Painless (32 page)

Chapter 72

The last train to Clarksville was a silver Camaro with New York plates. Clarksville, Virginia, that was, to have a little visit with Dr. Samuel Jordan. Billy was behind the wheel, now wearing Rich Kiely’s short sleeve golf shirt, and too energized to feel the cold wind on his bare arms. Dana sat beside him, her ponytail whipping around in the wind.

Having the top of the convertible down was against his better judgment, being that a massive manhunt was likely in hot pursuit, but Carolyn’s requests were hard to turn down after what she’d been through. She was strapped into Claudia Kiely’s car seat in the back.

The muddle huddle had worked as seamlessly as it did against Altoona High. But beating the police was one thing, trying to stay one step ahead of Operation Anesthesia was like running from death. Just putting off the inevitable. Billy and his troops might’ve won the Battle of Muddle Huddle, but were still heavy underdogs in the war.

But Billy chose to grin in the face of death. He visualized the likely looks on Hasenfus and Banana’s faces when they inevitably burst into the train station, only to find a different family heading for a weekend trip to Montreal. Once they learned that they were set up by a bunch of rank amateurs, Billy wasn’t sure how they’d react, so he made an anonymous call to the police, reporting that he witnessed the “kidnapper” at the train station. He figured a police presence would provide temporary security for the Kielys. Anesthesia lived off covertness in the same way that humans lived off oxygen. Dracula never killed anyone in the daylight. Their DNA would be to retreat to darkness, readying themselves to strike again.

Billy knew the minute Dana purchased the train tickets that Operation Anesthesia would be on the train station like paparazzi to celebrity. He used their über-aggressiveness against them. He visualized Coach Blake writing on the blackboard before a game.
The bigger they are the harder they fall. The faster they are, the easier they are to be trapped.
Sometimes someone’s biggest strength was also their biggest weaknesses. Billy was no different. His loyalty was a duel-edged sword, often his biggest strength, but sometimes his Achilles heel.

The car was on loan from Rich Kiely, and since he didn’t report it stolen, the police wouldn’t be looking for it anytime soon. They swapped it in a quick exchange in the train station parking lot. But it wouldn’t be long before Operation Anesthesia made the connection. And when they did, Billy knew their retaliatory strike would be swift, aggressive, and unrelenting.

Carolyn began the trip in a grumpy mood, annoyed she couldn’t attend school, as was promised. It appeared to be a pretty serious grudge she was holding, because even the motorcycle ride didn’t lift her spirits.

Somewhere along the New York Thruway, her orneriness turned to a bad case of ADD. One moment she was celebrating the opening of the roof of the convertible, and moments later declared it to be “too windy” and demanded it be put back up. For a brief time she happily sang along to Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love”—
Uh-oh, Uh-oh, Uh-oh
—but then had a meltdown because Billy and Dana didn’t have the forethought to bring along her favorite
Barney & Friends
CD while they were running for their lives.

Billy glanced back at her. She uncomfortably adjusted herself in Claudia’s car seat. It didn’t fit. It was like wearing somebody else’s clothes, which by the way, she was also doing. She was at the end of the line emotionally. Even though Carolyn was freakishly smart and often appeared wise beyond her age, he had to remind himself that she was only four years old. “Hold on, Carolyn,” he mumbled to himself.

It didn’t take long until Tropical Storm Carolyn upgraded to a hurricane. And she rebelled in a way that only a child who couldn’t feel pain could. She began violently gnawing at her lip until blood began to stream down her chin. It was Dracula the sequel.

“Oh my God!” Dana screamed.

Billy quickly pulled over to the shoulder of the road. “What did you do?” he scolded.

Dana grabbed a towel and practically leapt back over the seat to Carolyn. She then patiently held it over Carolyn’s lip, trying to calm the situation, rather than pour some more gas on her determined little fire. When the bleeding stopped, the tears came. And for twenty minutes Carolyn’s tears didn’t stop. She was at the end of the road. Dana looked at Billy with exasperation. He searched for a comforting look to give her, but he couldn’t find one.

Chapter 73

When they finally returned to the road, Carolyn drifted into a deep slumber. Every last emotion in her tiny body was drained.

Billy kept breaking his own rule by glancing into the rear-view mirror, and analyzing every soft breath the little girl took. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Dana grinning at him.

“What?” he asked.

“Any little girl in this world would be lucky to have you as her father.”

“That coming from someone who just yesterday thought I was a kidnapper.”

Dana smiled as she played with Beth’s BlackBerry, pulling up the Internet. “It’s not just me,” she said and showed Billy the Internet headlines on her screen.

Breaking news: police hunt kidnapper

The vague highlights of the article were that Billy, who allegedly had kidnapped the girl from her parents’ property in Lake George, was spotted with his “victim” Carolyn Whitcomb at the Elmer Avenue Elementary School. Shots were reportedly fired, and eyewitnesses reported that a security guard had been shot and killed, although the police had yet to confirm it. The police did release a joint statement with the FBI, stating that Billy was last seen leaving the school on a motorcycle with Carolyn. He was suspected to be armed and dangerous. They were actively searching the Albany area.

The report also mentioned that the missing girl’s parents were believed to be in seclusion, which was the media’s way of saying that they had yet to find the grieving parents to fully exploit their pain.

Billy didn’t know if the authorities really believed they were still in Albany, or they were trying to get them to let their guard down. The FBI’s presence made him suspicious that the police might believe they had crossed state lines. So Billy planned on operating as if they were right on their tail. Just like Operation Anesthesia probably was.

Dana looked back at Carolyn, who was now peacefully whistling a snore. “I admit, I thought it for a brief moment,” she stressed brief, “but I never for a second thought you would hurt her.”

“That makes me feel a lot better,” Billy said with a sarcastic grin.

Dana remained serious. “I also never believed you did whatever was done to Kelly’s face in that picture. I was right, wasn’t I?”

Billy said nothing, the grin erased from his face.

“Tell me about Kelly.”

“I told you, Dana, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Not what went down in D.C. or anything related to it. Tell me about when you met her. Why did you fall in love with her?”

He sighed, knowing Dana was relentless when she wanted something and wouldn’t give up until they got to North Carolina. So he cut his losses. “You know, deep down, I think I always knew she didn’t love me. At least in the
for better or worse
kind of way. It was just so magical in the beginning that I think we were both always trying to recapture the high. When I write stories, I’m in charge of happily ever after. I think I tried to do that in real life, but you can’t force that stuff.”

“At least you put your heart on the line.”

“Whoever coined that crap about better to have love and lost than to never have loved at all, should be sued for slander.”

“So you are saying Romeo and Juliet would’ve been better off without each other?”

“Love is a drug, nothing else. Initial chemical euphoria that people try to recapture like addicts. You never hear people say it’s better to have smoked crack and lost than to never have smoked crack at all.”

“That’s a pretty cynical view,” Dana replied, continuing to surf the Internet on the small handheld device.

“Look at you.”

“What about me?”

“You seem happy, no complexities in your life. You have no baggage. And trust me, Dana, baggage gets heavy when you carry it around all the time.”

Dana nervously adjusted her baseball cap. “That’s because I’ve always been too afraid to put myself on the line. Show me someone my age without any baggage, and I’ll show you someone who hasn’t really lived.”

“Miss Manhattan Style Babe hasn’t lived? Sounds a little hard to believe.”

“I’m not just talking about relationships. I mean with everything in my life. I gave up writing because I was afraid of the rejection, but I stay close to it with the agency. I’m like those people who become friends with those they are in love with. They bask in the glow of the thing that makes their life worth living, but are too afraid to put their heart on the line, fearing it will be ripped out. But you’re actually guaranteeing the rippage, just at a slow, tortuous pace.”

He recognized her words as staring in the mirror. “So who gave you that shot of Novocain in your heart, Dana?”

They passed a sign for Saratoga Springs, now over a hundred miles in the opposite direction. Dana pointed at it. “My father is in a convalescence home in Saratoga ever since his stroke. It’s a really nice place. The best place money can buy if you’re going to live out your life as a vegetable.”

“Better than the supermarket, I guess. What did he do to you, Dana?”

She sniffed, braced herself in the bucket seat, and then told her painful story. Forgetting her at school—walking in the house and hearing the groans from the bedroom—standing there and staring at them for what seemed like days. But the worst part was keeping the secret from her mother because she thought it would crush her.

“That lawyer from the train, Joe Skaggs. The one who rode with Beth on the train the day she was abandoned—he’s still afraid of your father.”

“I think the only person my father truly hurt was himself. He cost himself his family, including a daughter who thought he was the second coming. I think his stroke was caused by him losing his soul.”

“He seems like an odd choice for your mother, from what I’ve heard about her.”

“As you probably have figured out, a genetic family trait with the women in my family is bringing in strays.”

“That letter she wrote was telling.”

“It was. She was a strong woman, but I don’t think she would have ever left him. One thing about bringing in that stray, the bond is unconditional. Nobody is ever beyond saving.”

“Sounds like she was a special lady.”

“She was one of those rare people who truly would sacrifice her own life for others. A lot of people claim they would, but you can count on one hand those who really would give their own life for another. Mom was one of the few.”

“I guess in a way she really did give her life for Beth.”

Dana snuck another peek at sleeping beauty in the back seat. “She would protect Beth and me at any cost, and Beth would do the same for Carolyn.”

Billy nodded. He fully understood.

“After my mother died, for all intents and purposes, I ran away,” Dana continued, her voice full of regret. “I should’ve been there for Beth. She was just a child and I left her in the jungle all by herself. That’s when her problems began.”

Another Coach Blake-ism jumped into Billy’s head, and he passed it on, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, so you can go kill the son of a bitch who tried to kill you.”

“You should give up on novels and write greeting cards.”

“Where’d you run away to?”

She smiled with embarrassment. “I dropped out of BC and went to Paris to try to become a model.”

He couldn’t help but snicker. “I didn’t know people
tried
to become models. I thought they got discovered in the supermarket by some flamboyant photographer from Europe.”

“It was just an excuse to leave home. I couldn’t stand to be around my father and brothers,” she paused. “You really couldn’t see me strutting my assets down the runway?”

“You are definitely beautiful enough.”

She blushed, but covered it with deflection, “I actually spent most of my time holed up in my apartment, writing. Some pretty dark stuff. I think it was my way of dealing with my mother’s death.”

“You just totally ruined my image of models. I pictured naked pillow fights and snorting coke with Kate Moss.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Can you do the face?”

She looked curiously at him. “The face?”

“You know—the model face. The empty, vamp, I haven’t eaten in six days and I’m really pissed off look.”

Billy did the face, at least his version, and Dana fell into laughter. Then Dana took her best shot and he returned the laugh. They looked like two little kids making fish faces at each other.

Some shuffling could be heard from the backseat as Carolyn awakened. “You two are silly,” she said with a groggy giggle. The nap seemed to have soothed her surly attitude.

Dana put her arm around Billy, and pulled close to give him a peck on the cheek. She whispered in his ear, “I feel like I’m living life when I’m with you.”

He avoided the intimate moment by meticulously viewing the map. “We have a long way to go,” he said.

The statement was both literal (going to Clarksville) and figurative (he was not yet ready to put his heart on the line again). But it was better than being at the end of the road, like when he began this journey. He felt hope.