Runaway

by Anne Laughlin

  “Sleep well, my sister,” David said, clapping her on the shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  “I’m serious. You are my ideological soul mate. No one else understands what we’re really trying to do. I’m thinking of having you write something up, a manifesto of sorts, because you’ve got the ability to sum things up brilliantly.”

  “I write code, David, not words.”

  He smiled at her. “We’re all going to be multitasking. Going beyond our comfort level in so many ways. But we can talk about all that when we’re better rested.”

  Maddy fell on the mattress fully clothed and slept deeply.

  She woke in the morning to hear David calling for her to come upstairs. She used the toilet, worried he’d come down to get her and see her with her pants down. When she got upstairs, she found a group huddled with him around the kitchen table, all of them staring at her as she entered. These were the people she’d be living with, she thought, and found it less reassuring than the look of the mattress downstairs. She felt like the newest house member in a reality show, forced to live with people with wildly different backgrounds from hers.

  “Good morning,” David said, sounding cheery and hopped up, hopefully just on caffeine. “Grab a cup and join us. I’ll introduce you.”

  Maddy slipped into a folding chair next to David. The table was meant to seat four, but now there were seven squashed together and Maddy felt claustrophobic. She drank her coffee and took quick glances around. She hadn’t seen much of anything when they arrived in the middle of the night. She hadn’t seen that the walls of the kitchen were pink, that the floor seemed to have every other tile missing. The window over the sink was largely obscured by swaths of duct tape holding the glass together.

  “We’re having this special meeting so I can introduce you all to Maddy and we can get on to the next stage of our planning. Maddy and I had a hard night’s travel, and though I might normally ask you to go easy on a sleep-deprived newbie, she’s twice as smart as all of us put together so I know she can take care of herself.”

  There were two women in the group, both about the same age as David. The one sitting next to her was stocky and pierced at eyebrow, nose, and lip. She looked tough as hell.

  “What the fuck, David. This girl looks twelve years old.”

  “I’m not twelve,” Maddy said matter-of-factly. “I’m eighteen.”

  “Right. And I’m Lady Gaga,” the tough one said.

  One of the men snorted. He was skinny and had big veins popping out all over his arms. His sky blue shirt said “Warren” over the shirt pocket. “Well, you ain’t no lady, Kristi.”

  Kristi reached over and whacked him on the arm, but they were all laughing. Maddy resented the closeness of the others, but desperately wanted to be accepted. As always, she felt clueless as to how to go about making friends.

  “Listen, I know I look young. But I’m old enough. And I know a shitload about computers,” Maddy said.

  “Why do we need computers? We’re going to be in the middle of fucking Idaho. Do you think they’re going to have Wi-Fi or something?” This came from another of the guys, dressed in camouflage. His head was shaved and she could see a jagged scar running along his skull. It was red and angry looking.

  “Ed, I know you’re concentrating on all the hunting and fishing we’re going to be able to do out there, but you’ve got to remember that we’ll need security and communication capabilities. Smoke signals and guard duty just aren’t going to cut it,” David said.

  “I guess. It just seems everything is getting real complicated. We’re twice as big now as when we first started talking about this.”

  David looked satisfied at that. “Yes, we are. And that’s a good thing. Everyone at this table is bringing something unique—some skill or ability that contributes to the life of the camp. Maddy here is bringing some awesome computer skills.”

  The room was quiet. Kristi got up and brought the coffee pot over and poured for everyone. She looked Maddy in the eye and gestured to her with the pot. Maddy lifted her cup for a refill.

  “I’m Kristi,” she said. “And the only thing I do with computers is play games.”

  She sat back down and looked happy to have cleared that up.

  David reached around and pulled an envelope out of his rear pocket. “Here’s what else Maddy’s bringing to the table.”

  He took out the $20,000 check and placed it carefully on the table.

  “This puts us over the top for our down payment so we can go ahead and purchase the land. It’s all going to happen for real.” A big smile crossed his bony face. “Do any of you have a problem with Maddy joining us?”

  All eyes were on the check and all mouths stayed shut.

  “All right, then!” David shouted, slapping the top of the check with a loud whap. “Let’s get ready for Idaho!”

  Maddy looked around as the others erupted in whoops and high fives. The other woman in the room, a pretty blonde, launched herself into David’s arms and gave him a big kiss. Then she turned to Maddy and stuck out her hand.

  “I’m Diane,” she said. “And we’re really happy you’re going with us.”

  Maddy stood as the others came up to shake or give her a hug. Kristi bumped her fist against Maddy’s and grinned. The last of the group, a handsome boy named Tom, pumped her hand.

  “I know some about programming. Maybe we can talk about what you’ll be working on.”

  She saw David give her an encouraging look. “Sure,” she said. “I’d love to work with you.”

  There was a first time for everything, they say.

  *

  The school principal, Mr. MacBride, was a six-foot-five beanpole. His Adam’s apple stuck out like a chicken wing. Jan and Peet looked up at him standing in his office.

  “Of course, I want to do what I can,” he said. “I’m afraid I don’t know Maddy at all, which some people take to mean she simply hasn’t gotten into trouble. But, really, by junior year I usually know students for one reason or another—grades, clubs they’re in, athletics, something. But I actually couldn’t have picked Maddy out.”

  “It’s a huge school,” Jan said. “I’m not sure what you’re saying necessarily means anything.”

  “True,” MacBride said. “But we do know she’s not really involved in any activities. I’ve looked at her record. Her grades are average, mostly Bs and Cs, but all As in math. Teacher comments tend to run along the line of ‘not performing to potential,’ and ‘very quiet student.’”

  “That jibes with what we’ve heard,” Peet said. “Can we get a copy of that record? The parents will authorize it if you need to get permission.”

  Jan and Peet each took an office to interview teachers and students who knew Maddy. Jan was in the vice principal’s office, staring at a family photo on the desk when she heard a soft knock at the open door.

  “I’m Natalie Towne, Maddy’s social sciences teacher.”

  Natalie Towne was teacher crush material. She was youthful and elegant and had Jan ever been a high school student with a teacher like this, she’d have had a major thing for her.

  Natalie handed her a report as she took a seat in front of the desk.

  “What’s this?” Jan said.

  “A recent research paper Maddy wrote. When I heard she was missing and that investigators would be here to talk to us, I read it over again.”

  Jan leafed through the pages. They were heavily marked with red ink.

  “It doesn’t look like she did very well on it.”

  Natalie leaned back in the chair and crossed her legs. They were excellent legs, covered to the knee with a tailored skirt. Then she uncrossed her legs and moved her chair forward and Jan lost her view. She turned back to the paper.

  “Actually, she did very well on it. This copy is my own and I marked it up last night as I was reading.”

  “Okay. Why don’t you tell me why you brought it in?”

 
“Can I ask whether you have any idea what’s happened to Maddy?”

  Jan saw the look of concern on Natalie’s face, more genuine than she’d seen from Maddy’s parents.

  “I’m afraid we don’t know at this point.”

  “This is the first year I’ve had Maddy in class and school just started a couple of months ago. I don’t know her well. But she turned this paper in last week and it alarmed me. Maybe I should have said something to her parents about it.”

  Finally, Jan thought. Maybe someone knows something about this kid.

  “First of all,” Natalie said, “the paper is huge. I asked for fifteen pages and she gave me thirty. Kids don’t do that. But she wrote very passionately on the subject of the new wave of right-wing insurgency groups.”

  “As in the militias? That sort of thing?”

  “Yes, in general. Less on the military aspect than on the desire of the these groups to live free of government interference.”

  Like the Objectivists, Jan thought. Like her own father. She felt a sucking sensation, like being pulled into quicksand.

  “The thing that struck me about the paper wasn’t the subject matter. That’s interesting and timely and a good topic for research. It really was more about how she wrote about it.”

  Natalie reached over to the paper in Jan’s hands and flipped through to the last page.

  “Her summary describes her state of mind best, I think. It’s what alarmed me when I heard she was missing.”

  Jan read the last paragraph of the paper.

  “The range of opinions expressed by these conservative groups is very broad. As broad as America itself. Some are hateful, bigoted, and unrepentant. Some are crazed by religion. But some just want to be left alone, to live as true Americans—in the pursuit of happiness. To live free of unnecessary and ridiculous regulation. To leave the truly talented unfettered so that they can soar. When those that crave that freedom are robbed by their government of the ability to experience it, they are morally obligated to leave that government in order to form their own more perfect society. Of course, this is viewed by the media and the average stupefied American as extremist. They can’t understand those who are not content with the lowest common denominator. But their opinion does not matter to the gifted who seek to live with like-minded individuals. They will be living in a world apart.”

  Jan was silent for a moment. “She sounds much older than sixteen,” she said.

  “She’s a good writer,” Natalie said. “But her black and white thinking gives away her age. You remember that, don’t you? If you could only have this or that, your life would be perfect. This is the right way; yours is the wrong way. It’s all absolutes and very few shades of gray.”

  The idea that a sixteen-year-old would want to live away from the world seemed insane to Jan. It was precisely what she’d escaped from.

  “I have no idea if this has anything to do with Maddy’s disappearance, but I wanted to let you know about it,” Natalie said.

  “So you think Maddy may have run away to live with like-minded individuals, as she puts it?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve marked the areas in the paper where she advocates her position. See what you think.”

  Jan looked at her notebook. “I’ve heard the book Atlas Shrugged mentioned. Do you have any thoughts on why that book would be important to Maddy?”

  “You don’t need to know much about the plot of the novel to see why, and Maddy does reference it in her paper, which isn’t really appropriate in a research thesis. Atlas Shrugged is a novel. Rand portrays the government as a collection of dunderheads hell-bent on punishing people for their creativity and production, especially if an idea or invention improves the lives of others. The government in her novel will find a way to rob you of any motivation to implement it.”

  “She’s clearly anti-government, then.”

  “Yes, but we have to remember the context. Atlas Shrugged depicts a government that has powers ours does not, that takes steps toward socialism and communism that ours never has. It’s a fictional US government, and it’s in response to this fictional government that the hero of the book, John Galt, sets up a new society in a remote area of the country. It’s a society where the individual will be freely rewarded for the work they produce and not concerned with what a government decides is in the best interest of the masses.”

  “But she’s too young to have been thwarted yet. Or even to see yet whether she has ideas good enough to be suppressed.”

  “True, though she’s very intelligent and I don’t doubt she has confidence in her ideas. That comes through in her writing. But I don’t think she has a very clear idea of what she’s running to.”

  “I’m sure she doesn’t. I appreciate you reaching out to us about this.”

  Natalie tore a corner off Maddy’s paper and wrote her number down.

  “Please call me if you want to talk this over further. I’m really concerned about Maddy.”

  Jan gave her one of her cards and watched as Natalie walked out of the office on her excellent legs. Nice, but not Catherine Engstrom nice.

  The next person up came complete with whistle around the neck, athletic shorts, polo shirt with the high school logo on the front, and…Yep, Jan thought, lesbian hair.

  “I’m Yvonne Kuterasaminsky.” The woman smiled. “Call me Coach. It’s easier.”

  Jan grinned and closed the office door. Coach said with a chuckle, “Usually when a door closes around here, someone’s getting an ass-kicking. Am I in trouble?”

  “No ass-kicking today. I’m looking into Maddy Harrington’s disappearance.”

  Coach nodded and sighed. “It’s never a good thing when they take off, you know? I mean, even when it turns out they’re okay and no real harm done, it’s still bad that something made them leave in the first place.”

  “Any idea what might have made Maddy leave?”

  “None,” Coach said. “I only know her on the soccer field. And she’s not even on the team now. She was with me for two seasons and then she didn’t come out this year. Not sure why…she really seemed to enjoy the game. She played well and she played all-out.”

  Interesting, Jan thought. So Maddy wasn’t just all about computers.

  “How was she with her teammates?”

  “Here’s the thing. She was a good scorer and not selfish, and it’s difficult to find both in a player. She usually scored every game. And all the girls would come up and congratulate her, but it wasn’t the big hug and bump.” Coach shook her head. “Girls that age, well, they hang all over each other. They’re devoted to each other. Maddy didn’t seem to have any of that.”

  “Were they mean to her?” Jan asked.

  Coach thought a moment. “No. It was more that they never included her. And she didn’t try.”

  Jan thought about that later as she waited for Peet outside the high school. She stood in the crisp air of a beautiful fall day and tried to understand what could drive a lonely girl toward the same forces that Jan had shot her way out of. But her job was to find her, not to analyze her.

  Peet joined her out front.

  “I just got a call from Vivian. I guess the deal has closed and we’re supposed to be at the office by four for a company-wide meeting.”

  Jan’s first thought was not annoyance but excitement that she’d see Catherine again.

  *

  Jan and Peet joined the large group of employees gathered in the first floor security division of TSI. Catherine entered the room with father and son Begala, and the crowd fell silent. She waited a beat before beginning.

  “Good afternoon to all of you. My name is Catherine Engstrom, and I am Vice President of Corporate Development of Chartered Global Security. I know that the rumors are flying, and I’m here to give you the information you need and put your minds at rest. We are a fifty-year-old company based in London, specialists in all forms of services related to security and investigations, with offices in a growing number of US cities. We acquired
Titan Security and Investigation today, which gives us a very strong presence in Chicago, and therefore in the heart of the country. The ownership transfer is complete, so as of the present moment, we are your new employer.

  “Now, many people panic when they hear their company has been sold. There will be some changes, of course. We’ll need to conform your computer systems to ours, for instance, and we’ll need to make sure there is some uniformity in procedures, benefits, that sort of thing. All of these details will be carefully explained to you as we move forward. I will be here on-site overseeing these processes, and Mr. Begala Junior will also be on hand to assist in this transfer.

  “I want to make it clear, however, that we do not plan any wholesale layoffs. If there is an obvious redundancy, we will find you another job within the company.”

  Jan leaned over and whispered to Peet. “There you go. That sounds pretty safe.” But Peet stared intently at Catherine, as if trying to divine some hidden meaning behind her words. Jan found it unnerving to have Peet so unsettled. She felt unsettled as well, but less about any change in her job situation than in the simple physical reaction she was having to Catherine. Another part was frustration. Catherine was completely out of Jan’s league. She lived in London, an eight-hour plane ride away. And if that weren’t enough, she was her new boss and a relationship would be very frowned upon. All of these things made Jan want her more, as if the number of obstacles increased the desire, independent of the object of desire herself.

  Chapter Four

  Jan slipped out of the meeting and into the back lot. Her Jeep was close to the door, her reserved parking a privilege of her long employment and rank as a senior investigator. These were the things she had to show for years of piecing a life together, working diligently on countless cases of workers comp fraud, employee theft, cheating spouses, missing deadbeats, and runaway children. At sixteen, Jan had started a completely new life. She had to think of a new name—Jan Roberts was the first that came to mind—and then build a new identity with the help of some experts in such documentation she’d met through her LA contacts. Always at the back of her mind was the worry that someone from the camp or law enforcement was hunting her down for shooting her father. For twenty years, her work at Titan had enabled her to live essentially like everyone else, which was what she longed to be. Titan was her sturdy link to normalcy. Any talk of changing up that system made her brain shut down.