by Jax Miller
He immediately recognizes Adelaide Custis, mother to Carol Paul and Clare Custis.
And to the right is one that he doesn’t recognize, but Peter studies it anyway. It’s of a fifteen-year-old female who went missing two months ago.
Her name is Michelle Campbell.
Back at the office with Violet, the whispers of his colleagues behind the door about the disappearance of Mason’s sister rips at his insides and ties them in knots. This is the charmed life, he thinks as he looks around the large office, crystal decanters and silver teapots shimmering in the autumn sunlight. A successful man, guts twisting with rage behind a designer suit. I’m the most insufferable son of a bitch I know. But for the first time in his life, Mason snaps a little. He opens the bottom drawer and slugs at his emergency stash of Maker’s Mark bourbon, knuckles tight enough that he might break the neck.
“I don’t care if he’s having his lunch in fucking Guam,” Violet yells into the phone, waking circles around Mason’s desk. “Just get the sheriff on the damn line!” She raises an eyebrow at him, motioning as if she’s about to throw the phone across the room. She stretches out her arm for the bottle, double-checking that the blinds are closed. “Gimme that,” she whispers. Covering the receiver with her hand, “A police department run by rednecks. I’m just waiting for one of them to tell me I have a purdy mouth.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me in the least,” Mason says as he stares at the screen of the computer, head in his hands. He slightly tugs at fistfuls of his own hair with frustration.
“So much for that vacation,” she says to herself. The bottle tings her teeth.
Mason pretends he didn’t hear her. He turns to her while waiting for an upload to complete. “Why don’t you head on home, in case Rebekah shows up there?”
She rolls her eyes at the phone and hangs up. “Yeah, OK.”
He reaches for her hands. “Listen, hon,” he begins, about to apologize.
Violet knows what he’s about to say. “Don’t worry about it,” she says and sighs, failing to hide her disappointment. “You just find her.” She leans in and kisses his forehead. She goes for the bottom drawer to return the liquor.
“I got that.” He takes the bottle from her and grabs her blazer from behind him on the back of the chair. “Just get on home safe and I’ll call you in a little bit.”
“Keep me posted.” She starts for the door. “And don’t drink too much, you’re going to need your wits about you.”
He smiles as she closes the door behind her. When he’s sure she’s gone, he takes a good two or three shots. He opens the bottom drawer, the one he stopped Violet from going into. In it is a velvet box with an engagement ring inside.
The computer beeps with a pop-up saying an upload is complete; the CDs he lifted from the Bluegrass. He slams his mouse and opens the folder, face hot when he sees the files are encrypted. He can’t sit, can’t stand the thought of living in his own skin for a second longer.
“Mason, there’s someone here to see you,” says his secretary over the intercom.
“Gimme a minute.” He looks in the mirror and tucks in his shirt, realizing that the glass that cut his ear at the Bluegrass the day before left a perfect slice. He searches his inside pockets for a pack of gum to help conceal the booze on his breath. “Send him in.”
“I hope I’m not disturbing you.” A man in a wheelchair enters the office. Mason looks at the stranger, his curly black hair and thick lips.
Mason shuts off the television and closes the laptop. “Forgive me, I’m actually on vacation. Can I help you?”
“It’s about your sister, Rebekah. I’m here on behalf of a friend.” He squints against the sun that cuts through the blinds as he looks up at Mason. It’s remarkable how much Mason looks like Mark, Peter thinks.
Mason furrows his brow. “How is that?”
Without a word, Peter nods toward the bottle of Maker’s Mark on Mason’s desk. Mason doesn’t quite know what to think of it at first, this stranger, this guy who claims to know something about Rebekah, here on behalf of yet another stranger. But Mason doesn’t see many other options that might get him closer to finding Rebekah. He puts the mouth of the bottle to the man’s lips. “What’s your name?”
“Peter.” He breathes out the fire.
“And you said this is about Rebekah?” Mason sits behind his desk and crosses his arms.
“That’s right.” Peter swallows. “I may know who took her.”
Mason suddenly jolts from his buzz, still unsure about this guy. He twirls the bottle between his knees. “All right, then. Who took my sister?”
“Well, I should rephrase.” He reaches into the chair’s pocket and pulls out a USB drive. “I thought I knew who took her. It may be she has more than just a few people out there who are looking for her, and not for her best interest.” Mason gives a red-wheat-flavored smile because he doesn’t quite believe him yet, waits for Peter to continue. “What do you know about your maternal grandmother?”
“She and my grandfather died when I was a teenager.” Mason wonders if he was all the smarter for entertaining this stranger with answers, but it’s too late to take it back. “What does she have to do with anything?”
“Under my chair.” Peter jerks his head. “Grab my laptop.”
At first, Mason doesn’t believe what he sees in the local news archives on the computer, chalks it up to too much to drink. “All right.” He paces the room with the laptop in his arm. “Let’s say this is my mother’s mother, my grandmother.” He lets the last few drops of the bourbon trickle down the back of his tongue. “I still don’t see what this has to do with Rebekah.”
“Go to the photo gallery of the Third-Day Adventists’ webpage.” Peter directs Mason to a group photo of the tweens’ youth group in someone’s living room, the awkward kind: teeth they have yet to grow into, acne, the works.
“The Mickey Mouse Club, so what?”
“Look at the two girls in the back.”
Mason recognizes Rebekah, smiling, hugging another girl who’s facing the opposite direction. “What about it?”
“That girl Rebekah’s hugging…”
“I can’t see her face.”
“There’s a mirror on the wall, her reflection is in it.”
Mason has to peer through the pixels of the computer screen. “How the hell did you even notice that?”
“I’m observant.” He adjusts himself in the chair and his bones stiffen under his skin. “The girl in the mirror is Michelle Campbell, a teenager who went missing two months ago.”
Mason recognizes her face from the news, but to confirm the wild notion, he opens a new page and Googles the name. To his disbelief, there’s no denying. The girl in the photo with her back to the camera and face in the mirror is none other than Michelle Campbell. Mason grabs the laptop and slowly drags his feet back to his chair, deaf to the whirrs of the electric wheelchair trailing behind.
“That’s three missing people who can be tied to your family’s church: Adelaide Custis, Michelle Campbell, and…”
“My sister,” Mason finishes. “How did you figure all this out? I mean, why the interest in Rebekah’s disappearance? In the other disappearances?”
“Because before I pieced it together, I thought someone else might be responsible.” His stutter was a little more subtle. “In fact, it can’t be ruled out. We must look into both possibilities.”
“Which are?”
“It’s either my family or yours.”
“Your family.” He sits up straight. “What do you mean your family?”
“My brothers: Matthew, Luke, and John.” He glances over at a childhood photo of Mason and Rebekah that sits on a bookshelf behind the desk. It takes all that he has not to tell Mason of the whys and the whos of his brothers, who they are to him, why they might have something to do with Rebekah. He can’t tell him that his father’s mother, that sick bitch, is on the hunt for her grandchildren. He can’t tell him that his biological mothe
r is too. “I didn’t piece this connection until after I got here. But you must look at my brothers as suspects.”
Mason’s afraid to ask, wondering a million terrible things: Are these brothers waiting downstairs in the parking lot? Was Peter sent as a distraction? “Where do you stand with them?”
Peter straightens his head and pierces Mason’s eyes with his. “I can’t stand at all.” Mason laughs, despite himself. Peter says, seriously, “I don’t stand with monsters.”
Mason swallows hard. “And what might your brothers want with my sister?”
Peter rolls forward so his face is close to his nephew’s. “Mason, there are two types of men in this world. There are the common, and then there are the all-too-common monsters. Men like you and I would fall under the category of common. Then there are men who crave disaster; they suck the souls out of anyone they can. Those are the all-too-common, too many walking on this earth. And my brothers? Well, they fall into the latter category.”
“And this friend that sent you. Where does he stand?”
“She. Her name’s Freedom.” Peter leans back. “Freedom stands somewhere in the middle. Her interest in your sister is nothing but good intentions.” Peter tries several times to lift his pant leg. “Do me a favor. There’s a flask in my sock. Would you grab it for me?” He hopes this will avert him from the subject of Freedom.
Mason obliges; his head swims with the liquor when he bends over. “Why should I trust you to help me?”
“Because who else do you have?” The response lingers thick in the air, so strong that Mason can almost feel it with his bare hands. While the words are sharp, he knows Peter’s right. His thoughts are interrupted by Peter sucking through a straw from the flask.
“And you won’t tell me who Freedom is? Why she’s involved?”
“That’s her story to tell, not mine. But somehow, she knows your sister.” Peter accidentally drools when he pulls away from the straw. “You’ll meet her soon, don’t worry.”
“I don’t suppose your brothers are skinheads, are they?”
“No, why?”
“Hmm.” Mason remembers the CDs he lifted from the Bluegrass. “I got my hands on these CDs, but they’re encrypted files, I can’t read them. They could be security from the night she was taken.”
“What makes you so sure she was taken, anyway? I mean, who’s to say she didn’t just run away?”
“She did.” Mason gets up and paces. “But she was taken before she could reach wherever it was she was trying to get to. There was a witness who was with her that night. Beaten to a pulp. I got a text saying he didn’t make it.”
“Pull up the CDs,” Peter demands. “We’ll get the fuckers.”
—
Twenty minutes later, Mason sits in the back corner of the office, texting Violet to tell her he loves her. While he’s distracted, Peter sneaks into one of his desktop files labeled “Bills” and memorizes Mason’s home address.
He’ll text it to Freedom later. Peter calls out, “I got s-s-something.”
Mason runs to him at his desk. “What is it?”
“Interesting, to say the least.” Peter uses the back of his wrists to rub his eyes, strained from the screen. They see a blond woman walk in wearing a Jack Daniel’s shirt and tight jeans. They see some redneck rubbing on her. They see the cook come to her rescue. “Recognize anyone?”
“I don’t know.” Mason studies the black-and-white but clear footage. “Any one of them could be Gabriel; he was unrecognizable when I saw him.”
“And the out-of-place blonde?”
“Rebekah has long red hair.”
“Could have cut and dyed it, especially if she were running away.” Mason knows Peter could be right.
“Any way to zoom in?”
Click. Blur. Pixelated. Focus. Repeat. As clear as day, Rebekah is in the video, in disguise, but there’s no question about it. It’s her. Mason can see her necklace.
“Who the hell is that guy rubbing up on her?” Mason asks under his breath.
“One way to find out,” Peter offers. “Let’s print his face and head to the Bluegrass. Show his photo around.”
My name is Freedom and I don’t know where I am. I’m lying on my back in a large bed with what feels like the worst hangover a person could possibly imagine. The throbbing pushes itself toward the front of my skull when I sit up. It’s afternoon. I am naked, wrapped in those stringy white blankets that usually sit for years in the back of every linen closet in America. Where the fuck am I? I try to recall last night’s events.
The sound of static in my brain turns into the drumming of heavy rain on the aluminum roof. To my left, a fireplace crackles; dream catchers of red feathers ornate my blurry vision. I look around the wood cabin and no one’s here with me. Out the window is a view of a back porch with rocking chairs and wooden wind chimes, screened off from the desert that stretches farther than the aches of my head and heavy rainfall will allow me to see.
I wrap the white blanket around my body and get up from the bed as quietly as I can, but as soon as I put my weight on my right leg, I fall like a deer that’s been shot, the way I fell last night, I think. I’m starting to remember. All the blood in my body seems to rush to my calf, a pain that feels like my leg’s being impaled by a hot poker. I hear footsteps from the other side of the house. I have to get the hell out of here. Naked or not, I go to leave the sheet behind and head for the window.
But I’m not fast enough.
With one impressive sweep, a man lifts me like a child and lays me back on the bed. “You’re going to hurt yourself, miss. You need to lie down.”
I squirm, I try to snap my teeth at the man. “Put me down!” His long, black hair brushes over my face. His shoulders bulge from a wifebeater, his skin tight and sun-tinged. Shit, my gun. My money. My stolen motorcycle. “I have to get out of here. You have to let me out. You can’t do this to me.”
“Ma’am, I need you to stay calm.”
“Don’t tell me to stay fucking calm,” I bark at him from the bed, pulling the sheet tighter around my body. “What the hell is going on?”
In his hand is an orange bottle of prescription pills. He walks to my side and puts a tablet in my hand. “Take one of these. It’s amoxicillin for the infection.”
“Infection?” I sniff the pill and discern that it is an antibiotic, that foul smell. “Wait a minute,” I say as flashes of last night form in my mind like a broken ornament being pieced back together. The bike stalling, the lightning storm, the old man with silver braids rattling something over my head and singing something velvety and ritualistic. “I was shot.”
“Stay here, I’ll grab you something to drink.” In his absence, the harmony created between fire and rain constructs an atmospheric milieu. A voice outside breaks my trance from the fire licking the walls of the fireplace, black with years’ worth of silt and soot. It’s the voice from last night. The wood of the porch groans with age under the chair; it sounds like a record player spinning over and over again after the music stops. I suddenly realize the kind of people I’m with.
“You’re Indians,” I tell the man as he returns with a mug, steam rising.
“We prefer Native Americans.” He sets the cup on the nightstand.
“So you’re politically correct Indians?”
He gives half a smirk, something childlike and innocent. He’s one of the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen in my life. His jaw is strong, his dark eyes gentle. The fire paints him into something sculpted, muscle you can see through his shirt. “Drink up.”
“What the fuck is this, some Indian twig-and-berry poison crap?”
“Starbucks.” He takes a band from his wrist and ties his long hair back into a ponytail. Black-rimmed glasses fall from his head and land on his nose.
“Why the fuck am I naked?” I snap.
“Anyone ever tell you that you curse like a sailor?”
“Go fuck yourself, Dances with Wolves.”
He sits at th
e foot of the bed and lifts the sheet from my leg and looks under the bandage. “My father had to strip you naked. Your body was beginning to swell up.” He focuses on my leg while I reach for the coffee and blow into it. “He’s old-fashioned, cut the wound right off of you. The antibiotics will fix the infection. It did save your life, though.”
“I don’t understand…”
“Rattlesnake bite. Caught you twice, once in the leg, once in the arm.”
“So I wasn’t shot?”
He raises his eyebrows. “Were you expecting to be shot?”
“Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting to be attacked by a rattlesnake and dragged across the desert by an old Indian man.”
“Native American,” he corrects me, not that I don’t already know the difference. “Shoshone. We were called the Snake Indians many years ago.” He has a warm touch, places one ankle next to the other. “I’ll clean it in a little bit.” He moves up the bed and closer to my face while he inspects the bite on my right arm. He smells like that bright, orange Dial soap that pediatricians of my childhood would use. Above his upper lip is a faint scar.
“You found my gun and my money?”
“Mmhmm.” His breath touches my upper arm. “We’ll give them back.”
“And you won’t say anything?”
He covers my arm back up. “Say what to whom?”
I clear my throat. This has to be one of the best cups of coffee I’ve had in my entire life. “Are you a doctor?”
“I’m a surgeon at Saint Michael’s.”
“And what’s your dad, the backyard butcher witch doctor?”
“A shaman.” A trace of a giggle from his nose. “You’re a real feisty one, aren’t ya? My father always warned me about crazy white women.”
“Did that ever stop you?”
“Ask my white ex-wife.” He starts for the door. “I’ve cooked up some breakfast out here.”
“What’s your name?”
He stops. “Chuck.”
“You didn’t strike me as a Chuck,” I say as I watch the flames on the other side of the room.
