops show up, or if Manning leaves the building?”

“Absolutely.”

A moment later he’s gone and I’m all alone. Just me, the binoculars, and a pulsing gumdrop on a computer screen.

11. Cherchez La Femme

Randall Shane finally has his Town Car. Not actually his own, of course, but hired from a car service. And because Shane will not put himself behind the wheel when he’s been awake for more than twenty-four hours, the car service has also supplied a driver.

“You get much work this time of night?” Shane asks, settling into the shotgun seat. Fully retracted and lowered, the seat accommodates his long legs without his knees bumping
the glove box. Taking the front so he can keep a keen eye on the driver’s skills, which at first glance appear to be sufficient. No squealing tires, no herky-jerky braking action.