The Shadow Tracer

by Mg Gardiner

  Sarah’s nerves began to pop. RFID chips were used in industry—to track cars on the assembly line or drug inventories in pharmacies. And pets and livestock sometimes had tags injected for identification. They were twenty-first-century cattle brands, scored into chattel with a hypodermic needle instead of a red-hot branding iron.

  And one had been injected inside Zoe.

  Sarah steadied herself. Don’t lie. Not if you can help it. Not yet.

  “No. I didn’t know that,” she said.

  “Excuse me if I find that bizarre.”

  The implications coursed through her. Bad. Worse. Unbelievably awful.

  Dryden stared. Say something.

  “Her father,” she said.

  “What about him? You’re saying he had the chip implanted?”

  “He must have.” She stared at the x-ray. “I can think of nobody else who would have done this.”

  He examined her with open suspicion. “Where is Zoe’s father?”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Can you contact him?”

  “No. And it doesn’t matter whether he had the chip inserted.”

  “I take it you two are no longer together.”

  She held her hand up, gesturing stop. This was nearing dangerous territory. Her instincts told her to tread gingerly. They told her that one slip could be fatal, and that everybody was out to trip her up.

  “I want it removed,” she said.

  She wanted it burned. She wanted to grab Zoe and get out of the hospital before this went nuclear.

  “Now?” Dryden said.

  “I never gave permission for that thing to be implanted, and I want it the hell out of her.”

  “Very well, but it’s not a medical emergency. Who’s her pediatrician?”

  Cool it. She disliked the nosiness behind his question. “If she’s got the all clear, I want to take her home.”

  His voice turned neutral. “Once we finish her paperwork.”

  He glanced out the door at the hallway. And Sarah understood where the nurse had gone.

  “Oh, no.” She rushed out of the radiology suite.

  “Wait,” Dryden called.

  The pounding of her heart seemed like a warning bell. She ran back to the ER. On the bed sat Zoe, knees bouncing, while the nurse examined her with an electronic device that looked like a bar code reader.

  “What are you doing?” Sarah said.

  The nurse looked past her at Dryden. “Doctor, come see this.”

  Sarah had to get Zoe out of there now. “Is that an RFID reader? You were scanning …”

  She stopped. Zoe was staring at her.

  Bright-eyed, Zoe said, “The nurse waved it over me. It’s like a Star Wars gizmo that looks inside and sees what’s going on.”

  The nurse had almost certainly borrowed it from the hospital pharmacy. She handed it to Dryden. He read the display.

  “Your name is Sarah Keller, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Zoe’s father is named Nolan Worthe?”

  Zoe turned to him, her eyes abruptly huge with curiosity.

  “Yes,” Sarah said. It was the first time she’d ever admitted that in public.

  Dryden peered at the display, and at her. “Then who’s Bethany?”

  Sarah remained silent.

  “Ms. Keller. This readout says Zoe’s mother is Bethany Keller Worthe. So who the hell are you?”

  6

  Sarah fought the urge to grab Zoe and run. She had to get out of there, but Zoe was curled in the bed with a damn hospital ID bracelet around her wrist. The nurse was glaring at her. And Dryden stood between her and the door.

  He looked again at the RFID reader. “The information encoded in the chip lists this child as Zoe Skye Worthe. Father, Nolan Asa Worthe. Mother, Bethany Keller Worthe.” He lowered it. “Again, who are you?”

  She checked her voice. “I’m Zoe’s mother.”

  Zoe stared at her, wide-eyed. Dryden said, “You need to do better than that.”

  “I don’t use the name Bethany. With good reason, but it’s not for public discussion.” Sarah stepped to the bed and took Zoe’s hand. “And I’m taking her home.”

  “She’s not going anywhere,” Dryden said.

  “You told me she’s ready to be discharged. So we’re leaving.”

  Worthe. The chip actually listed Nolan’s last name? Not even Zoe’s birth certificate did that. A sheen of cold sweat rose on her skin.

  In the nurse’s pocket, a phone beeped. She checked a message. “Bloodwork’s back from the lab.” She glanced at Zoe. “She’s O pos.”

  Dryden said, “And?”

  Turning to Sarah, she said, “Your blood type is on file here as well. From the blood drive.”

  “That’s right.”

  She had donated, along with everybody from work, when a call went out for blood after a multivehicle wreck on the interstate. Nobody had hesitated to give. But now her heart sank.

  Dryden read the message. “AB positive. You have a rather rare blood type for a Caucasian woman.”

  “That’s why I donated,” Sarah said.

  “Type O blood results from a recessive gene. But AB is a dominant genotype. A parent will always pass it along to his or her offspring. A Type AB parent cannot give birth to a Type O child.”

  Sarah desperately wanted to talk to him in private, out of Zoe’s earshot. But she sensed that she shouldn’t leave Zoe’s side. She didn’t want to move beyond arm’s reach, and certainly not out of sight.

  Dryden said, “You’re not this girl’s mother.”

  Zoe said, “She is so.”

  Dryden eyed Sarah with grim triumph. “Explain. And skip the bull you shoveled at me earlier today.”

  Zoe kicked off the covers and climbed to her knees on the bed. She looked fierce. “She is so my mother.”

  Sarah put an arm around her. “I don’t owe you an explanation. I’m going to take Zoe home now.”

  The double doors opened and a uniformed security guard walked in.

  Dryden looked pleased. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “You have no right to keep us here. The guard can’t stop us from leaving.”

  Dryden said, “The police can.”

  Only seconds, Sarah thought—that’s all she had. It was coming down to this.

  From the moment five years earlier when she’d escaped a dead house primed to burn, the moment she’d run with Zoe, she had wondered if this day would come.

  She said, “Sorry. Let’s take this down a notch. I can explain, but I don’t want to discuss this in front of my daughter.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have a problem stepping right outside,” Dryden said.

  Son of a bitch.

  Zoe said, “Mommy, I want to go home.”

  “Soon, kiddo.”

  Reluctantly, she led Dryden and the nurse away from the bed and into the hallway. The security guard followed.

  Sarah said, “Zoe’s my adopted daughter.”

  Dryden’s expression was as flat as plywood. “All I’ve heard from you today is lies and distortion. I’m not taking your word for anything. You’re going to produce adoption papers. And we’re going to contact the people listed as her parents.” He nodded at the nurse. “Get a social worker down here. And have her alert Child Protective Services.”

  “No.” Sarah grabbed his arm. “Don’t.”

  He went rigid. She removed her hand.

  The nurse said, “Already called, when I alerted Security.”

  Sarah’s palms were clammy. Child Protective Services would be a disaster. She couldn’t let anybody separate her from Zoe.

  She seemed to feel the cold air of the forest, and the tiny warm life that had beat against her chest as she ran through the snow. That day she had held onto Zoe, against every fear and heartache, and she had to hold onto her now.

  “Let me state this very clearly,” she said. “If you attempt to contact Zoe’s birth family, you will put both her and me in
danger.”

  Dryden shook his head. “This gets weirder by the minute. What, you have a restraining order against them? You’d better produce that too.”

  “If you’ll let me explain—”

  “Your explanations only muddy the waters. If Zoe has a ‘birth family,’ why is her mother’s maiden name the same as yours?”

  “Sarah.”

  Coming across the entryway was Danisha Helms. Sarah felt a wave of relief.

  Danisha wore a nose stud and dreadlocks halfway down her back. Some process servers might disguise themselves as meter readers, or Mary Kay saleswomen. Danisha was five-foot-ten, African-American, an ex-Army NCO. She wore a straw cowboy hat and enough turquoise jewelry to start her own mine—around her neck, on both wrists, and on the belt that cinched her hip-hugger jeans. Danisha didn’t blend. Never had, never could, so she never tried.

  She took in the tense atmosphere—the doctor, nurse, the security guard. “How’s Zoe?”

  “She’s going to be fine.” Sarah took her hand. “She’s by herself. Will you go stay with her?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “There’s some confusion. I need to sort it out and it’s not the kind of thing Zoe should hear me talking about.”

  “Is this about insurance? Zoe’s fully covered as a dependent.”

  Dryden said, “This isn’t about insurance.”

  Danisha’s eyebrows went up. “Keller?” She gave the people around them a cool stare. “You want me to stay?”

  Sarah squeezed Danisha’s hand, digging her nails in. “No. I want you to take care of Zoe. Please.”

  Carefully, Danisha said, “Are you sure Zoe’s all right?”

  “She’s A-okay. She’s ready to be discharged.” She looked at Dryden. “Correct?”

  “Not until I sign off on her chart,” he said.

  “But physically Zoe is absolutely fine to go home.”

  Reluctantly, he nodded.

  Sarah squeezed Danisha’s hand again. “You go on.”

  Danisha headed into the ER. Just as she passed through the double doors, a woman in a blue suit stepped around the corner.

  “Dr. Dryden,” she said.

  It was the social worker. She introduced herself as Amelia Winston. Dryden gave her a rundown.

  She turned to Sarah. She had a motherly air and guarded eyes. “You want to explain?”

  “I shouldn’t have to,” Sarah said. “My daughter just survived a school bus crash. I want to get her home.”

  Dryden said, “She’s playing you for a sucker, Amelia. She’s been following me. An hour ago she tried to lure me into a trap. She draped herself across my car like some hayseed Lolita.”

  Winston frowned. “What?”

  Dryden pointed at Sarah. “Don’t believe a word this woman says. She laid in wait for me, then poured out an insane spiel of lies to trick a friend into revealing private information.”

  Sarah said, “Private information—her name? That’s garbage. She isn’t a covert agent.”

  The color flooded back to Dryden’s cheeks. “You’re a minx, you know it? You thought you got me. Bad news: We’ve got you.”

  Winston said, “What’s going on?”

  Dryden said, “She’s a stalker.”

  Sarah said, “I’m a skip tracer. I’ve been trying to serve a subpoena on his girlfriend, and today I managed it.”

  Dryden nearly jumped. “Jesus, shut up.”

  “Not my fault you’re having an affair with a thief.”

  Winston’s phone rang. She answered it curtly and listened, gazing at the floor. Her eyes flicked back and forth. When she hung up, she said, “I don’t know what’s going on between you two, but refereeing he-said, she-said isn’t my job.”

  Sure it is, Sarah thought. She bet it was a huge part of the woman’s job. Her internal alarm buzzed again, a low drone. Who had been on the phone, and what did they tell Winston?

  “Ma’am,” she said, “you just need to understand that I am Zoe’s mother. And if you attempt to contact her father or his family it could provoke a violent response.”

  “It was an acrimonious separation?”

  It wasn’t a separation at all. And Sarah got the feeling the woman knew it.

  Sarah’s impulse was to lie. It was an impulse she’d trained into herself over the past five years, as ruthlessly as she’d trained herself to hunt down debtors and fugitives, and to run a mile in six minutes, to go for a man’s knee or for a woman’s eyes. But she sensed that lying wouldn’t work, not here, not now.

  She composed herself. “Ms. Winston, I apologize if I seem on edge. Zoe could have been killed in that bus crash. And now Dr. Dryden has discovered that at some point before I became her mom, she was microchipped. It’s bizarre and, frankly, scary.”

  The woman’s expression didn’t change. “Those aren’t the issues.”

  “Here’s the issue. I came to this hospital because my daughter was injured in a high-speed collision. And instead of comforting her and discussing her medical care, I’m being interrogated about my love life and family history.” She was genuinely angry now. “Is this how you treat every parent when a physician has an unrelated beef with her?”

  Winston finally looked disconcerted. “Your circumstances are highly unusual.”

  If you only knew. “Zoe is ready to be discharged. You have no reason to hold her, or to make demands upon us.”

  Dryden stirred. “She’s threatening to slap you with legal papers. It’s her specialty. Ignore her, Amelia.”

  The social worker glanced at him disapprovingly. “If Zoe is not your child—”

  “If you think adoptive mothers aren’t real parents, God help you,” Sarah said.

  “I think that in such an exceptional situation—”

  “You can corner me? Harass me? No. I need to get my little girl home. Not to stand here …”

  Winston held up a calming hand. Sarah told herself: Chill. Then she heard a radio squawk. Two cops walked into the ER and approached the desk.

  They knew.

  Dryden exhaled, a triumphant half-laugh. “Try lying to them. See how that goes.”

  Sarah turned on him. “Stop acting like this is a pie fight.”

  Winston held up a hand. “Enough.”

  Sarah put her fingers to her temples. “Sorry. I don’t mean to snap at everybody. But this is all too much—it’s crazy.” She pressed a fist to her mouth. “Please give me a minute. Where’s the women’s room?”

  Winston pointed down the hall.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  She trudged down the hall, scraping her fingers through her hair, and pushed open the women’s room door as though it was leaden.

  Inside, pearled light filtered through a window. She grabbed her phone from her messenger bag and texted Danisha.

  Where r u?

  She scanned the room for a surveillance camera. Saw none. She checked the door: the dead bolt could only be locked with a key. She dragged the trash can in front of it. It wouldn’t stop someone from getting in, but it would slow them down.

  She hurried to the window, flipped the lock, muscled the pane up and stuck her head out.

  Outside was the ER driveway. An ambulance was parked under the portico. A police cruiser was parked behind it.

  Throat dry, she told herself: No going back.

  She knew what it meant if she climbed out the window. Everything she’d built, everything she’d braced herself against, would be blown away. Part of her clung to the burning desire for normality. You can explain.

  Her legs locked. Go out the window, and that option vanished.

  But she could never explain, not to the police. If they were here, everything was already blown.

  She wavered. She had come to love her job. She had, against every expectation, come to love Oklahoma—the big skies, the red-dirt prairie, the twangs, the fat-saturated foods, the rodeos, football, big hearts. She and Zoe had become part of the place. They’d become a family, and fo
und a home.

  And she saw: Those things were already gone. The cops were at the hospital. By staying, she was behaving like a dead thing that didn’t yet realize its heart had stopped beating.

  Her phone pinged. She read Danisha’s text message and took a hard breath.

  Rolling.

  She boosted herself out the window and ran.

  7

  Sarah ran across sun-heated asphalt to the truck. If she could get out of the parking lot, she’d be a step ahead of them.

  Some of them. Not the worst.

  She jumped into the hot cab of the truck, fired up the engine, and forced herself not to squeal away. A CCTV camera covered the exit. Burning rubber would tell a damning tale. And in about ninety seconds she would need every advantage she could eke out.

  She eased past the camera onto the street. The morning sun reflected from the hospital’s windows. Each seemed like an eye, studying her.

  The watchfulness of the modern world was inexhaustible. She now had to evade it, somehow—and fast. Before the word spread. The lies, and the truth, and the hatred that would follow like a burst dam.

  She tried not to see it all again. She focused on the road. Oaks overhung the street, dark green. The humid air was growing heavy, mirages beginning to swim on the asphalt in front of her. She stopped at a traffic light.

  Zoe Skye Worthe. Bethany Keller Worthe. The words made her dizzy.

  Her phone rang. She already had it in her hand. “Danisha?”

  “No, Mommy, it’s me.”

  Her heart leaped. “Hey. Where are you, honey?”

  Zoe’s voice moved away from the phone. “Where are we?”

  Distantly, Danisha said, “Northbound.”

  The light turned green and Sarah pulled away. “I’ll see you soon. Can you put the phone on speaker for Danisha?”

  “Okay.”

  Sarah reached a corner and aimed for the interstate. Her heart felt like it was turning as fast as the engine.

  Danisha came on the line. “Keller. Want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Meet me at Arcadia Lake. I’m on my way.”

  “This a skip tracing problem? Somebody after you?”

  “You have no idea.”

  She accelerated onto I-35.

  Derek Dryden said, “She should be back by now.”