Authors: Lis Wiehl,April Henry
Before he did, she wanted to take care of the one person who could tie all the loose threads together. She closed the locker and spun the lock. The person who could connect Elizabeth with Jenna. Who could connect Elizabeth with Sara and—what had that kid’s name been again? Oh, yes. With Noah.
But she had a plan for Joey. Sure, it would still leave her with one loose end, but Clark didn’t even know her name.
As soon as the six thirty lesson with Makayla Hedges was over, she would put the next step of her plan into action.
Elizabeth was sitting on the edge of the warm-water pool when the FBI agent walked in with her kid. Her navy blue pantsuit, worn with a peach-colored silk blouse, looked out of place in a room where everyone else was wearing scraps of Lycra and nylon.
Nicole Hedges looked, in Elizabeth’s opinion, terrible. Her shadowed eyes were unfocused, her greeting perfunctory. It was clear that her thoughts were elsewhere.
And, thanks to Cassidy, Elizabeth knew where they were. On Jenna.
It was an incomparable rush, knowing that she was only two feet from the woman who was hunting her down. Elizabeth suppressed a grin. The FBI agent would never guess that her daughter’s swimming teacher was behind the TV intern’s disappearance.
And to make sure that Nicole never guessed, it was definitely time to snip the last remaining thread that tied Elizabeth to that stupid wannabe reporter.
Nicole’s eyes focused on Elizabeth’s face. “What happened?” she asked, raising her eyebrow and touching her own eye.
A lie hovered on Elizabeth’s lips—lies were never far from her, just waiting to be plucked from the air—but she resisted the urge to pretend that someone had hit her or to spin a tale about a car crash. Instead, she stuck to the same lie she had been repeating all day. “I bumped into the bar on the lat pulldown machine. It looks worse than it feels.”
“Ouch!” Nicole said, but her eyes still seemed to be weighing Elizabeth’s words, her expression.
Elizabeth didn’t need this chick looking at her like that. It reminded her too much of another FBI agent, one who had interviewed her twenty years ago. The one who had encouraged her to confide in him.
She turned to the kid and asked brightly, “Ready for your lesson, M?”
After a pause, the girl nodded, but didn’t move away from her mother. She was all long skinny arms and legs, which was one reason swimming was hard for her. No body fat to buoy her up. The brief confidence that had filled her after her last lesson seemed to have disappeared.
“Bye, sweetie,” Nicole said, kissing her daughter’s forehead. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes.” She turned and walked toward the door.
Her kid watched her go and didn’t make a move toward the pool.
“Okay, let’s get in.” Elizabeth continued to use a cheerful voice in case Nicole was still within earshot. The heated pool didn’t have a lifeguard on duty, but if there was any potential for witnesses, Elizabeth was always careful to behave the way she should. You never knew when someone might wander in from the Olympic-size pool next door. While there were floor-to-ceiling windows, they just looked onto a green stretch of lawn and then a parking lot.
The warm-water pool was ideal for old people with joint problems. And for people who were afraid of swimming. Not having to face the shock of ice-cold water helped dial their fear back a notch. And because the pool was only ten yards long, and no deeper than five feet at any spot, it was not as intimidating.
It also tasted like pee. The gym ran groups of toddlers through here on weekends, and no matter how many chemicals they dumped in the pool after one of the baby swim classes, there was still no mistaking the taste of the water whenever Elizabeth was forced to put her face in.
She jumped into the water, but Makayla came down the steps agonizingly slowly, holding on to the stainless steel handrail with both hands.
Elizabeth pretended not to notice, although inside she squirmed with impatience. “Okay, the first thing we have to do is wash our face.” She closed her eyes and splashed water on her face. She opened her eyes. “Now you do it.”
Reluctantly letting go of the handrail, Makayla did a halfhearted job, only getting water on the lower half of her face. Even so, she gasped and blinked.
“Perfect!” Elizabeth lied. “Now let’s play the elevator game. What does an elevator do?”
“It goes up.”
“And down.” Elizabeth gripped the lip of the gutter. “So it’s like this.” She lowered herself straight down into the water until it was just over her head, blowing bubbles the whole time. Then she popped up.
“Now you do it.”
But the girl didn’t move. Just stared at Elizabeth with her huge green eyes.
“It’s easy, Makayla,” Elizabeth urged in a perky voice. “Just take a deep breath, put your head under the water, and blow! Like this!” Demonstrating, she pushed air out through her lips until they flapped comically.
Kids like this Makayla were old enough that they had learned they could get away with not always doing what they were told. They didn’t know how good they had it. If Elizabeth had talked back to Grandma when she was growing up, if she hadn’t jumped the second her grandma said “Jump,” she would have earned a slap across the face or a trip to the closet, or both. But now, just because a kid didn’t like something, they expected to be able to get out of it.
And it was clear that Makayla didn’t like putting her face in the water. Even if it was one of the skills they touted in the brochure:
Participants with water-related anxiety will learn how to be comfortable and confident in water, to enter and exit safely, submerge face, exhale underwater, float, tread water, swim basic strokes, and more
.
At the rate Makayla was going, she wasn’t going to achieve a single one of the goals. Then again, the girl wasn’t exactly an official participant. Elizabeth had told Nicole to write the check directly to her. What the front office didn’t know about, they couldn’t take a cut of, nor withhold money from for taxes.
If challenged, Elizabeth would explain that Nicole was an old friend, and the lessons were only a favor. She would make no mention of payment.
But so far, no one had challenged her.
Meanwhile, Makayla’s fingers were gripping the gutter so tight that her fingertips were white. Elizabeth put one hand on her shoulder.
“It’s okay, Makayla. Nothing can happen to you,” she said for the thousandth time. Like the girl was capable of listening. Gently, she put her palm on the top of Makayla’s head and pressed it down toward the water. “Now blow!”
But the girl stiffened, throwing her head back. The feel of her tangled wet curls brought back a memory. A memory of when Elizabeth wasn’t Elizabeth, but Sissy.
Barbur Bargain Motel
W
ith five lanes of traffic rushing by, it was unbelievably noisy. It would be easy to start shouting. Easy—and wrong. Cassidy’s mike was only six inches from her mouth. Which meant it was in essence only six inches away from the listener’s ear.
Any time a reporter started shouting, it made her look insecure and unsure. Which Cassidy definitely didn’t want anyone thinking.
In her IFB earpiece she heard Brad Buffet’s voice.
“Tonight—the mystery of the missing reporter. All of us here at Channel Four have a very personal stake in our top story, because it concerns one of our own: Channel Four’s intern, Jenna Banks. We now go out to crime reporter, Cassidy Shaw, to fill us in.”
Cassidy took a deep breath. “This is Cassidy Shaw, reporting to you live from the Barbur Bargain Motel in Southwest Portland.” She gestured at the yellow crime-scene tape that crossed the doors of the two rooms Jenna had rented. Further setting the scene were the three police cars parked in the lot behind her.
“Portland police say they found personal items belonging to Channel Four’s own intern, Jenna Banks, in a bloodstained room here at the Barbur Bargain Motel.” Nicole had asked Cassidy not to publicly disclose that Jenna had rented two rooms. “Jenna is missing, and police suspect foul play and are asking for your help.
“About all we know, Brad, is that Jenna Banks came to this rundown motel on Friday evening. We believe she was planning to meet someone about a story she hoped to cover. She checked in Friday night, but she never checked out.”
The last line had sounded good when Cassidy wrote it, but now
never checked out
sounded like something from an ad for a cheesy horror movie. Cassidy made her face sterner.
“Managers at this motel, which has been the scene of several prostitution busts, found Jenna’s purse and keys in a room. Her car was in the parking lot. Police have towed it to see if it contains any clues. They also found other evidence in the room. There was blood on one wall, and they say the pattern is consistent with a gunshot wound.”
“Now the police haven’t been able to tell us definitively that this is Jenna’s blood, have they?” Brad asked. His voice cut in and out.
With one finger Cassidy pressed the IFB more tightly to her ear. The earpiece allowed her to hear questions from the anchor, instructions from the producer, and all the other sounds of the newscast. The curly cord—a tan color that was more or less her skin tone—ran down from Cassidy’s ear and was clipped to her back.
“Well, Brad, the information from the crime lab as to whether the blood matches Jenna’s DNA will not be available for a few more days. But as you can imagine, this is terrible news for all of us at Channel Four. We are hoping and praying that Jenna will be found alive. Her parents are flying in from Florida today to be closer to the search.
“This is where you, our viewers, can help us. Have you seen Jenna Banks? Police are looking to talk to anyone who might have seen her Friday or Saturday.”
Cassidy knew that folks at home were now seeing the photo of Jenna with her boyfriend, who had been cropped out. A few of the men had seriously argued for the cheesecake shot of Jenna in the bikini, but the women in the story meeting had overruled them in no uncertain terms.
“Jenna is twenty-two years old, five foot seven, and 125 pounds.” This last was Cassidy’s best, envy-tinged, guess. “She has blue eyes and long blonde hair.
“Police also want to know if you drove past the Barbur Bargain Motel on Friday or Saturday. Did you see anything suspicious? Did you hear a gunshot? Did you see someone being forced or carried into a car? All of us at Channel Four ask that you think back. And if you go to our website, you’ll find more photos and more information about Jenna and her disappearance.
“Jenna is a college senior, majoring in broadcasting, who has been interning with us for a few weeks and helping us with stories. In fact, we have some footage of her.”
This part had been prerecorded to be used within a live shot. Cassidy should have heard Jenna’s voice saying “Hi, there,” in a seductive voice as she leaned into some poor sap’s Honda Accord. But in her IFB, there was only silence. With her free hand, she pressed the earpiece deeper into her ear.
Nothing. The IFB had just gone from being crucial to being a useless piece of plastic. She had to get them to order her a new one. Cassidy resisted the urge to swear. It was never safe to assume you were off-mike.
Dead air was lost money. Eric had drilled that into them.
“Well, it seems we’re having a technical glitch,” she said, crossing her fingers that it wasn’t just on her end. Whenever she had a live shot, Cassidy made sure she had her exit line memorized so she could go to it immediately if she needed to. This seemed like one of those times.
“All of us at Channel Four are hoping for Jenna’s safe return. Again, authorities ask that if you have seen Jenna, please call the number on your screen or call 911. This is Cassidy Shaw, reporting live from the Barbur Bargain Motel. Back to you, Brad.”
New Seasons
S
unday night with the woman Clark knew as Korena had been like a dream. He spent the next three days reliving it over and over. In the middle of ringing up a customer’s order, he would imagine kissing her soft lips again. Biking to work, he saw her manicured hands on his body.
Clark barely ate, and slept in snatches. The sheets still held her smell. He was lost. All nerve endings. Aroused, flushed, sweating, skin tingling. He didn’t know where his memories left off and his fantasies began.
“Sweet dreams,” she had said before leaving Clark’s apartment.
“I’ll dream about you,” he had told her. And he did. Asleep and awake.
All he could see was Korena’s face. Her body. Had he been too quick? Had he kissed her enough? Had he done everything right?
He didn’t know where she lived, although it must be in the neighborhood. Why hadn’t he written down the information on her check? Before he went to work on Tuesday, he biked blocks and blocks, looking for her car, but he never saw it. She must be at work, but he didn’t know where that was, or what she did. It was embarrassing when he thought of how he had monopolized the conversation. He didn’t even have her phone number.
Clark wanted nothing more than to kiss her again, undress her, touch her. To lie with her head on his shoulder while she haltingly told him her problems.
Sure, Korena was a little older than he was. It just meant that she wasn’t a silly girl. That she was old enough to look past his face—and his zits
were
only temporary, the way Korena said—and see him for who he really was.
And even though she was twenty-five, she didn’t know what real love was. It was clear that her ex-husband had used and abused her. It was a miracle that the girl could still smile, still laugh. That her heart hadn’t shrunk down into a hard little ball.
Every time Clark thought of the bruise on the soft inside of Korena’s upper arm, he wanted to find her ex-husband and punch him. Hard. When he remembered her sad voice saying that the creep didn’t usually leave bruises, he felt sick.
What
did
he do then? Slap her? Punch her in the gut? Force her to have sex? Clark tried to ask, but Korena had refused to say much. But he was pretty sure it was something awful. And if this guy was her ex-husband, then why wasn’t he leaving her alone?