Hidden Threat (31 page)

“
Okay, let’s go that way, then,” her father whispered, as if the hunters might at any second become the hunted if they gave away their position. Amanda held a stern look on her face, using her hands to brush away the low-hanging branches of pine saplings.

“
This trail is what the wild animals use to come to the stream to drink water. Animals are just like humans in that they need to drink a lot of water. And if big animals are here, what else is probably here?”

Amanda looked at him intently. This was no game in her book. They might as well have been on an African safari stalking a lion’s den. Her mind raced, searching for the right answer. She so wanted to please him by knowing. She wanted to show how smart she could be. Big, he had emphasized the word “big.” He was talking about how animals needed water. What else would they need? Food? She had it.

“
Smaller animals? For food?”

Her father smiled, and she knew she had it right. Pride surged through her, and she tried to hold back a smile, but couldn’t resist. He was smiling, too.

“
That’s right, baby girl. This is the chow hall.”

She could hear the South River churning to the east. Mist escaped her mouth as she breathed. She could sense her father right there behind her. His presence was comforting and reassuring . . . and necessary.

Her father saw it first, which is why he placed his hand on her shoulder and deftly stepped in front of her.

“
Don’t move,” he whispered. He moved a step to her front and a bit to the right, it seemed, so that she could see. Drinking from the stream was what looked like a big tabby house cat. She had owned several that had either run away or died in some accident or another. She always had pets and remembered a tan Manx cat she had when she was much younger.

“
Mountain lion,” he mouthed as he looked at her while placing his index finger over his lips, indicating for her to be quiet. She stared at the animal, its back to them, oblivious to their presence. A combination of a north wind and the rushing water most likely masked their approach to the typically alert feline. Then she looked at her father’s face, strong and rugged, without a trace of fear. He looked confident and assured.

She lowered to one knee, edging a shade closer to her father, resting a hand on his shoulder. They waited and watched this cat drink water, occasionally look to its left and right, and then go back to lapping at the stream.

For fifteen minutes they became lost in a trance, connecting with nature. The sun broke through for a moment and a sliver of yellow light spotlighted the animal’s silken gold coat. Then, as if the sunbeam was its cue, the mountain lion lifted itself off its rear haunches and loped harmlessly along the river bank to the east.

Now she was on the tennis court in maybe one-hundred-degree heat on a searing North Carolina July afternoon. The coach had just made the tennis camp team run four laps around the entire complex. Unsure if she could continue, she noticed someone move to her periphery and whisper in the coach’s ear.

Wiping away the sweat that was stinging her eyes, she raised herself up from resting her hands on her knees and looked toward the coach, who was nodding at her father. She saw her dad dressed in his army uniform. She wasn’t sure what all of the symbols and decorations meant, but she did know that it was her father and that he would make it all okay.

He walked away into the officers’ club which was adjacent to the tennis courts. The coach blew the whistle with a loud, ear-piercing blare and screamed, “Okay everybody, bring it in.”

Twenty girls and boys came limping over to the coach, all drenched with sweat, some seemingly on the verge of dehydration, as indicated by their vacant stares. Amanda tried to see beyond the throng now gathering, looking for her dad.

“
Good job, everybody. I want you to take the rest of the day off.” A chorus of cheers erupted. “Okay, okay. Hit the locker room.”

As the tennis camp crowd entered the clubhouse and its inviting cold air, she looked up in amazement. Her father was standing in the middle of the pro shop wearing a T-shirt that said “Lifeguard” and a geeky pair of swim trunks with a mixture of red, white, and blue colors fashioned in a swirling pattern. On his feet were flip-flops, and in his hand was a sheet of paper.

“
Gather around, team,” he called out, waving his arms toward the aspiring racquet masters. With some energy, they began to huddle around. Amanda was up front. This was her daddy. She stared up at him with adoring eyes. “Here’s what we’re going to do. There’s coolers of Gatorade in your locker rooms. You are all going to go drink an entire bottle and then put on your bathing suits and meet me at the swimming pool.”

A collective scream sounded from the small crowd. Amanda hugged her dad’s leg, looking up at him through her salty face, and then turned to her friends.

“
That’s
my
daddy,” she proclaimed just like a parent might proudly say, “That’s my girl,” when she rips a line drive in a Little League game.

She was sitting now in a library in Spartanburg with her father across the table. Construction paper and photos were scattered like a magazine editor’s workplace.

“
The name of this place is Wanda?” Amanda asked, eyes innocent and wide.

“
That’s close, baby girl, but it’s Ra-wanda. Just try saying Rah, like you’re doing a cheer, followed by Wanda.”

“
Rah-Wanda.”

“
Very good.”

“
It seems so sad,” she commented, looking at the pictures of young children with distended stomachs, well over one hundred of them, standing naked, staring at the camera, eyes wide with fear. She could make out flies crawling across the children’s eyes as if their eyelids could not function. Their stares were catatonic, envisioning some distant land or faint hope that they would die a quick death. They were all standing in a muddy opening, and there wasn’t an adult in sight. “Did you go there to fight them?”

“
No, honey, we went there to help them. To protect them. Always remember that wherever I go, my purpose is to help the good guys.”

“
I know that, because you’re one of the good guys.”

“
And sometimes good guys need help.”

“
Am I helping by doing this school project? By letting other people know about it?”

“
Exactly. Even little things can make a big difference.”

“
Maybe one day, you know, I can make a difference like you do.”

“
That’s all I ever want for you, baby girl.”

Bright images raced through her mind like butterflies escaping from captivity as she recognized now the rock face she was climbing.

They were scaling a steep bluff along Lake Hartwell just south of Clemson, South Carolina. The engineers had created a series of canals and dams on the Savannah River a hundred and fifty years ago to provide power for textile mills and other manufacturing.

“
Be careful, honey. It gets slippery.” Her father was directly behind her, as he always seemed to be.

“
I know, Daddy. I’m being careful.” Amanda rolled her eyes just a bit, smiling, as she was approaching that age where young girls began to develop emotionally and physically.

The rock face was about a forty-five-degree angle, so if she kept all four points of contact, both feet and both hands, on the rock face most of the time, she would be okay. There was a steeper part, but a two-foot-wide ledge that angled upward allowed them to handrail along the lip and then climb up when they reached the summit.

They were breathing hard when they sat down, their feet dangling over the ledge. It was a sublime autumn Saturday afternoon. While most people in this region were watching the USC Gamecocks play the Clemson Tigers in football, Amanda and her father were doing their thing, being together.

“
Beautiful day,” he said.

“
I guess.”

He blinked in the sun, and looked down at his little girl. “What’s up?”

“
Nothin’.”

“
Nothin’ nothin’? or nothin’ somethin’?”

She fidgeted, absently splitting a blade of grass. “I’m scared, Daddy.”

“
What are you scared of, baby girl?”

“
Of it not always being this way.”

CHAPTER 40

SPARTANBURG, South Carolina

Monday Morning

Amanda bolted awake and grimaced as the sun shot through the mini-blinds in knifelike shards. Sitting up, she ran her hands through her hair. Her face was slick with a film of sweat.

“
That was so real.” She sat motionless for a long minute, her hands pressed firmly into the sheets. Some dreams she could remember, most she forgot, but these were vivid, as if she were watching a DVD. The words, the movements, the actions were all lifelike and logical. These dreams made sense. Why? Why did they seem to flow logically?

She remained motionless in her bed, staring blankly at the screensaver scrolling across her computer screen. “No Dad. No Dad. No Dad. No Dad.” Her mother had helped her with the poem and had suggested she make the screensaver the title to give her inspiration.

She had settled nicely into her comfortable life with her Mercedes, the beautiful home, and the affections of her mother and grandmother. Now this foundation, it seemed, had been shaken to the core. Everything she had come to accept and believe—that her father was a no-good deadbeat and that her mother and grandmother were her saviors—was now being challenged.

Slowly she regained her composure by doing the only thing she knew to do. She looked at her right hand and said, “Okay, my dad leaves me five hundred thousand dollars.”

She stuck one finger out, as if keeping score.

“
I’ve got at least four, no, make that five good memories of him.”

Two fingers out now.

“
The house has all of those things he wanted me to see. Riley Dwyer’s photo albums. They all tell me that he loved me.” Then she placed her hand to her heart. “And I can feel it.”

Four fingers were out.

She was crying now. For another five minutes she cried and wiped the tears away, then cried again until finally she ran out of tears. She felt an image fluttering in the back of her mind. It was the substance of memory. Inexplicably, she stepped into her walk-in closet. In the closet was a small half door that led to an unfinished part of the home. It was essentially a storage area. Loose sheets of plywood were arranged atop the two-by-eight beams so that someone could walk across gaps that were filled with pink insulation. A few boxes were scattered on the plywood.

She tugged on a single chain that lit a naked bulb. She opened one box that had mostly old clothes in it. She saw a set of pajamas with Barney the purple dinosaur on them, and a few stuffed animals. These were all that remained in her possession from her time with her father. Haphazardly stuffed into these boxes, the items were molding and needed to be discarded, really.

Opening the next box, she saw a few photo albums and books. One of the books was
Charlotte’s Web
. She now remembered reading that with her father when she was little. She knelt onto the hard plywood and lifted the book, thumbing through its yellowed pages. She set it atop one of the boxes she had not yet opened. She pulled two more books out, thumbed through them, and placed them atop
Charlotte’s Web
.

She found herself staring at a blue album that looked like any other photo book. On the front she could see where she had written in her best second-grade handwriting:

The Invisible Children of Africa by Amanda Garrett.

With two hands she carefully lifted the album from the box, brushing a dead silverfish from its top. She blew some dust away as if she was excavating a ruins site. Carefully, she opened the book. If nothing else, the images she saw confirmed to her that while she was sleeping, those were memories that had come rushing from the wellspring of her mind, not dreams. She saw the picture that she now clearly remembered. The eyes of the children were staring up at the camera, which her father had told her he had held. There were no adults in any of the photos. As she flipped through the pages of their project, she placed her hand over her mouth as she got to the last page. There was a photo of her father surrounded by scores of naked children as he passed out food. She could see his face so clearly.

She lightly pawed the photo, as if to touch her father. She flipped the last page and saw her handwriting again:
It is my goal to one day help the invisible children of Africa. They are invisible because they have no parents . . . and nobody cares, except me and my daddy. Amanda Garrett.

She closed the book and placed it back in the box, aware of what might occur if her mother caught her with it. Perhaps to distract herself, she picked up her cell phone to check it for messages. To her dismay, the battery was dead, and she had forgotten to plug in the charger. She leaned over and connected the black cable to her Razr.

Amanda walked to the bathroom in her pink flannel pajamas. She stared at herself in the mirror, rubbing her reddened eyes and wiping away the stains of her tears. She ran a stream of toothpaste onto her toothbrush and started brushing her teeth as she walked back into the bedroom. Absently, she picked up the phone with her free hand. She had no messages, which she thought was odd. For two days now she hadn’t heard from Jake, but the North Carolina cops had put the fear of God in both of them, so she cut him some slack.