“Mr. McDaniels, Security is on the other line. The bed is still made up. Your daughter's belongings look undisturbed. Would you like us to notify the police?”
“Yes. Right away. Thank you. Could you say and spell your name for me?”
Levon booked a room, then phoned United Airlines, kept pressing zeros until he got a human voice.
Beside him, Barb's breathing was wet, her cheeks shining with tears. Her graying braid was coming undone as she repeatedly pushed her fingers through it. Barb's suffering was right out in the open, and she didn't know any other way. You always knew how she felt and where you stood with Barb.
“The more I think about it,” she said, her voice coming between jerky sobs, “the more I think it's a lie. If he took her? he'd want money, and he didn't ask for that, Levon. So? why would he call us?”
“I just don't know, Barb. It doesn't make sense to me either.”
“What time is it there?”
“Ten thirty p.m.”
“She probably went for a ride with some cute guy. Got a flat tire. Couldn't get a cell phone signal, something like that. She's probably all worked up about missing the shoot. You know how she is. She's probably stuck somewhere and furious with herself.”
Levon had held back the truly terrifying part of the phone call. He hadn't told Barb that the caller had said that Kim had fallen into “bad hands.” How would that help Barb? He couldn't bring himself to say it.
“We have to keep our heads on straight,” he said.
Barb nodded. “Absolutely. Oh, we're going over there, Levon. But Kim is going to be as mad as bees that you told the hotel to call the police. Watch out when Kim's mad.”
Levon smiled.
“I'll shower after you,” Barb said.
Levon came out of the bathroom five minutes later, shaven, his damp brown hair standing up around the bald spot at the back. He tried to picture the Wailea Princess as he dressed, saw frozen postcard images of honeymooners walking the beach at sunset. He thought of never seeing Kim again, and a knifing terror cut through him.
Please, God, oh, please, don't let anything happen to Kim.
Barb showered quickly, dressed in a blue sweater, gray slacks, flat shoes. Her expression was wide-eyed shock, but she was past the hysteria, her excellent mind in gear.
“I packed underwear and toothbrushes and that's all, Levon. We'll get what we need in Maui.”
It was 3:45 in Cascade Township. Less than an hour had passed since the anonymous phone call had cracked open the night and spilled the McDanielses out into a terrifying unknown.
“You call Cissy,” Barb said. “I'll wake the kids.”
Chapter 12
Barbara sighed under her breath, then turned up the dimmer, gradually lighting the boys' room. Greg groaned, pulled the Spider-Man quilt over his head, but Johnny sat straight up, his fourteen-year-old face alert to something different, new, and maybe exciting.
Barb shook Greg's shoulder gently. “Sweetie, wake up now.”
“Mommmmm, nooooo.”
Barb peeled down her younger son's blanket, explained to both boys a version of the story that she halfway believed. That she and Dad were going to Hawaii to visit Kim.
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.