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“Sweetheart. Aw, hell.”

The ache still hit me, even now. Day one: I stood in the hospital corridor stammering to Mom on the phone. Jesse was shattered. A surgical team had spent the night piecing him back together with metal rods and bone screws. And God wasn’t giving any sign that he heard my primal begging.
Undo this nightmare
.

She steered through the sluggish traffic. “You’ve always been full of surprises. But you building something strong, after such an awful trauma—that didn’t surprise me; it made me proud.”

My eyes were stinging. “Now you’re embarrassing me.”

“You found what counted. And it wasn’t him breaking his back.”

Tears were welling. Dammit, I knew I was stressed out, but this was ridiculous. I pointed up the road at the Town and Country Shopping Center.

“Pull in. I need some stuff.” Like, to change the subject. “Tissues and things.”

She flipped the turn signal. “Yeah. And vitamins, and saltines to settle your stomach.”

And a long nap, a pair of sexy Italian shoes, maybe two weeks at a spa in the Bahamas. She pulled up in front of the drugstore. I wiped my eyes and we got out.

Halfway along the sidewalk to the drugstore, my phone rang.

“Sweetie pie. Where you been?”

Mom saw my face. I held the phone out so she could hear Taylor’s voice.

“I dropped off some photo layouts for you to look at, but I’m still working on the descriptions,” she said. “Getting them right’s a trick.”

We went into the drugstore, cruising past the checkout stands. “Yeah, that can be a tough part of writing a book. The words. What do you want?”

“The twins. Mind if I borrow them?”

“Carlos and Miguel?”

“I want to do a baseball spread. You know—get to third base, go all the way, watch the fireworks ignite.”

“No.”

“Just for a day or two. Evan, they’re
twins
.”

“No.” Now I needed motion-sickness pills. And mouthwash. For my brain. “If you want to work with them, do it after they finish the job at my place.”

Her voice turned pouty. “Y’all can be such a stick-in-the-mud.”

I mouthed
stick-in-the-mud
to Mom. “It’s how my parents raised me.”

She play-punched my arm and handed me a pack of tissues.

“Leave the Martinez brothers alone, Taylor. Now excuse me, but I’m heading into the Grammar Society punctuation seminar.”

“Wait, I have a proofreading question. Am I spelling this word right?”

She gave it to me letter by letter. My eyeballs rolled back so hard that they flipped all the way around.

“No. It’s
ph
antasmagoria—P-H. And it means a shifting medley of images, like in a dream. Not a fantastic orgy.”

Mom picked up a giant bottle of vitamins and we rounded the corner into no-man’s-land: feminine hygiene, girl-cootie central. A stockboy was shelving Tampax, staring at the floor to hide his shame. I glanced at the products on the shelf and stopped, feeling a jolt.

“Taylor, I have to go.” I hung up. “Mom, I’ll meet you at the checkout stand.”

By the time she caught up I was outside. The traffic droned out on El Camino. I shoved the drugstore sack into my backpack, feeling glazed.

“You okay?” she said.

“Sure. Let’s go. I don’t want to miss the flight.”

She dropped me off in front of the terminal at SFO. Traffic was jumbled, cars swerving to the curb, passengers hauling luggage to the sidewalk. I fumbled in my backpack for my itinerary and spilled things onto the floor of the car. I stuffed junk back in and climbed out.

Mom came around and hugged me good-bye. “Call me tonight.”

“You bet.” She turned to go and I caught her hand. “Thanks for what you said earlier. It means a lot.”

Her cherubic smile looked wry. “Give my love to Jesse.” She squeezed my hand. “Now hustle it. Security’s a pig at this terminal. You’re going to have to run for the gate.”

She blew me a kiss and drove away. After a moment I headed for check-in, full of free-floating anxiety. I ended up running for the gate.

The takeoff roll took longer than I expected. We bumped into the sky and arced over the city and across the coastline. The ocean glittered below. The 737 banked sharply to the south, thumping through the air. I grabbed an airsickness bag and held it to my chest. The woman in the aisle seat glanced at me nervously. I felt as though I were rattling free of the plane, the day, things as I’d known them.

I glanced out the window at whitecaps on the ocean. The plane continued banking. I needed to get up but the seat belt sign was lit. If we didn’t reach cruising altitude real damn soon I was going to rip the armrests off my seat.

I crumpled the airsickness bag in my hand, feeling the jet level out of the turn. I couldn’t wait any longer. I unbuckled my seat belt, grabbed my backpack, and lurched to my feet. My seatmate jumped up to let me by. I banged down the aisle toward the lavatory, grabbing seat backs for balance. A flight attendant raised her hand, about to tell me to sit down again. But she must have seen my pallor, because she stopped herself. I bumbled into the bathroom and locked the door.

I dumped out the sack from the drugstore and ripped through packaging, leaning back against the wall to steady myself. The engines roared in my ears.

I looked at myself in the mirror. “Okay.”

Five minutes later by my watch, the flight attendant knocked on the door. “Ma’am, are you all right in there?”

“Fine.”

Misstatement of the month. I wasn’t fine. I was on Saturn. I stared at the home test stick in my hand. The vertical blue line on the test strip was bright and definite.

I was pregnant.

I hiked toward the exit at LAX. The light in the terminal felt shiny. I seemed to be walking at an oblique angle to the walls and people, as if space-time had momentarily uncoiled and spilled me sideways. A weird little melody droned in my head.

Pregnant. Holy mother of God. I had a graduate degree. Why did it take me so long to count past twenty-eight? A wild laugh skated through me, half whoop, half sob. I covered my mouth with my fist. This was inconceivable. The laugh skimmed past again, higher pitched.

I rounded the baggage carousels and saw the exit, the street outside, traffic sludging past the terminal in the Los Angeles sunshine. I saw people waiting to meet arriving passengers, watching us from behind a metal railing. I saw Jesse. He was resting an arm on the rail, tapping his thumb up and down in time to some unheard music. He was wearing his half-fingered gloves and a midnight blue shirt and a pensive expression. He scanned the crowd, searching for me.

Joy.

Pure, abundant joy, that’s what I felt. A baby. It was like having a star fall from the night sky into the palm of my hand. A blessing, a gift, God’s grace. Sacred, and scary as hell.

I smiled a goofball smile and walked toward the big unknowns. Telling him, for starters. Breathe deep, girl; get ready to blow him through the wall. I hitched my backpack higher on my shoulder and waved, striding toward him.

He spotted me and pushed off from the railing, looking puzzled. I was grinning like a clown and about to spew tears.

From my right a man approached. I saw a languorous stride and a head of cropped white hair.

“Kit.”

I stopped dead. It was my father.

He sauntered up, garment bag and computer case slung over his shoulder. His eyes were gunpowder black, restless and intent.

“Did you chase me down?” I said.

He set his things on the floor and cupped my face in his hands. “This is not lying low.”

He looked great—tan and hale, in a rawhide sort of way. He was wearing his oldest cowboy boots and a baseball cap with the logo USS
ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
CVN-72, the carrier to which my brother’s fighter squadron was attached. I felt blindsided.

“Mom told you which flight I was on.”

He kissed my forehead. “You need to start listening to your old man.”

Grabbing his things, he swept me under his arm and pulled me toward the exit. Ahead, Jesse angled through the crowd and coasted to a stop, flummoxed.

He extended his hand. “Phil.”

Dad shook it. “Thought I mentioned keeping a close watch.”

“And here I am.” He peered at me quizzically. “What is it?”

I leaned down and kissed him, running my fingers into his hair, letting my lips linger on his. He pulled back, wide-eyed.

“Tell me,” he said.

I wanted to leap on him, whisper it in his ear, and have him hold me and tell me it was good, we were going to be fine. I was petrified and tongue-tied and my father was right there.

My mouth hovered close to his. “Soon.”

Dad cleared his throat. When I straightened, he pressed me toward the door, boots knocking on the tile, and spoke to Jesse over his shoulder.

“You parked nearby?”

Jesse turned and pushed to catch up. “Across the street.” The automatic door opened and we headed outside into the sun. I said, “Why the urgency?”

Dad adjusted his
Abraham Lincoln
cap. “Things have changed.”

“What is it?”

He was holding me alarmingly tight. “Darlin’, I’m sorry. He killed Becky O’Keefe last night.”

The light went white and began to hum, drowning out the sound of traffic. Jesse’s voice barely cut through the noise.

“That’s not all. He stole her car, with her toddler inside. The little boy’s still missing.”

 
We crossed the street to the parking garage, Dad gripping me against the sunlight and noise.

“Becky’s husband was on the news, making a plea for the kidnapper to return the boy.” He shook his head. “God-awful thing. It’s your worst nightmare.”

“How did she die?” I said.

Dad didn’t answer. I looked at Jesse.

“Her throat was cut,” he said.

The light hurt my eyes. “Was she tortured?”

“I don’t know.”

He was grim. Special Agent Heaney’s statement came back to me: Coyote’s aim was to inflict maximum pain on his victims before killing them. The humming in my head intensified.

“Ryan’s only two years old,” I said.

The truck was parked near the entrance to the garage. Jesse unlocked it with the remote, the squelch echoing off the walls.

He touched my arm. “I don’t know that there’s much chance we can help.”

“Not much chance is better than no chance. And every minute that goes by . . .”

He nodded. “Right. Let’s roll.”

He got in, popped the wheels off the chair, and put them in the backseat. Normally he tossed the frame behind him as well, but add me and luggage back there and the fit got tight. He handed me a bungee cord. I lugged the frame into the truck’s cargo bed and lashed it down. Dad watched as if we were performing brain surgery with knitting needles.

“You have this down to an art.”

He looked disconcerted, and I couldn’t spare any emotional energy to worry about it. “Yeah. You ride shotgun.”

Jesse fired up the engine. I hopped in the backseat, Dad climbed in front, and Jesse pulled out, spinning the wheel.

Dad buckled his seat belt. “Did you bring a weapon?”

“Repeat that when I pull up in front of the security camera, please. Louder.” Sensing my father’s glare, he nodded at the glove compartment. “Locked in there.”

“Can you get much speed out of this truck?”

“Enough.”

I fought down a hoot. He could get speed out of a turnip. He glanced at me in the rearview mirror.

“Tell me?” he said.

High-wire trepidation pulsed through me again. I put my hand on his shoulder and shook my head. His mouth scrunched to one side. He paid and pulled into traffic.

“What are we going to get when we meet Maureen Swayze?” he said.

I got the Primacon Laboratories blurb from my backpack. “A heavy hitter. Degrees in electrical engineering and molecular biophysics from Columbia. Doctorate from MIT. Worked in the pharmaceutical industry before spending a decade in government research. Her publications include
Nonlinear Protein Dynamics
and
Neurological Dysfunction: The Mathematics of the Random Walk.
”

He eyed me in the rearview mirror at that one.

“Chemistry term, I think.” I leaned toward Dad. “She doesn’t sound like a fuel researcher to me.”

“She wasn’t. She was director of special projects, and her office covered a number of operations.”

I nodded. “I remember Swayze being at the high school after my class came back from Renegade Canyon. Red hair and a loud voice.”

“Your mom told me.”

“She remembers Swayze too. Says she’s a cold-faced bitch.”

He turned. The surprise on his face was genuine. “Your mother’s a woman of strong opinions. Often black-and-white.”

“Is she right?”

“Maureen’s a bulldozer and a pill, but that’s as far as I’ll go. Are you feeling all right?”

Jesse glanced in the mirror. “Yeah, your eyes are shiny and you look kind of dazed. Like you’ve been whacked with a two-by-four.”

No, it was a different kind of wood.

A snerking sound came out of my throat, equal parts shriek and laugh. “You aren’t kidding. Hard enough to hit a home run.”

They both turned and looked at me.

I pressed a fist against my mouth and waited for my nerves to crawl back inside my skin. Outside, billboards and palm trees and hotels and airfreight offices and nudie bars blared past in the unbecoming sunshine. Cars switched lanes at speed, darting like blowflies. Jesse followed another pickup through a hole in traffic, jinking across two lanes to beat a light.

I forced my voice to a normal register. “Will Swayze try to stonewall us?”

Dad frowned. “She was always on the up-and-up. She may have her own agenda, but I have to think she’ll tell us what she can.”