Keeping Faith: A Novel (22 page)

And finds herself staring at Ian Fletcher.

Oh, God. There is nowhere to go on a plane. Mariah takes the coward’s way out,

hustling Faith back to their seats after she comes out of the lavatory and thoroughly avoiding Ian Fletcher’s gaze the entire way. She closes her eyes in disgust. There must have been–what,

fifty flights?–leaving Logan Airport this hour, and she managed to blindly choose the one with Fletcher on it. The person who had the most to gain from giving up her and Faith’s whereabouts.

Then it strikes her: This was no chance meeting.

Somehow Ian Fletcher managed to follow them to the airport. She doesn’t know why he doesn’t get it over with, just stomp back here to steerage and tell her he’s got her number. Maybe he’s using one of those little AirPhones even now to arrange for a producer and a camera crew to meet them in Kansas City.

She feels tears constricting her throat. Her grand plan is over before it’s even started.

For a full minute after Mariah White flees like a frightened rabbit into the back of the plane, Ian entertains the thought of calling James Wilton and directing the hounds to the fox; he even goes so far as to take a credit card out and read the AirPhone instructions, but then remembers why he cannot. The very last thing he wants to do is bring the media crashing down within a hundred miles of Michael.

Mariah White doesn’t know it, but she has just as much of an edge on Ian as he has on her.

Ian finishes his bourbon and signals the flight attendant for another. The easiest way out of this is to go along with what Mariah is no doubt thinking: that he tailed them from New Canaan to the Boston airport. Otherwise she’ll wonder why he’s on a plane bound for Kansas City. It is one thing for him to learn all her secrets, another thing entirely for her to learn his. His entire trip will have to be changed now.

A thought takes root in Ian’s mind. What if he can watch Faith put on her private healing show at close range? What if he handpicks the target of her so-called miracle,

so that she can’t help but fail? The grandmother and the woman with the AIDS baby, they could have been in on the action somehow. But Michael–well, no one knows better than Ian himself that Michael isn’t part of their charade … and that Michael can’t be cured.

All he has to do is whittle away at their sympathies, so that they agree to try to fix Michael as a personal favor to Ian. And while Faith White is attempting to pull off her hoax, he gets an up-close, personal look at how it’s being done. Even Michael’s anonymity is preserved; Mariah White’s not about to go blabbing if it means revealing her location.

The ludicrous image of Faith laying hands on Michael in some charlatan revue that’s been choreographed by her mother gives way in Ian’s head to the image he’s tucked so far away that it aches to bring it to the surface: Michael looking him in the eye, Michael reaching for him of his own volition, Michael clapping him on the back in an embrace.

Ha–more likely he’d see Mariah White scrambling to explain that the moon is out of alignment or some other crap like that to excuse the fact that her miraculous daughter couldn’t heal an autistic man.

If Ian were a man who believed in destiny,

he’d think it was fate that brought the Whites to this particular plane. Instead he considers it an opportunity that’s dropped into his lap, one that could potentially become the story of a lifetime.

He only has to charm Faith and her mother into thinking that a cynic like him might not be the enemy after all,

might actually pin his hopes on a child with the alleged power to heal, might stand by and act devastated when Faith ultimately fails.

But would that really be an act?

Mariah isn’t surprised when she steps off the plane to find Ian Fletcher waiting for her,

nor is she surprised to have him ignore her–

entirely–for Faith. “Hey, there,” he drawls, getting down to her level. “Did y’all come out on this plane, too?”

Faith’s eyes widen. “Mr. Fletcher!”

“The one and only.” He stands up and nods.

“Ma’am.”

Mariah squeezes Faith’s hand, a warning.

“We’re here for a wedding. My cousin’s wedding.

Tonight.” Her voice is too high, staccato, and the moment she volunteers information Fletcher didn’t even solicit, she feels as if she could kick herself.

“That so? Don’t believe I ever heard of a wedding that took place on a Tuesday night.”

Mariah’s chin lifts a notch. “It’s …

part of their religion.”

“Seems there’s a lot of that goin’ around.”

He smiles at Faith. “On account of us running into each other, what do you say we get an ice cream?”

Faith, clearly excited by the idea, turns to Mariah. “We don’t have time,” Mariah says.

“But we don’t have any–“

“Faith!” Mariah interrupts, then sighs.

“All right. We can get an ice cream.”

Ian leads them to an airport cafeteria.

He orders a cone for Faith and Cokes for himself and Mariah. “Faith, your mama and I want to have a talk. How about eating your ice cream over there at that table?”

As Faith runs off, Mariah tries to call her back, but is stopped by Ian’s hand on her arm. For a moment she cannot breathe, cannot move, until he takes it away. “Let her go. You’ve got a clear view, and you’re fifteen hundred miles away from the people who want to get to her.”

Mariah defiantly turns. “We could just walk away from you. You can’t stop us.”

“You gonna call the police? I doubt it.

First of all, that’d leave a paper trail. And something tells me you don’t want to leave one of those.” He smiles sadly. “Would you believe me if I said I was here for any reason other than you and Faith? I didn’t think so. The hell of it is, Miz White, that I admire you for this. And I’d like to offer you some advice.”

“Said the fox to the gingerbread man,” Mariah mutters.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Huh. Well, what I was about to say was that you can’t be too careful. Have you given any thought as to where you and Faith will be staying?”

Refusing to let him in on their plans,

Mariah tightens her mouth.

“A motel, I’ll bet,” Ian continues breezily. “But sooner or later it’ll cross your mind that a lady staying with a little girl for some time in a dingy motel will stick out like a sore thumb. On the other hand, moving from motel to motel is going to be awful hard on a child. So that’ll leave you at the mercy of a local friend–of which I’m willing to bet you don’t have too many–or leasing some cheap apartment. Thing is, Miz White,

any landlord worth his salt is gonna want some references. And they’re hard to come by when you’re anonymous. Plus, that doesn’t even address the problem of how to rent yourself a car, when your driver’s license and credit card are surely items you don’t want recorded for posterity.”

Having had about enough of this, Mariah starts to move away. The hell with Ian Fletcher. The hell with Kansas City. There are at least a hundred connecting flights leaving this afternoon; all she has to do is manage to slip past him once more. She turns toward Faith, but he grabs her wrist,

holds her. “I will find you,” he whispers,

reading her mind. “You know that.”

Still, her eyes flicker toward the corridor,

the bathrooms, all the possible exits. “You said you were going to give me some advice.”

“That’s right. I think you ought to look up an acquaintance while you’re in town.”

Mariah chokes on a laugh. “Wait. Let me think of all the sorority sisters I have in Kansas City.”

“I meant me,” Ian says softly. “I think you should stay with me.”

For a long moment Mariah only stares at him.

“Are you crazy?”

His eyes are as blue as a pool, as inviting to fall into. “I just may be, Miz White,”

he admits. “Because if I wasn’t, I surely would have told my producer about your little girl’s hands last week. I would have had a bunch of cameras waiting to meet you when you got off that plane, instead of just me. I would have spent that flight thinking I was out to expose you to the world,

instead of thinking that maybe, this one time, I could do the right thing and help hide you away.” He glances at Faith. “It’s the ultimate cover. The very last place anyone would ever expect you’d go underground … is with me.”

“Unless you told them so yourself.” Mariah’s gaze is unflinching. It is impossible for her to trust this man, whom she never even would have met if not for his interest in Faith as a juicy story.

But then again, she cannot fault his claims. As blustery and vindictive as the public image of Ian Fletcher is, in private, he has often been sympathetic. And yet to run away from the eyes of the press and into Fletcher’s residence seems like a direct and suicidal jump from the frying pan into the fire.

He has not released her wrist, and his thumb grazes the skin along the ridge of her scar.

“You have my word that I won’t give away your hiding place. And you will have your privacy.” Then he smiles. “What’s worse, Mariah? The devil you don’t know … or the devil you do?”

They’re buying it. Ian is nearly giddy with relief as Mariah walks toward Faith and speaks to her daughter about the change in plans.

She’s still wary, but that’s all right. Let her think he has a hidden agenda. After all, he does.

It’s just not what Mariah White thinks. Getting Faith to the point where she willingly comes to meet Michael–and getting her mother to the point where she allows this–will take the bulk of Ian’s thespian skills.

As she walks back with her daughter in tow,

Ian is struck again by her features. It’s the contradictions that draw him: the stunning green eyes, puffy and tired; the soft mouth bracketed by lines that have been carved by pain. “So,” she says hesitantly, “you have a home here?”

At that, Ian almost laughs. He wouldn’t live in this state if it were the last place on earth. “Give me an hour and I will.”

He leads them to an Avis dealership and rents a car, signing it out on a Pagan Productions corporate credit card. Mariah remains in the background near a bank of phones, unwilling to risk being seen by someone who might later identify her or Faith. As he returns with keys in hand, Ian checks his watch and scowls.

He has less than an hour to get to Michael.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Mariah asks as they turn onto the interstate.

“West. I thought it might be better to get outside the city.” And closer to Lockwood.

“You drive like you know your way.”

“I come here a fair amount on business,”

Ian lies. “There’s a little place in Ozawkie that rents cabins on Perry Lake.

I’ve never stayed there, but I must have passed their sign a hundred times. I figured we could stop up there and give it a try first.”

“Can we go swimming?”

Ian grins at Faith in the rearview mirror. “Don’t think your mama’s gonna let you swim when it’s this cold. But I can’t imagine she’d get angry at a little fishing.”

In a while they turn off and drive across the flats from Missouri into Kansas. Mariah glances out the window, staring at stubbled fields where corn was recently harvested. Faith’s nose is pressed to the glass. “Where are the mountains?”

“Home,” Mariah murmurs.

As Mariah looks at the beaten shacks that comprise Camp Perry, she tells herself that beggars can’t be choosers. She and Faith might have found more luxurious accommodations, but, as Fletcher has said, they’d also be easily traced. She watches him circle the manager’s office and knock on the door, then step up and peer into a window. When no one answers, he shrugs and walks toward the car. “Looks like–“

“Can I help you?”

A little old lady with the look of a wren about her opens the door of the manager’s office. “Why,

yes’m, you can,” Fletcher says, his voice dripping with charm. “My wife and I were hoping to rent one of your charming establishments.”

Wife?

“We’re closed for the season,” the woman says. “Sorry.”

Fletcher stares at her for a moment. “Surely a good Christian woman like yourself would be willing to make an exception if it furthered the work of Our Lord.”

Mariah nearly chokes on her tongue.

“Mommy,” Faith whispers from the backseat,

“how come he’s talking weird?”

She cranes her neck back. “Ssh. He’s putting on a show. Like a play for us to watch.”

“Jesus told me to pack it all up October first,” the woman says.