Abandoned: A Thriller

by Cody McFadyen

Being pregnant makes you a woman more than anything else. You can talk tough like the boys, wear a gun like the boys, even be a boss like the boys, but once your belly starts to show, everyone is reminded: You’re not one of the boys and never will be.

  Why does it matter? I ask again, and again the answer comes: because of who we stand against. Our strength, our guns, our organizational might, those are the things that keep the evil men at bay. It’s not shame about being a woman, it’s the maddening question: Would Sands have crept into my house if I’d been a male agent instead of a female one?

  In my heart of hearts, I don’t think so.

  I touch my belly. It’s a baby, it’s hope, it’s a future life, but what it feels like right now is a bull’s-eye, outlined in neon, carrying a bullhorn and shouting out loud for all the world to hear, This is where I’m weak! This is where I’m weak!

  This, it says, is the place where you can hurt me the most. Shoot me here, and you shoot my soul.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The doctor I’m seeing is a serious woman—not serious in that way that makes a person unapproachable, not grave, but in that way that says you have all of her attention and she cares.

  Meeting a new doctor, even though I’m not a fan of going to the doctor, is easier than meeting new people in general. When a doctor examines my scarring, it’s usually frank and open, and I can be relatively certain the curiosity is professional. This doctor is no exception. Her name is Sierra Rand.

  “Why did your parents name you Sierra?” I ask.

  I’m buying time. Now that I’m here, sitting in this office, and she’s sitting there, with her white coat, file folder, and pen, I find that I’m terrified. Seeing a doctor has suddenly made it all too real.

  She seems to take it in stride. “My parents were big into hiking and camping. As the story goes, I was conceived in a tent on Mount Whitney, which is part of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.”

  “It’s a pretty name.”

  “Thanks. They were just getting over being hippies when I was born. I could have been named ‘America’ or ‘Freedom,’ or something like that, so I have no complaints, trust me.” She smiles. “Now, what can I do for you, Ms. Barrett?”

  She’s killed the banter, and it leaves me discomfited. No escaping now. “I’m pregnant.”

  She doesn’t smile or offer congratulations; she doesn’t frown. Her expression is a PhD study of the noncommittal. “How do you know?”

  “The usual. My period stopped a little over two months ago, and my boobs got sore, so I did a home pregnancy test and it came up positive. Followed it up with a blood test to confirm.”

  She consults my chart. “On your intake form you said you’ve had a child before?”

  “One.”

  “And is she healthy?”

  “She was.”

  She frowns and puts the chart back down on her lap. “Was?”

  “She was murdered by the man who did this to my face.”

  I see it then, as I’ve seen it before: the look of recognition. My story was splashed in the papers and on television. Instead of going goggle-eyed or, what I hate even worse, searching for the “right thing to say in this situation,” she shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Ms. Barrett. I didn’t put two and two together.”

  “It’s okay. And call me Smoky, Dr. Rand.”

  “Smoky.” The smile again, a nice one. “You’re welcome to call me Sierra, but you should probably call me Dr. Rand. Studies have shown that patients trust their physicians most when they stay in costume. They just don’t believe I’m a doctor if I don’t wear the white coat.”

  I open my jacket a little and show her my gun. “Similar phenomenon. It doesn’t matter how much I flash my badge; if I’m not carrying, people don’t really believe I’m an agent.”

  “I assume you had an obstetrician. Can I ask why you’re not seeing him—or her—about this pregnancy?”

  “A him. Dr. Evans. To answer your question—superstition, I guess. The daughter he saw died. I don’t want him having anything to do with this baby.” I look down, a little embarrassed, maybe a little ashamed. “I know that’s unfair, and really I don’t blame him for her death, but …”

  “You want a fresh start in every way.”

  I look back up, surprised. “That’s right.”

  She smiles reassuringly. “There’s nothing wrong with that, Smoky. The first thing we want to reduce in an expecting mother is stress. It makes sense not to be stressing about your physician, whatever the reason.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So, back to your daughter. Was she healthy? Any problems with the pregnancy or delivery?”

  “No, Alexa was easy. I had minimal morning sickness and a four-hour labor. She was a healthy baby and a healthy child. She ran a really high fever when was six months old, and she cracked her forearm once when she fell off the jungle gym. Other than that, she was fine.”

  “Good. How about you? Have you developed any health problems since then?”

  I take a deep breath and tell her what only a handful of other people know. “I had an abortion not long after my rape.”

  She takes it in stride, not even looking up from my chart. “Any complications from that? Infection, more bleeding than usual?”

  “No.”

  “Have you been going to your gynecologist regularly?”

  “Yearly pap.”

  “Excellent.” She looks at me directly now. “Were there any physical complications resulting from your assault that I need to know about?”

  “Just the scars. Everything he did was exterior.”

  “Okay. Now, I notice you didn’t put down any medications, but I always ask. Some patients are more private than others. Are you on any antidepressants?”

  “No. Thought about it, but no.”

  “What about birth control?”

  “We were using the sponge. Can’t recommend it now, I guess.”

  “So you’re not on the pill?”

  “No.”

  “What’s the medical history in your family?”

  “My mother and father both died of cancer.”

  “What about miscarriages, difficult childbirths, genetic defects?”

  “I heard something about a great-aunt who gave birth to a son with a cleft palate. Other than that, no.”

  She makes a few notes and puts my chart aside.

  “You sound like an ideal candidate for a healthy childbirth, Smoky. You’re in good shape, at a good weight, with no history of blood pressure or heart problems, you don’t smoke, and your first birth went well, with no eclampsia, diabetes, or clotting.” She smiles. “There’s no reason to expect you’ll have any difficulties with this pregnancy. We’ll keep a close eye on things due to your age, but I’m not concerned.”

  “What are the risks because of my age?”

  “There’s an increased risk of chromosomal disorders as the mother gets older, primarily Down syndrome. The statistics are debated. The worst-case scenario I’ve heard presented is as follows: at age twenty-five, a woman has roughly a 1 in 1,250 chance of having a baby with Down syndrome. At age thirty it’s 1 in 1,000. At age 40 it’s a 1-in-100 chance, and above forty-five it drops to 1 in 30.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I’m giving you this in fair disclosure, but keep in mind, seventy-five percent of all babies born with Down syndrome are to mothers under the age of thirty-five. We’ll also, if you like, do a blood test that will look for markers associated with having a Down syndrome child.”

  “When would we do that?”

  “It will depend entirely on you. The test is most accurate between the sixteenth and the eighteenth weeks, but there’s no need to wait that long. First-trimester screens, when done properly, are ninety-five percent accurate.”

  “So I’d have plenty of time to decide, if it did have Down syndrome, whether I wanted to keep it.” I sigh. “Great.”

  She reaches out to briefly touch my arm. “Smoky. There’s no reason for you
to think your baby is going to be anything other than healthy. I’ve delivered quite a few healthy children to women over forty years of age.”

  “And a few that weren’t, right?”

  “Yes. But those few women had all been tested and knew that they were going to be giving birth to a Down syndrome child. It was their choice, and they were no less happy about their babies than anyone else.”

  “Really?”

  “Think about …” She hesitates. “Think about your daughter. Would you have regretted bringing her into the world, even if she’d had a birth defect like Down syndrome?”

  It shouldn’t be a startling question, but it certainly hits me that way. I think about it, about Alexa, my sweet girl. Would she still have been her, if she’d been born with a handicap? I close my eyes for a moment and her face comes to me, as I saw it on that last morning. I see her smile, I hear her giggle; most of all, I see the essence of her shining in her eyes.

  Yes, I think. Alexa would always have been Alexa, in whatever form. I open my eyes. “No, I wouldn’t have regretted it. She would have been my baby, and I wouldn’t have loved her any differently.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  This is a woman who chose her profession not because it would make her the most money, not to avoid the pressures of other medical disciplines, but because it was her calling. She loves what she does and has no choice about doing it; it’s her fate to help bring new life into the world.

  I think about Douglas Hollister strangling his own son. A parent killing his own child has never seemed more alien to me than right here, right now, in this woman’s office. I touch my belly, and search for understanding, but it’s unfathomable. How could I ever kill this baby?

  “It won’t matter.” I say it as I know it, and I feel a surge of relief. “We’ll do the test, but it won’t matter. I want this baby, Doctor.”

  I’m mortified to find that I’m crying. I thought I’d put all these tears behind me. I’d settled into a new life, a new love, a new marriage. I’d recovered my ability to be flip and to let fly, to laugh on a dime and damn the torpedoes. The river of sorrow that had haunted me for so long had turned into a stream and then had dried to a puddle.

  Apparently, some things can still bring the rain.

  I thought I’d never have this chance again, and now I do, and I’ve just understood how much I want it, how deep that need, how great the ache.

  “Sorry,” I choke, unable to keep the tears from coming.

  “Don’t be silly.”

  I let the tears come.

  I think about my search for the soul on the drive home. Everyone has their own answer. Father Yates, the priest at Callie’s wedding, has his. The Buddhists have theirs. When I was a girl, I had mine. I had it with a certainty and innocence too powerful and too pure for me to consign to mere naïveté. Is there something we know when we’re young that we forget when we’re older, or is it all just a process of looking behind the curtain, finding that what the young call cynical the old call reality?

  The question I’ve been asking myself most is: Why do I care?

  I rub my belly, trying to sense the life growing there, to commune with it.

  I care because of you.

  I care because of the truth I saw in Dr. Rand’s office, that Alexa would be Alexa whatever her form. Is that proof of the soul?

  Nothing answers me, but I am content that I’m getting closer.

  I consider going by the office but decide against it. Alan will call me if Dali contacts them again. James and Callie will call me if anything else develops.

  “Screw it,” I say out loud, and laugh. I’m a little giddy. Once again, my hand finds that spot on my tummy. “I’m going to be a mom again, baby. Young again at forty-plus. Can you believe that?”

  We need milk, and I pull into the supermarket parking lot, humming “Blackbird” by the Beatles. Mom always loved that song. She could sing it too, high and sweet. I stare out through the windshield, remembering her sitting at Dad’s feet, smiling and singing as he played the guitar. It makes me smile too.

  It would have been nice if she could have known her grandchildren.

  I’m not sure what it is right now that makes me think of her instead of Dad. Maybe it’s because Mom always seemed to find it just a little bit harder to be happy, and when she did find it, she found it in her family.

  I continue to whistle as I close the car door.

  Something hard touches my lower back, and a voice whispers in my ear:

  “Make a wrong move, Special Agent Barrett, and I’ll shoot you right here and walk away. You’ll die, I’ll live. You know who I am, so you know that I’ll do what I say.”

  I freeze in place. My heart starts to hammer so hard I think it’s going to punch its way out of my chest. I feel slightly nauseated.

  “Dali?” I croak.

  How did my throat get so dry so fast?

  “We’re going to walk to my car. You’re going to get in the trunk. Fight me and I will not only shoot you, I’ll go to your home and I will kill your adopted daughter and your boyfriend. Do you understand?”

  A million thoughts whirl through my head, things to say, bargains to make. The gun nudges me, pushing all that aside. “Yes,” I whisper.

  He reaches under my jacket and takes my weapon. He unclips my cell phone from my belt.

  “Walk forward.”

  We walk no more than ten feet, arriving at a blue Toyota Camry. The trunk is already unlocked. How’d he know I’d be here? He didn’t. He was following me. Why? “Open it,” he orders. I comply.

  “How long have you been following me?” It’s a useless question, but as I peer into the darkness of the trunk, I think about Heather Hollister, living for eight years in the dark, and I am overwhelmed by terror, atavistic and instantaneous.

  “Get in or you die and your family dies with you.”

  His voice is flat, emotionless, almost bored. It’s the boredom that convinces me more than anything else. I scan the parking lot briefly. A man is walking to his own car, bag of groceries in hand. He’s talking on his cell phone and pays us no mind.

  I crawl into the trunk and whip around to catch a glimpse of Dali. His face is swathed in gauze. He pauses for a moment, looking down at me.

  “People look away from a burn victim,” he says, and then slams the trunk shut.

  I hear nothing, and then I hear a muffled voice, followed by two spits that I recognize as silenced gunfire. More nothing, then some scuffling sounds and the car door slams. The engine starts. We’re in motion.

  It had to be the cell-phone man. He must have seen a guy with his head covered in bandages stuffing a woman into the trunk of his car. He said something and Dali shot him without hesitation. I have little doubt he’s dead. Dali is a creature of precision and pragmatism, and it’s only practical to become good with a gun.

  I pray that someone’s noticed all this, that a patrol car was driving by and saw it go down, something, anything. I put my hand on my belly and I pray to the God I don’t believe in.

  I don’t even know if you’re there, but if you are, please, do something. I’m not asking you to part the Red Sea. He shot a man in a public parking lot, you know? Just give me a cop or a concerned citizen with a cell phone. Please.

  As time goes by, I understand just how far away we must be from the parking lot by now. I hear no sounds of pursuit. I slump into myself.

  I go silent, smell the faint odor of gasoline, and try to get ready for the moment when he opens the trunk.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The car slows down and stops. It idles, waiting. I hear the sound of something moving, something mechanized. A gate?

  I’d tried to get some idea of how long we traveled. I was surprised at how difficult that was to do with no watch, in the dark. There’s no sense of distance. I had tried to count the seconds but kept getting lost in my own fear.

  The panic is crippling. I don’t know if it’s better or worse for me than it
was for Heather Hollister. I have more training. I know what I’m up against. I’ve been under fire and have survived more than a single attack on my life.

  None of it seems to be helping. Images of my rape and torture at the hands of Sands, images I thought I’d put to bed long ago, rise in my mind. My heartbeat is out of control and I’m close to hyperventilating.

  I attended a conference once for law-enforcement personnel. It had various lectures on a variety of subjects: personnel, firearms, interrogation, etc. I attended one entitled “The Psychology of Fear: Conquering the Flight Urge in Combat Situations.”

  The speaker was a man by the name of Barnaby Wallace, an ex-Delta Force operative turned Special Forces instructor turned private consultant.

  The problem in most situations where fear takes over is a lack of training on the subject itself, or improper training. We’ve promoted the idea in this society that fear is found only in cowards, men who aren’t worth the title of men. We’ve promoted the concept of being ashamed of fear. In World War Two the Russkies approached it from a more practical angle: You could choose between the guns of the soldiers behind you—which would kill you for sure if you ran—or the guns of the enemy in front of you, which you might still survive.

  The history of the military is one of dealing with fear. We train soldiers to “obey orders, no matter what.” Desertion is frequently a capital offense, punished by a firing squad.

  What’s it all show, though? He’d leaned forward a little to emphasize his point. Obviously, that fear is a natural response. In fact, in my years of command, it was always the fearless men who gave me the most trouble. They generally had a screw loose.

  The audience laughed, and you could sense in that laughter a low relief, as though we were all being given a sudden pass on some hidden shame, a time we’d felt fear and had to hide it.

  Fear is probably one of the oldest biological imperatives. It was developed to keep the organism alive. Fear demands flight from the stronger opponent, because, at the animal level, might does tend to make right. The bigger opponent will generally be the winning opponent.