by Camy Tang
Clay had the phone book out before the message finished. He searched and found Gabriel Speight’s address listed. “Think she went there?”
“If I were scared enough to quit my job? Yeah,” Joslyn said. A haunted expression passed across her face briefly, as if she knew exactly what that felt like. His hand clenched at the thought of someone terrorizing her like that.
Joslyn moved away slightly.
Clay wanted to reach out to her, to hold her, to help erase that pain. But what did he know about healing people? For most of his adult life, he’d only hurt others. He’d protected a few people, like the women at the club he worked at, but he didn’t know if that made up for all the ones he’d roughed up.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Instead of exiting through the back door, Clay locked it from the inside, and they exited through the side door, which could automatically lock behind them. As they were walking onto the front lawn, he noticed sound of the television from the neighbor’s house had turned off and an older Asian woman was outside on her front lawn, watering the plants along the fence. The expression in her dark eyes was fierce. “Who’re you?”
“I’m an old friend of Amelia’s,” Clay said.
“I’ve never seen you around before,” the woman replied, still hostile.
“I haven’t seen her or her mom, Hannah, since we were kids,” Clay said. “Our moms had season passes and took us to Disneyland all the time when we were living in Los Angeles.”
The neighbor relaxed a bit at that information. “She still goes to Disneyland all the time.”
“Her back door was open, so we went inside, but we locked up behind us,” Joslyn said. “Do you know where she is?”
The woman shook her head. “Hasn’t been home in a few weeks.” However, by her tight-lipped expression, she wasn’t about to enlighten them on where Amelia might have gone.
“We were going to Gabe’s house to see if she’s there,” Joslyn said. “Did you have any messages for her?”
The woman seemed to unwind a bit. “Well, tell her I borrowed her shovel from her tool shed.”
“Will do.” Joslyn and Clay waved goodbye to her and got into their car.
They looked at each other, and said together, “Gabe’s.”
Gabe lived farther south and closer to the downtown areas. His high-rise apartment building sat on a block with a coffee shop, a florist and another tall building that held law offices. They found street parking and walked to the glass-fronted building.
For some reason, Joslyn seemed tense as they walked through the front doors into the lobby. There was a security guard in a uniform sitting behind a large desk made of faux blond wood and a glossy black top. “Hi, folks,” he said.
“We’re here to see Gabe Speight,” Clay said, leaning against the desk.
“Is he expecting you?”
“No, but tell him it’s Clay Ashton.” He hoped that if Amelia or Fiona heard his name, she’d know he wasn’t here to hurt her.
The guard got on the phone and dialed. “I have a visitor for you, a Clay Ashton?”
The silence was tight. Clay feigned casual disinterest and confidence that they’d be allowed up, but it took all his self-control not to fidget. Would it work? Was Amelia or Fiona there?
“All right.” The guard hung up. “Go right up.”
Clay had to restrain from doing a victory fist-pump. “Thanks.”
Joslyn started walking toward the elevators, then asked Clay, “What’s the apartment number, again?”
“Er...” Clay looked back at the guard.
“Three-oh-two.”
“Thanks.”
As they rode the elevator, Clay’s leg jiggled. Fiona had to be here. It was safer than her house, because of the security guard, but they’d still managed to finagle their way in. He had to get her somewhere even more secure.
They knocked on the apartment door, and a woman’s voice inside said, “Who is it?”
“Amelia, it’s Clay, Fiona’s brother. Is she all right? Are you okay?”
There was the sound of the deadbolt sliding back, then the door cracked open. “Come in.”
Something was wrong. Clay entered slowly, eyes searching the apartment. Directly ahead of them were floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall, with a leather couch and small dining room table in front. A few Disney toys were scattered on the floor.
He and Joslyn entered the apartment, then there was the sound of a gun safety clicking off.
Clay turned and saw Amelia, standing to the side of the open door, holding a pistol to Joslyn’s head.
* * *
Joslyn stood stock-still. Her blood roared in her ears, and all her senses were trained on the feel of metal caressing the skin of her temple.
Clay put his hands up. “Amelia, it’s me. We’re not here to hurt you.”
“I haven’t seen you in years. Why have you suddenly shown up? And here? How did you find me?”
“Please put the gun down first,” Clay said. “We’re looking for Fiona. I got a phone call from her three weeks ago. She said, ‘Help me, Clay’ and then got cut off. And Joslyn got a postcard from her with the same message.”
There was a tense silence, then the muzzle of the gun dropped from Joslyn’s head, and she heard the safety being clicked back on. She suddenly felt as if she could breathe again, and the air returned to her lungs in hard gasps.
“Is Fiona here?” Clay asked.
“She’s not here,” Amelia said, sounding weary.
Clay deflated visibly. He’d been so hoping for Fiona to be here. Joslyn had been hopeful but cautious, because she remembered how mindful Fiona was of others. Joslyn couldn’t see Fiona holing up with Amelia and her daughter, putting them both at risk.
“How did you find me?” Amelia asked.
“We know Fiona is running from one of Martin’s enemies,” Clay said, “so we figured she’d run to someone not connected to Martin at all. You’re the only friend Fiona had who Martin never met. He hated Disneyland, so he let Mom take me and Fiona alone.”
A small smile quirked the corner of Amelia’s mouth. “We had so much fun there.” Then her eyes grew wide. “You weren’t followed, were you?”
“No,” Clay said. “And I’m pretty sure Martin doesn’t even remember your friendship with Fiona from her childhood. We went to your house and found Gabe’s address, so we came here.”
“If Fiona isn’t here, why did you run?” Joslyn asked.
“Because Fiona told me to.”
Clay drew in a sharp breath. “You saw her.”
Amelia nodded. “Three weeks ago.”
“Can you tell us what happened?” Clay asked.
Joslyn heard voices outside the open door and ducked her head out to check. A man on his cell phone had just opened an apartment door with his key and was walking inside. She closed the front door to Gabe’s apartment and locked it.
At that moment, there was a faint cry and a small fist pounding on a closed door in the apartment. “Mommy!”
Amelia hurried to the hallway and opened a bedroom door, picking up a little girl with Amelia’s brown curly hair and button nose.
Joslyn smiled at her. “She looks just like you in that Disneyland picture.”
“What picture?” Amelia asked.
Joslyn had tucked it, frame and all, into her bag and brought it out now. Amelia’s brown eyes lit up at the sight. “I had forgotten all about that day. I got sick from too much ice cream.”
“It’s how we figured out where Fiona would go,” Clay said.
“She came to my house,” Amelia said, sitting on the couch with her daughter in her lap. “She was...frantic.”
“Mommy, down,” the little girl said, and Amelia let her play with some toys on the c
arpet.
“What happened?” Joslyn asked.
“She’d been kidnapped, but she escaped.”
Joslyn couldn’t speak for a moment. Clay had turned white. “Who kidnapped her?” he said.
Amelia shook her head. “Fiona said she didn’t know. Two men grabbed her outside some museum. At a truck stop, she managed to get loose and hide, then she hitched a ride in the back of a farmer’s truck to get away from them.”
Clay gave a long breath. “She was okay?”
“She was fine, but scared. I told her to go to the police and she said she couldn’t because of something with her father.”
“When did she come to your house?” Joslyn asked.
Amelia told them the date.
“She came to you two days after Clay’s phone call and the postal date of the postcard she sent to me,” Joslyn said. “Why didn’t she try to contact us again?”
“Did she mention anything to you about calling me?” Clay asked.
“No. She said she didn’t want to put me and Jessica in danger, so she left after only a day or two. She told me to find somewhere safe, too, in case those men tracked her to my house.”
Was that why Fiona hadn’t reached out to Joslyn and Clay again, so that they wouldn’t get involved? “She didn’t tell you where she was going?” Clay asked.
“No, she purposefully didn’t tell me,” Amelia said.
Clay shook his head, his neck bent, a picture of defeat, but Joslyn wasn’t done yet. She’d learned a few things from the way Elisabeth had managed to find out about Tomas and all the trouble Joslyn had been in last year in trying to escape him. They would find Fiona. They had to. “Amelia, what did you guys talk about while Fiona was here?”
“Well, a lot about Jessica.” She smiled at her daughter, whose Disney princesses were having a heated discussion about who got to ride the stuffed unicorn. “She hadn’t seen her in so long, she was amazed at how big she’s gotten.”
Joslyn sat up. Amelia’s daughter was at least four years old, maybe five, but Amelia’s comment meant Fiona had seen Jessica as a baby. “When was the last time you saw Fiona, before she showed up?”
“Oh, it’s been a while...two years?”
“Two years?” Clay asked, surprised. “You and Fiona have kept in touch all these years?”
“You mean since we were kids? No, we lost touch when your mom moved to Chicago with you, because the only times Fiona and I ever really hung out was at Disneyland. But when Fiona moved back to LA, she called Mom and we got in touch again.”
“Did you go to Disneyland with her?” Joslyn asked. “I went with her once.” Fiona had gone to Disneyland maybe once or twice a year, and she usually went with her roommates, or whatever group of friends she could get together.
Amelia nodded. “I went with her once, too, but my marriage was falling apart at the time and my husband didn’t like me going to Disneyland so much. Actually, when I divorced him, Fiona went with me and some friends on a trip to Hawaii.”
“I think I remember that,” Joslyn said. “It was just before Fiona left LA. She came back with a great tan. It was last-minute, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, one of my other friends had to cancel at the last minute, so I asked Fiona if she wanted to take her spot.” Amelia frowned. “She was a little down on the trip.”
“I remember she was a bit down just before she left,” Joslyn said. “I never figured out why or what caused it.”
“I talked to her about it a little, you know, when we were lying on the beach. It was two years ago, so I don’t remember exactly, but I think she said something about being unhappy with her job.”
“Job?” Joslyn shot a bewildered look at Clay, who looked equally perplexed. “I hadn’t even realized she had a job.” She’d seen Fiona almost every day for the months they’d been in the same master’s program. They’d hung out, laughed together, had dinner and lunches together, and yet Fiona had never mentioned she had a job. “Did she say what her job was?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t remember it very well, so maybe she told me and I just forgot.”
Maybe it was nothing. It might have been something she was doing for Martin and couldn’t speak about because of a nondisclosure agreement. Was that why Fiona hadn’t mentioned seeing Martin very often? Joslyn realized they still weren’t completely certain if that was why Fiona had always bought candy from that store near Martin’s office building.
“So what else did you guys talk about?” Joslyn asked.
Amelia thought a minute. “Gabe. We only started dating a few months ago.”
“Did Fiona say she was seeing someone?”
“No.” Amelia laughed. “She said the only romance in her life was from books.”
Joslyn remembered all the romance paperbacks in the box she’d left at her old house.
“We talked about a lot of stupid stuff,” Amelia said. “Our favorite restaurants, the latest thing trending on Facebook. Maybe we were avoiding the topic, or something like that. Honestly, I can’t remember what else we talked about.”
“What did Fiona have with her when she came? And what did she take with her?”
“Hardly anything. I let her take some of my clothes. She’d lost her phone, her jacket, and she said she pawned her watch in order to get out of Phoenix. I gave her a heavy jacket and a sweatshirt, and all the cash I had.”
“How much?” Clay asked. “I can pay you back.”
Amelia waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it. She and I borrowed stuff from each other all the time...” She suddenly sat up straight. “Actually when I left my house, I put Jessica’s stuff in a messenger bag that I borrowed from Fiona and kept forgetting to give back to her. It had some stuff inside she’d left there. Did you want to see it?”
Joslyn nodded eagerly, and Amelia went to the bedroom and returned with a large black over-the-shoulder bag made of heavy canvas. It had scuff marks and wear spots on the corners.
Inside, Joslyn found a little fairy doll, which she gave back to Amelia, and a romance paperback. There were also a few receipts for water bottles from kiosks in the Los Angeles airport.
“These aren’t yours?” Joslyn asked Amelia, who shook her head. “Looks like Fiona used this for traveling.” Had she taken this with her on those mysterious trips her roommates had mentioned?
Suddenly the door swung open and a man with wavy brown hair entered the apartment, carrying a briefcase. He froze at the sight of Clay and Joslyn, then shouted, “Who are you? And what are you doing in my apartment?”
FIFTEEN
Once he got over his anger and shock, Gabe was a great host. Clay couldn’t blame him for being upset at seeing two strangers with his girlfriend and her young daughter, especially since Amelia had told him everything that had happened with Fiona.
Gabe had even cooked dinner for them, talking with them about safe topics like sports and the trips he and Amelia had taken, mostly hiking at various national parks in California, and showing them pictures. Amelia talked about what she had been up to over the past several years.
It was past midnight now, and Amelia was sleeping in one of the bedrooms with Jessica. Gabe had offered his bed to one of them, but they’d both refused. Clay had opted for some blankets and a pillow on the floor, while Joslyn took the couch.
Except neither of them were sleeping. They both sat at the dining room table, the lamp overhead the only light in the quiet apartment. Outside the glass windows, the many lights of Los Angeles sparkled.
They’d been brainstorming where Fiona might have gone, somewhere without a connection to Martin, somewhere remote. Clay had racked his brains and come up with a few ideas in Chicago, but a part of him didn’t think Fiona would go back there.
“Did Fiona go to Sonoma with you?” he asked Joslyn.
; “No, I never went to Sonoma until after she left.” Joslyn sighed, then drew the messenger bag toward her. She pulled out the book and the receipts. “Would she leave the country?”
“She didn’t have her passport with her when she was taken and she didn’t want to go back and get it.”
Joslyn suddenly squinted at the receipt in her hand. “This one isn’t from the airport.” She passed it to Clay.
It was a receipt from somewhere called Bara Grocery Store for a bottle of water and lemon drops. “Fiona likes lemon drops if she can’t get Chinese candy,” Clay said.
“Look at the totals.”
Clay choked. “Fifty bucks for a bottle of water?”
“Is it really dollars? I didn’t see a denomination.” Joslyn reached for Amelia’s laptop, which she was letting them borrow, and got online. “What’s the address on it?”
“There’s just a street number and name—1765 Ishibashi Street.”
Joslyn typed, and suddenly turned the laptop so Clay could see. “It’s not in the US. It’s in the Tankoushoku Islands.”
“I don’t even know where that is.” He stared at the online map she’d brought up, and saw that it was somewhere called Bara Island, in the Tankoushoku Islands, southwest of Hawaii.
Joslyn grabbed the paperback book. “This was in this bag. I wonder if she bought it in Bara, too.” She flipped the book over and pointed to the price sticker. “Look, it’s in Tanko dollars.”
Clay looked over her shoulder as she looked up Bara Island. What they discovered blew his mind.
Joslyn’s eyes were wide. “Bara is known primarily for offshore banking.”
“Maybe she went on vacation,” Clay said. “It’s an island—maybe it has nice beaches, too.”
“There’s got to be a way to find out,” Joslyn said, as if to herself. “Where’s the box Fiona left at her old house?”
They’d kept the box with them and brought it in from the car. Clay put it on the table, and immediately picked up the shell. “See? Nice beaches.”
