Текст книги "Thread of Betrayal"

Автор книги: Jeff Shelby

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EIGHT

Ten minutes later, Lauren and I were back in front of the home with the putting green in Soaring Eagle. I’d knocked on the door again, got no answer, and went back to the car. I slipped back behind the wheel and shoved my hands in front of the heater.

“Now what?” Lauren asked from the passenger seat.

I turned the heat down to a lower setting. “We wait. Nothing else to do.”

She sighed and leaned back in the seat. “Great.”

I understood her frustration. Our daughter, the daughter we’d been missing, the daughter I’d been searching for for nearly ten years, was with this girl. Morgan. I wanted to rip the town apart, call out an APB, do anything I could to locate them. But I couldn’t. The only thing either of could do was wait.

“If we leave, we might miss her,” I said.  “If we…”

She held up a hand. “I got it. I don’t need an explanation.”

I pushed the button on the side of the driver’s seat and it complied, reclining slightly.

“Sorry,” Lauren said after a few minutes. “Didn’t mean to cut you off.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’m just frustrated.”

“I know.” I was, too. But I was used to it.

“I know there’s nothing else to do,” she said. “I’m just worn down from this chase. Or whatever you want to call it.”

“I know.”

“Is this how it always is?” she asked. She didn’t look at me, just played with her fingers, picking at her nails, rubbing her thumb over her knuckles.

I shrugged. “Sometimes. Sometimes it’s easier.”

“How is it ever easier?” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t see that.”

I stared at the house for a long moment.

“I was in Dallas, maybe two years ago,” I said. “I can’t even remember why I was there initially, but I ended up helping this woman find her son. He was a college kid. All she knew was that he’d had a fight with his girlfriend. Hadn’t checked in with his mom in a couple of days and she was freaked out. Understandably. I went and talked to the girlfriend. He wanted her to come home with him for the summer. She wasn’t sure her parents would be okay with that. It was a fight over nothing. But she knew when he got frustrated he’d go up to this lake in Oklahoma and camp by himself, just to get away. And they had a deal. If she ever really needed to get ahold of him, an emergency or something, she could text him with a code word and he’d call. She texted him. He called back in about thirty seconds. She told him his mother was worried, that I was looking for him. He felt terrible, apologized to her, to me and immediately called his mom.” I shrugged. “That was pretty damn easy.”

“They weren’t all like that,” she said. She didn’t pose this as a question, just stated it like something she knew to be true.

“No. But some were. You just never know.”

“I wish we had a secret code,” she said, her voice wistful.

I reached out and briefly touched her hand. “Me, too,” I said. “Me, too.”

She smiled at me, a sad smile that tore at my heart. As much as I wanted to find Elizabeth for me, I wanted to find her for Lauren, too. For both of us. I glanced out the front window, my eyes scanning the road. Every car that passed us on the street gave me a little twinge, wondering if it was the one that might be carrying Elizabeth. But each one continued by, either headed toward another gigantic house or out of the subdivision.

“Was that night in San Diego weird for you?” Lauren asked, shifting in her seat.

“Which night?”

“Me and you,” she said. “The hotel.”

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 disturbance.

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

“I told you to stay with that Morgan girl,” I said.

“Well, I didn’t know you were going to shut down a fucking airport,” Lauren said, shaking her head and looking away from me.

We were in a holding area somewhere in the airport. A small, square windowless room with gray walls. A single table and several chairs.

I rubbed at my wrists, the bright red lines from the handcuffs beginning to fade. “Either did I.”

The officers had pulled me up from the ground and marched me quickly out of the terminal. I’d kept my mouth shut. The plane was gone. There was nothing to fight at that point. They’d brought me to the holding area and questioned me. I’d told them my daughter was on the plane and she didn’t have my permission to travel. They were more concerned with the fact that I’d bought a ticket not thirty minutes earlier for a trip I didn’t plan to take and then proceeded to disrupt the entire gate area while threatening a gate agent.

My story didn’t make sense to them. My daughter had a different last name. With a Minnesota address. I resided in California. And we were in Colorado. Was this a custody battle? Some sort of lover’s quarrel? Did I plan to harm her? Did I plan to harm the plane? The passengers?

I finally shut up and said I wanted my lawyer. They assured me that would just make it worse. I assured them no one could make my life worse at that moment and I wanted my lawyer. After thirty minutes of silence, I was allowed to call my lawyer.

Lauren showed up an hour later.

And now we were in the holding area and she looked like she wanted to take my head off.

“So fucking stupid, Joe,” she said.

“I know.”

“Then why’d you do it?”

“Because she was on the plane.”

She stared at me, dead-eyed. “And acting like a maniac was going to help?”

“The door was closed,” I said. “I asked the gate agent to stop it.”

“Jesus Christ,” she said, sinking into the chair across from me. “You sound like those idiots in the security line who haven’t traveled since 9/11. You know what airports are like. You can’t go off half-cocked. You know that.”

I stared down at the table. “I asked her to stop it. Nicely.”

“Yeah and then you apparently started trying to rip the door down and knocking people over on their asses,” she said. “Well done.”

I rubbed at my wrists some more, but didn’t say anything. She was right, of course. I didn’t have any good answers and any slim chance I’d had of stopping the plane had disappeared the moment I started screaming and banging on that door. But I knew what was going to happen if they didn’t stop the plane.

I’d lose Elizabeth again.

And, like always, nothing else mattered.

Not even making it worse.

“So now what?” I asked.

Lauren took a deep breath and drummed her fingers on the table. “Now, we need to wait and see what they come back with. They’re running background on you. That should be okay. And you need to make a decision.”

“A decision?”

“Do you want to involve them?” she asked. “Do you want to try to bring in federal authorities right now? I honestly don’t know whether they’ll give a crap at this point, given your performance out there. These guys are trained to worry about air travel and air travel only. So I’m not sure they’ll care. But if you want to bring in help, this is the time to speak up. Probably take them some time to get someone here, but we might be able to convince them that you aren’t just some raving lunatic and there was some legitimacy to what you did.”

I folded my arms across my chest. It had been almost three hours since the plane had left. It would take some time to get any federal agent out there to help us, if they were inclined to do so.

Elizabeth was probably already on the ground. Somewhere in Los Angeles. Alone.

And bringing in feds right at that moment might also mean involving my old colleagues in Coronado. I wasn’t ready to do that.

“No,” I said. “Not yet.”

If she disagreed, she didn’t show it. “Okay. Then I’m going to go out there, tell them you’re extremely sorry, that you got carried away and hope they just want to fine you some ridiculous amount of money rather than lock you up.”

I nodded and watched her leave.

I wanted to pace, to burn off all of the nervous energy raging in my body, but I knew better than to get up and start moving. Yeah, the door was locked, but I knew that a windowless room didn’t mean that I wasn’t being watched. If I started moving around, they’d get anxious. I’d already done enough to get their attention, so I stayed in my seat.

I laid my hands flat on the table and stared at the faint red circles around my wrists. I didn’t think Lauren was right. I didn’t think that anything I did would’ve gotten them to stop the plane. I could’ve been calm and collected and polite and the gate agent still would’ve read from the script that the door had been closed and there was nothing she could do. But at least then I wouldn’t have lost more time and turned the entire afternoon into a gigantic mess.

I wasn’t used to getting so close, though. I’d spent so many years trying to find Elizabeth, then failing, that the urgency had been muted. I’d worked with a calm intensity, following leads until they turned dead, then walked away from them, looking for the next. I preached to families to remain reasonable, sensible, level-headed, that not doing so could result in them missing something.

But I’d finally gotten close to Elizabeth and I’d imploded. I’d ignored my own advice. I was now stuck in a mess where  I had only myself to blame. My daughter was somewhere in California and I was no closer to reuniting with her.

The door clicked opened and Lauren stepped back into the room. She came to the table and leaned down, exhaling, resting her hands on the table.

“What?” I asked.

Her eyes were tired. “Good news is they aren’t going to hold you,” she said. She rubbed her temples. “We’ll probably be out of here in about another hour after they do the paperwork. They are going to issue you a citation for interfering with airline personnel and there’s going to be a hefty fine. Probably around five thousand bucks.” She paused. “You’ll have to appear back here in federal court, but they’ll basically admonish you, take your money and send you on your way.”

“Okay,” I said. “I can handle that. What’s the bad news?”

She bit her lip for a moment, then shook her head.

“What?” I asked.

“You can’t go near an airport or get on a plane or buy a ticket for a month,” she said, leveling her eyes with mine. “You’re on the no-fly list for the next thirty days.”