by Jeff Shelby
He nodded. “I will. But can I give you something?”
“Give me something?”
He fished in the pocket of his jeans for a moment, then pulled his hand out and extended it to me. A small silver bracelet was in his palm and I took it. There were several small charms attached. A moon, a sun and a small cat.
“I gave it to her for her birthday,” he said. “I found it on the counter in the bathroom in the hotel in Denver. I think she forgot it. Would you give it to her when you find her?”
I fingered the charms for a moment, wondering what they meant to Elizabeth. Wondering how it had looked on her wrist. Wondering if she’d meant to leave it behind or if it had been a mistake. Wondering what other kinds of jewelry she liked to wear.
I folded it up carefully and put it in my pocket. “I’ll get it to her.”
“Thanks,” Bryce said.
“You can find your way back to the airport?”
He nodded. “Yeah. And when you find her?”
I waited.
“Ask her to call me,” Bryce said. “Just whenever she can. Ask her to call me.”
He slid into the driver’s seat of his car and I watched him pull away from the curb.
I still wasn’t sure why he’d followed us to Los Angeles, but I didn’t think he’d meant any harm. I thought he was a kid who missed his girlfriend and couldn’t figure out why she’d cut him out of this part of her life. He was confused, sad, frustrated.
And I hoped I’d have the opportunity to ask her to call him at some point.
TWENTY-NINE
I got back into the car and Lauren was on her phone for a moment before punching it off.
She looked at me. “That was Morgan. Her calls are going to be forwarded to your phone.” She nodded at the front seat. “They got what they needed from her, she said okay and they set it up.” She paused. “So if she calls Morgan…”
“My phone will ring,” I said. “John, is that every call that goes to Morgan’s phone or just from my daughter’s?”
“Every call,” Anchor said, turning around. “We did an entire forward from her system. So any number that calls the girl in Colorado will ring through to you. We should be able to recognize the number, though. Should have a Southern California area code. But I’d say we answer everything, just to be safe.”
I nodded, staring at my phone for a moment. I wasn’t exactly sure how I’d handle hearing my daughter’s voice. I didn’t think there was any way to prepare for the moment.
“Nothing on triangulating her number?” I asked.
Anchor shook his head. “The phone hasn’t been used. We’re still watching. If she makes a call, we’ll see it.”
I nodded again.
“Can anyone tell me what exactly we’re doing?” Will Thorton asked in the seat next to me.
“No,” Lauren said. “Shut up.”
Thorton shrunk in his seat.
Kitting navigated the neighborhood streets in Redondo, passing through narrow streets of upright homes with multiple stories, each trying to get a glimpse of the Pacific out to the west. He pulled to the curb, the big car idling in front of a two-story stucco with a brown garage door and a gate barely hanging on one hinge. An old VW bug was in the driveway, the shiny chrome exhaust pipes at odds with the faded orange paint on the rest of the vehicle. A small, portable fire pit was near the garage door, along with several empty beer cans.
Kitting twisted his head towards us. “This it, kid?”
Thorton nodded, still sulking. “Yeah. He has a roommate, too. But that’s his car.”
Kitting nodded and looked at Anchor.
“You want me to go get him?” Anchor asked.
I opened my door. “No. I’ve got it. She might still be here.”
“I’m coming, too,” Lauren said, her door already open.
“We’ll be here,” Anchor said.
My stomach knotted as Lauren and I walked to the door. We weren’t too far behind Elizabeth. There was a good chance that she was there, behind the door, and that we’d come face to face with her for the first time in nearly a decade. I didn’t know if she’d recognize me or even if she did, how she’d react. I wasn’t sure how I’d react. For so long, I’d committed myself to a search without an ending, a search that only ran into dead-ends. These last couple of days were the first time I’d ever let myself get caught up in thinking that I was close to finding her. That I was going to find her.
And I told myself I was. Even if she wasn’t at this house, we knew she was nearby. Close enough to catch.
Close enough to finally see.
I knocked on the door and heard the knock echo behind it.
We waited.
Footsteps shuffled behind the door and it opened.
A guy in his twenties wearing board shorts, no shirt and sporting a barbwire tattoo around his fairly sizable right bicep stood there, looking at us. “Yeah?”
“You Aaron Simmons?” I asked.
He looked me up and down, then did the same to Lauren. “Maybe. Who are you?”
“We’re looking for the girl you picked up from the Crowne Plaza earlier,” I said. “She here?”
He looked bored. “Not sure what you’re talking about, man, and it’s late to be knocking on my door.”
“Yeah, you do,” I said, then motioned at the car. “Your buddy Will is in there and he brought us here.”
If that fazed him, he didn’t show it. “No idea what you’re talking about, dude,” he repeated. “And I was just about to go to bed so thanks for stopping by.”
He went to close the door but I wedged my shoulder against it. “We’re not done.”
His arms arched at his sides and he thrust his chest out. “Get off my door, dude.”
“We’re not done,” I repeated.
He stared at me, giving me a stare that I’m sure he thought was hard, intimidating, a stare he thought might scare me off. Then he turned to Lauren.
“You’re welcome to come in, though, sweetheart,” he said, casting a leering grin in her direction. “I’ll stay up for you. In a couple of ways.”
I put my hand on his throat and pinned him to the doorframe. He grabbed at my wrist, then tried to swing at me. I pulled my head back and pressed my fingers tighter around his neck.
Lauren stepped off the small step, but didn’t intervene.
He gave up trying to hit me and focused on my hand that was cutting off his air supply. Both of his hands clawed at my forearm as his eyes tried to stay calm. He was strong and I was having trouble maintaining my grip.
I stepped forward and drove my knee upward between his legs. His hands fell to his sides and his entire body sagged. I let go of his throat and let him fall to the ground.
He writhed on the concrete, one hand on his neck, the other folded in between his legs.
I bent down. “There are two guys in that car over there who are far scarier than me. If I go ask them, they’ll come over here and start taking off your fingers, one at a time. We’ll just drop them in a trash can. You’ll beg them to stop. And all because you didn’t want to answer my questions about the girl you picked up earlier. Seems kind of stupid, doesn’t it?”
Beads of sweat popped on his forehead. Red circles sprouted on his neck where my fingers had been.
I waited.
“Fuck you, dude,” he rasped, his eyes darting at me.
Before I could move, Lauren’s foot smashed into his mouth. She pulled it away, exposing a mess of scarlet teeth. Aaron’s eyes were closed tight in pain.
We waited.
He rolled onto his back and eventually opened his eyes. He swallowed several times, probably more blood than saliva, then pushed himself into a sitting position.
He wiped at his mouth with his forearm. “What about her?” he spat.
“You picked her up at the hotel?” I asked.
“Yeah. Will called. It’s our thing. At least, since that bitch fired me.”
“Right. You picked her up. Tell me
exactly what happened.”
He leaned back on his hands. “Will told her I could give her a place to stay, a ride, whatever she needed. I went to the hotel. Met her outside. She didn’t really wanna get in the car, but I guess she decided I didn’t bite.” He shrugged. “I told her she could crash at my place.”
I glanced at the front door. “So she’s here?”
He shook his head. “No. We drove for like five minutes and she changed her mind.”
The tiny tendril of hope in my gut disintegrated. I knew better, but I couldn’t help hoping she was somewhere in this dirtbag’s house.
“She just changed her mind?” Lauren asked, frowning. “Just like that?”
He wouldn’t look at her and he rubbed at his jaw. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“Or maybe you hit on her or told her she was gonna need to sleep in your bed if she needed a bed to sleep in,” Lauren said.
He stared at her, then shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t remember.”
“Right,” she said, returning his stare.
Lauren was probably right and a small bubble of anger formed inside of me. But beating the crap out of this guy wasn’t going to get us closer to Elizabeth. We needed to focus and not get distracted by his crap.
“She changed her mind,” I said. “Then what?”
“She said she didn’t wanna go,” he said, moving his eyes from Lauren to me. “She asked if I could just drop her off at another hotel.”
“So you took her to another hotel?”
His mouth twisted and he looked away from me. “I told her no.”
“No?”
“Told her I didn’t have time to take her anywhere else,” he said. “It was my place or nothing.”
The anger inside of me grew. “So you just kicked her out of the car?”
He ran his tongue over his teeth, turning them from red to pink. “I pulled over. She was kinda mad.”
“No kidding,” Lauren said, shaking her head.
“I’m not a taxi service,” Aaron said.
“Yeah. You’re just an asshole,” Lauren said. “An asshole who drops girls off in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of the night.”
He started to say something back, then glanced at me and thought better of it. He leaned back on his hands. “I pulled over. She got out. That was it.”
He took a deep breath. I was frustrated with him, but also with Elizabeth. She was playing a dangerous game, getting into cars with strangers, then changing her plans. She was lucky that Aaron was just a jerk and kicked her out of the car. He could’ve done far worse.
“Where did you let her out?” I asked.
“Halfway between here and the hotel,” he said, then shrugged again.
“Where exactly?”
“I wasn’t paying attention.”
I glanced at the cars. “I’m serious. Each finger. They will take each finger off and won’t stop until they are all gone.”
He tried to act like he wasn’t afraid, but his eyes had darted to the SUV and he was swallowing hard.
“Probably about six blocks from here,” he said and then named the cross streets.
“She say anything about where she was going?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nope, and I didn’t ask.”
“You see which way she went?”
“No. She shut the door and I was gone. That was it, man. Didn’t even check the mirror.”
I reminded myself that Elizabeth had gotten herself this far. She may have been afraid, but she wasn’t dumb. She’d made it all the way from Minnesota to California and that didn’t happen by mistake. She may have made some errors in judgment, but she had gotten herself all the way to the coast by herself. That told me she could take care of herself. She wasn’t going to walk out in traffic or sleep in a crack house.
It was a small consolation.
I looked at Lauren. “Let’s go.”
Lauren stood still, staring at Aaron. I’d seen that look before. I knew she wanted another shot at him.
“Not worth it,” I said. “Come on.”
She stayed for a moment, then shook her head and walked past him.
Then she whirled and drove her foot right under his chin, snapping his head back and buckling his arms as he hit the driveway.
She turned back to me. “Totally worth it.”
THIRTY
We were driving in circles.
We’d relayed the info to Kitting and Anchor that we’d gotten from Aaron Simmons and we’d gone to the intersection where Elizabeth had exited Simmons’ car. There was no smoking gun, no giant clue, no arrow pointing in the direction she’d gone.
It was simply a deserted intersection just before dawn in a coastal town.
So we drove. We dropped Will Thorton back at the Crowne Plaza and returned to the intersection, trying to replicate every possible route, seeing if they led anywhere that might give us some indication as to where Elizabeth might’ve gone. But the longer we drove, the more frustrating it became. The houses in the neighborhoods looked more foreign, the fast-food restaurants more generic and the faces of the people in the middle of the night walking the streets less like Elizabeth’s.
I was tired of staring out the window. My head hurt. It was almost dawn. I hadn’t slept for more than a couple of hours since the chase had begun. Wherever she’d gone, it wasn’t where we were looking. We weren’t going to find her.
And then my phone rang.
The ring tone was that of an old rotary telephone, a shrill bell that sounded like it was coming from a phone hung on a wall in a kitchen with a long cord, before the days of cordless phones and cells. The number flashed large on the screen, the entire interior of the car illuminating as the screen lit up. A number with an L.A. area code.
“Right number?” Anchor asked.
I nodded, letting the bells ring in my ears. “Yeah.”
“Wait three seconds, then answer,” he said.
Lauren’s fingers dug into the leather seats.
The seconds ticked away in my head.
One.
Two.
Three.
“Okay, answer,” Anchor said.
I took a deep breath, but couldn’t find any air.
I stuck my finger on the answer button, then touched the speaker button.
I tried to speak, but nothing came out.
“Morgan?” the voice said. “It’s me. Are you there?”
I hadn’t heard her voice in almost a decade, but there was no doubt in my mind that it was Elizabeth’s voice. I knew it as if I’d been speaking to her every day for her entire life. In some ways, maybe I had. But hearing her voice right at that moment confirmed something for me that I’d never, ever let myself believe one hundred percent.
She was alive.
“Morgan? Can you hear me?”
“Elizabeth?” I said, my voice sounding strange and foreign in the interior of the car.
She didn’t say anything.
“Elizabeth, please don’t hang up,” I said. “Morgan is worried about you.”
“Who is this?” she asked, her voice quieter, suspicious.
The answer was so simple. It had never changed for me. But I had to wonder if she would agree with it and I had to force the words out of my mouth.
“I’m your dad,” I said, my eyes blurring. “And I’m here with your mom.”
Anchor reached over the seat and gestured with his hand to keep talking.
“I know you have a million questions,” I said, spitting the words out, not sure I was making sense. “We talked to the Corzines in Minneapolis. We talked to Bryce. We’ve been trying to catch up to you. We’re here in Los Angeles.”
“You’ve been following me?” she asked.
Of all the questions I expected, that wasn’t one I was prepared for and I opened my mouth and nothing came.
“Elizabeth, can you tell us where you are?” Lauren said, her voice taut, hanging by a thread. “We just want to help. You don’t have to be alone.”<
br />
“I don’t know you,” she said. “I don’t know you.”
Lauren looked at me, lost as to what to say.
“The Corzines said you found papers about your adoption,” I said. “You weren’t adopted. You were taken from us.”
“What?” Her voice was high-pitched. A little hysterical. “What are you talking about?”
There was no roadmap for this conversation. There were no guidelines. I was afraid of saying the wrong thing, but more afraid to say nothing. I knew she might’ve blocked out whatever had happened to her. I knew it might be hard for her to recall and that maybe she couldn’t. But I also knew we’d spent years trying to get her back and now we had her on the phone and it felt like we could reach out and touch her.
“You weren’t adopted,” I repeated. “You were taken from us. And you may not remember all of it. We still aren’t sure what happened. And right now, it doesn’t matter. What matters is making sure you are safe. We want to help you.”
Anchor again spun his finger in the air, encouraging us to keep her on the line.
“Can you tell us where you are?” I asked. “You shouldn’t be alone out here. We can get you to a hotel. We don’t want to…”
“I was taken from you?” she asked and it sounded like she was crying.
My fingers dug into my thigh. “Yes. From our front yard. Almost ten years ago.”
“Was it here? In California?”
“Yes.”
The line buzzed and I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath.
“I thought something happened to you,” she said, her voice breaking. “Or that you gave me away.”
Tears raced down my face and I steadied myself against the car door. “We didn’t, Elizabeth. We didn’t. We wouldn’t. I’ve spent the entire time looking for you. The entire time.”
“I thought you gave me away,” she said again, the words ragged.
“We didn’t. I promise you, we didn’t.”
“I called Morgan,” she said, ignoring what I was telling her. “Why did you answer? You said you were here in California. But she’s in Colorado. How did you answer her phone?”
“We didn’t,” I said, frustrated that I couldn’t give her answers to assure her. “The call was forwarded. Let us come to you. I swear we can explain everything. Let us come get you. We’ll come right now.”
