by Kim Hoover
In the meantime, I was just happy to be in class, acting as though I was a normal teenage girl. At the end of the day, I walked as fast as I could back to Dad’s apartment. All I wanted was to talk to Jane and I had to come up with a plan. When I walked into the apartment, I was surprised to find Grandma there.
“Grandma!”
“Surprise! I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to see you.”
“Oh my gosh, Grandma. You won’t believe what all has gone on.”
“Any news from your mom?”
I felt a twinge of guilt for not telling her about Mom. But I knew I had made the right decision. It was better for Grandma if she didn’t know about all that. “Nothing yet.”
“I heard you saw Rachel.”
“Thank God she’s okay. I was so scared.”
“What about Jane?”
I dropped into a chair at the table. “She’s at boarding school. In New York.”
“What?”
“Can you believe it? Her parents sent her there just to keep us apart.”
“Oh, honey, that’s a shame. What is wrong with them?”
“Her mom is a monster.”
“Now, now. I’m sure she thinks she’s doing the right thing.”
I pouted for a few seconds, but then had a brilliant idea. “Grandma, you could help me!”
“Anything, honey.”
“I have the phone number of the school, but they aren’t going to let me talk to her.”
“Well, of course not. You’re the problem, obviously.”
We grinned at each other. “But you could pretend to be her aunt or something, get her on the phone and then I could talk to her. What do you think?”
Grandma rubbed her hands together. “I like it. Where’s the number?”
I listened as Grandma used her Texas charm and pretended to be Jane’s aunt, checking on her favorite niece. I wondered if Jane would figure it out before she answered the call.
“Hello, Jane, it’s Bert,” she said when Jane came on the line. “Here’s Cal.”
“You are so ingenious,” Jane said.
“Not ingenious enough. You’re the one in the fancy boarding school.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you too. It looks nice. I read about it and saw pictures.”
“It’s okay. It’s just, you know, the reason I’m here. That’s the hard part.”
“What did they say, your parents?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But do you think…do you think we are what they say?”
“I don’t think we have to call it something, like it’s a disease. I just feel the way I feel.”
I pulled the phone as far as I could into the pantry where I had a little more privacy. “Tell me how you feel.”
“You know I’m in a hallway.”
I could feel her smiling. “You can do it.”
“You make me so freaking hot. When I think about you, I can’t see straight. Send me something—a T-shirt, anything, that you’ve been wearing.”
“What will you do with it?”
“I’ll put it on a pillow and sleep on it,” she said, giggling.
“Oh my gosh!”
“Hey,” Jane said, “how’s everything else?”
“Weird. I need your advice.”
“I don’t know,” Jane said after I told her what was going on. “You’ll be conspiring with them if you do it. And there’s no guarantee they’ll let her go. What will you do if they don’t?”
“I can’t think that far ahead.”
“Don’t be a hero, Cal.”
“What do you mean?”
“Even if you decide she’s the victim, just give her the information and get away as fast as you can. Let her save herself.”
I was quiet, thinking that over, not sure I wanted to commit.
“I mean it, Cal.”
“Okay,” I said, finally. “I get it.”
“Let’s set a time to talk again,” she said. “I’ll call you in forty-eight hours.”
“Okay. Between four and five o’clock. I’ll be by the phone.”
When I hung up, Grandma gave me a snarly look with her arms crossed. “What was that I heard?”
“Grandma, I don’t have a choice.”
“You could go to the police.”
“Mom says they’ll kill her if we go to the police.”
“Your mom says a lot of things. Why not call that nice Texas Ranger lady?”
“Please, just trust me. I can do this.”
“Honey, I know you can do it. I just hope your momma doesn’t disappoint you one more time.”
The next morning on my way to meet Mom, I dropped a T-shirt in the mail to Jane. As I approached the diner, my nerves got the best of me. Butterflies flew up and down my insides. Once more I rehearsed what I planned to say to her. Then I closed my eyes for a second, took a deep breath, and opened the door.
When I stepped inside, someone immediately stepped behind me and locked the door. I looked around. One of the Hart brothers each stood in a corner of the room, guns stuck in their belts. I couldn’t believe it. “What’s going on? Where’s my mother?”
Just then she walked out of the kitchen and into the room, this time not dressed in a disguise. Her shoulder-length frosted hair looked almost blond. She wore a miniskirt and black knee-high boots over fishnets.
“What the hell?” I said. “What’s all this?” And then I realized the Hart boys worked for her. Dad was right.
“It’s just a precaution, honey.”
“Mom!”
“It’s not that we don’t trust you, sweetie, but there’s a lot at stake here. Now, come with us.”
“Wait, Mom, please. I don’t want to go anywhere!”
“You don’t have a choice,” she said. “Go ahead,” she told the one I knew was Warren.
He took my hands and tied them behind my back and then tried to put a blindfold around my eyes. “Stop! Mom! Don’t do this to me!” I started screaming and crying and pulling away as hard as I could.
“Stay quiet or we’ll have to put a gag in your mouth,” she said over her shoulder as she headed into the kitchen. “But I’d rather not.”
“I was trying to save you,” I said, tears forming at the corners of my eyes.
She walked away from me and hesitated for just half a step, then kept walking, saying nothing. I struggled against the man who pressed a blindfold over my eyes and forced me out the back and into a vehicle that must have been a truck. Crowded between two of the large Hart brothers, I felt frighteningly alone. And desperate. Dread came over me like a suffocating pair of hands at my throat. I couldn’t think. I had no idea what to do or how I would get out of this trap.
Chapter Twenty-Five
When I finally found my voice, I shouted, “Where are we going?”
No one responded.
“Please, where are you taking me?”
Still no one responded. I slumped back against the seat, growing angrier, trying to think. I don’t know how this came into my head, but I started singing. “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found. Was blind, but now I see.”
“Shut up!”
I recognized Warren’s voice. At least I got a rise out of him.
I estimated it was about forty-five minutes before we stopped and they took me out of the truck and into a building where they removed the blindfold and the rope from my wrists. I looked around and saw what appeared to be a combination of a garage and a warehouse. It was so hot in there it felt like the air weighed a thousand pounds, and I could hardly catch my breath. There were no windows and the doors were solid metal, so I couldn’t tell anything about exactly where they had taken me. I saw tanker trucks parked inside the building, along with several desks and some couches and soft chairs.
Someone offered me a sandwich and a Coke.
“Do you have Dr. Pepper?” I asked.
He pointed to a sma
ll refrigerator and I opened it, finding several bottles of it inside. I sat on one of the couches eating the sandwich, waiting for something to happen. Sweat rolled down my back. Before too long, my mother walked in through the main door of the building. She came straight to me and stood over me, taking her finger and lifting my face to look at her.
“I’m sure you think I’m being a little rough on you,” she said.
“I’m okay,” I said, batting her hand away.
“I know you’re wondering why you’re here.”
She sat down on the couch opposite me.
“I did what you asked me to do. I have the information,” I said, slamming my drink bottle down on the coffee table between us.
“I wanted to test you.”
“Test me?”
“I wanted to see how good you are.”
“Do you really think you can recruit me into this?”
“You can see how serious these guys are,” she said, gesturing to the Hart boys and the other men standing around the room, all with guns on their hips. “Please tell me you’re going to cooperate.”
I leaned forward. “What. Do. You. Want. From. Me.”
“I have one more mission for you,” she said as she picked up her Newports and shook one out of the pack.
“Why me?” I stood up. “Why me!”
Warren stepped in to light her cigarette.
“Because I can trust you,” she said, blowing smoke over my head.
I waved the smoke away. “What makes you think that? After all this.”
“Because you’re a good girl. You always have been. If you help me get through this, we can all go on with our lives.”
“That’s what you said last time. If I could get that information for you, they would let you go.”
“I know, honey, but like I said, that was just a test. I promise, just do this for me and I won’t ask you for anything else.”
She put on a good show and I would have preferred to believe her. But I couldn’t. “I’m sorry, Mom. I can’t help you.”
She threw down her cigarette and crushed it angrily. “Don’t push me, Cal, or you’ll be sorry.”
“Mom!”
“You better listen to me carefully.”
I stood up and backed away from her.
“I have eyes on your girlfriend.”
I turned my back on her and took deep breaths to calm down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Jane,” she said. “I know where she is. And I know what’s going on between you two.”
More deep breaths. I realized everyone in the room was staring at me.
“I also know it wasn’t your fault. That Jane is a predator who needs to be disciplined.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You know what I mean,” she said, getting close to me and whispering harshly into my ear. “You’re going to do exactly as I say.”
I doubled over, put my hands over my ears, thought about screaming as loud as I could, but I knew it wouldn’t matter. “Leave me alone.”
But she just stood there, towering over me. “Do you know what they do to cure homosexuals?”
I went after her, trying for her throat, but one of her henchmen pulled me back. I knew what she was talking about. It came up in Sunday school. They told us about shock therapy and even lobotomies to “shock the gay away.”
“I can’t believe you!”
“You listen to me, Cal,” she said, in my face again. “You cooperate or I will make sure that girl gets shipped off to a camp for deviants like her who try to corrupt innocent children like you.”
“You’re insane! Jane’s parents would never let that happen!”
“They hauled her off to boarding school, didn’t they?”
I was seething. I wanted to smack the smug look off her face.
“I need to call Ted, Jane’s brother. If I don’t, Jane’s going to think something happened to me and call the police.”
“Nice try, sweetheart, but I’m not falling for that.”
There was a volcano inside me and it was about to explode.
“I do have an idea, though, for how Jane can improve her standing in my eyes,” Mom said.
“You are so full of it,” I said.
“Don’t talk to your mother that way,” she said, pulling up two chairs and pushing me into one as she sat in the other. “Now, I’m going to explain what I need you and Jane to do.”
I stared at the floor. I didn’t want to see her face.
“Jane’s father has access to the codes that unlock a secret petroleum reserve that’s kept underground in Palo Duro Canyon. The plant manages that reserve for the federal government and he’s the head honcho of the plant. We’ve been trying to get access to that reserve for months now.”
“This is something different from the gas syphoning you’ve been doing?”
“Don’t worry about the details,” she said. “The less you know, the better.”
“I don’t know how Jane and I could possibly help you with this…reserve, or whatever it is.”
“I need you to get the access codes,” she said.
“How?”
“Talk to Jane. See what she can find out. Then get yourself into the plant.”
I didn’t respond.
“Find an excuse to go to work with your dad. He’s on evenings this week.”
“Do you really think this top-secret code is going to be sitting out on a desk somewhere?”
“Here’s what I think,” she said. “You’re a pretty good detective, and there’s a lot on the line, so I think you’ll figure it out.”
“Tell me the truth. Nobody’s making you do this.”
“Get her back to town,” she said to Warren.
As I sat alone, waiting for my ride, I caught a glimpse of Hank Hart. He came through a door in the back of the warehouse, spotted me and came over. I hadn’t really gotten that good a look at him before. He was much handsomer than I had thought. His eyes were intense, full of energy.
“There’s something I want you to know,” he said. I didn’t say anything—just waited. “I came after your mother. She never would have gotten into this if I hadn’t come along. She’s a good woman.”
He seemed to want a response. “You sure could have fooled me. She seems into it. In a big way.”
“She didn’t seek it out.”
“Why don’t you let her go?”
“She could walk out right now if she wanted to,” he said. “Now, you get on back home. Do what she’s asked you to do and everything will be fine.”
“The Rangers said you put that envelope in our mailbox so I could figure this out.”
“Actually, it was your girlfriend I was fishing for. Now you know why.”
He walked away while one of the other men blindfolded me and took me back to a waiting truck. Oh my god. All along it was Jane he wanted, through me! He was clever, all right. The Texas Rangers hadn’t thought of that angle. So far, he was winning.
Warren dropped me off a few blocks from school. When I got there, I checked in with the principal’s office and told them I had been sick that morning. I was still shaky from the barrage of crap coming at me from all directions. The secretary told me I didn’t look too good and maybe I shouldn’t have come in at all. Walking down the hall, trying simply to put one foot in front of the other and keep my balance, I ran smack into the captain of the cheerleading squad.
“Hey, Cal. You know you have to show up for practice or you’re going to be off the squad.”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” I said. “I know. I understand. Sorry about that. I’ll be there tonight.”
Funny how a few weeks ago I thought getting to cheerleading practice was my biggest problem in life.
“Homo,” someone said as he passed by me in the hall.
I looked up to see a group of girls laughing and looking back at me. I felt like someone had sliced me with a knife. First, I was embarrassed and ashamed, and then I was angry. I
wanted to go back and yell something awful at them, but instead, I turned down another hallway. School was beginning to feel like prison.
I had to walk to practice that night because Dad was working the evening shift and my bike had a flat I couldn’t fix on the spot. Funny, but it was a relief to be there. I tried to forget everything else and just cheer.
“Nice handspring!” the captain said. “Have you been working on that?”
“Thanks!” I said. “Yeah, you know, I want to try out for the varsity next year.”
Where did that come from? I hadn’t worked on it at all and I had no intention of doing this again.
“You should!” she said.
Mrs. Anderson, the mother in charge of the squad, approached me as she was gathering up her things at the end of practice.
“How are things at home, Cal?” she asked.
“Uh, well—”
“You’re at your dad’s, right?”
“Yeah. It’s fine.”
“Let me know if you need any help.”
“Sure,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Do you need a ride home?”
“That would be great. Dad’s working late so I was hoping someone could give me a lift.”
“Jennifer!” she called to her daughter. “Come on, let’s go. We’re giving Cal a ride.”
I sat in the backseat, responding politely to questions from Mrs. Anderson while Jennifer faced forward, ignoring me.
“What do you hear from your mother, dear?”
I didn’t have a story prepared so I had to think fast. “She’s…doing some training. Getting another certification for her accounting stuff.”
“Oh, I see. When will she be back?”
Jennifer looked back, rolling her eyes as if to say, “Please excuse my mother’s annoying questions.”
“You know, I’m not sure. But it’s fine. I’m okay at my dad’s.”
When we got to Dad’s apartment, I thanked her for the ride.
“Cal,” she said as I was one foot out of the car. “God loves the sinner but hates the sin.”