Exposure (41 page)

Kim dropped her fork. “What does he mean, ‘unwilling’? They ran away together. Who could possibly think otherwise?”

“Other than her father, you mean? It’s Anthony’s note, I’ll bet,” her mother said. “He never says ‘we,’ only ‘I.’ I thought that was peculiar, but of course I never imagined it might mean he abducted her.”

“He
didn’t
,” Kim said, reaching for her phone. “You saw them—by the waterfall? Really, Mom.”

“Honey, I know.”

She dialed Mariana Davis while the anchor introduced a second clip, this one of Harlan Wilkes. “In this interview, which he granted before his daughter was reported missing, Harlan Wilkes, owner of the North Carolina Wilkes Automotive empire, defended his daughter vigorously.”

“What people haven’t been seeing in the news and such,” Wilkes said, looking sad and sincere, “is that Amelia was conned by this guy, taken in by his good looks and his intelligence. The fact that he’s those things doesn’t mean he isn’t also a perverted predator of young women.”

Kim pointed at the screen. “That man should be hanged for his lies,” she spat, waiting while Mariana Davis’s voice mail greeting finished playing, then she left a message, saying, “We’ve got to tell CNN it’s not true, he didn’t kidnap her. Witnesses saw them together yesterday—lovingly together. Her
mother
saw them. Oh—this is Kim Winter. Please call me back.”

The anchor was saying, “He had this to add earlier today,” and there was Wilkes again, this time saying, “I’m glad Liles is finally making some sense—arresting Kim Winter was a step in the right direction. I have no doubt that Amelia was taken against her will—the note they’ve got, that proves it. She was named after Amelia Earheart, so you can bet she’s hanging tough, wherever she is.… My wife and I pray for her safe return and ask you all to pray with us, and we look forward to the truth being revealed and justice served.”

The anchor said, “We have the text of the note he refers to—”

Kim stabbed the TV remote’s power button. “I know I said I wanted to keep up with this, but how can I stand it? Bonnie and Clyde? They’re not bank robbers, for Christ’s sake!” She stood up and carried her plate to the kitchen, saying, “How am I supposed to stand letting them malign him this way? Why am
I
keeping quiet when he’s obviously not?” She set the plate on the counter and pressed her hands against its cool surface, her head bowed, her eyes focused on the inch-wide ankle bracelet that tracked her every move via satellite.

The charges against her were misdemeanors, class 1, equivalent to Anthony’s first charge—and just as ridiculous. With no prior record, she wouldn’t serve jail time, but that hardly mattered now. The damage was done. She was being tried and convicted in the court of public opinion right alongside the kids. In late-eighteenth-century France they’d have all gone to the guillotine by now.

“
There’s
something to be thankful for, then,” she said, as her mother came into the kitchen.

“What’s that?”

Kim told her what she’d been thinking, about the guillotine, then she said, “Didn’t they realize this was going to happen?”

“They’re so young,” her mother said. “We think youth is a blessing, but sometimes it’s a curse.”

28

T’S ONE THING FOR THEM TO CALL US FUGITIVES
,” A
MELIA SAID
Monday night, reading online news articles about herself and Anthony on her friend Jodi’s computer. “
Kidnapping
, though—that’s nuts. My dad is completely wigged out. We thought the note would just be a red herring for the local police, to give us time to get here without them on our trail.”

Jodi, a long-limbed, energetic brunette who Amelia had first met several years earlier at a national singing competition, said, “So it worked better than you thought. They’ve even got the border patrol on alert for you two.”

“We may as well be terrorists.”

“Ugh, don’t say the T word,” Jodi told her. “We had a show canceled three weeks ago because of a bomb threat. I mean, it was nothing—probably some asshole who auditioned and didn’t get a part. You forget, right, until something makes you remember and then it’s ‘Oh shit, I really should get a real job with my dad in Connecticut.’ ”

“You’re so lucky to be working on Broadway. You’d never give it up.”

Jodi grinned. “I know. Finally.
Fin-al-ly
!” she sang. “And so will you, one day. Your voice is
so
much better than mine. So are your legs. So is your ass.”

“Jodi!” Amelia laughed.

Anthony sat across from them, watching the street scene from the fifth-story window of Jodi’s Village apartment. “She’s right,” he said, smiling—but more dimly than he would have, if not for the turns things were taking. “You’ll get here.” He scratched his head and added, “Though damned if I know how, just yet.”

Amelia met his gaze. There was nothing critical there. He wasn’t blaming her for persuading him to leave, for catapulting them from one mess into another. Though if she was honest, she wasn’t as disturbed by the furor going on now as she’d been while sitting at home, cut off from life. They’d made it here, to New York! It felt to her like an entirely different world, where nothing preceding their drive north made the slightest difference now. Life was in motion, flowing everywhere around them, and all they had to do was step into the stream.

The trip up had been long and tense. They’d started off at a Raleigh ATM, where she’d taken out the maximum cash allowed, then stopped at a nearby Wal-Mart and used her card once more, to buy prepaid Visa cards so that they couldn’t be tracked later by their purchases. In order to avoid being spotted easily, they’d driven an indirect route to get to New York—almost twelve hours driving, instead of the nine it took by interstate, and taken turns napping in the car. On their arrival, Jodi had welcomed them in as if they’d all been friends forever, showed them around the apartment, pointed them to the guest room, and said, “Coffee and bagels at ten. See ya.”

They’d stayed holed up since arriving, keeping track of the news and trying to decide where to go from here. As lovely as the apartment was—belonging not to Jodi, who could never afford it on her own, but to Jodi’s father, a high-end interior designer who’d kept the apartment when he moved—Amelia was longing to get out and see the city with Anthony. Now Amelia wanted to see the city and then return here to the room they’d shared last night. To return to Anthony’s arms, which had held her so tenderly as they’d both fallen into exhausted sleep.

He said, “So they’re calling us fugitives, huh, as if we’ve already missed our court dates.”

“I guess because we violated our bail terms just by being together … and by leaving our parents’ homes?”

“I never should have left that note.”

Amelia closed the computer and set it aside. “It isn’t your fault. That’s just the excuse they’re using to justify more trouble.”

“You know, I wrote that note deliberately keeping you out of it, thinking that if they caught up with us it would mean I’d take the heat for the idea of us leaving
together
. Why didn’t I see that someone might misinterpret it and call it kidnapping?”

She put her arms around his waist. “Don’t worry—all I’d have to do is say it was my idea, too, or that I jumped at the chance and you definitely didn’t make me go. It can’t be kidnapping if I say it wasn’t, right?”

“Oh, you think Liles needs there to be a
victim
in order to charge me with something new?”

Amelia laid her index finger against his lips. “You were so sweet to try to protect me.”

“It’s my privilege.” He put his hands on her face and kissed her. “Come on, ladies,” he said, leading her away from the windowsill. “Put your coats on and let’s go see the city.”

Amelia brightened. “Yeah?”

“It’s New York, it’s dark, nobody is looking for us here. We might as well make the most of it.”

The night air was biting, but filled with the scents of exotic foods and diesel fumes and a leftover dampness from recent rain. Amelia tucked her scarf behind her shoulders, then pulled her coat closed and began to do up the buttons, but stopped when a pain rippled across her abdomen. She pressed her hand to her stomach.

“What is it?” Anthony asked.

“Nothing. A cramp. Probably that salmon cream cheese stuff from this morning disagreeing with me.”

“Hey, don’t knock the lox,” Jodi teased. “Probably you have indigestion after reading about yourself in the news. That’d do it to me—well, unless the news was a great review of one of my amazing performances.”

Anthony frowned at Amelia. “You sure you’re fine?”

“Absolutely,” she said, nodding. “Better already.” And she was. The pain had shrunk and was fading quickly, the way it had the other day. There’d been no more after it and her period hadn’t come early, so she’d written it off as nothing to worry about. She’d do the same now.

“Let’s go,” she said, and they set off for the subway.

Amelia reveled in the rightness of the night, the company she was in, Anthony’s gloved hand holding hers, the feeling of normalcy that came with being here, being away. She felt like she belonged here. Like she was an important part of something very right. She, Anthony, and Jodi were three young people walking and talking and laughing, skipping down the stairs to the train, riding it along with people from all around the world, people who knew this was the greatest city, the place where everything happened—good and bad, the place where particular kinds of dreams were inclined to come true.

Not for everyone, she understood that. Some of the people in this car with them looked as if they couldn’t get further away from success. One man of indeterminate age with a greasy beard, greasy hair beneath a dirty watch cap, a once-yellow nylon jacket that had no insulation and was torn at the elbows, slept with his mouth hanging open in a seat at the end of the car. There was no way of knowing whether his plight, and that of the others here who weren’t far above him, was a result of a lack of opportunity, a lack of personal capacity to achieve much, a lack of willpower, a lack of belief—or maybe they were in New York for reasons that had nothing to do with chasing a dream. They’d been born here, maybe, or had come against their wishes, or didn’t accept the mythology of New York to begin with. If that was the case, she was sorry for them. She was sorry for them regardless.

She tugged Anthony’s sleeve and said, “If I ever make it—”

“
When
you make it,” he said.

“I’m going to give my money away. My dad is wrong. I don’t want to live like he and my mom do, ever.”

Anthony squeezed her shoulder and nodded his agreement. “Sounds like a good plan to me.”

A good plan, and an easy one. Harder was going to be figuring out where they’d go from here. Even if Jodi was inclined to have guests indefinitely, Amelia knew they could stay anonymous for only so long. The money would run out, but even more to the point, there was no way for them to move ahead—no school, no jobs—unless something drastic put a stop to the legal nonsense. But she wasn’t going to think about any of that now. It would keep. Now was for
now
, for here. The rest would work itself out; she truly believed that it would. Truth and justice, those were the foundations of their country, right? Truth, justice, and faith, none of which were serving them very well right now, but they had to get a break sooner or later.

The three of them left the subway at the Fiftieth Street station and started walking toward Times Square. Jodi said, “We’ll pass most of the theatres this way, so we all can drool like starving beggars at restaurant doors.”

“What are you talking about, ‘all,’ ” Anthony said. “You’re working.”

“As
the
most inconsequential Tribe member in
Hair
. But yeah.” She grinned, and the lights from the shop fronts and glowing signs around them made her so-white teeth appear pink. “Yeah, damn it, I am.”

She took a flip camera from her pocket and aimed it at Anthony. “Okay.
The Big Adventure
, take one: the man you see before you is Anthony Winter, who’s in New York City for—how many times have you been here before?”