Fourteen
JADE WAS ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED.
Limousines, yes. Jets, yes. Helicopters, no.
The helicopter was bare bones. No comfy upholstery. No backseat televisions or bars. She and Theodora were strapped into seats separated by several inches, and Theodora motioned for Jade to put earphones on: big heavy-duty black ones that covered the sides of her head. Classical music filled Jade’s ears. Jade hated classical. Stupid violins. She looked around for dials to get a decent station, but there didn’t seem to be any controls.
She had taken the headphones off, ready to argue, when the rotors began to turn. The engine felt as if it were actually inside Jade’s seat. Her entire body was jarred. The noise of the blades increased until it was too much for her ears to contain. Drunkenly, the helicopter lurched, came off the ground a foot and hung there, as if deciding whether to crash. Then it rose vertically. Jade had eaten nothing in hours, but her stomach tried to throw up anyway. The noise was horrifying.
She almost came out of the seat when something sharp poked her rib. Was the copter falling apart? Was it a piece of metal or—
Theodora’s finger motioned Jade to put the earphones back on.
She obeyed. Inside the big, soft black pillows, violins talked to her and the racket of the helicopter was more felt than heard.
If she did not look at anything, her stomach sat quietly. The moment she looked out the window—there was far too much window in this horrible little bubble—she knew they were going to crash. Every part of Jade was afraid. Her ankles were jelly, her stomach rolling, her armpits sweaty.
Theodora opened a briefcase and read from sheets of computer paper. She crossed her legs, and reached without looking for a small bottle of flavored Canadian water tucked into a neat compartment by her elbow.
Jade had one, too. She took it out of its slot. Icy cold. Clammy and even more threatening to Jade’s body.
The violins became a piano and then a row of blatty horns. On and on the boring music went. Never a drum, never a lyric, never a melody.
Rich people had white rooms and boring music.
Jade would be a rich person who knew what to do with money. She would live through this without humiliating herself, and afterward she would demand the limousine and Tommy.
Tommy.
What was it with the clothes?
If for Annabel’s sake, Daniel had set aside any of his hatred for Hollings Jayquith, it was back now. Never had Daniel Ransom so loathed another human being.
He refused to give in to the desire to swear or scream. Through teeth pressed together so hard his jaw hurt, he said, to Hollings Jayquith, “You did this for a publicity stunt. Annabel told you what I was going to say on television and you came up with a sick, perverted way to stop me. Nothing will bring the country’s sympathy to your side better than a kidnapped daughter.”
He only thought he was speaking calmly. Actually the adrenalin was pumping so ferociously he was screaming. Never had Daniel gotten from Massachusetts to Connecticut with such speed. Driving, he had had the sensation that he was not using road surface; fury and fear lifted his tires right off the ground and he flew.
Daniel wanted to hit Hollings Jayquith a hundred times, like a punching bag. He wanted to deflate every bit of pomp and pride. Leave the man flattened, eviscerated roadkill.
“She hasn’t been kidnapped!” shouted Daniel. “You just moved her somewhere. She told me about your trying to lock her up this morning. You are a sick family. What kind of father are you? Holding your own eighteen-year-old daughter in front of you? Using your own daughter for a hostage? You sick perverted disgusting—”
He was ready to launch like a SCUD missile. He actually had to hang onto the doorjamb to keep himself from going after Jayquith.
How much of this, thought Daniel, in a rational corner of his mind, is the culmination of my ten years’ anger about my own father, and how much is about Annabel?
Hollings Jayquith had just as much energy. He paced the immense room in long strides, smacking one fist into the other as if he were the drummer for his own march, plunging his feet against the floor as if wading through snowdrifts. “Don’t be ridiculous! I would never do that!” he thundered. “Who do you think you are, anyway? You think you’re important? You are nothing!”
“I am the sword hanging over your head,” said Daniel.
“Sword?” shouted Hollings Jayquith. “You aren’t even a penknife! What have you done with my daughter? Why are you making up this insane story about a kidnapper? Where is Annabel?”
“I’m not making anything up! You’re the one making things up. You’re afraid of me. You’re doing this to stop me. Well, you’ve succeeded. I’m stopped. I called the network and left word for Theodora that there will be no interview. But only temporarily. Only until you take Annabel out of this.”
Mr. Jayquith threw up his hands. “Daniel, you have no evidence that I was involved in your father’s death because I was not. You’re a grief-stricken young man saddled with a grief-crazed mother.”
It was the word young that got to Daniel. He was twenty-two. On his way to law school. He was not young. Dimly he imagined himself and Annabel together for life. She’d have Catherine Ransom for a mother-in-law and Daniel’d have Hollings Jayquith for a father-in-law. Not a pretty sight.
“I expect to be the target of nutcases,” said Mr. Jayquith, dismissing Daniel. “Of course you may go on Theodora’s show and say anything you like. Nobody except grocery store tabloid newspapers will react. Now where is my daughter?”
They were panting and perspiring like fighters in a ring.
“If you’re correct,” said Daniel, “and you didn’t take Annabel, then she really was kidnapped.”
“Why would kidnappers call you? I’m the one with the money.”
“You’re not the one with the story.”
“If anybody kidnapped her, it’s your insane mother! Catherine’s probably gone off the deep end. Literally. We should be dragging that lake of yours!”
Daniel went white. For that was an expression his cousins used—your mother’s gone off the deep end, Daniel.
The Camp was not a home. It had not been a home since Daniel was ten. It was a shrine. On the fat, yellowing log walls, polished daily like silverware, hung enlarged photographs: the senator with car company presidents and oil magnates, diplomats, rock stars, fashion moguls, and movie producers. On the immense stone hearth sat the sneakers from the last time Madison Ransom played racquetball. Leaning against the wall were his golf clubs, labeled with the date of his last game. Open on the cherry card table was a chess set, left at his last maneuver. The library book he had been reading was still waiting to be returned.
On what had once been a dining room table lay open photograph albums, like wallpaper sample books in a paint shop. The final album, the one over which his mother spent the most time, was entirely photographs of Senator Ransom dead. Every angle of the corpse and the bullet holes. A dozen shots of the senators who had gathered round in horror. A dozen shots of the senators who had fled. The ambulance arriving. The gurney being lifted. The funeral home. The hundreds of bouquets—from tiny handfuls of daisies to immense brackets of roses. Daniel on the left of the open casket. Daniel on the right of the open casket. Daniel kissing his dead father’s forehead as they closed the casket.
Every time the cousins visited (actually they made a point of not visiting), they jerked their heads toward the album room and muttered something about Daniel’s mother going off the deep end.
Could Annabel have driven to The Camp? Could his mother, displacing her hatred of Hollings Jayquith, have taken it out on Annabel? A long, narrow pier connected the back deck to the float in the lake. Nothing had ever been tied up to the float but quiet green canoes. Daniel had spent many a summer day sitting at the end of the pier, feet dangling over the water, a fishing rod in his hand.
It was, literally, a deep end.
He had taken his time getting home afte
r he and Annabel said good-bye (a prolonged and physical good-bye if there ever was one). He’d driven aimlessly through the mountains, equal parts thrilled by his good fortune at finding Annabel, and by his bad fortune at finding Annabel.
Could Catherine Ransom have—
No. Catherine would have wanted him on Theodora’s show no matter what.
“How could anybody know that Annabel matters to you?” added Mr. Jayquith. “You just met.”
How could anybody know? thought Daniel. It was comforting in one way: It let his mother out. He had not said a word to her about Annabel. In fact, Daniel had not said a word to anybody about Annabel. Although Michael had guessed there was a girl, Daniel hadn’t given him a name.
Only the people here, at this house, in this room, or at Emmie’s, could know. That didn’t narrow things. There had been three hundred guests at the wedding reception, and plenty of telephones for them to notify others.
They landed on top of the Jayquith Building. That was how they avoided the sightseers in the lobby. Jade took off the hateful headphones, and got out of the helicopter exactly as Theodora did, putting her feet and hands in the same places.
New York City spread around her. High as they were, plenty of the city was higher. It was unbelievably beautiful. It was eight-forty. Night had almost, but not quite, fallen. Against a puffy silver-gray sky rose the black silhouettes of skyscrapers, sprinkled with lights and dancing with energy. The city went on and on, its jagged geometry pieces of heaven for a girl who had lived in the middle of nowhere.
Jade lost interest in the country. Why would these people waste their time under green trees when they could be here? A new emotion possessed her and made her giddy. She could hardly bear to leave the roof.
I want this roof, too, she thought. I want New York. I want—
Her heart was full of yearning. Something hot … pulsing … scary but rewarding …
I love the city, she thought.
Jade had never loved anyone. Never been able to figure out what girls mooned about. One reason she preferred the company of boys was that they certainly never wasted time talking about love.
I wasn’t designed to love people, she thought. I was designed to love a place. New York, New York.
“This way,” said Theodora.
They walked together toward a set of doors that were flung open by a man in a suit. Theodora never glanced at him. Another man in a suit took her briefcase and Theodora never glanced at him, either. Three women joined them now, also suited, but more gracefully. They might have been napkins stacked on a table for all the interest Theodora showed in them.
They, however, showed interest in Jade.
The haircut and the green contacts had been worth every penny. Their jaws dropped. Their eyes widened. They exchanged stunned looks with each other. They wet their lips and visibly held back smiles of fascination.
How will she introduce me? thought Jade. What will she say? Does she have enough nerve to tell the truth? Should I tell the truth if she doesn’t?
How to play the cards. That was always it, in the end. You did not know what you were dealt until you were right there, in the elevator, getting off the elevator, facing the bright greedy eyes. And you had to play right or lose the only game in town.
The elevator moved without sensation and stopped without sensation.
The doors opened.
A woman stocky and wide in a black suit said, “You have an important phone call, Miss Jayquith. Your brother. Urgent.”
Theodora frowned. “I was just there.”
“Urgent. He said nothing else mattered.”
Theodora was irritated. “I have things to do.”
The wide gray and white corridor filled with people all of whom looked urgent. They all had things to do that could not wait and must not be interrupted. People with deadlines. People who mattered.
Everybody except Jade wore black. Black suits, black skirts, black dresses. All shirts were cream or white. Jade had chosen canary yellow from Annabel’s closet. The splashy wild pattern looked like one of the paintings Mr. Jayquith had on his walls. She was a flower among funeral directors. They were New York, they were television—but she, Jade, glowed hot as the sun. Their eyes could not avoid her.
This is it, thought Jade. This is my moment.
This was how Olympic gymnasts and divers felt, poised at the edge of the mat, the rim of the pool. Their entire lives, their years of practice, came together for this instant, these few seconds.
And the world watched. It was worth anything, to have the world know you existed.
Jade recognized no faces around her, but she did not care who they were. They cared who she was. They recognized Theodora in Jade, and were guessing, exchanging gossipy glances, their curiosity sharp and quick.
They were fascinated, and not by Theodora.
By me, thought Jade.
She imagined rows of magazines in drugstores—People, Famous, all the rest of the celeb magazines—and on the cover, her picture. Larger than Theodora’s, because the article—the lead article—would not be about the woman who gave birth to her. It would be about Jade herself.
About me.
Jade stood exactly like Theodora, the half-swagger, the chin up, the sassy control all there.
Theodora did not have to go to the phone.
The phone came to her.
“Yes, Holl,” she said irritably, looking at her watch. “What’s the problem?”
Fifteen
THE RIDE WAS LONG. From the feel of the engine, it was also slow. They were not in a hurry. Slow driving attracted less attention. But it was a striking Mercedes. In Annabel’s experience, people always looked at interesting cars; no matter how many you saw, you were interested in the next one. And no matter that the hidden estates were full of famous television actors, sports heroes, and assorted millionaires—they were still ordinary people, to whom a vehicle like this was exotic.
But the windows were smoked, and nobody would see that the occupants wore Halloween masks.
They had left her hands free. She wore no seat belt. She could hear only the hum of air-conditioning and the cozy thrum of the engine. She could not even hear the others breathing.
She was sitting against the door, and the man was on her left against his door. With her right hand she explored the door. It was utterly smooth. Velvet, with no appendages. No handles. No ashtrays. No map compartments. She could have been in a padded room.
Neither man tried to touch her. Neither spoke to her.
She grabbed the bottom of her mask and ripped upward so fast she had it halfway off before one of them jerked it roughly back down. All she saw were the hands.
The ride went on.
Annabel tried once more to rip the mask off, but this time didn’t even get a grip on the rubber before her wrists were forcibly lowered to her lap.
They said nothing.
Annabel said nothing. If she spoke, nobody would answer, and it felt safer not to let her voice out there all by itself. She would keep her voice inside, keep at least one part of herself safe and private.
What were they going to do to her?
It had to be about money. Her father certainly had enough. But would they release her once he paid?
Oddly, the mask was an aid to clear thinking. She could not see, nor even lift her eyelids. There was nothing to do inside her head but think.
At Wythefield campus, one other girl actually lived with guards. She had been the daughter of an Arab prince at war with all the rest of the Arab princes in his family. It was unusual to bother so much with a daughter. After four years of living with Soraya, Annabel found out the prince was not guarding his daughter from evil; he was preventing Soraya from running away. Soraya did not want to be wed to a sixty-two-year-old prince when she got home.
They had graduated, Soraya to great applause, for she was a fine scholar, and Soraya had been assisted by her guards into her limousine for a brief drive to the airport and a thirty-hour
flight to her wedding in a far country.
I promised Soraya I’d write, thought Annabel. I never did.
There would be a long list of things she would never do.
The car slowed for a speed bump. She had a sense of frequent turning, and altogether counted six more speed bumps. Where on earth did you find speed bumps? Hospital entrances? Boarding school campuses? Elementary school bus lots? Did airports have speed bumps? Were they going to fly somewhere?
Annabel was accustomed to private planes and helicopters, private yachts and elevators. She knew many people who came and went with anonymity using their own entrances and exits to the world.
An exit from the world.
It would be a small plane. They would wear their Halloween masks. They would take hers off at the last minute, so she could see what was happening. They would open the plane door, give her a gentle push. She would cling screaming to the opening of the door, trying to stay with them. We thought you wanted to leave, Annabel. And she would fall a mile, or two miles, watching the earth grow closer. Plenty of time to wonder how it would feel and listen to her screams vanish in the disinterested air.
But when the deep blue Mercedes stopped, and the men shifted, and her door was opened, she did not scream. She kicked.
She could have wished for better shoes to kick in. She had some wonderful high heels with pointed toes, and even one pair with a brass tips. But she was in sneakers. The man she kicked did not so much as grunt. He simply turned her, and with each holding an arm against her ribs, as efficiently as a wrestling hold, they marched her forward.
Wherever they were, there was nobody to wonder what she was doing in a Halloween mask.
Then she remembered it was nighttime. She had lost track. It had been the longest day of her life since the day of her mother’s funeral.
She was walked over grass. She crossed a brief stretch of pavement, she took, perhaps two steps on cement, and was back on grass. It was not mowed but tickled up to her knees. Pavement again, a single pace, and now the men half-lifted her, and they went up eight wide, deep stair treads. Stairs that were slick, like marble.