Girl of Rage (2 page)

Adelina. May 1, 10:15 pm Pacific

The little man grimaced, rubbing his eyes. Adelina Thompson had called three times during the drive north, and he’d promised to stay awake until she arrived. But he hadn’t been gracious or polite about it. He was short, with thick glasses that magnified his rheumy eyes, and his pale blue pajamas were threadbare, the vertical blue stripes faded into obscurity. She imagined that winter was tough for him—his knuckles were swollen and arthritic.

He had a business here in the shadow of the northern California redwoods, but it was a business that merely limped along. The prospect of the twenty extra dollars she’d offered for late arrival had been powerful.

The campsite was deep in the woods, and the air was moist and warm. Crickets and frogs and God only knew what else made a continuous buzzing, and the darkness hid the trees and cabins and dangers beyond. It was oppressive. Claustrophobic.

“Here’s the key. No noise, everybody’s already asleep. You’re in the second cabin on the left.”

“Thank you,” Adelina said. “We won’t be making any noise. My daughter’s asleep in the car.”

“I’ll just need to make a copy of your driver’s license, please.”

She lay her hand on the counter and said, “Oh no … I’m afraid I forgot it.”

The old man narrowed his eyes. “Can’t rent a cabin without a driver’s license.”

She frowned. “We’re only here for the night. Can you make an exception? You wouldn’t make me and my daughter sleep in the car, would you?”

He grimaced. “Them’s the rules,” he said, sounding unsure of himself. It was after midnight, after all, and temperatures had been dropping.

“Please?” she asked, leaning slightly forward. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent. You see…”

“I don’t need any trouble,” the man said.

“We’re no trouble. It’s just … my husband…” As she said the words, she dropped her eyes to the floor.

He grimaced. “Left him, did you?”

“He hurt me,” she whispered.

The man exhaled. “All right, then. Fine. I guess the copier’s not working. You make sure you’re out of here early, mind you. We don’t get inspected often, but if the county finds out I’m letting people stay without ID, there’ll be hell to pay.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

He frowned. “That’ll be forty dollars. Plus the twenty you promised on the phone.”

¡Gilipollas! It didn’t matter. Right now, the important thing was to get Jessica into a bed and get under cover for the night. She couldn’t drive without sleep and Jessica couldn’t continue at all. Despite the adrenaline and shock of the news of Andrea’s kidnapping and finding their home burning away, Jessica had still slipped into a deep sleep within minutes of getting on the highway. She’d tossed and turned, moaning and resistant when Adelina woke her to eat at a fast-food chain along US 101.

That was the withdrawals.

She won’t suffer through the same kind of physical withdrawals you see from alcohol or heroin,
Sister Kiara had told her.
But it will be almost as bad in its own way. She’s only been doing
meth
a few weeks, but it might be two years before she laughs again, or feels any joy. That’s just what happens to the brain.
She’s done a tremendous amount of damage to herself.
In the meantime, all you can do is love her.

That, and keep her alive. Jessica had been through a harrowing ordeal on an emotional level, but Adelina knew that the only way she could keep her daughter safe now was to run as far and as fast as she possibly could.

She thought about the voice on the phone … the voice she hadn’t heard in more than a decade.

Always, Adelina. Always.

Hearing his voice again gave her a thick pain like a fist buried in her chest, slowly squeezing the breath out of her. He’d been the love of her life. He’d gone away, at her insistence.

Hearing his voice gave her something she hadn’t had in years.

Hope.

So she ran. It’s not that she thought Richard would hurt Jessica. He was a monster, but in some ways a predictable one. He wouldn’t hesitate to hurt Andrea, most likely, reasoning that she wasn’t actually his daughter. But Jessica was his, and he knew it.

But Richard wasn’t the only threat. She never knew the details, but something terrible had happened in Afghanistan when Richard was there thirty years ago. Something so terrible it had lain dormant, a secret which had floated some careers and killed others. She thought she knew who some of the players were. Prince Roshan, a charming snake of a man who kept his wives in veils in Saudi Arabia while sporting around Washington with twenty-year-old call girls on his arm, a man who had smiled at her and been charming and had the same cold, lifeless look in his eyes as her husband.

She thought the other threat was likely to be Leslie Collins, who Richard had insisted for years was nothing more than an accountant. He thought she was stupid, and at times through the years it had served her well to let him think that. It had protected her and her daughters. But Collins was no accountant, and when he finally reached a level where further promotion required Senate approval, the now Director of Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency finally had to go public about his career.

Collins wouldn’t hesitate to torture small children to accomplish his goals. She just hoped the rest of her daughters had heeded her instructions to run.

If only she knew what had happened in Washington. She’d called the condo that afternoon and gotten Dylan, her son-in-law. Her instructions were simple. Run, and get Andrea out. She heard a loud crack over the phone, then more, and then Dylan hung up. She knew what the sound was. Gunshots. She’d called again, but it was too late. She kept trying, stopping at rare pay phones along the road—there were few enough of those left—but no one answered at the condo.

It wasn’t safe to use cell phones. She’d thrown them into the San Francisco Bay as they left town. Then drove, for hours, north, stopping only for one meal and restroom breaks. In a way, Jessica’s deep depression and withdrawal made the trip easier.

But Adelina kept questioning herself. Second guessing. Jessica needed to be in heavy therapy. She needed to be in an environment where she could get treatment. She needed to be examined by a doctor. Instead, she was on the run, and the only thing Adelina could do for her daughter was pray.

Finally they had reached her destination for the first night—a campground in Crescent City, California, surrounded by redwoods and quiet. As she got out of the car, Adelina took a deep breath, the scent of pine and spring flowing into her nose. It was a smell of hope.

She stumbled in the darkness to the cabin and unlocked it, the latch opening with a loud, audible click. The door swung wide. A queen bed and a bunk bed. A small table. No sheets or pillows. They would make do. She had a blanket in the back of the minivan, and bundles of clothing from their bags would have to serve as pillows.

First, she needed to get her daughter inside.

Adelina opened the sliding side door to the van. Jessica was sprawled across the middle seat. Her lifeless brown hair was splayed across her face, eyes closed, and mouth open. Since Adelina had taken her to the retreat to dry out less than ten days ago, Jessica had begun to gain weight. But it still wasn’t enough. Her face, red and marked with acne, was gaunt, the hollows in her cheeks heartbreakingly prominent, her ribs clearly visible under her tank top.

“Jessica, wake up. Come inside the cabin and you can sleep in a bed.”

Jessica groaned and turned her head into the seat.

“Come on, Jessica. I need you to get up for just a minute.”

Jessica didn’t stir. Adelina closed her eyes. Her daughter was eighteen years old.

Her daughter was a wreck.

She leaned into the van and tilted Jessica out of the seat, pulling the girl to her shoulder. Jessica groaned and flailed, and Adelina staggered a little under the weight, her knees bending. With a lot of effort, she got her arms around Jessica and dragged her out of the van, Jessica’s sneaker-clad feet hitting the ground with a thud.

Jessica groaned and said, “All right, all right. Head hurts.” Then she stood, and staggered toward the door of the cabin.

As she stepped inside, Adelina sighed and whispered a prayer. For now—for the next few hours—they were safe.

She leaned against the doorframe for just a second, staring in at her daughter, indirectly lit from the headlights of the car. Jessica had staggered in and fallen into one of the bunk beds. Anyone else who saw this scene would see a strung out kid who might be a drug addict or might be anorexic, a kid who couldn’t keep her eyes open, brush her hair or take basic care of herself.

Adelina knew what they saw. She’d seen the looks, in the weeks leading up to their final departure from San Francisco. When Adelina had first returned home, switching places with Richard, she’d given Jessica plenty of leash. But it became clear, quickly, that her daughter was out of control. Conflict and rage. Sadness and grief. It was clear Jessica needed help and wasn’t getting it.

In February, she had to drag Jessica out of the house when her daughter refused to even get dressed. They’d gone into the grocery store with Jessica padding behind her, wearing pajamas and flip flops, muttering and cursing at her mother all the way through the store.

She’d seen the looks of curiosity and pity from the young mothers. Disgust from single men. Understanding and empathy from the older mothers and grandmothers.

Nothing was as simple as it seemed. Adelina didn’t see an eighteen-year-old drug addict lying on the bare mattress in the cabin. What she saw was a three-year-old daughter twirling in her ballet shoes. She saw the daughter who seemed to take on the pain of her daring, sometimes reckless twin. She saw a young teen, fifteen years old at the time, serious expression on her face, as she played Paganini’s 24
^th
Caprice for a packed recital at the Green Music Center. One of the most difficult pieces for violin, and Jessica had mastered it. Of all of her daughters, Jessica was probably the only one who had both the musical talent and discipline to match her mother, and until a few months ago, it had seemed likely she was destined for the San Francisco Conservatory.

When Adelina looked at her daughter, she saw the four-year-old who had once followed Sarah around the house, both of them leaving a trail of chaos everywhere they went.

Adelina walked out to the minivan. She looked around in the darkness. She couldn’t see anyone, so she reached far back under the driver’s seat and removed the thick envelope full of cash. She wouldn’t risk leaving that in the van. She removed the blanket and their bags from the back seat, then carefully locked up the van and went inside.

She closed and locked the door, covered her daughter with the blanket, then curled up beside her in the darkness

Adelina suppressed a tear. She didn’t have time to fall apart right now. She’d already done that too many times in her life. For now, she needed to hold it together.

All the same, she missed her little girl.

Bear. May 2. 12:10 am.

“Are we
finished
? I need to get my daughter to sleep somewhere appropriate.”

When Carrie Sherman said the words, her daughter stirred in the sling. The baby had cried most of the last hour, finally drifting off into a fitful sleep. They were inside a sterile office in a building she’d never paid attention to before, a few blocks from the main State Department building. A stream of investigators, uniformed officers, and God only knew who else continued to demand answers. The noise had made for a challenging time, as the team of federal investigators asked questions and then asked them again, over and over.

Where was Dylan? Why hadn’t he or Andrea come out with them?

Why were drugs found in Andrea’s room?

What did they know about their father’s career?

Bear Wyden knew the questions wouldn’t get any answers, because he knew that the three sisters knew nothing. But her demanding, arrogant tone infuriated him. People were
dying
out there.

“We’re done,” he said. “For now, we’ve got you in a safe house in Alexandria. I’m going to need to get clothes sizes for all of you.”

“What?” Carrie asked. “We’re not going to a safe house.”

“Just for a couple days. Your condo is a crime scene, Mrs. Sherman.”

“Fine. I’ll need all new baby supplies then too. Diapers. Clothes. Formula. Bottles. Breast pump. Either we get that stuff from my condo or someone buys it. And where are my sisters?”

Bear closed his eyes and heard the phone call with Leah in his mind again.

Bear, is there supposed to be a relief team here?

No
, he’d said. There wasn’t time to say anything more, because the supposed relief team, led by Ralph Myers—an insider, a fifteen year DSS agent Bear had known for at least a decade—killed Mick Stanton and critically injured Leah.