James Patterson Page 4

  Her sons became attentive immediately, bombarding Barb with questions until Levon walked in, his face taut, and Greg, seeing that, shouted, “Dad! What’s goin’ on?”

  Barb swooped Greg into her arms, said that everything was fine, that Aunt Cissy and Uncle Dave were waiting for them, that they could be asleep again in fifteen minutes. They could stay in their pj’s but they had to put on shoes and coats.

  Johnny pleaded to come with them to Hawaii, made a case involving jet skis and snorkeling, but Barb, holding back tears, said “not this time” and busied herself with socks and shoes and toothbrushes and Game Boys.

  “You’re not telling us something, Mom. It’s still dark!”

  “There’s no time to go into it, Johnny. Everything’s okay. We’ve just — gotta catch a plane.”

  Ten minutes later, five blocks away, Christine and David waited outside their front door as the arctic air sweeping across Lake Michigan put down a fine white powder over their lawn.

  Levon watched Cissy run down the steps to meet their car as it turned in at the driveway. Cissy was two years younger than Barb, with the same heart-shaped face, and Levon saw Kim in her features, too.

  Cissy reached out and enfolded the kids as they dashed toward her. She lifted her arms and took in Barb and Levon, as Barb said, “I forwarded our phone to yours, Cis. In case you get a call.” Barb didn’t want to spell it out in front of the boys. She wasn’t sure Cis got it yet either.

  “Call me between planes,” Cis said.

  Dave held out an envelope to Levon. “Here’s some cash, about a thousand. No, no, take it. You could need it when you get there. Cabs and whatever. Levon, take it.”

  Fierce hugs were exchanged and wishes for a safe flight and love-you’s rang out loudly in the morning stillness. When Cissy and David’s front door closed, Levon told Barb to strap in.

  He backed the Suburban out of the drive, then turned onto Burkett Road, heading toward Gerald R. Ford International Airport, ramping the car up to ninety on the straightaway.

  “Slow down, Levon.”

  “Okay.”

  But he kept his foot on the gas, driving fast into the star field of snow that somehow kept his mind balanced on the brink of terror rather than letting it topple into the abyss.

  “I’ll call the bank when we change planes in L.A.,” Levon said. “Talk to Bill Macchio, get a loan started against the house in case we need cash.”

  He saw tears dropping from Barb’s face into her lap, heard the click of her fingernails tapping on her BlackBerry, sending text messages to everyone in the family, to her friends, to her job. To Kim.

  Barb called Kim’s cell phone again as Levon parked the car, held up the phone so Levon could hear the mechanical voice saying, “The mailbox belonging to — Kim McDaniels — is full. No messages can be left at this time.”

  Chapter 13

  THE MCDANIELSES HOPSCOTCHED by air from Grand Rapids to Chicago and from there to their wait-listed flight to Los Angeles, which connected just in time to their flight to Honolulu. Once in Honolulu, they ran through the airport, tickets and IDs in their hands, making Island Air’s turbo prop plane. They were the last people on, settling into their bulkhead seats before the doors to the puddle jumper closed with a startling bang.

  They were now only forty minutes from Maui.

  Only forty minutes from Kim.

  Since leaving Grand Rapids, Barbara and Levon had slept in snatches. So much time had elapsed since the phone call that it was starting to feel unreal.

  They now spun the idea that after Kim had given them hell for coming there, they’d be laughing about all of this, showing off a snapshot of Kim with that “oh, please” look on her face and standing between her parents, all of them wearing leis, typical happy tourists in Hawaii.

  And then they’d swing back to their fear.

  Where was Kim? Why couldn’t they reach her? Why was there no return call from her on their home phone or Levon’s cell?

  As the airplane sailed above the clouds, Barb said, “I’ve been thinking about the bike.”

  Levon nodded, took her hand.

  What they called “the bike” had started with another terrible phone call, seven years ago, this time from the police. Kim had been fourteen. She’d been riding her bike after school, wearing a muffler around her neck. The end of the scarf, whipping back behind her, got wrapped around the rear wheel, choking Kim, pulling her off the bike and hurling her onto the roadside.

  A woman driving along saw the bike in the road, pulled up, and found Kim lying up against a tree, unconscious. That woman, Anne Clohessy, had called 911, and when the ambulance came, the EMTs couldn’t get Kim to come back to consciousness.

  Her brain had been deprived of oxygen, the doctors said. She was in a coma. The hospital’s posturing told Barb that it might be irreversible.

  By the time Levon had been reached at the office, Kim had been medevaced to a trauma unit in Chicago. He and Barb had driven three hours, got to the hospital, and found their daughter in intensive care, groggy but awake, a terrible bruise around her neck, as blue as the scarf that nearly killed her.

  But she was alive. She wasn’t back to a hundred percent yet, but she’d be fine.

  “It was weird inside my head,” Kimmy had said then. “It was like dreaming, only much more real. I heard Father Marty talking to me like he was sitting on the end of the bed.”

  “What did he say, sweetheart?” Barb had asked.

  “He said, ‘I’m glad you were baptized, Kim.’ ”

  Now Levon took off his glasses, dried his eyes with the back of his hand. Barb passed him a tissue, saying, “I know, sweetie, I know.”

  This is how they wanted to find Kim now. Fine. Levon gave Barb a crooked smile, both of them thinking how the story in the Chicago Trib had called her “Miracle Girl,” and sometimes they still called her that.

  Miracle Girl who got onto the varsity basketball team as a freshman. Miracle Girl who was accepted into Columbia premed. Miracle Girl who’d been picked for the Sporting Life swimsuit shoot, the odds a million to one against her.

  Levon thought, What kind of miracle was that?

  Chapter 14

  BARB TWISTED a tissue into a knot, and she said to Levon, “I should never have made such a fuss about that modeling agency.”

  “She wanted to do it, Barb. It’s no one’s fault. She’s always been her own person.”

  Barb took Kimmy’s picture from her purse, a five-by-seven headshot of eighteen-year-old Kim, taken for that agency in Chicago. Levon looked at the picture of Kim wearing a low-cut black sweater, her blond hair falling below her shoulders, the kind of radiant beauty that gave men ideas.

  “No modeling after this,” Levon said now.

  “She’s twenty-one, Levon.”

  “She’s going to be a doctor. Barb, there’s no good reason for her to be modeling anymore. This is the end of it. I’ll make her understand.”

  The flight attendant announced that the plane would be landing momentarily.

  Barb raised the shade and Levon looked out at the clouds flowing under the window, the peaks of them looking like they’d been hit with pink spotlights.

  As the tiny houses and roads of Maui came into view, Levon turned to his wife, his best pal, his sweetheart.

  “How’re you doin’, hon? Okay?”

  “Never better,” Barb chirped, attempting a joke. “And you?”

  Levon smiled, brought Barb close, and pressed his cheek to hers, smelled the stuff she put in her hair. What Barb smelled like. He kissed her, squeezed her hand.

  “Hang on,” Levon said, as the airplane began its steep, sickening descent. And he sent out a thought to Kim. We’re coming for you, honey. Mom and Dad are coming.

  Chapter 15

  THE McDANIELSES STEPPED from the plane’s exit door to a wobbly staircase and from there down to the tarmac, the heat suffocating after the chilled air on the plane.

  Levon looked around at the volcanic l
andscape, an astounding difference from Michigan in the black of night, with the snow falling down the back of his shirt collar as he’d hugged his sons good-bye.

  He took off his jacket, patted the inside pocket to make sure that their return plane tickets were safe — including the ticket he’d bought for Kim.

  The terminal was full of people, the waiting room in the same open-air section as the baggage claim. He and Barb turned cards over to an official in blue, swearing they were not bringing in any fruit, and then they looked for taxi signs.

  Levon was walking fast, feeling a heightened need to get to the hotel and not watching his feet when he sidestepped a luggage trolley and just about stumbled over a young girl with yellow braids. She was clutching a fuzzy toy, standing in the middle of everything, just taking it all in. The child looked so self-assured that she reminded Levon again of Kim, and a wave of panic rose in him, making him feel dizzy and sick to his stomach.

  Levon swept blindly forward, asking himself if Kim had used up her quota of miracles. Was her borrowed time up? Had the whole family made a tremendous mistake buying into a headline written by a reporter in Chicago, giving all of them a belief that Kim was so miraculous that nothing could ever hurt her?

  Levon silently begged God again to please let Kim be safe at the hotel, make her be glad to see her parents, have her say, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to make you worry.

  With his arm around Barb, the two headed out of the terminal, but before they reached the taxi rank, they saw a man approaching — a driver holding up a sign with their name.

  The driver was taller than Levon. He had dark hair streaked with gray, a mustache, and he wore a chauffeur’s cap and livery jacket and alligator cowboy boots with three-inch heels.

  He said, “Mr. and Mrs. McDaniels? I’m Marco. The hotel hired me to be your driver. Do you have claim tickets for your luggage?”

  “We didn’t bring any bags.”

  “Okay. The car’s right outside.”

  Chapter 16

  THE McDANIELSES WALKED behind Marco as Levon noted the driver’s odd rolling gait in those cowboy boots and the man’s accent, a trace of something — maybe New York or New Jersey.

  They crossed the arrival lane to a traffic island where Levon saw a newspaper lying faceup on a bench.

  In a heart-stopping double take, he realized that Kim was looking up at him from under the headline.

  This was the Maui News, and the large black type spelled out, “Missing Beauty.”

  Levon’s thoughts scattered, taking him a few stunned moments to understand that during the eleven or so hours he and Barb had been in transit, Kim had officially gone missing.

  She wasn’t waiting at the hotel.

  Like the caller said, she was gone.

  Levon grabbed the paper with a trembling hand, his heart bucking as he looked into Kim’s smiling eyes, took in the swimsuit she was wearing in this picture, probably taken just a couple of days ago.

  Levon folded the newspaper lengthwise, caught up to Marco and Barbara at the car, asked Marco, “Will it take long to get to the hotel?”

  “About a half hour, and there’s no charge, Mr. McDaniels. The Wailea Princess is paying for as long as you need me.”

  “Why are they doing that?”

  Marco’s voice turned soft. “Well, in light of the situation, sir.”

  He opened the car doors, and Levon and Barbara climbed in, Barb’s face crumpling when she took the paper, crying while she read the story as the sedan slipped into the traffic stream.

  The car sped onto the highway, and Marco spoke to them, his eyes in the rearview mirror, gently asking if they were comfortable, if they wanted more air or music. Levon thought ahead to checking in at the hotel, then going straight to the police, the whole time feeling as though he’d suffered a battlefield amputation, that a part of him had been brutally severed and that he might not survive.

  Eventually, the sedan crawled down what looked like a private road, both sides massed in purple flowering vines. They drove by an artificial waterfall, slowed to a stop in front of the grand porte cochere entryway of the Wailea Princess Hotel.

  Levon saw tiled fountains on both sides of the car, bronze statues of Polynesian warriors rising out of the water with spears in their hands on one side, outriggers filled with orchids on the other.

  Bellhops in white shirts and short red pants hurried toward the car. Marco opened his door, and as Levon walked around the sedan to help Barb he heard his name coming at him from all directions.

  People were running toward the hotel entrance — reporters with cameras and microphones.

  Racing toward them.

  Chapter 17

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Barb was dazed and jet-lagged as she entered a suite that on another day, and in different circumstances, she would have thought “magnificent.” If she had peeked at the rate card behind the door, she would have seen that the charge for the suite was over three thousand dollars a day.

  She walked into the heart of the main room, as good as sleepwalking, seeing but not taking in the hand-knotted silk carpet, a pattern of orchids on a pale peach ground; the tapestry-upholstered furnishings; the huge flat-panel television.

  She went to the window, looked out at the beauty without really seeing it, just looking for Kim.

  There was a gorgeous swimming pool below, a complicated shape, like a square laid over a rectangle, with circular Jacuzzis at the shallow end. A fountain, like a champagne glass, in the middle spilled water over the children playing.

  She scanned the rows of pure white cabanas around the pool, looking for a young woman in a chaise sipping a drink, Kim sitting at the poolside.

  Barb saw several girls, some slimmer or heavier or older or shorter, but none of them Kim.

  She looked out beyond the pool, saw a covered walk, wooden steps going down to the beach dotted with palm trees, fronted by the sapphire blue ocean, nothing but water between the edge of the beach and the coast of Japan.

  Where was Kim?

  Barb wanted to say to Levon, “I feel Kim’s presence here,” but when she turned, Levon wasn’t there.

  She noticed an ornate basket of fruit on the table near the window and went to it, heard the toilet flush as she lifted out the note that was in fact a business card with a message written on the back.

  Levon, her poor dear husband, his eyes unblinking and pained behind his glasses, came toward her, asking, “What’s that, Barb?”

  She read out loud, “Dear Mr. and Mrs. McDaniels, please call me. We’re here to help in any way we can.”

  The card was signed, “Susan Gruber, SL,” and under her name was a room number.

  Levon said, “Susan Gruber. She’s the editor in chief. I’ll call her now.”

  Barb felt hope. Gruber was in charge. She’d know something.

  Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes later, the McDanielses’ hotel room was full. Standing room only.

  Chapter 18

  BARB SAT ON one of the sofas, her hands clasped on her lap, waiting for Susan Gruber, this take-charge New York executive, with her bright white teeth and face as sharp as a blade, to tell them that Kim had had a fight with the photographer, or that she hadn’t photographed well enough and so she’d been given the time off — or something, anything that would clear it all up, make it so that Kim was simply absent, not missing, not abducted, not in danger.

  Gruber was wearing an aquamarine pantsuit and a lot of gold bracelets, and her fingers were cold when she reached out to shake hands with Barbara.

  Del Swann, the art director, had dark skin, platinum hair, jewelry in one ear, and he was dressed in fashionably worn-out jeans and a tight black T-shirt. He looked like he was about to have a mental collapse, making Barbara think maybe he knew more than he was saying — or maybe he felt guilty because he was the last one to see Kim.

  There were two other men. The senior one was forty-something, in a gray suit, had corporation written all over him. Barb had met men like this at L
evon’s Merrill Lynch conventions and business cocktail parties. She thought it was a pretty safe bet that he, and the junior clone standing to his right, were both New York lawyers who’d been overnighted to Maui like a FedEx package in order to cover the magazine’s ass.

  And Barb looked at Carol Sweeney, a big woman wearing an expensive, if shapeless, black dress. As the booker from the modeling agency who’d landed this job for Kim and had gone on the shoot as Kim’s chaperone, Carol looked like she’d swallowed a dog, that’s how choked up she was.