Nick of Time (6 page)

“You need to go back to the office, then?”

Chris shook his head. “No, I can make it work. Just be happy that you're not paying by the hour.”

In the silence that accompanied the detective's new concentration, Carter tried to figure out why Brookfield, Virginia, rang such a bell with him. He knew that he passed the signs south of Washington on I-95, but that didn't seem quite right. There was something more substantial in his memory, but he couldn't pull it up.

“So, what happened to this Brad kid?” Chris asked. His fingers didn't slow a lick while he spoke.

“He moved away.”

“The whole family, or just him?”

“Just him. One day he was living there, and the next day he wasn't. There were lots of rumors about all of them, but like I said, I was never on the greatest terms with the Bensons themselves, so I don't know the details.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“That it was an abusive household, that Brad was responsible for some local break-ins. That sort of thing.”

“Did you ever get the department involved?”

“I'm not a prosecutor all the time, Chris,” Carter said, noting the defensiveness of his tone. “Sometimes I'm just a neighbor.”

The comment drew a look, but Chris said nothing.

“Ultimately, the Bensons traded the kid in for a later model,” Carter said.

Chris shook his head. “I know you don't need me to make this any worse for you, buddy, but it's pretty twisted that he'd seek her out after all these years. Given the age difference and all.”

Carter said nothing. What was there to say?

“Okay,” Chris announced. “Brad Ward and Bradley Ward. Jesus, I've got over five hundred hits nationwide.”

Carter gasped.

“Now, presumably, these are not all the same guy.”

“Can you narrow it down to Virginia? Since that's where Nicki's headed, I guess it makes sense—”

“Twenty-six in Virginia,” the detective announced. “I don't suppose you have a social security number or an address.”

Carter gave him a look.

“No, I didn't think so.” Chris pushed himself away from the desk. “That's about the last of it that we can do quickly,” he said. “From here, I can get mug shots and individual criminal histories.”

“Do that,” Carter said. “That's a good idea. But I can't wait for it. I'm going to head toward Brookfield, Virginia, and see what I can dig up on my own. If nothing else, I'll be a little closer.”

Christopher Tu shifted uneasily in his seat. “You're assuming that Brookfield was their final destination. Maybe it was just a bus stop. In the chat logs, all they said was that Brad would meet her there. There really was no discussion of where they'd go afterward.”

Carter's face fell. “Nothing at all?”

Chris shook his head. “No. I mean nothing that jumped out in the five minutes I had a chance to go through it all. There was just some nonsense about him having a surprise ready for her when they got together. She was supposed to think about her greatest fantasy, and he'd have it ready for her.”

“What kind of fantasy?”

Chris turned back to the keyboard and started typing again. A few seconds later, he pointed to the screen. “There it is. It's from their last chat, three days ago. That's how I found it so fast.” He rolled his chair out of the way so Carter could see the screen more clearly.

Carter scowled and shook his head. “So, we don't have to look for them at any literary events.”

“Hey, man, that's the best of Internet speak. Who needs grammar when your fingers are flying? But as you can see, it doesn't seem as if this Brookfield place is their last stop.”

“Look at the tenses Nicki uses,” Carter said, pointing at the screen. “Everything's conditional. It doesn't read as if there was a solid, established plan.”

“A contingency,” Chris surmised.

“Exactly. Waiting for Nicki to pull the cord. And, it's a place to start. There's a picture of Nicki on the refrigerator downstairs, her school picture from this year. If you don't mind doing me one more favor, could you get that out on the net up and down the East Coast? Maybe we can get other people looking for her, too.”

Chris sighed and looked pained. “I can do that, yes,” he said. “In fact, I will do it. But you know how it's going to be received, right?”

It took only a second for Carter to think it through all the way. “As just another runaway,” he said.

Chris nodded glumly. “A seventeen-year-old runaway at that. They're a dime a dozen, I'm sorry to say. I'll pass the word along, but I think it's a mistake to expect much in the way of results.”

“We can play up the sickness angle.”

“I suppose we can try. I don't mean to be negative, but these are just the realities—”

Carter held up a hand to cut him off. “I understand. Just do what you can.” Police department bulletin boards were papered with pictures of seventeen-year-old runaways.

Chris stood and walked with Carter back through the house to the front door. “I'll lock up for you when I finish here,” Chris said. “How long a drive is it, do you think, to this Brookfield place?”

Carter shrugged. “Five hours, maybe.”

“Get started then. I'll run this Brad Ward for you and see if I can cough up a mug shot from somewhere. If he was bounced around foster homes, the chances are pretty good he's got a record. It's just a matter of finding the right one. I'll see what I can dig up and then e-mail everything to you. You'll have a laptop?”

“Always.”

Carter was halfway to the stairs when Chris called from the room, “I hope this turns out fine, Carter.” The prosecutor responded with a rueful smile. He was praying for fine, but he'd settle for anything short of disaster.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Five

T
he bus nosed into its slot at an angle, one of a dozen identical vehicles. Together, they reminded Nicki of so many piglets nuzzled up to a sow. The rigors of the trip had wiped her out, and as always, the fatigue had brought on a bout of depression. It sucked to be her.

Nicki held on tightly to the aluminum guardrail as she eased herself down the stairs to the pavement below, where the steamy heat of the day took her breath away. People behind her buzzed with impatience as she took her time, apparently assuming that she moved slowly on purpose. So, this was Brookfield—or at least the bus-station section of Brookfield. Fetid and filthy, the station smelled little better than the vehicle that brought her there. Months-old trash jammed the gutters at the curb, and the sidewalk was nearly impassable, thanks to the horde of passengers hovering near the cargo bays of their motor coaches, clearly guarding their luggage from predators. She'd heard her dad wonder over the years if slums grew naturally in the shade of bus stations or if bus companies deliberately placed the points of arrival and departure in the worst parts of town. Now she understood the irony.

Nicki had no luggage other than her purse. Brad had told her that she needed nothing, and she took him at his word. She had her ID, the $500 from the ATM, and her meds. But for the shorts and T-shirt she wore, she had no earthly possessions.

Much to her surprise, that didn't bother her a bit.

Stepping through the double glass doors, Nicki entered the station itself. It had the look of a place that might have once been a train station; not one of the grand palaces from the big cities, but just another stop along the way. The ticket windows were arched, and decorative bars covered all but a little slot at the bottom. Behind those bars, the workers looked every bit as tired and neglected as the building. The yellowed tile and stained fluorescent light fixtures told her that the “No Smoking” signs went largely unheeded, as did the “No Loitering” signs. Some of the loiterers looked firmly enough encamped to call the place their home.

This was the most exciting thing Nicki had ever done. The most dangerous. The most stupid. With all the nut jobs and evil people her dad had prosecuted over the years, she had to be out of her mind to meet a guy in a bus station two hundred miles away from home. Why didn't she just put a gun to her head and blow her brains out?

She tried to tell herself that Brad wasn't like that. He was sweet, not evil. Still, it had been five years since she'd seen him, and now that she'd finally arrived at their designated meeting spot, she realized for the first time that she might not even recognize him anymore. She'd been twelve years old back then, all chubby and gap-toothed, with a hairstyle that more resembled a boy's than a girl's.

And he'd been a god.

Funny thing. Back then, she'd always thought that he was older by only three years. Now, she realized that it was a five-year gap. His boyish looks—and her willingness to believe that he was even remotely more attainable—had allowed him to pull off the lie, which was itself created to cover for all the grades he'd had to repeat in elementary school.

God, how she'd dreamed of him over the years. While other girls in school drooled over the heartthrobs in the teen magazines, she'd had one living in the flesh right next door. Operative word: flesh. She'd loved to watch him on summer afternoons as he mowed the lawn and tended to his countless chores around the house, always shirtless, his hard muscles flexing under his taut, tanned skin. But it was the smile that had melted her, the gleaming teeth and piercing eyes so blue that you'd swear they had to be contact lenses.

If only he had noticed her noticing him. The very thought of it was laughable, of course. If he had, she'd probably have just withered up and died. Gods did not mingle with mere mortals, and Nicki had never known anyone more merely mortal than she.

Then, one day, he was simply gone, and her dad told her not to ask any questions. He was trouble, Dad said. The neighborhood was better off without him. But Dad didn't know the secret that they shared. He didn't know about what happened the day before Brad disappeared. If he had, then he'd have known why she'd never be able to stop thinking about him. Sometimes, in her fantasies, Nicki saw herself with him still, traveling through life as his girlfriend. His mate for life.

It's funny how fate works. Over the years, Nicki had lost track of the number of letters she'd written to Brad, only to tear them up as soon as they were done. She'd told him about school and about soccer and track and about her mom's illness. She'd pretended that he wrote back to her, his words sweet and understanding. In them, he would lie and tell her that she was beautiful.

Never in a million years did she think that such a crazy fantasy might actually come true.

He'd appeared out of nowhere as an IM—instant message—on her computer screen one night as she was cruising the chat rooms. His screen name was BW477. “My name is Brad,” the message said. “I found your screen name through your website. Are you the same Nicolette Janssen who used to live on Berwick Place in Pitcairn County, New York?”

She remembered the rush of dizziness. “Oh, my God, yes!” she'd squealed, but she didn't dare commit that kind of enthusiasm to writing. She'd tried to calm herself as she typed, “Brad who?” Could it be? Could it possibly be?

“This is Brad Ward. How've you been?”

It was him! It really was him! God, could she possibly have been that lucky? She had to be sure. “How do I know it's really you?” she'd typed.

“Because I'm the only one who knows that you lent me your father's bathrobe,” he replied.

That cinched it. That was their secret—at least, it was the end of their secret, and Nicki had never shared it with a soul—not a single solitary soul.

They'd chatted online for hours that first night, about everything, about nothing. They just caught up, and the longer he typed, the more she could hear his voice in her head. Honestly, if she hadn't had to get up for school the next morning, they probably never would have stopped.

That first encounter online was only the first of dozens, always begun late at night after her father had gone to bed. Brad was her confidant, her best friend. On the other end of all those miles of cables and telephone lines, he couldn't know how fat and ugly she was, and when she told him, he didn't care. Brad liked Nicki for herself, nothing more and nothing less. And he knew everything, too: about her illness and about the clock that was ticking down toward her last breath. She held nothing back and he absorbed it all.

And he was such a
bad
influence on her. It was only on their second or third conversation that he'd first suggested running away together. What did she have to lose? he'd asked. She had this terrible disease; she was looking at a tragically short life as it was, why waste those precious few hours in freaking history class? Why not tour the world, wander around as a nomad or a gypsy? Why not join a circus? And for God's sake, why worry so much about following the rules all the time?

At first, she'd thought that he was just pulling her chain; taking the role of the devil's advocate, tempting her with a wild lifestyle that they both knew she could never live. But after a few weeks of the recurring theme, she'd come to realize that he was serious. It was, she came to realize, the kind of life that Brad had chosen for himself—no fixed address, no responsibilities. Just a laptop, a few clothes, and a sense of adventure. A modern-day cowboy.

But she couldn't do that, she explained. Her dad needed her around; not just to make sure that there was food to eat at night, but also just to be there as company. Since Mom died, he needed company.

Brad thought she was crazy. Family was an anchor, he'd told her. To live—to
really live
—she needed to be out on her own. Brad offered to be her travel guide. It was fun to think about, but totally out of the question.

Until today. And maybe even today wouldn't have pushed her over the edge if it hadn't been for last night. Yesterday afternoon, actually, after her doctor's appointment where they'd laid out a new torture they'd dreamed up for her. She was doing pretty well, they'd told her, all things considered, but to make sure that everything stayed on track, they had this nifty new technology they wanted her to play lab rat on: a pump that they would install in her gut to keep a constant flow of hormones into her system to keep the vessels in her lungs open. It was great, they told her; the next best thing to the transplants she needed, only there was one hitch—one little teensy detail that she probably should know about: It would mean a three-week hospital stay, hooked up to machines that would monitor every twitch of her heart and every squirt of her kidneys.

No flippin' way. Three
weeks
? In the
hospital
? What were they smoking? Oh, and to make it even more outrageous, there was no guarantee on the other end. The treatment might work wonders, or it might do nothing at all. The only constant—the only bet-your-ass guarantee—was that she'd lose three weeks of her fifty-two-week life span to somebody's chemistry experiment.

“Absolutely not,” she'd told them. And when they looked stunned, she said it again. “Which part of ‘no' confuses you?”

And dear old Dad, God bless him, was on
their
side. “Honey, it's for your own good,” he told her. “We're only thinking of what's best for you.”

Yeah, well, chemo was for Mom's own good, too. It was what was best for her, and look where it got her: she'd puked herself all the way to her grave. No one could explain to Nicki how slow poisoning in a hospital, surrounded by strangers, was a better way to die than just letting nature do her thing, surrounded by friends. Dead was dead, right?

The doctors had all kinds of euphemisms for it all—final decisions and terminal courses and God only knew what else—but when you cut through all the bullshit, it all added up the same: she had a year left in which to live a lifetime. She could do it her way and have fun, or she could do it her dad's way and be miserable. Did they think there was even a choice to be made?

The argument had continued all the way out of the doctor's office, all the way home, and all the way through the evening. It wasn't a discussion or a presentation of opinions, it was a real argument, and her father wasn't about to lose. “We're not discussing this, Nicolette,” he'd said, his face red and his eyes redder. “I know you don't think this is fair, but you don't have a vote. You're a minor, and you'll do what I tell you.”

“I won't,” she'd countered. “You can't make me. If they hook me up, I'll just undo the leads. I'm not spending a twelfth of my remaining life in some stupid hospital!”

Her dad grew very serious with that, very quiet. Scary, almost, the way his eyes narrowed and his voice became barely audible. That's when he threatened to have her arrested. Unbelievable. And the thing of it is, he was
serious.
Either she'd do things his way or he'd have her put in irons and tied down to the hospital bed.

Then, the beeper had sounded, and for one brief
spectacular
moment, life had seemed fair.

God, she hated doctors. Minutes after they had taken her new heart and lungs back, Dad and the mad scientists were treating her like a chemistry experiment again.

And now she was cobbling together a new life.

“Adios, assholes,” she muttered, drawing a look from a janitor old enough to have played soccer with Moses. When she fired off one of her patented “screw you” looks, the old man averted his eyes.

Brad would be proud. He'd given her step-by-step directions on exactly what she should do. He'd told her the place to go, and even how much the bus fare would be to get there. Now she'd just have to hang around long enough for him to get the e-mail she'd sent this morning and then come to pick her up. He was the man with the plan, the one who told her not to worry about a thing.

On paper, it had all sounded so
romantic,
but now that she was here, standing in a skanky bus station surrounded by so many strangers, so far away from home, the romance eluded her. Now that she thought about it—you know,
really
thought about it—how did she even know for sure that this guy who called himself Brad wasn't some twisted imposter who'd done some really good research? On the Internet, you could be anyone you wanted to be. How many times had her father told her that?

The familiar fluttery feeling tickled her stomach as a touch of panic gripped her, and she sat down in anticipation of the light-headedness that was never far behind when she got upset. By inhaling through her mouth, and then letting the breath go as a silent whistle, she could actually wrestle her heart rate down.

And nobody cared. Was that terrific, or what? Nobody rushed to her side, felt her wrist, or offered to get her a drink of water. Out here, no one knew anything about her. It was liberating as hell. As far as any of these strangers knew, she was just a regular teenager; maybe a runaway, maybe not. Maybe a fugitive from the law. Or, maybe just a girl waiting for her grandmother to get in from Toledo.

It was as if she'd been given a chance to reinvent herself, for as long as her body would let her. Keep your marijuana and your booze, baby. This freedom shit was the greatest high in the world.

“Nicolette Janssen?” The voice came from behind her, and sounded nothing like she'd remembered.

She whirled on her bench, and there he was, a fully grown, slightly bulkier version of the boy she remembered. He sported a beard now, albeit it a little scraggly, a darker brown than his yellow hair would have implied, and there was a certain pallor about him that led her to believe that he'd lost his passion for sunbathing. There was no mistaking that smile, though—a flash of brilliant white. When he pulled the sunglasses off, she knew for sure.