“Let her talk!”
The media people objected loudly, but he ignored them and guided me to the front door, where he stood like a shield while I unlocked it. I twisted around one last time to look at him and say “Thanks” before I let myself inside.
“Feel better,” he said.
Chapter 7
IT WAS A huge relief to lock the door behind me. Thank God the kitchen was in the back of the house, so I could sit without feeling all those eyes staring in. Mom wasn’t home; she was probably out shopping. I had to warn her, but when I called her cell, I got her voice mail. Still shaking, I poured myself a glass of cold water and sipped slowly. A tight, throbbing pain had started to grow along the sides of my head. I have this bad habit of clenching my teeth when I’m tense, and it causes the muscles above my ears to cramp. If I catch it early and make a conscious effort to relax, I can usually make the pain subside. But sometimes I forget.
The countertop TV came into focus. I turned it on, half expecting to see a video of me in my car, but of course it was too soon for that. Instead, the channels were filled with the typical afternoon talk and cooking shows.
Then, even though I was still upset with him, I called Dad.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he answered, sounding weary.
I told him about the media outside our house.
“Yeah, there’s a bunch of them hanging around here, too,” he said. “Feels like we’re defending the Alamo.”
The line grew quiet. I wasn’t sure what to say next.
“Well, at least you’re safe,” he said.
It felt like he was ready to get off the phone. But I wasn’t finished yet. “Have you talked to the others?”
“What others? Other girls?”
“No, Janet, Gabriel, and Mercedes. Maybe they have some ideas.”
“I spoke to them. We’re all in the dark. Nobody even remembers those girls. We’ve probably done close to a thousand head shots in the past three years. We looked at the photos the detectives had, and none of us recognized them. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. If the girls had all come from the same town, you might think they got together and ran off to Hollywood or something. But they live so far away from each other. It’s crazy.”
It felt and sounded like he was being completely honest, and I was relieved. In a way, it was reassuring. No matter what anyone else said, I could tell that he wasn’t hiding anything.
“Oh, so let me tell you about our escape plan,” Dad said.
“We’re going to disguise Gabe and let him take the Ferrari. Hopefully, the media will think it’s me and follow him.”
“Meanwhile, you’ll sneak out?” I guessed.
“Right. Janet will give me a ride home.”
“You’re really going to let Gabriel have the Ferrari?”
“Yeah. He’s thrilled. You know how he’s always wanted to drive it.”
I did. And I also knew how protective Dad was of his car.
Just the idea that he was willing to let someone else use it was a measure of how crazy things had become.
“We’re going to wait until it gets dark,” Dad said. “Otherwise, someone may notice that it’s Gabe in a disguise. So I’ll see you at home later, okay, sweetheart?”
“Sure.”
He got off the phone, and I speed-dialed Mom again. This time I got her and warned her about the crowd in front of our house. “Maybe you could park in front of the Sisks’ house and then cut through the backyards and come in the back door.”
Twenty minutes later, Mom came in through the kitchen door and put her shopping bags on the table. “This is unbelievable,” she muttered.
“At least you got in without being surrounded,” I said.
Mom frowned. She was such a quiet, orderly person; she must’ve hated the media circus trampling the lawn outside.
“You heard about the third missing girl also being one of Dad’s clients?” I asked.
She nodded.
“It’s freaky, Mom. What do you think’s going on?”
Her eyebrows rose with surprise. “Don’t jump to conclusions, Shelby. They’re only missing.”
“I know, but it’s still weird. I talked to Dad before. It really sounds like he doesn’t have a clue, either.”
Mom glanced away and didn’t respond. I wished I could get her to open up and tell me what was on her mind.
“You believe that, don’t you?” I asked. “That he doesn’t have a clue?”
Mom’s forehead wrinkled, and she placed a reassuring hand over mine. “Of course I do. Your father wouldn’t hurt a fly. Those girls will probably turn up somewhere in a day or two.”
I wanted to believe her, but I knew she was better than most when it came to sticking her head in the sand and avoiding upsetting topics. Sensing that I wouldn’t get any further, I changed the subject. “I went to that interview at Sarah Lawrence this morning. It’s a nice school.”
Mom brightened. “I’m so glad.”
“But I still want to visit some bigger campuses. Someplace with a real college town around it.”
She pressed her lips together. The smile vanished. “There’s no place like that nearby.”
“Mom, even if I went to Sarah Lawrence, I’d want to live in a dorm. I wouldn’t live at home.”
She nodded and looked a little crestfallen. Sometimes I felt like she wanted me to stay home and be her little girl forever. Part of me understood why. Beth once told me that before Mom lost my little brother, she’d been a gregarious, outdoorsy type who loved to go camping and take long hikes. But after he died, she’d retreated to the indoors, becoming overprotective and cautious, at times so introverted that it almost felt like she was living in her own world. Like the way she made a place setting for Dad every night despite the fact that he hardly ever ate dinner with us. How could she pretend that we were a happy family when Dad had moved into the guest bedroom four years ago? He said it was because of his snoring, but I wasn’t stupid. There was no affection between them, and they almost never went out together. Was that the reason Mom didn’t want me to go far away to college? Because without me, she had nothing?
I went upstairs and got online to tell Roman about being ambushed by the media.
“It’s like being famous, but for all the wrong reasons,” she said.
“Tell me about it,” I grumbled, and then I told her about Dad’s plan to sneak out of the studio after dark. “Gabriel’s going to take the Ferrari to his place.”
“If he doesn’t drive all over town first, showing off to his friends,” Roman quipped in a snarky tone.
I sensed that she was about to launch into a recitation of all the things she disliked about him, so I quickly changed the subject. “What else is going on? What are they saying at school?”
On the screen, Roman looked down at her keyboard, so all I saw was the part in her hair. When she looked back up, her lips were a flat, straight line. I knew the news wasn’t going to be good.
“It’s all they’re talking about. I was chatting with Sabrina and some girls from the Bugle, and they were comparing notes. Like things your father had said to them, or the way they sometimes caught him looking at them. The general feeling is that he’s probably responsible for whatever happened to those girls.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I still felt like I’d been stabbed in the gut. It was so unfair. Why didn’t Sabrina come to me in person? We’d been teammates on intramural volleyball for years.
“Mom says they probably ran away and will pop up in a day or two,” I said.
“Three girls from different states ran away together?” Roman repeated dubiously.
I winced at how dumb that must’ve sounded. On the screen, Roman’s eyebrows dipped with concern. “Should I not be saying this stuff?”
“No, it’s okay.…I guess.”
“If you ask me, it’s just plain sucky,” Roman said. “I mean, I like your dad, and I think it’s a ridiculous leap from catching someone staring at your cle
avage to assuming he’s going around hurting people, but—”
“Wait,” I said. “Nobody said anyone’s been hurt. Maybe they didn’t run away together, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t go somewhere. They could have all joined a cult.”
“The Kirby Sloan head shot cult?”
I sighed. “Let’s talk about something else.” I told her about my interview at Sarah Lawrence that morning, and Roman told me that she’d decided to apply early decision to Skidmore, where she wanted to pursue art and dance. When we finished, I closed my laptop and sat on my bed, feeling really, really down about the rumors concerning Dad. Was it partly my fault for never saying anything to him about the way he sometimes acted around my friends? I guess there are parts of our lives that we’re aware of, but we try to make them go away by not thinking about them. I realized I was guilty of the same thing Mom was—we believe that if we don’t think about certain problems, they won’t be true. There’d been so many embarrassing things Dad had said over the years.…Like once he’d asked me what Courtney’s bra size was. And then there was the time he wanted to know what my friends and I talked about when we took showers after gym, and other times when he made sexist jokes that I found seriously distasteful. And then there was the Ferrari, and how before I was old enough to drive, he used to love to pick me up at school in it. Nothing seemed to make him happier than when one of my friends asked if he would take her for a ride around the block before we went home. And since it was a two-seater, that always meant going off with her alone.
If only I’d said something, told him that some of the things he did and said were borderline creepy…Maybe it would have made a difference. Maybe he would have been more careful about the way he acted and we wouldn’t be in this situation now, where everyone assumed he was guilty of having something to do with those missing girls.
But like everything, there was another side to the story. Most of the fun times I’d had with my family had come because Dad had gotten us to go out and do something. And when I was upset, he’d always been the one I’d gone to, the one I could depend on to help me feel better. Mom never seemed to understand me the way he did, and for that reason I needed him and was a little afraid of doing anything that might make him angry. So as those moments came when maybe I should have said something about his behavior, I’d just tried to laugh it all off, saying things like “Oh, it’s just Dad being Dad” and “He’s harmless.” Because, I realized now, that’s what I wanted to believe.
My BlackBerry buzzed. I picked it up and felt my jaw tighten. It was another e-mail from
[email protected]: Wre I 2 die today, my dying wish would B 2 C Ur dad get what he deserves.
I sat up on the side of my bed, thinking I should show it to Mom, but then caught myself. She was already upset about what was happening with Dad and with imagining a life without me at home. Showing her another e-mail like this wouldn’t help. The best thing I could do about this latest e-mail, I decided, was to keep it to myself.
And there was something else: like the last one, this message had come as an e-mail, but was written like a text. What did that say about the person who’d sent it?
Chapter 8
I’D GIVEN UP on my homework and was skipping around the Internet, looking for news updates, when Dad knocked on my door and came in. The lines in his face looked deeper than usual, and his eyes were ringed.
“How’s it going?” he asked, trying to sound jocular.
“Not very good, but probably better than it’s going for you.”
He plopped down wearily on the edge of my bed. “I’m sorry about all this, sweetheart. Really can’t make heads nor tails of it. But it’s good that the police are involved. Sooner or later they’ll figure out what’s going on with those girls. And then we’ll be able to get back to normal.”
It was a relief to hear him say that. Surely someone guilty of wrongdoing wouldn’t be so welcoming of police involvement.
“I ask a favor?” he said. “We pulled off our little masquerade, and Gabe’s bringing the Ferrari over. Someone has to drive him back home.”
I felt my heart leap unexpectedly. “Oh, uh, sure, Dad, I can do that,” I said, as if it was the right thing for a daughter to do. But the truth was, despite everything that was going on, I couldn’t help but feel excited by the thought of being alone in a car with Gabriel.
“Thanks, sweetheart.” Dad managed a weak smile. “And don’t worry. We’ll get through this.”
As soon as he left my room, I started to look through my closet for something to wear. I did feel a little guilty about trying to look nice during a family crisis, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to look my best for Gabriel. I was in the bathroom doing my makeup when I heard the high-pitched whine of the Ferrari’s engine outside.
Dad called up the stairs. “Shels? Time to go.”
Downstairs, Gabriel was in the hall with Dad. I know it was only my imagination, but I wanted to believe that they were both captivated as I came down the steps like a movie star descending a curved marble staircase. My fantasy was brief. Thinking more about the car than about me, Gabriel turned to Dad and said, “Can’t I drive it back to my place and then Shelby can drive it home?”
“You’ve had enough fun for one day,” Dad replied.
Gabriel tossed him the key fob with the famous prancing black horse. A few minutes later we drove out of the driveway in my Jeep. The few journalists still hanging around outside looked up as we passed, but no one showed much interest. Meanwhile, I nervously racked my brain for something clever to say. Luckily, Gabriel had a question.
“Does he ever let you drive it?”
“The Ferrari? Just once.”
“Why? Something happen?”
“I backed it out of the driveway, and he said I didn’t come to a complete stop before I shifted into first.”
“So you know how to drive a stick?” Gabriel sounded impressed.
“Before the Ferrari, we had a Porsche. That’s what I learned on. Dad taught me to drive in a parking lot when I was fourteen. He thinks it’s sexy when a woman can drive a stick.” But now I wondered, had it been appropriate for Dad to say to me, his daughter, that driving a stick was sexy?
“I’d have to agree,” Gabriel said.
I sensed an opportunity to flirt, but given the circumstances, it felt wrong. Instead, I changed the subject. “So what do you think’s going on?”
“Who knows? It’s crazy.”
“In what way?”
“In every way.”
“Like all three missing girls getting head shots from Dad?”
“Yeah, and …” For a second it seemed like he was going to add something more.
“And?” I prompted him to continue.
“And just, you know, the whole thing. The cops questioned everyone at the studio, but you could see they were more interested in your father and me because we’re guys. As if we might have had a reason to go around doing evil things to women.”
I wanted to ask him more, but before I could, he reached over and flicked away some strands of hair that had fallen into my face.
When his fingers brushed my cheek, I felt a shivery tingle.
“That’s better,” he said. “Anyone ever tell you that you have a beautiful profile?”
The tingling increased. I’d been told I had a nice profile, but I couldn’t recall anyone saying it was beautiful. That felt good, especially from someone like Gabriel, who had certainly spent a lot of time around beautiful women.
“Uh, no,” I answered. “But thanks.”
“I wonder …” He reached behind me and gathered my hair in his hand as if putting it in a ponytail. I felt goose bumps as his fingers grazed the nape of my neck. “How come I never see you in a ponytail?”
Was he indicating that he paid more attention to me than I’d previously thought? How else would he know that I almost never put my hair in a ponytail?
“Only when I’m playing sports,” I said.
“Which ones?”
“Tennis, snowboarding, volleyball. I used to play soccer.”
“We should go boarding sometime,” he said, then pointed through the windshield. “That’s it, on the right.” The building was new and brightly lit, with a canopy stretching out to the street. As I slowed down, a doorman stepped out.
Gabriel turned to me. “Thanks for the ride.”
“You’re welcome.” I smiled.
The doorman opened the passenger door. Gabriel started to get out, then stopped and turned back to me. “Feel like a quick drink?”
Chapter 9
MY FIRST IMPULSE was to say yes, but I quickly caught myself. Just suppose the girls hadn’t run away? Suppose something bad had happened to them. Anyone associated with the studio had to be a possible suspect, right? And besides Dad, Gabriel was the only other male who worked there.
But the chances were slim that something bad had happened. Like Mom said, in a day or two it would probably all be cleared up.
And I did have a crush on Gabriel, who hardly seemed like a violent, girl-abductor type. With looks like his, he was probably more concerned with being abducted himself.
Those girls could have all run off and joined the circus.
I was dying to see Gabriel’s apartment.
And Dad knew where I was.
“Okay, sure,” I heard myself say.
We rode up in an elevator lined with mirrors. Gabriel smiled, and I smiled back nervously, then noticed that his gaze went past me to his reflection in the mirrored elevator wall. I was surprised since, in my estimation, he was the last man on earth who needed to be concerned about his appearance.
A few moments later, while I stood in the hall, waiting for him to unlock the door, I realized that I’d never been in a single man’s apartment before. The door opened into darkness, and I began to feel apprehensive. Was this a smart thing to do? Gabriel turned on a light, and I felt my jaw drop. He may have been only a few years older than me, but his apartment was gorgeous, spacious, with art on the walls and a granite counter separating the kitchen from the living room. There were black leather couches; thick rugs; tall, elegant lamps; and sheer curtains. I couldn’t help wondering if he’d done it all himself or hired a decorator, and where he’d gotten all the money. Definitely not from being an assistant at Dad’s studio while picking up a few local modeling jobs here and there.