He gladly picked it up and ignored the red blinking light of his answering machine, the signal that he had messages waiting.
“Yo. Speak to me.”
“Thank God…Payton.”
A sob swallowed her voice. At first, in his alcohol-addled brain, he didn’t recognize the caller, even in the stillness of his cabin. Eventually it came to him—his sister Susannah. Most people didn’t give thanks when they crossed his path these days. Susannah was at the top of a short list of folks who tolerated him. But something in her voice made him grimace, triggering a throbbing headache.
“Hey, sis. What’s—”
She interrupted. “Nikki’s gone, Payton. She took her clothes…a duffel bag. And the state troopers are treating this like a missing person case, not an AMBER Alert.” She choked on her last words. “I can’t go through this again.”
More tears. A crying woman always ripped him apart, but his sister’s pain provoked a rush of dark memories. He shut his eyes, wanting all of it to go away. Grief had torn a hole in his heart, one he never filled. Together they endured the loss of their parents at far too young an age. Emotionally, it cut the legs out from both of them. He wasn’t sure he could do it again.
Especially if something happened to Nikki, his only niece.
All those years ago, Payton had been the one to buckle down and take charge after their parents died, to make the
difficult decisions and get their lives back on track despite Susannah being a few years older. He had no choice, really. It had been that way ever since. His sister relied on him for everything. She and Nikki were the only family he had left.
“Have you called her friends?” he asked. “Maybe Nikki’s staying overnight somewhere, like the last time.”
Joe Tanu stepped closer, urgent concern on his face. Payton shrugged and shook his head. Susannah’s only child was seventeen, a strong-willed girl with a mind of her own. Nikki had run away before, but something in his sister’s voice triggered a bad feeling.
This time would be different.
“Nikki packed a lot of clothes,” she cried. “She left a note, but it didn’t say much. I’m scared, Payton. This time she’s meeting someone, a stranger off the Internet. And I have no idea how to find her.”
Payton ended the call and rushed to his truck, with Joe riding shotgun. With his mind elsewhere, he forgot about the red blinking light on his answering machine.
Talkeetna, Alaska
Payton turned onto the gravel road that led to his sister’s front door, his mind working overtime on what he’d say to a mother whose only child was missing. He drove through a stand of evergreen trees, with the sound of stone crunching under his tires filling the cab of his truck. He was resisting the urge to gun the accelerator. Kicking up rocks and riding in like the cavalry would do nothing for Susannah’s frayed nerves. Over the years, he had learned that his sister needed his calm reassurance, no matter how he felt inside.
Joe rode next to him in the front seat, not saying a word over the last few miles. Having him along gave Payton a sense of strength, one he could pretend for his sister’s sake. And the man understood he needed time to think. But even now, every little noise plucked at his resolve and played on his mind like an annoying guitar string off key and out of sync, grating on his nerves. Even the quiet patter of drizzle on his windshield made him on edge as it outpaced the steady thump of his wiper blades. He had a bad feeling. And no amount of macho bullshit or testosterone overload would make it go away.
But for Susannah’s sake, he had to put on his game face.
Up ahead, his sister’s house looked stone cold. The curtains
were drawn and the place looked empty, but he knew better. Susannah would be inside, waiting for him to find the elixir that would cure her misery and bring Nikki back.
“You’re not in this alone.” Joe’s voice came when he needed it most.
Payton nodded. Never one to mince words, his friend always knew how to slice through the clutter and make each word count. He parked the truck and took a deep breath, unable to take his eyes off his sister’s door.
“Déjà vu sucks, Joe.” He caught the movement of a curtain from inside. “And I’m not sure I can be the rock she needs this time. If something happens to Nikki—”
“Don’t borrow trouble, Payton.”
“Hell, who needs to borrow it?” He pinched the bridge of his nose to fend off a welling headache, then raked a hand through the blond hair that had fallen into his eyes. “Trouble gets off on kicking me in the ass. I got no say.”
Joe fortified him with a hand on his shoulder. Susannah opened the front door wearing a bathrobe and a nightgown. She waited for him to come inside, her face red and puffy, glistening with tears. But as Payton got out of the truck, any resolve he’d had drained from him like sand through his fingers.
When he crossed the threshold, Susannah collapsed into his arms. He held her tight, soothing her with whatever came to mind, whispering lame reassurances in her ear.
“This can’t be happening, Payton. I think I’ve lost her this time.” His sister sobbed harder now, her body trembling. “Maybe I lost her a long time ago. I just don’t know anymore.”
Joe caught his eye. And he understood the man, without so much as a word spoken between them. Getting his sister to focus might make all the difference.
“Catch us up to speed, sis. What happened?”
She pulled away, wiping her nose with a tissue. That’s when he smelled the liquor on her breath. Alcohol had be
come the weapon of choice in his family, when self-flagellation beat the alternative of facing the truth. His friend must have smelled the liquor too.
“I’ll make us some coffee.” Joe nudged his head toward the sofa, directing Payton to get Susannah off her feet.
With his arm around her shoulder, Payton walked her to the living room as she talked, rehashing it all in her head.
“You don’t know how it’s been with that girl. Communicating with her these days is like talking to a stone. If I get any conversation at all, it comes in one-word mumbles with that annoying roll of her eyes. But you wanna know the worst thing? Whenever I saw her resentment, I’d blow a gasket.” She gulped air, taking a breath hindered by a sob. “I’d see myself lose control and I couldn’t stop it from happening, Payton.”
The bitterness in her voice had melted away, transformed by a wave of prevailing doubt as he helped her to the couch and eased her down.
“It’s been playing over and over in my head like some continuous loop that I can’t stop. Damn it, how did it come to this? You don’t know how much it hurts to know your daughter hates you, to be rejected by your own kid. God, I suck as a mother.”
“She doesn’t hate you, Susannah.” Kneeling at her feet, he wiped the tears from her cheeks. With his voice steady and calm, he added, “The double shot of raging hormones and the strong Archer stubborn streak are hard to overcome. But Nikki loves you. I know she does.”
In the way he always preferred to remember it—in hindsight filtered through love and loss—he and his sister never went through the teen war zone with their parents. A part of him wished they had. That would’ve meant his mom and dad hadn’t died in that blasted plane crash just as they’d hit those difficult times. Teen angst and the drama of rebellion seemed like such a small price to pay to have them longer. The stark reality of their death forced him to grow up way
too fast. And after the shambles he made of his life, he was pretty damned sure he never got it right.
“When did you notice her missing?” he asked.
“This morning.” Fresh tears mixed with a powerful guilt. “But her bed wasn’t slept in and she took clothes with her, more than she did the last time. And a duffel bag is missing too. I think she left last night.” She looked into his eyes. “I’m scared, Payton. Really scared.”
“Stay with me, honey. For Nikki’s sake.” He gripped her by the shoulders. “You said she left a note. What did it say? Do the state troopers have it?”
She nodded. “Yeah, they’ve got it, but it didn’t say much. Only that she left on purpose. Said she’d call when she got where she was going.” She wrung her hands, her knuckles drained of color. “I can’t get my head wrapped around this, Payton. Nikki did it for real this time. She really did it.”
Disoriented, she wiped her face with a sleeve from her bathrobe. Smudges of mascara left dark circles under her eyes, and her skin was covered with red blotches.
“I need a drink.” She grabbed for the armrest, trying to stand, but Payton stopped her.
“Joe’s got coffee coming, honey. Remember?”
“It’s almost done,” Joe called out from the kitchen. Payton knew he’d been listening.
“You said she met someone off the Internet. Why do you think that, Susannah?”
“I know what goes on, Payton.” His sister slouched back but kept a grip on his arm. “All those secret codes. She didn’t want me to know.”
“What are you talking about? What codes?”
“I’ll show you.”
She struggled to get off the sofa. Payton helped pull her up, then followed her to the stairs. He kept a hand to her back so she wouldn’t fall. Susannah had more than a few drinks, but who was he to judge? Suffering a hangover, he had no right to say anything. When they got to Nikki’s room, she
moved to the desk and grabbed a stack of papers by the computer.
“See? She’s been talking in codes.” She choked back the emotion of her daughter’s betrayal. “She didn’t want me to know. She did all this to blindside me.”
Nikki had run away before, staying at a friend’s house in town. She wanted to hurt her mother and had succeeded in a big way until Susannah took to spying on her. She found chats on Instant Messenger where her daughter had made arrangements to escape maternal oppression. She tracked Nikki down and forced her to come home that time, erecting a wall between them. Trust on both sides had decayed, a complete breach of faith.
When Payton looked at the printed pages Susannah gave him, he saw where his niece had thwarted any potential for her mother’s espionage attempts. This time she meant to disappear for real.
“This looks as cryptic as one of my old playbooks,” he muttered, staring at one of the pages. “Where did you get these?”
Joe had followed them upstairs. Payton handed him the pages, sharing an apprehensive look. When he turned back to Susannah, she looked sick.
“Off the computer.” She swallowed and avoided looking him in the eye. “I’m not proud of what I did, but…” His sister struggled to find the words. “I put software on her computer, to spy on her activity. I used it the last time, but I swear to God I had no intention of—”
“No one’s judging you here, sis. You and Nikki have history. I’m not gonna pretend to know what it’s been like.”
“I thought I could trust her again. I wanted to. God, I didn’t think I had to keep doing this.”
His sister was pale, the skin of her face a ghastly gray.
“Nikki did this on purpose, to shut me out.” Susannah collapsed onto her daughter’s bed. “I should’ve taken the computer away for good, but I was afraid.” A strange amusement
drove harsh laughter from deep in her chest, a nervous outburst that sounded out of place. “Afraid I’d make things worse. Can you believe that?”
Her eyes filled.
“I was just trying to establish boundaries for her. I thought I was doing the right thing. If this ends up being my fault, I won’t…I just can’t…”
His sister grabbed for her daughter’s pillow and clutched it to her face, breathing in the scent of her only child. It broke Payton’s heart. He reached out a hand and stroked her head. Nothing he could say would help, but he had to do something.
“We need a recent picture of Nikki.” When she looked up at him through dazed eyes, he said, “So we can make flyers to post around town. We’re not gonna leave Nikki in the hands of the local law without helping all we can.”
Not waiting for her permission, Payton looked around the room and found a picture of his niece. Smiling, the young girl looked so much like her mother, but something in the eyes hinted of Nikki’s father, a guy Payton knew nothing about. Susannah had her only child without the dubious benefit of marriage, and she’d never confided the sperm donor’s name.
It reminded Payton of the troubled times following the gaping wound caused by the tragedy of their parents, when his already fragile link to his sister nearly swirled down the drain too. The memories came at him in a rush, like a blitz he never saw coming. At the time, he had put his life on hold and took control, helping Susannah deal with the unexpected pregnancy. All this came on the heels of pro football scouts courting him. The added pressure, coupled with the instantaneous celebrity, had not been a good mix. He knew that now, but back then he thought he was bullet-proof. Mr. Teflon.
He stuffed Nikki’s photo into his shirt pocket, but an empty frame on the desk by the computer caught his eye.
“What was in this frame?” He held it up, showing it to his sister. “Didn’t she used to have—”
“The photo of her thirteenth birthday, yes.” Susannah reached for the frame with trembling fingers, using both hands to hold something precious to her. “I remember.”
“Maybe she took it with her, sis. That’s got to mean something, right?” Payton sat beside her on the bed, putting his arm around her shoulders again. The unexpected glimmer of hope bolstered his spirits too. Nikki hadn’t completely severed the link with her mother.
“Tell me what happened with the state troopers.”
“One of them came here, took a report and a photo of Nikki. He also took something of hers for fingerprinting and asked about dental records. Said they’d post her picture on the Internet and get the word out through some kind of database clearinghouse for bulletins.”
He knew the trooper’s request meant something more. Dental records and fingerprints were used to identify a body, if it came to that. The gravity of their situation hit him hard. And by the look on his sister’s face, she knew it too.
“Before, you said they were handling this like a missing person case. Why aren’t they treating it like an AMBER Alert?” Payton asked.
Joe stepped in, to save Susannah from having to explain something she probably didn’t fully comprehend in her condition.
“Nikki has a history of running away,” he said. “And she left a note and took clothes. Not good. If they don’t have evidence of an outright abduction, they make a judgment call to treat this like a missing person case.” Joe set his jaw and fixed his gaze on Payton. “Plus, she’s seventeen. Different jurisdictions have lower age restrictions. It varies state-to-state.”
“What difference does that make?” Payton asked.
“An alert may not get transmitted across every state line.” Joe crossed his arms, a pained expression on his face. “They make rules about AMBER Alerts for a reason. Overuse of the system would undermine its effectiveness. I know it’s hard to understand, but—”
“No, I tell you what’s hard to understand, Joe.” Susannah’s face had turned bright red. She pointed a finger at the former lawman, aiming all her anger and frustration. In the quiet room, her raised voice shocked him. “The law is supposed to help. My little girl is out there somewhere with a stranger. For all we know, it could be a sexual predator. And no one is lifting a finger.”
His sister had made the leap toward blaming someone else, a convenient lifeline in a raging sea of desperation.
“Susannah, Joe is only trying to help,” Payton whispered, and stroked her hair. When she settled down, he kissed the top of her head and pulled her to him. “We’re gonna find her, but we need your help too.”
He glanced up at Joe.
“Joe and me, we’re gonna get answers from the state troopers’ office. Then we’re gonna plaster this town with posters, even into Anchorage. But I need you sober, sis. Joe made coffee. Use it. If Nikki calls and wants to come home, I want you to contact me on my cell.”
“You think…?” She looked up at him. The fragile hope glistening in her eyes wrenched his heart. “Please find her, Payton. All I want is one more chance to make it right. Please.”
“We’re gonna find her. I promise you’ll get that chance, Susannah.”
He had no business making that promise, not with his track record, but his heart pulled rank over his good sense. When he stood and caught the eye of Joe Tanu, the harsh reality of their undertaking took hold, and his belly churned hot with the prospect of another failure. But he didn’t see the sense in shoving his sister off the same cliff. For now, he had no qualms with letting her believe he could do it.
“You comin’, Joe?”