I think he somehow sensed I needed to be around him, so he hung around more, made himself available. He was profound that way. I could hear it in his lyrics. He wrote the way I drew—noticing details others overlooked, insightful about people. I thought he was as talented a musician as I was an artist, and that was saying something.
Even though I was used to sketching in natural light, the sun reflected off the riverboat’s windows, creating an interesting play of light and glare on his handsome face that I toyed with in my sketch. I couldn’t be too daring because this was a commercial sketch, a poster promoting Kyle’s next gig at the Venue. I had already done one for him, and the feedback was so positive, I decided to sketch another for his next performance. I thought using real art to advertise added a special touch.
Since I’d taken a bunch of classes online for graphic design, I knew how to put things together. Some classes were really great. Others not so good. But Debbie always said that no effort was wasted if I came away with one little something.
“So always make sure you come away with one little something,” she used to tell me, laughing.
I missed her laughter. But I remembered her advice, and always learned something. I was glad I could put those somethings to use for Kyle. The best part of creating his promotional posters was how thrilled he was. So thrilled, that after his gig he’d hung the first on his bedroom wall and planned to frame it when he got extra cash.
The music stopped.
“You going to do it?” he asked suddenly, letting me know what was on his mind.
A conversation I didn’t want to have right now when the day was peaceful and perfect and we were together.
It was a gallery showing at the Venue.
Kyle hadn’t been the only one thrilled with my poster. The Venue directors had asked about the artist who’d sketched him, and Kyle had done what he had promised and told them about me.
They’d wanted to see my work, so I brought by some pieces from my portfolio and got invited to do a gallery showing if I had enough work to display. I did. But I also had a problem that was ruining my excitement about my first official gallery.
“I suppose I can be ‘the artist known as no one’.” It was a joke, but Kyle’s frown told me he didn’t find it funny.
“I don’t understand what the big deal is about your name. It’s pretty. Different.”
“It is pretty different,” I said mildly, making him scowl even harder because that hadn’t been what he’d meant.
Pretty not mine, which was why I didn’t want to talk about this until I figured out what to do.
Kyle set aside his guitar and stretched out on the blanket. At first he stared across to the other bank. The riverboat had passed and wouldn’t be back for another few hours.
Then he shifted his gaze to me, and I pretended not to notice. I was working on my sketch, hoping he would drop the subject. I had told him I would think about what to do because I wanted the gallery to happen. This was a really big deal, but the details had to be worked out.
I appreciated his support. But he didn’t understand the problem. And I couldn’t explain.
Until I turned eighteen and could use my real name, I would not sign my art.
It was a matter of principle.
I hated that he was so put out with me. He’d been really generous and encouraging. And he wanted to make me feel better because I’d been so bummed lately. He wanted to be my hero. A guy thing, but really sweet. I think he wanted to share all the exciting things that were happening in his career, too. He wanted exciting things to happen to us together.
I wanted that more than anything, too.
“We’re alike, you and me,” I finally said. “On our own a lot.” Always. “Sometimes I’m surprised at how alike our lives are. But there are some things that are different, Kyle. You’re older. You’ve graduated already.”
“I don’t have a clue what that means, because you’re like a closed book.” He sounded sulky. No longer the guy with the voice that made my heart ache.
I wanted to make him happy, to avoid this subject, which seemed to be coming up more since we kissed. My secrets were bugging him. He didn’t call them that, but he knew I wasn’t inviting him home for a reason, wouldn’t tell him where I lived. Like him, I came and went as I pleased. But he’d already graduated high school and was on his own.
He knew I still had a ways to go.
“What if I show my work under a pseudonym?” The idea just popped into my head. A compromise.
“What would you use?”
“ARO. All caps. One word.”
“A name?”
“Yeah. Not Aro, but A-R-O.” I tested the sound out.
“Sounds like initials.”
My initials. Some teeny-tiny part of me. “It’s different, right?”
He shook his head as if to clear it. “Now different is good? What’s up with that?”
“I want special.” I wanted real.
I knew he didn’t get it. He wouldn’t get it without knowing the truth, especially since he was a musician all about putting his name out there. He wanted credit for his music. Wanted recognition. I did, too.
But it was more than that. For the first time in so long I couldn’t remember, I wanted someone to call me by my real name.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
COURTNEY CAME FACE-TO-FACE with a few realizations. The first was that she hadn’t felt alive for a long time.
A very, very long time.
Though she and Marc had barely left the hotel during the past few days and had been existing on stolen naps and room service, Courtney had come back to life during days and nights fueled by incredible sex and the urgency of a chase conducted in front of a computer, on a phone and at a fax machine as Marc did what he did best—track down adults who were trying to hide.
His first break came in the bus rosters of evacuees.
Fifty-five passengers boarded the bus in Atlanta. The Little Rock church recorded the arrival of fifty-six evacuees.
Marc tracked down the name of a church volunteer involved in the administration of the shelter, only to be informed the discrepancy had been a clerical error.
“A child was accidentally counted twice,” she said.
There was no record of an additional child at the Little Rock shelter, and Debbie Abercrombie was reported to have remained there until the shelter had been demobilized two months later. But Marc wasn’t so quick to accept the clerical error explanation, and cautioned Courtney not to get too disappointed. They considered the possibility Araceli had stowed away on the bus, attaching herself to a family upon their arrival in Arkansas, then vanishing.
They tracked down Debbie’s living arrangements during that stay, but the documentation for the church-owned housing also appeared to be in order and made no mention of a child.
Contacting neighboring tenants at the time proved tedious and time-consuming and didn’t yield any mention of a child. But a conversation with a woman who had been in between short-term missions at the time did produce unexpected information.
Courtney had been the one to make that call, so she engaged the woman to learn Debbie was the great-niece of a man who had once been a church pastor and a founder of the network.
One call and they clarified the relationship Tamara had previously mentioned, and learned Debbie’s parents had died in a bus accident in Mexico, not long after Debbie had married. She and her new husband had continued establishing a church there, then continued their mission work in the Fiji Islands and Bolivia. The woman couldn’t remember what had happened, or the husband’s name, but she knew Debbie had returned a widow.
“Do you know how to get ahold of her?” Courtney asked.
“Afraid I have no clue. She used to pop in every few years, but I haven’t seen her
or even her name in our prayer rosters for quite a long time.”
“By any chance do you know where she went after you closed the shelter?”
“That I do know. She went to South Carolina to visit her great-uncle. He was a former pastor of our church in Columbia and a very good man. Her only family left, I believe.”
Courtney thanked the woman and faced Marc, who had been listening over speaker, and received a kiss for her efforts.
“You’re hired.” He massaged her neck with strong hands, and she leaned into his touch. “Saved us tons of work on that call.”
He liked to touch her. She liked when he touched her. And in between all the touching, he hadn’t missed a chance to romance her. A rose on her pillow. A box of gourmet chocolates when he’d thought she looked like she could use a sugar rush. He’d been clever with arranging these surprises because the only time they left the room was for the fitness center so he could keep up with his therapy.
“You’re welcome,” she told him, and meant it.
The great-uncle proved a gold mine of information once they found him. Turned out the former Pastor Fitch had moved into an assisted living facility four years before. A few phone calls to senior living homes in the area located him and confirmed he was still a resident. But attempts to speak with him produced a nurse who informed them Pastor Fitch wasn’t accepting telephone calls. She transferred the call.
Marc motioned to Courtney to handle the call. “Probably another nurse. You’ll have better luck than I will.”
Courtney reached for the notebook and pen she’d been using to compile notes, and when connected, she greeted the woman on the other end. “I was hoping to speak with Pastor Fitch, but I understand he isn’t accepting calls.”
There was a good-natured chuckle. “That’s one way to put it. He hasn’t taken a call in a year. He gets confused, you see. Is there anything I can help you with? I’m his care tech.”
“I’m trying to track down his great-niece, Debbie. We served together at the mission in Bolivia, but she moves around so much, I can’t find her most recent address. I figured Pastor Fitch was my best bet.”
“She used to visit and call all the time to check up on him,” the woman said. “But we haven’t heard from her. Good thing he doesn’t notice anymore or he’d be hurt. Especially since I’m still making sure his checks get mailed for special holidays.”
Courtney nodded to Marc, heart beginning to race. “That doesn’t sound like Debbie. If you have her contact information, I’ll get in touch with her and see what’s up.”
“I’ve got it in his address book. Give me a second.”
Marc sank back in the chair, idly stroking her hand that held the pen, a casual gesture that didn’t feel casual at all.
“I had a number but I don’t think it works anymore because someone scratched it out. There are a lot of scratched-out numbers and addresses for her. But here’s the one I’ve been sending checks to.”
Courtney scribbled the address of a post office box in Nashville. She asked for the phone number, too, on the off chance it might still be in service or somehow provide a lead. After thanking the woman, she disconnected the call.
“Post office box in Nashville, hmm.” Marc glanced at the information she had written down, considering.
“Can you do something with that?”
“No problem.” He smiled.
Courtney marveled at how he transformed right before her eyes. Where was the sarcastic jerk she’d had no use for?
The man in front of her had become an excited lover who kissed her breathlessly whenever they added a new piece to the puzzle. A man who touched her casually. Marc had said he was on familiar turf again, that he was getting to know his prey.
He was getting to know her, too. During the lulls between faxes or awaiting return calls, he discovered what made her sigh and melt in his arms until she was the one to strip off his clothes, to hop into his shower, to curl up beside him in bed, to savor every moment they had together.
He inspired a wild abandon in her she had never known before. But as much as she reveled in the feeling, she felt anxious. Which led to another realization—she should always trust her gut. She had known from the start getting involved with Marc would be a bad idea.
She had been right, if for very different reasons.
Courtney had been able to resist the jerk he’d been, even though she had been attracted to him. Resisting this thoughtful lover he’d become was much harder.
“Why don’t you get on your computer and track down the network churches in Nashville while I work on this address?” He pulled his notebook computer across the desk toward him.
Harley had warned Courtney to keep her bedroom door locked. She hadn’t thought she would be in any danger of falling for Marc’s moves.
She’d been wrong.
What she knew in her head wasn’t what she felt inside. Her inside was having no part of rational warnings that this seduction was exactly that—not the start of a relationship.
She did not understand what demons drove Marc to live the life he had been living before his accident, but she needed to remember he was still the same man, a very attractive man who shunned commitments.
She did not want her heart broken.
The search for Araceli was an emotional roller coaster, and she was defenseless.
Against his kisses, his smiles, him.
So she threw herself into the search, determination renewed to protect herself by staying realistic even though she had no real world to hang on to. There was only her and Marc in this suite, and their united efforts to find Araceli.
A few more hours of research yielded information, but not what Marc had expected. “I should be able to find a physical address attached to this post office box.”
“No luck?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’ve had luck. The bad kind. If I didn’t know better I’d say Debbie had a history as a con. She doesn’t miss a trick. I’ve tracked her to Nashville, but I can’t pinpoint where because everything that should lead to her is smoke.”
Courtney rubbed her temples and reached for the bottled water. Adrenaline was the only thing keeping her going. “In English, please.”
“Every connection I find to this woman jerks me around a bit before leading to a dead end. That’s intentional. I’ve got addresses for post office boxes and bank accounts that lead to empty lots on Google Earth. No car insurance. No utilities. No phones. No internet. But I’ve got email accounts with more fake addresses and backup email accounts used to verify accounts. Everything about this woman appears in order on the surface, but she exists only on paper. Makes you wonder why, doesn’t it?”
Courtney nodded.
“Especially when I start looking at the deviations from her established routine. She normally contacted her great-uncle but hasn’t recently. She normally bounced around from mission to mission. Church people saw her or heard about her but now she seems to have dropped out of sight. Harboring a runaway child might change someone’s normal behavior.”
“Any mention of a child?”
“No. But she must have a reason for going through this amount of work to make herself invisible.”
Courtney leaned her head against the back of the sofa and closed her eyes. For the first time since this nightmare began, real hope replaced desperate wishful thinking. They were unraveling the events of the past eight years, and each revelation that didn’t lead to the worst-case scenario suggested that maybe Araceli’s luck factor had been of the good variety.
“What do you think?” Her voice was a breathless whisper.
“Debbie Abercrombie is hiding in plain sight,” Marc explained. “Everyone knows her. Everyone knows she gets around. People have even seen her. But if someone tries to track her down, she’s no longer there. We’re not looki
ng for someone concealing her movements, but someone blending in.”
He repositioned his leg and the tension on his face eased. He was as tired as she was. Probably more.
“We still don’t have a solid connection to any child,” he continued. “Not the normal stuff. School enrollment. Child services. We need another angle. The art is bugging me because we still haven’t fit it in. Araceli was attached enough to her father’s drawings to run away because some kids damaged them.”
“Mrs. Calderone said they were the only things Araceli’s mother would have cared about.”
“The art factors somewhere if we’ve got a kid—the right kid—we just have to figure out where.”
Courtney recalled their visit with Mrs. Calderone and the caricature Araceli’s father had drawn of his daughter. “What churches did Debbie visit during the past eight years? After Little Rock. Read me the list.”
Marc pulled the notebook computer toward him. He pulled up a browser window and search engine.
“Okay, here goes,” he said. “We’ve got St. Louis. We’ve got Miami. We’ve got Columbia. And Baltimore. New York City. Cincinnati. Nashville.”
Courtney sensed his gaze on her but kept pulling up window after window on her own laptop, fingers flying over the keyboard, heart racing. “Guess what all these cities have in common.”
“Mission churches.”
“Marc, they allow busking.” When he continued to stare at her blankly, she pulled a face and said, “Street performing.”
“What Araceli’s father used to do in Jackson Square?”
“What he was teaching Araceli to do in Jackson Square.”
Understanding dawned on his handsome face, transformed into excitement. “You get a raise.”
She laughed, pleased by his praise. “We know Debbie. What would she do if she decided not to return a runaway artist to foster care?”
Marc’s smile reached his eyes. “Vanish, for starters. Make them invisible, and maybe even foster her runaway’s talent.”
Love In Plain Sight Page 20