Thread of Hope

“Nurse doesn’t want me to stay long,” I said, nodding back at the door.

“I’ve been sleeping for a couple of days,” he said with a weak smile. “I’m fine.”

“I’m sure,” I said, returning the smile. “Any idea who beat the shit out of you?”

The smile faded. “No. I was on the beach, ru

“I’m working on that,” I said. “It’s not go

“You sound pretty confident.”

“Jon Jordan and I made a deal.”

He stared at me for a long time. “A deal?”

“Meredith’s missing,” I said.

His features sagged, like the wind had been knocked out of him.

“Almost forty eight hours now,” I continued. “He hired me to find her.”

“You gotta be kiddin’ me,” he said, his voice hoarse.

I explained to him the deal that Jordan and I struck.

“He’s full of shit,” Chuck said.

“I agree. He may drop the charges, but he’ll figure out another way to come after you.”

“Fuck him,” Chuck said quietly. “Go ahead and try.”

“What was going on with you and Meredith?”

He looked away from me.

“And just so we’re straight,” I continued. “I know it’s not what everyone thinks it was.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know you.”

“You’ve been gone a long time,” he said. “Maybe I’ve changed.”

“Oh, you have,” I told him. “No doubt. You’re hanging out at our old high school, coaching basketball, doing a bunch of shit I never would’ve guessed. But sleeping with teenage girls and beating them up?” I shook my head. “Not a chance, Chuck. Not a chance.”

He shifted his head on the pillow, moving his eyes back to me. “Thanks.”

“Tell me what was going on.”

He stared at the wall across from the bed for a long time, his hands fidgeting beneath the sheet, the monitor next to the bed beeping in rhythm. “I made her a promise, Joe.”

“She was hooking, wasn’t she?”

He glanced at me, unable to hide the surprise on his face.

I ran down everything I’d learned from when I’d first arrived in Coronado, from the Jordan family to the teenage pimp to what Mike shared with me about Mrs. Jordan.

“So I understand you want to honor a promise to her, but given all that’s happened, it’s hard to think her disappearing is a coincidence, right? She isn’t off on some lark. Something’s happened to her and I doubt it’s good.” I tapped my temple with my index finger. “If you know something about what was going on in her life, you need to tell me. Right now.”

Chuck lay there, staring up at the ceiling, digesting everything I’d told him, blinking every so often. I stayed quiet, letting him get it straight in his head.

Finally, he turned to me and said, “She’s a good kid, Joe.”

“That’s what everyone has said. But for a good kid, she's causing a lot of trouble.”

“She’s a good kid,” he repeated. “But she got into something. She’s trying to get out of it, but it’s complicated.”

“Get out of what?” I asked, thinking maybe, finally, I’d get an answer as to what I was actually doing in the middle of all of this.

“I don’t know much,” he said. “She wouldn’t give me specifics. Probably because she knew I’d get involved.”

I nodded.

“Her father, he’s pretty strict,” he said, his words slow, methodic. “Keeps her on a tight leash.”

“Not a bad thing.”

“No, it’s not. But she’s rebelled against it. Not like you or I ever did,” he said. “Loud, letting the whole world know. She’s done it very quietly.”

I stayed quiet.

“Last semester there was some sort of dance,” he said, now tapping his hands lightly against the table. “Something happened at home, I don’t know what it was. But Jordan cut her off.”

“Cut her off?”

“Gave her some sort of weekly allowance,” Chuck said, the wrinkles at his mouth and eyes tightening. “Probably a lot bigger than you or I ever got. But an allowance. She needed the allowance to buy tickets to the dance. It was some sort of formal deal, like a prom or something, I guess. To buy her dress, too, and a bunch of other crap, I guess. But he cut if off and she had no money to go.”

I kept quiet and let him continue.

“She was pissed at him,” Chuck said. “And she wanted to go to the dance. She needed money.” He paused, stared at his hands for a moment. “And she did something really stupid.”

I thought about everything I’d learned from Gina, from the Jordans, from Meredith’s friends and now from Chuck. I assumed her getting cut off was one of the things Jordan had done to attempt to sabotage her relationship with Derek. So Meredith needed money. She was rebelling against her parents. If prostitution was her way of filling those two needs, it was far more than stupid.

“She told you all of this?” I asked. “Everyone tells me you were spending a lot of time with her, but…”

“No,” he said, cutting me off. “She didn’t tell me. I saw her.”

“Saw her?”

Anger edged into his eyes. “Working.”

SIXTY-TWO

“Couple of weeks ago, I was over on Harbor Island.” He named one of the high rise hotels near the airport. “I’ve been doing some work on my place and I needed a place to stay, so I spent a couple of nights at the hotel,” he said, shifting in the bed. “Got bored in my room, went downstairs to grab a beer at the bar. She was sitting there, dressed up, looking like she was about twenty-five. Didn’t recognize her at first.”

The nurse that walked me down to the room stuck her head in the room. “Sir, time’s about up.”

“He’s fine,” Chuck said, his voice the loudest I’d heard it yet.

I held a hand up to him and turned to her. “I’ll be outta here in just a minute.”

She nodded and disappeared.

“I’m fine,” he said. “You can stay.”

“Finish the story,” I said.

A

“She was with some guy, older than both of us,” he continued. “There were drinks in front of each of them. He had his arm around her and she was trying to act natural, but you could see she was uncomfortable.” He stared across the table at me. “I knew it was one of two things. She was either dating this guy in some sort of weird-ass relationship or he was paying for her. It was obvious. Hotel bar, near the airport, you know what I’m talking about.”

I did. San Diego wasn’t Vegas, but there was enough high-end prostitution to go around. Expensive hotels near the airport and downtown were prime targets and while maybe the men thought they were being discreet, anyone with a brain could add it up correctly.

Chuck lifted one of his hands and flexed his fingers slowly, wincing. “They didn’t see me. So I walked around the bar-it was one of those square deals in the middle of the room-and tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around and nearly fainted. She couldn’t even speak.” He brought his hands back to the table. “The guy immediately panicked, couldn’t get away fast enough and I let him go. I walked Meredith outside.”

“You let the guy go?”

“I was more worried about her than some piece of shit john.”

“Okay.”

Chuck glanced at me, then continued. “I took her to my car and she cried for about fifteen minutes. When she was done, I asked her what the hell she was doing. It wasn’t a weird-ass relationship. He was paying for her.”

My gut bounced. An eighteen-year-old girl turning tricks. She wasn’t some runaway or drug addict. Meredith was a kid from an unbelievably wealthy home with seemingly every opportunity in the world. It was ridiculous.

“She told me about the dance from last year, that’s when it started,” he explained. “She said she didn’t intend for it to go beyond that one time, but it was a ton of money and whoever she’s working for kept pressing her into service. I’m not sure how, but I can imagine.”