I took a deep breath and typed GARRETT in all caps.
It was amazing. Doctor Hathaway was the dumbest smart person in the world.
“Bingo,” I said, watching as the database opened for us.
For the past several decades, starting back before I was born, the whole HIPAA deal—where doctors weren’t allowed to divulge any information about patients to anyone non-consenting—had become obsolete. Anyone who worked in the medical field, including nurses and techs—or anyone who pretended to work in the medical field—had access to any and all medical records. It had started as a way to monitor women in particular, in response to personhood laws. And it had gone south, fast. It was a total invasion of privacy. But today? Easy access to medical records was actually working in our favor.
I pulled up a search box. The simple search function required the patient’s name, date of birth, and/or NID—National ID number. I found the advanced search, where I typed in Jilly, Jack, Ron.
No results was the result.
I tried Jill, John, Ronald.
And suddenly there were more than twenty thousand matches. I clicked through to a few and realized that, in many cases, John or Ronald or Jill was the first name of the doctor involved in someone’s treatment.
We needed a way to narrow down our search. “What more do we know about them?” I mused. I looked up at Garrett. “You told me Rochelle went up north and then brought Jilly back with her. Do you remember where—which state?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think she ever said, but…” As his voice trailed off, he looked like he was deep in thought. Which was kind of scary in a way. Then, all of a sudden, he started jumping up and down. The move was so abrupt, it made me jump too.
“What? What is it?” I asked.
“The number on her arm!”
“Number?”
“Yeah!” Garrett stopped jumping and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He scrolled through it for a few seconds and then tapped on the screen excitedly as he held it out for me. “See that? That’s a selfie that Rochelle made me and Jilly take, back when she was still pretending Jilly was her daughter and we were gonna be one big, happy family. You can see Jilly’s arm—she’s holding the phone out. And see that number?”
In the photo, Jilly’s hair was streaked with bright orange and yellow. And sure enough, a series of numbers and dashes was written on the inside of the girl’s forearm, next to the little bump that we now knew was a tracking device. The color of the ink and size of the print reminded me of photos I’d seen of the concentration camp ID tattoos that Nazis gave Jewish people during the Holocaust.
“At the time, I just thought it was one of her weird goth moves,” Garrett continued. “She’d write it on her arm on some days. Other days it would be scrubbed off. Anyway, I was thinking about it, and…I’m pretty sure that’s her National ID number.”
“Holy crap,” I mumbled, because he may have been onto something. It was the right number of digits to be her NID.
We all had one. Everyone in the country did—which, yeah, was pretty creepy.
I didn’t waste any time. Yanking the phone out of Garrett’s hand, I enlarged that part of the photo and went back to the original search screen where one of the options was for the patient’s NID. I typed in the numbers, realizing that I didn’t even need her name. I just pushed Enter.
The computer thought for a moment.
Then?
“Holy crap, it worked!” Garrett was jumping up and down again.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I squealed, too.
Morgan heard us and came in.
I read out loud. “Jillian Teller. Deceased.” What? I looked up at Morgan and Garrett. “Somebody’s claiming that she’s already dead,” I said. I clicked over to what was definitely a death certificate for Jillian Margaret Teller, age fourteen at the time of death. “As of ten months ago. It’s signed by a doctor, who was obviously lying, but what if her parents think she’s really dead?”
“Go back, go back,” Garrett said, and I returned to Jilly’s main page.
“Parents: Cynthia and Ronald Teller,” Garrett read from the screen. “Twin brother: Ronald, Jr.; younger brother: John, age three. I thought he was named Jack.”
“Jack is a nickname for John,” I told him. How could he be eighteen years old and not know that? But there was no time for even an eye roll, because…
“There’s an address here,” Garrett told Morgan. “And a phone number.”
Jilly’s family lived in Virginia, just outside of Richmond.
I reached for my phone. But Morgan was already holding out his. “Better use my burner,” he said. “After you make this call, we’re going to have to smash it, and I know you’re waiting to hear from Milo.”
I was. “Thanks.” I took it, dialed the number, then set the phone on speaker.
It rang once, twice, and then a woman answered.
“Hello,” she trilled. Her voice sounded cheery. Singsong. Not the way I imagined the voice of a woman who had lost her only daughter not too long ago would sound.
“Um, Mrs. Teller?” I asked in a careful tone.
“Yes? This is she.”
I cleared my throat. I needed to sound confident. “I’m calling with news about your daughter.”
I paused, and there was silence on the other end of the line, although I could tell that Jilly’s mom hadn’t hung up.
I continued. “I wanted to let you know that Jilly is not dead. She’s safe. Well, she’ll be safe soon if—”
“Who is this?” she whispered. She was no longer cheerful. “How dare you call like this! Haven’t we suffered enough?”
“No,” I said. “I mean, yes. But that’s why I’m calling—your daughter’s not dead!”
This was where she was supposed to fall to her knees, the way Sasha’s mom had when we’d brought Sasha back home to her. This was where she was supposed to cry and sob, Oh, thank God, thank God!
But this woman said nothing. There was absolute silence from her end of the phone.
So I said, “She’s being held prisoner, and we’re going to set her free, but she needs to know that you’ll be there for her when we—”
“Don’t you dare!” she said again, her voice sharp. “She’s already dead to us. We’ve already grieved, so just stay out of it! Stay away from her!”
What? I glanced over at Garrett, who looked as shocked as I felt.
While I’d been talking, Morgan had leaned over my other shoulder and had typed something into the computer. I realized now that we were looking at a satellite map of the Teller’s suburban address. Morgan zoomed in on the highlighted house, and we all realized that not only was it huge, it had a swimming pool in the back.
“How much money did you get for her?” I asked, suddenly wildly angry. “And maybe you’ve already grieved for her, but she’s still out there being tortured. Did you know, when you sold her into slavery, that she would be tortured before she was killed?”
“You have no idea how hard it was!” Mrs. Teller interrupted. “My husband has a job now! My boys have food on the table! Do you know how hard it is to watch your children starve? Do not throw judgment onto me for even a moment, because you have no idea how much I have sacrificed to protect my family!” The words came tumbling out of her mouth in rapid succession. When she was done, her breathing turned ragged through the phone.
It was my turn to be absolutely speechless. How much she’d sacrificed?
“Don’t you dare call back again!” she hissed. “And stay the hell away from Jilly! If you go near her, or if you so much as contact me again, I’ll have them track you down, too!”
“Who’s them?” I asked, but there was a click, and the line went dead.
————
Garrett was oddly silent after that.
Morgan took his phon
e from my hand, pulled out the battery, and then dutifully went about taking it out to the driveway and running over it with Garrett’s car.
After that, Morgan spent about ten minutes on the computer, laser printing articles and reports from the Obermeyer Institute on their ground-breaking Destiny detox procedure. He knew without asking that Dana was a hard-copy kind of girl, but he also forwarded the links to Cal’s email address, so that we’d have access to the information that way, too.
I spent the time silently willing Milo to text me again, but his sole response to my Y’ok? was Yes, TY.
Finally, we had everything that we needed to reconnect with Dana and Calvin in Harrisburg and see if we could help them get the supplies they needed for that makeshift D-lab.
I made a quick pit stop, and as I was coming out of the bathroom, I heard Garrett say to Morgan, “No, you know what? Just take my car. I’m not going to go.”
“Okay,” Morgan said evenly. “I appreciate your trust with your wheels. We’ll be back in a few hours to scan Calvin and—”
“No.” Garrett cut him off. “You’re gonna have to find someplace else to do that and your detox, too. I’m out. I’m done.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
He turned to me. “I’m just…done. If we try to save Jilly, then you’re in danger, and then you both die. We bring Calvin here, he’s just going to die, too. And we’re going to be the ones who kill him. Let’s be real about this bullshit. We’re fighting a losing battle!” He voice got louder. “And I didn’t sign up for any of this. So just leave. Just fuck it. Fuck everything! And just…leave.”
Neither one of us moved.
Garrett leaned forward and got right into my face. “I said leave! Get out! Get! Out!”
Morgan reached out to place a sympathetic hand on Garrett’s shoulder. But Garrett shrugged it away. “Hands off, Gay-Boy!” he exclaimed and stomped past both of us to fling open the door that led out to the driveway. “Go!”
Morgan didn’t flinch at the insult. But his expression was one of utter sadness.
“Close the door behind you when you leave,” Garrett said and started back past us to his father’s office, where there was a door and a stairway leading up to the main part of the house.
I blocked his path. “If you quit on us now, if you just walk away from this fight, then you’re no better than Jilly’s mother.”
He flinched, almost as if I’d punched him in the face.
By this point in my crazy life, I’d been pretty damn certain that nothing could ever shock me again. And yet, the next thing that happened sent my jaw to the floor.
Garrett Hathaway burst into tears.
It was messy and noisy, the sobs wracking his body in waves.
I didn’t know what to do. So I stood there awkwardly, while Garrett leaned against the door and cried. I reached out to touch his arm, and he took that as an invitation to envelope me in a soggy hug.
I looked at Morgan over Garrett’s shoulder, sending him a silent, Did you do this with your truth-telling voodoo?
Morgan shook his head and silently mouthed the words, Not me.
So I stood there, awkwardly patting Garrett’s back as he cried himself out. To be honest, if it were me, I’d’ve kept sobbing for a whole ’nother hour. But he finally quieted down. And he eventually let go of me, turning away from us as he wiped his eyes. “That was stupid of me,” he said in a muffled voice.
Neither Morgan nor I responded. I wasn’t sure which part Garrett was talking about—telling us to leave or crying his eyes out.
“I’m sorry about that,” Garrett continued. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “I don’t do that ever.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I told him. “I cry like that every week or so.”
“Yeah, but you’re a girl,” he said.
“So what?” I countered. “Being a boy means that you’re not human? That you don’t feel things?”
Garrett was silent, so I kept going.
“I know you think this is all hopeless—detoxing Calvin and helping Jilly, but I for one am not going to quit. I’m not going to let that lady scare me off. I don’t care what she thinks she can do. I’m going to figure out a way to save Jilly even though she doesn’t want to be saved—I don’t know what, but I know we’ll think of something. And working together, we’ll make it happen. And I know this sucks and it’s hard, but we need your help. We need to use your dad’s OR, and yeah, it may not work, and you’re right that Cal is probably going to die, but if we just give up, then he’ll definitely die.”
“My mother died last year,” Garrett said quietly. “She got cancer and she fought it and she should’ve survived, she did everything right, but she fucking died.”
“Garrett,” I said softly. I’d had no idea. “I’m so sorry.”
He nodded. “I didn’t tell anyone. She and my dad were divorced since forever, and she lived in Harrisburg—by choice. She ran a food bank, and I was ashamed of her, so I just never talked about her. And I just keep thinking that she would never do what Jilly’s mother did. Never. So how come she’s dead and Jilly’s mom lives in a big house with a swimming pool?”
I couldn’t answer that, and I looked to Morgan who just shook his head.
“Life rarely makes sense,” he told Garrett. “Best you can do is give it—all of it—a big fuck you and keep going. Keep trying, keep fighting.”
I nodded. “Please say you’ll help us, Garrett. We need you on our team.”
Garrett sniffed and glanced from Morgan to me and back again. His face was blotchy, and I knew how embarrassed he probably was.
So I led him back to more familiar-to-him, douche-tastic territory by adding, “If Dana were here, she’d say the same. And I know you can’t resist two hot chicks, both begging for your help.”
“Heh-heh,” Garrett said. “Heh. I guess I can’t. But the question remains, can either of you fly?”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. That was my own fault. I’d opened that door. Nevertheless, he’d gone charging through it.
No doubt about it, even the best version of Garrett was still Garrett.
Chapter Nineteen
Stay put at Garrett’s. Cal and I on our way.
The text came in from Dana before Garrett, Morgan, and I had a chance to leave Doc Hathaway’s OR.
“Dana wants to meet us here. Is that okay with you?”
Garrett had already excused himself, no doubt to spritz cold water on his face and regroup a little bit more after losing it in front of us. As he came back from the bathroom, he nodded. “Yeah, that’s cool.” He casually rolled up the sleeves to his polo shirt, no doubt to reveal his muscular forearms as he crossed them over his chest.
Morgan was playing around with the scanning machine again, and I used the time to check my messages. “I wish Milo would send an update about his stakeout of our John Doe.” My heavy emphasis on Milo was for Garrett’s sake.
I texted Milo via the group he’d set up earlier, hoping it would come across as businesslike teammate instead of needy girlfriend. Update?
For once, the reply came back quickly: Spent the morning shopping. John Doe’s been valeting his car so I can’t get close enough to plant GPS device.
Shopping? I asked. For…?
Looks like clothing but also camping gear and MREs. Best guess is he had lots of equipment in his car. He’s doing a resupply.
Good. Hopefully the family of his Sav’A’Buck kidnapping victim had found it all before they ditched the vehicle in Orlando.
A new text popped up: WTF are MREs? It was Garrett, who was following our conversation from the other side of the room.
Meals Ready to Eat, Milo texted back. Military-style food, easy to store and keep.
He’ll also need more ammo, I texted.
Yes I’m certain he
replaced that too, Milo responded. Also bought a legit hunting rifle.
Great.
Right now he’s @ lunch, Milo reported. @ the fish tank. Car again valeted. Can’t get close enough.
The Fish Tank was an upscale restaurant in Coconut Key Village, not far from the richie-rich mall.
Do u think he knows he’s being followed? That was Dana chiming in from Cal’s car. Bcuz of all the valets?
It feels more like an FU to someone, Milo sent. Maybe his bosses for leaving him in the hosp for all that time? Buying underwear and camping stuff from an upscale mall instead of Big W or Outdoor Emporium. Lunch here. He’s on someone’s payroll, using their credit card. He’s sending them a message = my guess.
Hope ur right, Dana texted back, adding, Fifteen mins from you, BG.
BG was me. Bubble Gum. We’re here, waiting, I told her.
And then, because I was in wait mode over here, and Milo was in wait mode outside the Fish Tank, I sent a private text, just to his phone.
I’ve been thinking about that closet and ur stepfather, and while I wish you’d told me about it, I also wish that I’d asked you. I knew something was wrong and I didn’t. Ask. And I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m not going to not ask if I think something’s wrong, or if there’s something I want to know about you. I love you, but this won’t work AT ALL if you think I need to be, I don’t know, protected or shielded. Like a child.
I hit Send before I chickened out and erased the whole thing.
And then as I flashed both hot and cold, I quickly typed, I’m tougher than both you and Dana think.
I really am sorry, he sent back, followed by: I know.
I got a message that he was typing more, so I waited.
I didn’t want to tell you bcuz I was ashamed. I’m still ashamed.
Why on earth are you ashamed? I started to ask, but his next text came in before I could hit Send.
I never tried to escape, Milo told me. He told me I deserved to be punished, and part of me must’ve believed him because I never tried to get away.
You were a little boy, I texted, whose mother had just died!
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