A Trick of the Light

by Tina Wainscott

  “Chill out, buddy. Is this a good time to talk about the Kraft Theater?”

  “No.”

  “All right, we’ll chat after the taping. I’ll see you at the studio at six-thirty.”

  Dylan pounded on the steering wheel. Yochem was concentrating on Dylan’s life, the media was interested in hot sex and psychic alliances between him and Chloe, and no one was looking for his son.

  He dialed Yochem’s number. “Yochem has been pulled onto another case, sir. Officer Mutt is now assigned to Teddy’s case. Hold a moment.”

  “Wait! What do you mean, Yochem’s not on my case?”

  “Haven’t you heard? A man’s got an entire toy store held hostage. Yochem’s handling that. Now if you’ll hold —”

  Dylan hung up. His son only rated an officer now. Five days later, and no leads, nothing tangible. Sure, a few officers were still looking. But they’d given up. He was up to ninety miles per hour without even realizing it, his knuckles white on the wheel and muscles rock hard.

  Well, dammit, he hadn’t given up. And he wouldn’t.

  But the worst part was, Teddy probably thought he had. The man of the house and protector of his family had let his little boy down.

  * * *

  Teddy was still sitting outside when the old woman came out. He thought he’d been out there for a day, but he wasn’t sure exactly. All he knew was that he had his buttons and his clothes, and that he was cold. But now the sun was out, and he was slowly warming up.

  The woman looked cold too, with her sweater pulled around her. “Ah, so that’s where my buttons went.”

  She was looking at his buttons. Not in anger like his mom sometimes did. Before she’d try to take them away and he’d cry. Once he had them, they were his, part of his world.

  The woman gestured around them. “Do you know where we are, young man?”

  He didn’t like to look out there. It was weird, different. He wanted his room back. One time he’d ventured a look farther out and saw a pink bird. He’d seen white birds before, walking on their skinny legs around his yard. He’d never seen a pink one, especially with a funny-looking beak.

  The woman walked closer, studying him the way he sometimes studied a bug. “You’re my grandson, aren’t you?”

  “You’re my grandson,” he repeated, just to give her an answer. All he knew was Mom, Dad, Camel, and other people. She was an “other” person. A bad other person.

  “You mean grandmother, don’t you? How long we been out here?” she asked, squinting in the sun.

  “How long?”

  “Yes, how long? Days, weeks?”

  Time wasn’t important to him. It was hard to understand. He knew morning and night, but all those divisions in between weren’t clear. There were minutes, and hours, which were really long. Days were forever.

  “She’s not coming back for us, is she?”

  Those were bad words, and he tried hard to understand what they meant. “She’s not coming back.”

  “I knew it! Your mom’s left us here, abandoned us.”

  He worked with the words, separating them at first, then putting them together. Mom not coming. Mom not coming. “No!” He jumped to his feet, refusing to believe that she wasn’t coming. He didn’t understand the rest, but he knew not coming. “No!”

  “She’s punishing me for letting her dad put her in that hospital. I tried to tell her how it was, how you couldn’t tell that man anything, and they promised it would help her. We’re almost out of food and water. She’s left us to starve out here in God-knows-where. We’re going to die out here.” She sank to her knees on the deck and reached for him. “Come here, boy. Give me a hug before we die. I’m scared.”

  “No!” He moved away from her, grabbing his buttons and clothes tighter to his chest. She moved closer, pulling herself along the floor toward him. “No touch.” He didn’t like to be touched. It felt like a dull pain.

  He climbed through the railing, focusing only on that gnarled hand coming at him. And then he lost his balance. Suddenly he was surrounded by cold, dark water.

  And then something grabbed his ankle.

  * * *

  Chloe felt like she’d been hit by a car again — from the inside.

  She kept running everything through her mind, over and over again. Waking up to Dylan tipping the canoe over, going down into that murky brown water, him pulling her up again, him kissing her. She replayed every second in slow motion.

  His tenderness had been a surprise. That incredibly sexy body hadn’t. She’d somehow expected that, though seeing him in the flesh had been another story altogether.

  She was quite sure she’d never been knocked over with lust at the sight of any man’s body, not even Ross’s finely-honed physique.

  But Dylan …she made a growling noise deep in her throat. Tall and lean, muscular without bulges and veins, just enough hair … Chloe sighed. Perfect. Not the least bit like a poet’s body. And so what did the pillar of self-control do? Jump him!

  Well, there had been a reason, if reason had played any part to it. She just couldn’t remember what it was at the moment and she’d never professed to being a pillar of anything anyway.

  She sat in the dark room downstairs for an hour, just thinking and breathing in the scent of clay. She didn’t know what was real anymore. Were her dreams about Teddy real? Her feelings for Dylan? And that awful insight about him being the right one — could she be more wrong?

  None of it was real, that’s what she decided after an hour. She had no special skill to find Teddy, no hints, no vibes. Time to face it: leave it up to the police and Dylan. Put it out of her mind and chalk up the dreams to the shock of the accident and her inability to resist saving a lost child.

  She went upstairs and showered, then laid down for a nap. Everything dragged her down. The truth about her mother, her aunts’ lies, nearly making love with Dylan, and the way she still wanted him. Oh my, the way she still wanted him, beside her, holding her, inside her. It all pulled her into an uneasy sleep, into a familiar dream…

  She was canoeing at dusk, gliding soundlessly through the water. She slowed when she saw the flock of pink spoonbills perched on a group of mangroves. She rarely saw spoonbills, so she took a moment to marvel at them. Their bills were flat, fashioned for sifting out morsels from the water. Their necks were long and white, flowing into their pink feathered bodies. She loved all the birds that lived around the waterways, but these were her favorite.

  The birds took sudden flight, tucking up their long legs and flapping their wings. She looked to see what had frightened them. A canoe floated in the water a short distance away. And Teddy was sitting in it. He reached out to her.

  “Teddy, hold still,” she said, paddling toward him. “I’m coming.”

  She reached out to him, trying to touch his fingers and pull him to safety. Then his canoe tipped over, and he tumbled into the brown water with a gasp.

  And never came up again.

  She woke with a similar gasp, hand over her pounding heart.

  “It’s all right, honey,” a soft voice soothed as Chloe focused in on her house and then Lena sitting there reminding her a lot of her mom. Lena’s red hair was loose around her shoulders. Morning sun streamed into the house, filtered by the leaves and a thin fog. Lena, smelling like chamomile tea, kept stroking Chloe’s hair.

  “More dreams about Teddy? I remember you used to wake up like that after your mama died. When we moved here, you started dreaming about falling in the water. You always did hate that brown water,” Lena said with a soft smile. “Never could figure out why it bothered you so much.”

  “I don’t like not seeing. It’s always been about the not seeing.” Chloe swallowed hard and sat up in bed. “He fell in the water out there and disappeared. But I’m sure it was only a dream.” She blinked, trying to clear away the fuzzies. She felt warm and sticky. “What’s wrong? Why are you here?”

  “I think I know where Teddy is.”

  Now she ca
me fully awake. “What?”

  “I let myself go with the vision this time. Thought I owed it to you after … well, after everything. Maybe I did you wrong, but I was only trying to protect you.”

  Chloe tried to smile. “I’m not some fragile flower, Lena. I was raised by three of the strongest survivors around.”

  Lena placed her palm on Chloe’s cheek. “But you’re not like us. You’re tender inside. You always have been. That’s why you can’t resist saving every little thing that comes your way.”

  “I don’t want to be tender.” Was that why she longed for a man in her life? Because of some silly tenderness?

  “You’re strong, don’t get me wrong on that. But inside you’re a tender flower that needs to be nurtured. We’ve tried to do that. It was my decision to keep the truth from you. I fought for it. And maybe you lost.”

  Chloe took Lena’s hand and squeezed it. “I know you were only doing what you thought was right. But it hurts, hurts to be …” She cleared the tightness from her throat. “left out again.” Lena’s face looked more shadowed than ever. “Are you all right?”

  “I’ll be fine, hon.”

  “You said you knew where Teddy was.”

  “He’s on a boat. I think it’s a boat, but sometimes it looks more like a house. He’s in the Keys, one of the less populated ones. The boat is just offshore, on the west side of the islands. I keep seeing a skull too. And the birds.”

  “What about the man who’s with him?” Chloe asked.

  “I could feel his presence, but I couldn’t see him.”

  A real lead! “I always felt Teddy was nearby. But then, what did I know? Nothing.”

  “You felt he was near water.”

  “But it’s Florida. There’s water everywhere!”

  Chloe leaped off the bed and hugged her tight, closing her eyes and savoring the sensation. Being separated from them had been too scary. “Thanks.” Then she started rooting through her drawers, throwing things on her bed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going down there. And I’m going alone. That way I won’t drag anyone else into this. I can do this, Lena. I can find him.”

  Dylan went home to shower, shave, and change. He wasn’t going to do much good looking like a drowned rat.

  “I’m going to pick up the posters in a while,” he told Camilla. “I’d like you to take them around the neighborhood, ask them to keep looking.”

  “I did that. Not with posters, but I went around and tried to get some people to search this area again. The truth is, they’ve already looked several times, and they’re convinced he’s not here. They’re probably right.”

  Dylan rubbed his forehead, feeling a dull throb in his brain.

  Camilla asked, “Do you want me to look —”

  “No, you stay here. Work on the press for me. See if we can get more coverage on Teddy. Not me, not my love life, Teddy.”

  “I’ll try, but everyone’s been covering the hostage situation at the toy store.” She nodded toward the television.

  Cameras focused through the front window on the man clutching a frightened woman in front of him like a shield. Life was going on, bad and good. And Teddy had been forgotten.

  “Maybe I’ll go down there. Maybe I’ll take someone hostage so I’ll get some f — freaking press. I don’t know what else to do.” But then they’d think he was crazy like his mother.

  He took a hot shower, threw on some fresh clothes and tried to think about other ways to get press. Sane ways.

  “Camilla, I —” As he walked into the family room, he realized it wasn’t Camilla standing in front of the fireplace. It was his father. He looked grayer, older than when Dylan had last seen him.

  “Hello, son.”

  Dylan’s throat went tight. “What are you doing here?”

  “I couldn’t stay away. My grandson —”

  “You’ve never even met your grandson.”

  “I wanted to. But I —”

  “I know, you were too busy to be inconvenienced by family. Why aren’t you back in Michigan now, working the markets, making those international calls?”

  “Because I’m here,” he said in a soft voice. “Because you need me.”

  “I don’t need you. I needed you years ago when I was young and defenseless.” Just like Teddy needed him now.

  Will McKain released a long breath. “But now you’re a tough guy with a big problem. Let me make up for lost time. I made mistakes.”

  Dylan hardened himself against his father’s words. “You didn’t make mistakes. You just weren’t a father. And if you weren’t a father, how the hell can you expect to be a grandfather? Go home. I don’t need you.”

  Leave now, don’t get started with him, Dylan told himself as he made himself walk out the door without a backward glance. He picked up the fliers from the printer and took them to the office where he passed out stacks to every employee. “We’re closing for the day and tomorrow so get these posters out to everyone you can think of. Steve, you cover airports, bus stations, public places. Jodie, I know you can sweet talk people into helping distribute more of them. Jake, start hitting trailer parks, particularly the ones out in the boonies.”

  “I’ll get my wife and kids to help, too,” he said, taking a stack.

  Jodie touched his arm. “What made you finally decide to ask for our help?”

  Dylan couldn’t look at the tender expression on her face. He looked beyond her to the door. “Because no one else is looking. Because … I need your help.”

  As Dylan was locking up the office, his cell phone rang. Please let it be Yochem with a lead.

  It was Ross again.

  “Hey, buddy, bad news. Our stint got canceled.”

  A sick feeling twisted Dylan’s stomach. “Why?”

  “That situation at the Toys Unlimited. It’s one of those disgruntled employee things, he went in there with a shotgun and is holding the entire place hostage. The station just arranged to interview the man’s ex-wife. Sorry, but that’s bigger news. Unless you’ve got something really juicy, like wearing women’s clothing, or a kinky affair with Chloe. And that’s probably only going to get you thirty seconds of airtime.”

  Dylan hung up on him. He couldn’t take anymore. Once again he had thoughts about taking a hostage himself. But that would be crazy. Dylan had had all the crazy he could handle in one lifetime.

  By late afternoon, Dylan had taken posters to Florida Power and Light, all of the post office branches, and nearly every store in Golden Gate. When his cell phone rang, he didn’t harbor hope of hearing good news from the police. They were too busy saving multiple lives to worry about one little life.

  It was Camilla. “Lena called. She said it was urgent.”

  Lena. His heart jumped. News about Chloe. “Give me the number.”

  Lena answered the phone saying, “I know you don’t believe in visions, Dylan, and it doesn’t really matter none. What matters is I told Chloe I had a vision that your son is down in the Keys on a boat. Or a house on the water, I’m not sure. Chloe’s going by herself. She’s determined not to drag anyone else down with her, she says. She’s a smart girl, but her compassion is clouding her judgment. And she’s got her bulldozer face on, which means nothing’s going to change her mind. The hurricane just went through down there a few weeks ago. There’s still a lot of destruction. Maybe even looters.”

  “And you’re calling me because…”

  “Because it’s your son and because … I don’t know what’s going on with our girl. I don’t want her hurt.”

  He tried to ignore the way the words, “our girl” tickled his stomach. “When is she planning to leave?”

  “Tonight.”

  “But I can’t leave town while my son is still missing.”

  “What if your wife had her mother drive the boy down to the Keys? Can you say for sure it’s not possible?”

  “My mother-in-law has Alzheimer’s. She might not even remember how to drive.”<
br />
  “When has a disability ever stopped anyone, mental or otherwise?”

  Those words hit home. How far would Wanda go to get what she wanted? Could he afford to ignore any lead when he’d exhausted his search of Naples. “I’ll be right down.”

  “Don’t tell her I told you. She wouldn’t be happy with me, and she’s already knee-deep in anger.”

  “What am I supposed to tell her?”

  “I don’t know. You’re that mix of creativity and logic; you’ll figure something out.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Chloe was sitting at her dinette table before a map of Florida when the knock sounded on the door. It was probably Lena or Stella trying to talk her out of leaving tonight. Well, they could just forget it. She was her own woman. If she left tonight, she’d have the entire day to look for Teddy.

  “Isn’t that right, Shakespeare?”

  The dog almost seemed to nod in agreement.

  On the way to the door she dumped out the rest of her coffee in the sink. Any more and she’d be stopping at bathrooms the whole way down. Her mouth was open and ready to silence any and all protests from her aunts or grandmother. It stayed open as she took in Dylan wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt and looking all kinds of gorgeous.

  Surprise mixed with extreme pleasure at the sight of him. Forget the pleasure part. Forget the way he looked and the way he smelled, all woodsy, and focus on why the heck he was at her door. “Five percent of one-sixty is eight,” she blurted out.

  “Nice to see you too,” he said with a smile.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “How about, I thought I told you not to come back? Unless … is there any news on Teddy?”

  He walked in. “No, nothing. Especially not …” Anger flashed over his face. “with the hostage situation going on.”

  “What hostage situation?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  She nodded toward the tiny television set on the kitchen counter, turned off as it usually was. “I’m not much into watching TV, or listening to the radio. Too many negative vibes.” Or was she too tender? Didn’t she put herself in the victims’ places and find herself haunted by those images?