Lost (6 page)

Warm.

There, she actually feels something, a physical sensation. Where is it coming from? Is death warm? No, no, she’s feeling the warm on her skin, on her forehead and scalp. That’s where the warm message is coming from.

Beads of perspiration on her scalp. Sweat in her eyes. She blinks instinctively, feels her eyelids respond.

How very strange. Her eyes are open but she sees nothing. And although she’s starting to detect the numbing tingle of a body beyond her face, it’s very distant, as if her limbs have been hidden over the next horizon. Not that she can see the horizon in the dark.

Dark.

That’s why she can’t see! It’s dark. The absence of light.

With that realization—she’s alive, in the dark, and something is terribly wrong with her body—comes a wave of
sheer terror. A flood of icy adrenaline that freezes her brain like an arctic blast.

Why can’t she feel her hands, her feet, what’s wrong with her? Was there an accident?

The memory floats up like a bubble through honey: she didn’t have an accident. There was an attack. Just as she and Seth are disembarking the aircraft. She has the cell to her ear, telling her mother something important. Something about trouble, about calling the cops. Before she can finish asking her mom for help, a man on the runway is pointing something at them—a gun, a weapon?—and there’s a sharp, needlelike pain in her abdomen, then darkness.

Not a bullet, something else. A powerful drug. Was that the needle slamming into her abdomen? Is that what happened? Does that explain the vast numb tingling? The thickness of her thoughts? The sensation that her mind has been wrapped in a fluffy blanket?

Kelly’s experience with drugs is somewhat limited. Beer and chronic at parties, and that one time she and Sierra dropped Ecstasy at a warehouse rave in Long Beach. The X was fun—she danced for hours and hours—but at the same time a little scary because part of her kept chanting, “Three! Four! MDMA, methylenedioxymethamphetamine!” She’d made the mistake of looking up the drug’s chemical name on the web, read what it did to the brain, the neurotransmitters, and couldn’t quite shake the uneasy feeling that little bits of her mind were frying like that stupid ad from the last century, your brain on drugs, sizzling like an egg in a pan.

Whatever is causing this—it feels like her thoughts are slurring—it isn’t like ecstasy or marijuana or alcohol. It’s something much more powerful. So powerful it’s amazing that her body continues to breathe—she can feel the air in
her nose and throat, the gluey dryness of her mouth—and her heart, yes, she can pick up on the slow thump of her pulse. Much too slow to keep up with her jittery thoughts, the panic that’s rising like a tide, or the burning sensation she’s just now detected in her abdomen.

Seth, what about Seth? It was his plane, his flight plan, his delivery. What went wrong?

What happened? Where is she? Is Seth okay or did they kill him?—three lines of a chorus that slowly rises into a scream of fear and confusion. She can’t make her mouth work, so for now the scream stays inside her mind. Silently screaming a heat-seeking name, over and over, endless loop.

MOMMY HELP ME PLEASE HELP ME MOMMY PLEASE HELP HELP HELP MOMMY MOMMY MOMMY HELP HELP HELP

Hot tears leak from her paralyzed eyes. She’s five again, terrified beyond endurance, and she wants her mommy.

12. The Man Called Shane

It’s Fern who suggests trying the name on the card. Having called for an update and gotten an earful—anxiety makes me vent—Fern has agreed that the computer files are vitally important.

“It’ll all be there,” she assures me. “These kids, they keep everything in their e-mail and blogs, or on MySpace.”

“Kelly’s not on MySpace” is my instant retort.

“Really? How do you know?”

“She promised. We agreed it was too dangerous. All that stuff in the news about perverts.”

Fern sighs, thinks I’m being ridiculous. Teens lie about everything, get over it. “Okay, fine, she’s the only girl in Valley
Stream without a page on MySpace, whatever. What about her e-mail? Her address book files? Whatever whippy snippy thing the girls have going this week. You need to get in there.”

“I need help, Fern. And it has to be fast. Today.”

“Agreed. So call the consultant, see if he can recommend an expert.”

“Consultant?”

“You said the cop gave you a card. So call. What can it hurt? Takes you three minutes. Worst case, he can’t help. Best case, he looks like Johnny Depp.”

“Fern!”

“Admit it, when Johnny D’s on the screen you are stuck to the seat like a sticky bun.”

Swear on a Bible, if I was lying in the wreckage of a major vehicular accident, gasoline leaking, wires sparking, Fern could still make me laugh. After decades, all the way from that first day in first grade, she knows where the laugh button is, and when to push it. Plus she’s right, I have to stop letting anxiety and panic get the best of me. I have to get my little house in order for my daughter’s sake. Get on the horn, Jane, start making some noise, get things rolling. The world is full of computer geeks, I just have to find one who can get started right now, no excuse, no delay. And if the old retired fogy from the FBI can’t help with that, then he gets crossed off the list of helpers, on to the next.

Randall Shane
Former Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Consultant, Special Cases

Special cases, what does that mean, exactly? Only one way to find out. Punching in the number, I rehearse my opening
gambit. Try to sound cool, calm and collected. All of which vanishes the instant a thick male voice comes on the line.

“Shane.”

“Um, I need, ah, to speak to, ah, Randall, um, Shane?”

“This is he.” Sounding more than a little gruff. Like, get on with it lady, what’s your problem?

“It’s about my daughter,” I blurt out. “She’s gone. Missing.”

His tone is no longer impatient. “Go ahead, I’m listening.”

“They gave me your card,” I tell him in a rush, clutching the phone with both hands so it doesn’t slip out of my fingers. “I don’t know the boy, isn’t that stupid? I mean I do know his first name, it’s Seth. But not his last name, or where he lives. Nothing! I never heard of him until yesterday and by then it was too late. They can’t, the police, they need somewhere to start, I understand that, really I do, but I don’t know anything and now she’s gone and she was supposed to call and she did and she said she needed help and then the phone got cut off and something really bad has happened I can feel it in my bones a mother knows you know?”

“Okay,” says the voice. “Take a deep breath. Hold it for a count of ten and then let it out slowly. Okay?”

“‘Kay,” I manage.

“I’ll count. One. Two. Three …”

As he counts I can feel my heart slowing, and I’m thinking he may be an old fogy, he might be a scam artist, but he’s got a great voice and would be calming and reassuring even if he was reading from the phone book. Or counting, for that matter.

“Okay,” he says. “Good. Now, if you could tell me your name.”

I tell him.

“Jane Garner, fine. Here’s how it works, Mrs. Garner. I’m
going to ask you a few questions and then we’ll decide if I can be of assistance, okay? We’ll start with the note your daughter left. What exactly did it say?”

My brow furrows. “I mentioned the note?”

“Not exactly. You mentioned a promise to call. I assumed that promise was in the form of a note, but I suppose it could have been a voice mail.”

“It was a note,” I tell him. “I’ve got it right here.”

As I read him Kelly’s note, part of me concludes that we’ve been in conversation for, at best, a few minutes, and already he’s established that he’s paying attention. Listening. Which is not what I carried away from my conversation with Jay Berg, the Nassau County detective, who let me run on more out of professional politeness than actual interest. As far as Berg had been concerned, my daughter took off with a guy, end of story. Whereas Mr. Shane seems to be taking me seriously. Or at least taking the situation seriously.

“Okay,” he says. “Got it.”

I can hear him taking notes, the mouse squeak of a felt-tip pen. He reads it back, and I agree he’s got it, word for word.

“Now the call,” he says, “As best you can remember.”

“‘Mom, I need your help, please call.’”

“That’s it?”

“Last word was cut off.”

“And what was her tone? Excited, worried?”

“She was whispering. Like she’d didn’t want anyone to hear. Whispering and worried and maybe a little afraid.”

“Please call as in ‘please call back,’ or ‘please call for help.’”

I think about it, Kelly’s voice replaying in my head. “Not please call back. It was like she had a lot to say and had to tell me in as few words as possible. So it was more like ‘please call for help.’”

“Or please call someone specific?”

“Maybe.” I rack my brains, reliving the call, but that’s all I get, a maybe.

“You mentioned computer files.”

I must have, but have no recollection. Unless, of course, he’s a mind reader. “That’s why I called. To see if you know anyone who can get into protected files.”

“How protected?” he wants to know.

“I don’t know her password.”

“So not necessarily encrypted? Just password protected?”

“I’m not really sure. All I know is I can’t into the files. So, do you know anyone who can?”

The man called Shane chuckles, warming my ear.

He says, “Matter of fact, I do.”

13. Bingo He Says

Two hours later, Randall Shane arrives in a gleaming black Lincoln Town Car with tinted windows. Is it a cop car thing, or a retired FBI thing, or does he moonlight as a chauffeur? Or does he just prefer a car the size of a boat? As it pulls into my driveway, the big Lincoln looks like it could eat my little Mercedes wagon and spit out the chrome.

Standing in the open door—I’ve been chewing my nails and watching the street for at least an hour—I give a wave of greeting as Mr. Shane unfolds himself from the driver’s seat. He nods in my direction—right place, obviously—and pops the trunk lid with his key. Retrieves a bulky briefcase and a laptop, secures the trunk, and strides up the walkway, all business.

There’s a lot of him. Very tall, six feet four or five. Wide
shoulders, long muscular arms, and a purposeful, no-nonsense way of walking. Not a walk exactly, certainly not a strut—more of a march. Fern’s joke comes to mind—can’t think of anyone who looks less like Johnny Depp. He could put Johnny Depp in his pocket and still have room for lint. No, there’s nothing wistful or soft or feminine about Randall Shane. More the Liam Neeson type, if you have to pick an actor. He’s all angles, with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper goatee that gives him a long, slightly gaunt face. Deep-set, utterly serious sky-blue eyes that are already studying me. Age, somewhere in his forties. Surely not old enough to be retired, and obviously not the elderly gent I’d been expecting, even if he does drive a car associated with seniors.

His attire is less formal than I expected. Crisply pressed khaki trousers, a lime-green Polo shirt with a soft rolled collar, brown leather Top-Siders. On someone else it might be a preppy look. Not on Shane. On him it looks like something an NFL linebacker would wear on his day off.

“Mrs. Garner?” he asks, with a slight, wary smile. Nice, even teeth.

“Jane, please. Come in, come in. This is very kind of you.”

“We’ll see,” he says, ducking slightly as he eases into the foyer. “No promises.”

“Understood. I’ll pay for your time, whatever happens.”

He shrugs, as if indifferent to the notion of payment. Towering over me in the little foyer, smelling faintly of Ivory soap and something like cedar. Manly cedar, though, not the perfumed version.

“Show me to her room,” he says.

“This way. Up the stairs and to the left.”

“No calls?”

I shake my head. No calls, no contact. My frantic calls
are still going directly to voice mail, and my daughter is still in the wind.

The summer days are long, so there’s plenty of light in the sky, but early evening has arrived, and as we traipse up the stairs, the host in me automatically offers this stranger something to eat.

“Not right now,” he says, pushing open the door to Kelly’s bedroom. A step inside and he stops, checking out the walls, furnishings. The place is girly-girl, teenage girly-girl, but very clean and organized because Kelly is a neat freak.

“Did you tidy up?” he wants to know.

“She keeps it this way.”

He nods to himself, as if registering a fact to be filed away. Sets his briefcase on the floor, his laptop on her desk, and then turns to look at me. More of a quick study than a look.

“You didn’t have supper,” he says. A statement of fact.

“Not hungry.”

“Okay.” He nods to himself, registering another fact. “Do you drink tea?”

What’s this about? I’m thinking, but admit that sometimes I do, in fact, drink tea.

“Good. Then I suggest you make yourself a mug of strong, hot tea. Put sugar in it, for energy. Eat two pieces of toast, you’ll be able to hold that much down.”

“What?” I say, thinking he’s been here less than a minute, already he’s telling me when and what to eat.

“You look like you’re about to faint, Mrs. Garner. Time and efficiency are very important at this juncture, and I need you to be conscious and thinking coherently. In a crisis like this, many parents tend to fall apart. We don’t have that
luxury. Tea, toast. Stay downstairs. I’ll let you know if I need help, or have questions.”

I’m halfway down the stairs before I realize he just ordered me out of my own daughter’s bedroom.

He may be brusque and bossy, but Randall Shane is right about my needing to eat. The toast settles my stomach and the hot, sweet tea gives me energy. Hadn’t realized how depleted I’d been, how close to passing out. Maybe even fainting, as he’d suggested. But “at this juncture”? Is the man a robot? Nobody says “at this juncture.”

Cops do, I realize. They lapse into cop talk. And FBI agents are federal cops. They dress better but they have cop hearts. Not that I’ve ever met an FBI agent, retired or otherwise. All my thoughts on the subject of FBI agents come from TV shows, and muttered asides from my late father, so maybe I’m way off, reading too much into Shane’s formal manner of speech.