“Darling,” he said softly, “it’s going to be fine — she’s just a teenager who didn’t want to miss her senior prom. Can you blame her?”
Frustration and something like anger colored her face. “Doesn’t she know what she’s done? How she’s put us all at risk?”
“No. Like I said, she’s a teenager... And even when we get her back home, safe and sound, we may have to seriously consider telling Shore all about this.”
Alarm again widened the dark blue eyes. “You said bringing WITSEC in was dangerous...”
“It may be more dangerous not t moving on to another identity. I’m going to want to talk to Anna and her boyfriend about just how much contact they’ve maintained, and how they did it. And then, remember... we have another option.”
Confusion tensed her forehead. “Which is what?”
“We still have our half-mil nest egg. We can start over like we were planning to, before WITSEC stepped in — a new life in Mexico or Brazil or some damn place. Without the federal safety net, but also without the federal hassle.”
Her eyes were so tight with thought, they were almost closed. “What will Anna think about that?”
He smirked. “What does she think now?”
She fell into his arms and held on to him tight and shivered. “I want to go with you.”
“Back to Tahoe?”
“Everywhere — to the airport and—”
He held her away, just a little, and locked her eyes with his. “No, honey. You need to stay here. By the phone.”
She thought about that, then said, “You’re right.”
“Anna may call, or the Parhams may hear from Cindy, or Cindy may show up and—”
“You’re right. Go.” She managed a crinkly smile, somehow. “Get out of here and find our little girl... ya big lug.”
“I love it when you call me that.”
“Find our daughter.” The smile from a moment ago was ancient history. “I couldn’t take... Find her.”
He nodded, and then he kissed her lightly.
She clutched his face in one hand, roughly, in an almost accusatory fashion, and then kissed him — hard.
“I love you, Michael. You’ll come through for us. You always come through.”
“I love you, Patsy Ann,” he said, and kissed her.
And went off to find their daughter.
Eight
Michael started with the Greyhound Terminal on South Church, talking to every clerk and vendor and even a guy with a broom. The snapshot of Anna was fairly close up, and she was an attractive girl whose heart-shaped face, big dark eyes, and endless brown mane made her distinctive enough to be remembered. But no one did.
American Trailways on East Tenth drew the same disappointing results, though Michael did catch one slight break. The same clerks were working today, at both terminals, as had been on duty yesterday afternoon. Which was exactly when his daughter would have come around to buy a bus ticket (based on when Cindy’s parents saw the girls drive off in that red Mustang).
Otherwise, Michael would have had to spend much of the day tracking down off — duty bus-station tellers, all over Tucson.
The identical combination of good and bad luck awaited him at the Southern Pacific railroad station on East Toole: same clerks on duty as yesterday, none of whom recognized Anna’s picture. This was repeated at Tucson International, six miles from the city, out US 89, though it took a while — he had to query busy clerks at American Airlines, TWA, and half a dozen other lines major and minor.
From a pay phone at the airport, already pushing four p.m., he called the Parhams to see if they’d heard anything from their daughter, Cindy. They had not.
So he called home.
Pat answered the phone with a painfully eager, “Yes?”
“Just me, sweetheart.” From the sound of her voice, he knew the answer to his next question, but he asked, anyway: “Hear from Anna?”
“No. Any luck with the snapshot?”
“Afraid not.” He quickly filled her in about the air, bus, and train terminals. “I think we can be reasonably sure she didn’t travel that way. I just called the Parhams and they haven’t heard from Cindy, either.”
“You think Cindy drove Anna to Tahoe?”
“Well, it’s just the idiotic kind of road trip a couple of teenagers might take. And with that many hours facing them, two drivers, trading off behind the wheel, would suit the plan.”
“Michael, we don’t know for sure she went home...”
“No, we don’t. She and Cindy could be hanging out with some of their friends at some mountain cabin, taking their rebellion out with beer or pot or something.”
“That doesn’t sound like Anna.”
“Not to me, either, but a kid frustrated about her life... on the weekend of the prom she can’t attend... could behave seriously out of character.”
“Oh, Michael... what now?”
The frustration and desperation in his wife’s voice broke Michael’s heart, but he kept his own tone positive.
“Do me a favor, sweetheart. Call across the street and get that Parham woman to phone the parents of every friend of their daughter’s she can think of. If Anna’s still in Tucson, we need to find out...”
He left unstated:... before I go running around the Tahoe area, breaking our cover, looking for her. Just in case the feds were tapping the Smith line...
“Yes,” Pat was saying, “yes, that makes sense. I’ll get her to do that right away... What about those calls we talked about?”
Pat, too, was being cautious about what she said on the phone. She was referring to the long-distance calls to friends in Tahoe that Michael had said he’d make. Good girl, he thought.
“I’m doing that next... Listen, I know it’s no picnic for you, staying home by the phone. But it’s important.”
“I know it is. And I love you, Michael, for... for springing into action like this.”
“Listen, she’s fine. You just hang in there, baby. I love you, too.”
They said goodbye and hung up.
Before he left Tucson International, Michael bought a ticket on the red-eye to Reno — the flight, on American, would leave at one a.m.; in Reno he would rent a car and spend Saturday in Crystal Bay and Incline Village, tracking down their wayward daughter; and would she be thrilled with her father, when he pulled the prom rug out from under her...
On Congress he found a drive-in bank that stayed open till five, and just made it in time to trade paper money for rolls of nickels, dimes, and quarters.
His next stop was the library on South Sixth. In the massive two-winged red-brick building, he found a wall of shelves with out-of-town phone books — including one labeled lake tahoe area. He hauled the relatively slender directory out onto a stone table in the library patio and sat in the sunshine for twenty minutes copying numbers onto a piece of scratch paper.
At a pancake house on Stone, he pulled in to the parking lot and soon was making phone calls in a nearby booth.
He’d already prepared a speech for these friends and acquaintances who’d been abandoned when WITSEC whisked the Satarianos into the Smiths’ new life.
“Yeah, well, I got this job opportunity on the East Coast and I had to jump at it. Didn’t mean to leave you folks in the lurch.”
That was all he intended to share, other than, “Look, I promise I’ll call again under better circumstances, but Pat and me, we’re crazy with worry, trying to find Anna. We think she got homesick and ran back there to go to the senior prom. Have you seen her?”