by Jeff Shelby
I’d been in San Diego two weeks prior, helping out an old friend, when I’d gotten the photo of Elizabeth that set this entire search in motion. In the middle of helping my friend, Lauren and I spent the night together in the hotel where I was staying. It was the first time we’d been together since the divorce. And there hadn’t been time to discuss it.
“Weird?” I asked, then shook my head. “No. It was the opposite of that.”
“Opposite?”
“Familiar,” I said. “Comfortable. Right. I don’t know how to explain it.” I paused. “We got divorced because we went different ways. Not because we didn’t love each other. At least, that’s how I’ve always looked at it.”
She nodded in agreement. “Me, too. And I’m not trying to rehash any of the old stuff. We’ve done that.” A faint smile drifted on to her face. “And it felt the same way for me. Familiar. In a good way. I needed it.”
I smiled back, unsure what else to say. At that moment, I’d needed it, too. Needed to be comforted and loved and with her. Not someone random, but her.
“Do you ever wonder what it would be like if we were still together?” she asked. “Like, if we’d gotten through her disappearance somehow and managed to stay together?”
“Yeah. Sure. I’ve thought about it. Probably wished for it.” I traced my finger along the steering wheel. “My anger hasn’t always been about Elizabeth being taken. It was also about what her being gone did to you and me. Whoever took our daughter also took our marriage.”
Her lips pursed. “Yeah. Yeah.”
“I will always be angry about that,” I said. “No one can give us that back, you know?”
Lauren started to say something, then stopped. Then she turned to me. “You think we’d have had another child?”
My smile was genuine. Instantaneous. “Yeah. Without a doubt. We said we always wanted two. And that we wanted some space in between them, to enjoy them. So, yeah. I think so.”
The smile found her face again. “Yeah.” She started to say something else, but her eyes shifted past me and the smile disappeared. “Car. In the driveway.”
I turned to see a white Ford Explorer stop just short of the garage door. I could see a driver.
And no one else.
I pushed my door open, the warm air of the car interior replaced by a cold, sharp wind. I stepped onto the sidewalk and Lauren was right behind me.
The girl wore black yoga pants and a hot-pink thermal vest over a long-sleeve black T-shirt. Her long black hair was expertly woven into a tight French braid and adorned with a thick hot-pink headband. She scurried around the front end of the Explorer, heading to the front door of the house. She froze when she saw us.
I held up a hand. “Hi. Are you Morgan?”
Her bright green eyes regarded us. “Who are you?”
“I’m Joe,” I said. “This is Lauren. Are you Morgan?”
“Do I know you?” she asked, taking another step toward the front door.
“No. But you know our daughter. Elizabeth. Or Ellie. Corzine.”
She looked from me to Lauren, then back to me, her hands fidgeting inside the pockets of her vest. “Who?”
“Ellie Corzine,” I said. “I think you picked her up at a hotel earlier this morning?”
Her already pink cheeks flushed brighter. “You’re her parents?” Her tone was derisive. “From Minnesota?”
I knew she didn’t believe us. If she’d been friends with Elizabeth back in Minnesota, she would have met the Corzines. Known them. We were complete strangers to this girl.
“No,” Lauren said slowly, her voice shaking. “We’re her real parents. Who she was taken from.”
The color drained out of her face. “Holy shit.” Just as quickly, a flush of color returned to her cheeks. “I mean, sorry.”
I looked at the car again. “She’s not with you?”
“I, uh…I…”
“Morgan,” I said, sharply. “Morgan Thompkins. I think you were friends with her back in Minnesota. She called you. She ran away because she found out she was adopted. Only guess what? She wasn’t. She was taken from us. And she was with you this morning, I’m pretty sure of it.” I paused. “Please. I’m begging you. We’ve been looking for her for years. And we came here from Minnesota. We need to find her. Where is she?”
She pulled a phone from her pocket, punched a number and held it to her ear.
“Morgan?” I asked again. “Where is she?”
She held up a finger.
I waited.
“Shit,” she muttered under her breath. She didn’t apologize this time.
“What?” I asked.
“She’s at the airport,” Morgan said.
NINE
“She called me three days ago,” Morgan said. “Asked if I could meet her and loan her some money.”
We were inside Morgan’s house. She’d continued to try and call Elizabeth, but even I knew it was useless. Bryce had said she'd turned off her phone. My gut was churning more than it ever had. I couldn’t rationalize how we could be so close, yet so far away. It wasn’t fair.
“I moved here two years ago,” Morgan said, shedding the vest and kicking off her shoes, still clutching her phone. “We went to the same school in Minnesota. We were best friends. But my dad got some stupid job here and we had to move.”
She moved out of the entryway toward the kitchen.
“We talk every week,” she continued. “We’re still best friends. Or just like best friends. Or whatever. We text. We email. Facebook. But we talk every Sunday night on the phone for sure. Two years, we haven’t missed a Sunday night.”
I nodded.
“So it was weird to see her number pop up on a non-Sunday,” Morgan said. “Like, I knew something was wrong. I just knew. And she told me how she found a paper or something that said she was adopted.”
“How was she?” Lauren asked. “I mean, how did she feel about that?”
“She was confused,” Morgan said, setting the phone down on a massive stone island in the middle of the kitchen. “And hurt. And pissed. I tried to talk her down, get her to chill, but she was beyond pissed. She felt like her whole life was a lie.”
“Had she ever said anything before about being adopted?” I asked.
Morgan shook her head, the braid swinging back and forth. “Nope. But she always was kinda weird about when she was a kid.”
“What do you mean?” I wanted to sit down and pore over every detail she could give me. It was irrational and there wasn’t time for that but it didn’t keep me from wanting it.
Morgan glanced at her phone, frowned. “Like, she couldn’t remember a lot. And she didn’t tell people that because she couldn’t figure out why.”
Lauren and I exchanged glances. I’d often daydreamed that Elizabeth was alive and I’d wondered what she’d remember. If she would remember being taken. Or Coronado. Or us. Lauren had always maintained that if she was alive and the abduction wasn’t violent, she probably had blocked out a lot of the details. She’d done hours of reading and research in the days and weeks following her disappearance, digging into the psychology of kidnapped children. Many missing kids blocked out the traumatic details of suddenly losing one life and being thrust into another. They would accept a fictional history rather than deal with the reality of having been ripped from loved ones.
“Why did she come here?” I asked. “To Denver. I mean, if she wasn’t planning on staying?”
Morgan raised her eyebrows at me like the answer was simple. “Because of me.”
“You.”
“She knew she could trust me,” she said. “She knew I’d help her.”
I leaned against the breakfast bar. “What did she need?”
“Money,” she said. “A new phone. A ride away from her dork of a boyfriend.”
I felt a little pang of sympathy for Bryce, the slighted boyfriend, but quickly put it aside. “And you took her to the airport?”
She glanced down at her phone again
. “Yeah. But she won’t answer.”
“The new phone?” I asked. “The one you gave her?”
She nodded.
“Why the airport?” I asked. “Where is she going?”
“She’s trying to figure out what happened,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Small details,” she said. “Small details are coming back. Or she’s seeing them. When she found the paper that said she was adopted, I think it freaked her out. But she couldn’t sleep. For days. And she said she kept seeing things.”
“Like?” Lauren asked.
“The beach,” she said. “Palm trees. Ocean.”
My pulse quickened. “Coronado.”
“What?”
“Coronado,” I repeated. “Where she lived. Where we lived.”
Morgan rubbed her hands together. “I don’t know. But she decided she wanted to go see if she could see anything else that might help her remember.”
“So she’s going to San Diego?” I asked, the hope sparking again.
“No,” Morgan said, extinguishing the spark. “Los Angeles.”
“Why L.A.?”
Morgan shrugged. “I don’t know. She felt like she needed to go somewhere. We looked at a map. It seemed to make sense.”
“Sending a kid to L.A. by herself made sense?” I asked, incensed. “Really?”
Lauren put a hand on my arm, but I shook it off.
“Are you serious?” I said. I didn't care that Morgan was just a kid herself as I unleashed all of my anger and frustration. “She’s never been there before. She’s going there alone. And you think it makes sense to let her go? What the hell kind of friend are you?”
Morgan’s shoulders slumped and her eyes drifted to the floor. I didn’t care if she felt bad. I did care that she was apparently stupid.
“Joe,” Lauren said, her voice sharp as her nails dug into my arm.
I shrugged her off.
“So you bought her a ticket?” Lauren asked Morgan. “Is that why she came to you?”
“I gave her money for a ticket,” Morgan said, still staring at the floor. “And some extra because she’s almost out. For hotel or whatever. She’s supposed to call me when she gets to L.A. so that I know…”
“What time’s the flight?” I interrupted. “And what airline?”
Morgan hesitated.
“What time?” I yelled.
She winced, then glanced at the clock on the microwave. “She was looking at one that left at one-thirty. I don’t know the airline.”
I looked at Lauren. “Stay here with her. Get as much info as you can. Keep calling the number. Call her parents. But stay with her and don’t let her out of your sight.” I jogged toward the front door.
“Where are you going?” Lauren yelled.
“Airport,” I said, and, before she could stop me, I opened the door and ran into the cold, cold wind.
TEN
Denver International Airport was located east of the city, out on the plains before you hit the Kansas border. I’d driven to the airport once before—I couldn’t recall why—but as I sped down the roads that left the highway and pointed me toward the airport, I recognized the giant, white, tent-like structure as it grew larger.
I flew past the rental car center and, unsure of which airline she might be trying to get on, chose the east terminal because it looked like I could get there quickest. I momentarily flirted with the idea of pulling into the parking garage, then changed my mind. If I was able to stop her, there was going to be all kinds of chaos and the least of my worries would be a rental car parked in a pick-up zone.
I found an open spot in the pick-up area and slid in behind a gray SUV. I got out and without looking around, hustled into the airport. No one stopped me. I found a screen listing the departing flights and scanned it quickly. I spotted one flight leaving for Los Angeles at one-thirty.
Which was in exactly nine minutes.
I had to make a decision. Find the airline counter and try to get them to stop the flight or try to get to the gate myself.
I took the latter.
I found a kiosk for the nearest airline and did a quick search of flights for the day. I bought the cheapest I could find—one bound for Topeka, Kansas. I had no intention of going to Topeka, but the boarding pass would get me to the gate.
I went down the escalator, two steps at a time and cut under the empty security line ropes. The stations were nearly deserted at mid-day and I quickly had my shoes and jacket off and was through the x-rays in less than three minutes.
I checked my watch.
I had four minutes.
I jammed my feet into my shoes, grabbed my jacket and sprinted toward the trains to the gates. I slipped into one just as it closed and grabbed the metal pole to keep my balance as it took off.
It couldn’t go fast enough.
The train car pulled to a stop at the terminal and I was yanking on the doors before they finally slid open. I sprinted up the stairs, saw the directions to the gates and ran harder toward the gate the plane was leaving from. I was at Gate 20.
She was at 46.
The numbers escalated as I ran.
26.
32.
40.
And finally 46.
I stood there for a moment, my chest heaving. The seats in the gate area were empty.
And the door to the jetway was closed.
The woman dressed in the navy and white uniform of the airline punched a numerical code in the door and walked toward the podium.
“Wait,” I said, waving at her. “Wait.”
She looked at me, but kept walking toward the podium.
“Wait!” I yelled.
“Were you scheduled to be on this flight, sir?” she asked, glancing at me as she stepped behind the counter.
“Yes,” I said, trying to catch my breath. I glanced out the window. The plane was still at the end of the jetway. “I mean, no.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “Sir?”
“My daughter,” I said. “She’s on that plane. She can’t go. It can’t go.”
“Sir, if she’s ticketed…”
“Open the door. Call them. You need to stop it.”
“Sir, I can’t…”
“Call them!” I yelled. “She can’t go!”
She hesitated, then looked at her screen. “What is her last name?”
“Tyler,” I said, then shut my eyes. “No. Sorry. Corzine. It’s Corzine.”
She glanced at me again. “She’s your daughter?”
“It’s Ellie Corzine,” I said, looking at the window again.
The plane was still there.
The woman stared at her monitor. “Do you have I.D.?”
I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and flipped it open. “My name is Joe Tyler.”
“But you told me your daughter’s name is Corzine,” she said.
“I can’t explain,” I said. “Just stop the plane.”
She stared at me for a long moment, then picked up the phone next to her computer.
I turned again to the window.
It was still there.
I started to relax.
“This is Elaine down at B 46,” the woman said into the phone. “I need some help down here with a guest.”
I swiveled back to her. “Call the plane. Please.”
“Yes,” she said, averting her eyes. “A guest here at the podium.”
I sprinted over to the door to the jetway and yanked on it.
It wouldn’t budge.
I pounded on the door.
I pushed all of the numbers on the keypad.
I turned back to Elaine, who had stepped out from behind the podium, still on the phone, her eyes widened in alarm.
“Open the fucking door!” I screamed at her. “Right fucking now!”
People were coming closer to the podium now, watching me, approaching cautiously. I knew what it looked like. I knew what happened in airports if you made a disturban
ce.
But I didn’t care.
“Open it!” I screamed again.
Elaine was talking urgently into the phone.
Jet engines whirred behind me.
I spun around.
The plane was pulling away from the jetway.
I rushed back to the podium.
Elaine backed away from me. “Sir, please. Calm…”
“Call them,” I said. “Call them right now and tell them to stop.”
“Sir, I cannot…”
I reached and snatched the phone from her. I put it to my ear, but heard nothing.
I pushed her out of the way and looked at the phone console and started hitting random buttons.
“Hey, buddy,” a guy said from my left. “You can’t just go back there. You need to calm down.” He put his hand on my arm. “Put the phone down and…”
I shoved him hard with the arm he had ahold of. He toppled over backward into the group of people standing behind him.
I looked at Elaine, tears in my eyes. “Please. Call them back. It’s my daughter. Please.”
She started to say something, then her eyes swept past me and relief filled her face.
And I knew what was coming.
“Step away from the counter,” a voice commanded.
I turned around.
There were four police officers, all with their weapons drawn, pointed squarely at me.
“Stop the plane,” I said. “Please.”
“Put your hands on your head,” the one in the middle said. “Now.”
“Stop it,” I said. “Please. Don’t let her go.”
“Hands on your head,” the officer repeated. “Now.”
I looked around. There were now hundreds of people gathered around, watching.
I dropped the phone and put my hands on my head.
“Turn around and back up toward my voice,” the officer said. “Slowly.”
I did as he said and watched as several other officers arrived, running at us.
Hands grabbed at me from behind and I was shoved to the ground, a knee in the small of my back, the hands patting me down.
I twisted my head toward the window.
The plane was already gone.
ELEVEN
