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The Disappeared Girl: A Thriller
The Disappeared Girl: A Thriller
The Disappeared Girl: A Thriller
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The Disappeared Girl: A Thriller

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The author of Straw Men continues his Memory Series with “a terrific read for lovers of political suspense” (Rebecca Forster, USA Today–bestselling author).
 
Two men stand out in a crowd overlooking the Ohio River. A plane is being removed from the water where it crashed decades before. Both men helped put it there.
 
Jim Christensen’s adopted daughter, Melissa, has been troubled of late. She has dreams that feel like memories, unsettling images percolate to the surface. She remembers a terrifying past, possibly her own, from a time before she was adopted. Christensen’s work as an expert in memory makes him the ideal person to help unlock his daughter’s fragile grasp on her own history. But will he want to learn the truth of where Melissa came from? Who she was before? Who might still be looking for her?
 
This dizzying novel of suspense takes the reader back into a dirty war and its human costs, into the fevered mind of one of its survivors, and through the crosshairs of a man desperate to keep his own history vanished.
 
Praise for the Memory Series novels
“The creepiest good time I’ve had in ages—a genuine page-turner!” —Laura Lippman, New York Times bestselling author on Straw Men
 
“[Time Release] is a spellbindingly accomplished first novel.” —James Ellroy, national bestselling author of L.A. Confidential
 
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 4, 2014
ISBN9781626811898
The Disappeared Girl: A Thriller
Author

Martin J. Smith

Martin J. Smith is editor-in-chief of Orange Coast monthly magazine and a former senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine. He is author of several mystery novels and his nonfiction books include include Oops: 20 Life Lessons From the Fiascoes That Shaped America (with co-author Patrick J. Kiger) and Poplorica.

Read more from Martin J. Smith

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The Disappeared Girl by Martin J. Smith is a 2014 Diversion Books publication. I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Melissa, a young woman that was adopted at the age of five and now finds herself pregnant and she is told she should attempt to discover her family history for the sake of her unborn child. When Melissa begins asking questions as well as remembering some odd things from before the age of five ,her father, Jim Christensen, goes to Melissa's Uncle Michael for answers. Michael had arranged the adoption for his brother and sister in law when they discovered they would not be able to have children. He went through a lot of trouble and while everything looked like it was on the up and up, the truth was Jim and his wife just didn't probe for details. They were just thankful to have Melissa. Michael is a man with a conservative public persona. He is a talk show host on the cusp of going from the local market to the national market. An airplane that has been discovered in the Monongahela River could dredge up a plethora of trouble for Michael. To make matters worse, his neice has begun to remember bits and pieces of her ordeal as a child and both she and Jim are pressuring him hard to give up some answers. When Michael remains a vague as possible, Jim and Melissa decide to try and track down her birth parents on their own. What they discover will stun them and their entire family and will change the comfortable lives they have been living forever. This was an incredible story that had me interested from the first chapter and my attention never wavered. Melissa is an interesting girl that has always had some emotional problems. She has a hard time coming to terms with her current situation at first, but begins to channel all her emotions and energy on finding out her family medical history. Having been adopted as a small child instead of at birth could be part of her troubles. Now that early memories are surfacing the irony lies in the fact that her adoptive father is a well known memory expert. The story will take us back in time to Argentina during a complicated period of time within the country. Michael had managed to save a child that had fallen prey to the country's "Dirty War" where an incredible amount of people had disappeared. As a result, the situation was ripe for shady adoptions to occur. When Michael finally returns to the states, he picks his life back up and becomes successful with his talk show, leaving all the incidences of the past in the murky waters of the the Monongahela River. But, now the time has come to pay the piper and Michael is trying to maintain his professional life and protect himself and others from the sins and tragedies of the past. If any of the information from the adoption and how it was all arranged were to come to the surface, Michael's promising career would go up in smoke and he could be facing criminal charges, but not only that, there are others involved and their very lives depend on him keeping their secrets. The tension is incredible as we try to figure out what happened in Argentina, how Michael was involved, if Jim had any idea what strings Michael had pulled to get the adoption passed , and if Melissa is in danger, and as we watch Michael really start to sweat , knowing deep down that after all these years, his darkest secrets are about to be exposed. The plot was perfectly paced and gave the reader just the right amount of information, at just the right time to keep those pages turning. The story is gut wrenching as I began to piece together the puzzle , I couldn't beleive what I was reading. Wow, just wow. The emotional journey for Melissa is a bittersweet ride. There is much hope and much love and much support for this young woman and we know she will still have a lot of issues to work through, but she will be stronger and more at peace now. I'm going to pull out the 5 star rating on this one. A+

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The Disappeared Girl - Martin J. Smith

Chapter 1

Definitely not my demographic, Dorsey thought. Undesirable ears, in radio parlance. These were Bottoms dwellers, the people who lived for generations just three miles downstream from Pittsburgh’s crystalline skyline, but in an area most real estate agents called simply Hell Adjacent. A dozen faces turned as he approached—kids mostly, malicious and dirty white—drawn to the downstream railing of the McKees Rocks Bridge by the news reports. Now here comes this out-of-breath 240-pound white man in a $1,700 suit.

Gents, Dorsey said, tipping an imaginary hat. Ladies. Mind if I join you?

No one recognized him, which figured. No one answered, either. Maybe that was best. They just turned away, focusing again on the salvage barge anchored in the brown Ohio River a hundred feet below. He checked the time on his Blackberry—still an hour before he was due to meet Carole at her brother’s house for Sunday dinner. He tried again to be friendly. They’re trying to pull something up?

The tallest one shrugged. Got it hooked on. Heard the dude say.

’Bout time. Stringy-haired guy. Guy’s already down there half an hour. Sea Hunt’s gonna run outta air.

Dorsey’s stomach clenched as he eased toward the railing. He was standing on crumbling concrete at the center of Western Pennsylvania’s most self-consciously monumental span. Damn, this was high. But the spot offered the only clear view of what was happening below without crossing paths with the local TV news crews documenting the operation from the riverbanks. He gripped the railing and leaned closer, closer, trying again to blend in.

Got what hooked on? Dorsey asked.

The tall one gave him a hard stare, and Dorsey answered with his friendliest smile. The kid was maybe fifteen, a basketball wedged under one arm, shorts sagging. He pointed at the barge. Airplane. Army or something. Heard the dude say they got it hooked on, like, five minutes ago.

In the river? Dorsey tried to sound astonished. It crashed?

A tattooed woman spoke up. Like, a million years ago.

Another woman rolled her eyes. "Like they even had airplanes a million years ago."

Dorsey slid the tailored silk suit jacket from his shoulders, draped it over one arm and rolled the cuffs of his white linen sleeves up to his elbow. In the humid summer heat, a boatman’s voice rose in a syrupy bubble from far below: Clear!

’Bout freakin’ time, Stringy Hair said.

The crane’s motor coughed a cloud of black smoke. Dorsey watched the boom as the steel cable tightened. The plane was buried in muck, or so said the radio station’s news director who’d read it off the Associated Press news feed. The rest Dorsey knew or assumed. The impact sheared off both wings as the pilot ditched in the Monongahela River one icy night in January 1983, twenty-two years before. The plane parts sank like bricks, but the fuselage rode the currents for months or even years, covering a mile of the Mon, past the Point where that river and the Allegheny flowed together in a grand geographic accident that became the Ohio. But the Ohio River got weird near Neville Island. The same currents that regularly delivered the bodies of bridge jumpers and mob hits to McKees Rocks must have deposited the plane’s hydrodynamic fuselage here as well. It finally settled, and over the years silt buried everything but the tip of its tail. That’s what finally gave it away. County divers spotted the tail while on a body search, according to the news report, sticking up from the mud like a shark fin.

The crane boom groaned, and the operator revved its motor to a bellow. The entire barge dipped like a bobber, straining against the weight and the sucking mud. The guy beside Dorsey pulled a mouthful of malt liquor from a quart bottle of King Cobra.

Big goddamn carp, he said, and the Bottoms crowd laughed.

Then something popped. It was muffled by sixty feet of river water, but Dorsey heard it—the sound of corroded metal snapping like a branch. The crane’s motor changed pitch, and with a high whine the steel cable started to move. Whatever was still hooked on wasn’t putting up much fight.

Something fluttered beneath the water’s surface as the prize moved back and forth like an underwater kite, growing by the second. Blurry edges became distinct. When the fractured piece of an airplane tail finally broke the river surface in a cascade of white water, Dorsey felt an odd mix of emotions. Sadness—remembering again his long-ago losses—but also an unexpected surge of relief.

With the plane missing all those years, conspiracy buffs had run amok with what the newspapers called the Mystery of the Mon. Now, finally, they’d realize that the plane hadn’t been carrying a secret payload of nuclear bombs or biological weapons or Soviet spies, and hadn’t been extracted from the river during a covert, late-night government operation. It had simply broken apart and drifted in the river until it sunk into the mud. Its recovery would end the talk, all that hackneyed freelance speculation. At least that’s what he hoped.

The crane operator swung his boom over the barge, his catch clearly now a tail section from a C-130 Hercules. It rotated slowly like a suspended side of beef while two guys from the salvage crew hosed away the accumulated filth.

That the wing?

Ain’t no wing.

That thingy on back then.

Snapped right off, huh?

Oopsyfuckingdoops. The guy with the malt liquor took another long pull, finishing it off. They’s done for the day. Running outta sun.

I’m hungry anyway.

The locals shuffled away, heading west, following the bridge back into the Bottoms, moving to the cadence of a bouncing basketball. Dorsey watched them go, wondering if his Lincoln Navigator was safe in the Ukrainian Orthodox church lot where he’d parked it. When he turned back, a solitary figure lingered at the downstream railing. Dorsey could tell, even with the man facing away, that he wasn’t with the others. The clothes were too nice, his shoes shined, his silver-streaked hair oiled and combed straight back along the contour of his skull.

Michael Dorsey, the man said without turning around.

Dorsey swallowed hard. There was something familiar about his voice, a softness to what should have been the hard K sound in Dorsey’s first name. It was the distinctive accent of a Buenos Aires native, and Dorsey responded as a reflex.

Ramon?

How long had it been? Guerra finally turned. His smile was genuine. They say there are no coincidences, my friend.

For the first time in at least a decade, Dorsey experienced the disorienting sensation of looking into Guerra’s eyes—one a bright and brilliant blue, the other darker, almost violet. His instinct was to look away, and when he finally did Dorsey noticed the heaviness of Guerra’s jawline and the thinness of the hair sweeping straight back from his forehead. He was a little stooped, too, in the way the older men seem to get after their children are grown. He reached for Guerra’s hand and found genuine warmth in his grip.

I’ll be damned, Ramon. On the way down, I wondered—I just had this weird feeling I might see you here.

A premonition? Or perhaps you heard the news this morning, like me, and decided to come?

Curious, is all. You?

Guerra nodded. Something unspoken passed between them.

Guerra relaxed, but it seemed a conscious choice. I’ve been terrible about staying in touch, Michael. I’m sorry about that. But it seems—I listen to you all the time, you know. Your show. You are very good.

Lucky, mostly.

Guerra waved away his attempt at modesty. Your slogan, how does it go again?

Dorsey lapsed into his on-air voice: "‘Backtalk with Michael Dorsey—Keeping the Thought in Thought-Provoking Radio.’"

Guerra spilt a grin beneath his thick moustache. "So true. So much talk, talk, talk out there, but no one is saying anything. You, your call-in show, it is very different. There is clear moral vision. Values. A voice of authority. Your voice."

Dorsey studied Guerra, trying to decide if he was sincere or just blowing smoke up his ass. It was hard to tell even with their history.

What about you, Ramon? Your business?

We have a free-trade president again, thank God. Guerra gestured to the heavens. Do what you can to keep the Republicans in power, Michael. I nearly starved with the Democrats.

Dorsey held up both hands, palms out. Strictly nonpartisan, Ramon.

Of course. Guerra’s grin this time was more like his moustache, carefully considered and trimmed for effect. He turned back toward the bridge railing. Strictly.

Do you ever miss medicine, Ramon?

Dorsey asked it without thinking, and regretted bringing it up as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Guerra looked away without answering, then leaned out over the bridge railing. Dorsey joined him, gazing almost straight down at the salvage barge. The crane operator had lowered the twisted chunk of the airplane’s tail onto the deck, and they stared at it a long time before either of them spoke again.

We are both lucky, Michael. It nearly ended for us both the night that plane went down. For us all.

Dorsey stepped back, uncomfortable now. They hadn’t spoken about this since it happened. Guerra leaned his forearms on the bridge rail and laced his fingers together high above the river. He closed his eyes, and for a moment Dorsey thought he might be praying. Then, suddenly, Guerra said, The girl must be a young woman now.

Dorsey thought for a moment. Melissa’s twenty-seven—hard to believe—and she’s had a rough go. Lot of hardwired emotional problems, the kind you so often see in late-adopted kids. Actually, I’m on my way to their house. Her father—her adoptive father—remarried, and—

Remarried? Guerra said. Don’t tell me a divorce, after all they went through to adopt a child.

Dorsey shook his head. Jim, my brother-in-law, lost his first wife a few years ago. Car accident. Coma. Nasty stuff. But he remarried, and Carole and I are getting together with them tonight. I’ve been so busy with—anyway, Melissa should be there. He chanced another look into Guerra’s mesmerizing eyes. She’s struggled, Ramon, but everything worked out as well as it could, considering. For her. For them. For me. What we did, it was a good thing— Dorsey cocked his head toward the river below —even if things didn’t go exactly as we’d planned.

Guerra nodded. For me as well. I have a good life here, thanks to you.

We helped each other, Ramon.

The crane motor stopped. The kid was right. The salvage crew was shutting down for the night. But they’d be back at it in the morning, and they’d keep at it until the river released its grip on the plane, or whatever was left of it.

Dorsey checked his watch again. I should get on out to Shadyside.

Of course.

Far below, a dark, rubbery head rose from the mud-brown river right next to the barge. The scuba diver kicked to a ladder dangling from the barge’s lip and tossed a pair of black swim fins onto the deck.

Guerra sighed. Twenty-two years the river held our secrets, Michael.

Dorsey answered with words he wanted to believe: I think we’re fine.

Chapter 2

Christensen upended the Merlot, letting the last rosy drops trickle into his older sister’s glass. Not drunk, but not exactly sober, he set the empty bottle next to the other two in the center of a broad dining room table covered with dessert dishes and one empty, untouched dinner plate. Where was Melissa, anyway?

Kicked already? his sister asked.

We’ve got more, Carole. I’ll get it. Brenna lifted her bare feet from his lap, starting to get up.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Michael Dorsey held up both hands, palms out. At that moment, Christensen thought his brother-in-law looked like Buddha dressed for business, though with a tear-shaped stain of au jus on the breast pocket of his crisp white linen shirt. Early flight tomorrow.

Carole leaned forward, took her husband’s hand in hers and kissed his palm. She was a teetotaler, but Christensen knew he’d poured her at least two glasses. She spread her arms wide and sang. If I can—buhm, buhm—make it there …

Dorsey shot her a look, a gentle reprimand.

New York? Christensen asked.

Carole rolled into the chorus: New York, New York!

Oh God. Her husband looked pained. Not Sinatra again.

Really atrocious Sinatra, Brenna added. You’ll be hearing from his estate.

Carole put a finger to her lips, teasing her husband. Ooh, right. Almost forgot. Strictly hush-hush.

Dorsey shook his head, but he was smiling. He clasped his hands across his belly and leaned back. His chair creaked in protest. Nice cover, hon. Nobody suspects a thing.

For crying out loud, she said, they’re family, only family we’ve got. Carole turned, unable to suppress a broad smile. Michael has some news.

Nothing’s inked. We’re still—

"Backtalk is going national," Carole interrupted.

"May go national. Nothing’s final."

Carole took that as permission to spill it all. He’s been in talks with the network people for months. It’s unbelievable, what could happen.

National? Brenna said. "You mean, like, national?"

The announcement brought the banter to an abrupt halt. Dorsey’s show had become a Pittsburgh talk-radio powerhouse in the three years since it hit the air. Backtalk had even been featured on Nightline from time to time, whenever Dorsey wrenched some significant revelation from one of his high-profile guests. But national?

Wait, Christensen said at last, you’re telling me there are that many fanatical right-wing sociopaths out there?

Dorsey picked up his fork and scraped the last bit of cheesecake from his wife’s dessert plate. Damned right. It’s finally paying off.

Your hard work?

The man waited a perfect beat. It was his genius. Our breeding program. There’s a ranch in Wyoming.

Christensen’s laugh erupted, honest and spontaneous. He loathed his brother-in-law’s politics, but never doubted that Dorsey was one of the funniest and best-informed social commentators around. His conservative credentials were impeccable. Years in the State Department. Reagan-era diplomat. Eastern Regional Commissioner of the INS—a role that gave him remarkable insight into an agency with critical national security importance after the World Trade Center attacks. In a world where conservative listeners embraced Rush’s ravings and the pompous pieties of Dr. Phil, where the prerequisites for mass media punditry were woefully low, Michael Dorsey was impossibly overqualified. He had a self-effacing sense of humor plus a dead-on, deadpan delivery that, combined with his velvety basso profundo voice, had fast become a radio trademark. TV might never be an option given Dorsey’s girth and his increasingly desperate comb-over, but the man was outright seductive with a radio mike.

One favor, Michael, Christensen said. Carole retrieved her husband’s plate and handed it across the table. Christensen paused for emphasis, dead serious. Raise the level of discourse out there in Radioland. Strike a blow for evolved people everywhere.

Dorsey nodded. I’m going to try. Thank you for your confidence.

Christensen raised his wineglass in toast: To your success, Michael. That’s wonderful news. The others followed suit, and the glasses met midtable with a clink of crystal.

Christensen sipped his wine and turned to Brenna. And while I’m at it— He cleared his throat. A little Irish number in tribute to my wife, Ms. Kennedy here.

He raised his glass again. Brenna rolled her green eyes, so striking in a face framed by her copper-colored hair, but he recited anyway: The mist on the glass is congealing, ’tis the hurricane’s icy breath. And it shows how the warmth of friendship grows cold in the clasp of death. So stand, stand to your glasses steady, and drink to your sweetheart’s eyes.

After a silent moment—impressed silence, he hoped, not awkward embarrassment—they all drained their glasses. Then Carole reached for her husband’s hand. At the same time, Brenna laid her left hand gently along the right side of Christensen’s face. She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips, tasting like heaven, then wiped away a tear as she pulled back. Everyone saw her do it, and she was suddenly self-conscious. She started clearing dishes.

OK, folks, show’s over, she said.

Damn, Jim, Dorsey said. You couldn’t just buy her a Toast-R-Oven like a regular guy? I’m feeling a little inarticulate here.

Christensen, relieved, joined Brenna in stacking plates. Taylor and Annie had eaten fast and adjourned together. The living room was alive with their teenage video game chatter, and Christensen marveled at how well Brenna’s son and his younger daughter were getting along. He left Melissa’s plate in place, wondering again why she’d wandered away from the table just as dinner was served. Headache, she’d said, but Christensen could tell something was bothering her.

There were times, in the brittle aftermath of Molly’s death—tough, bitter years—when his oldest daughter had deeply resented him and his relationship with Brenna. Maybe their recent marriage, even after years of living together, was stirring all that up again. Or maybe his daughter’s new meds were wreaking havoc on her famously unstable moods. She looked thinner than usual, and lately dark crescents had reappeared behind the loose curtain of black hair that often hid her brown almond eyes. For years now she’d worn Molly’s haircut, a tribute to—and, he suspected, Melissa’s deliberately haunting impersonation of—a woman now gone.

He hefted the plates and headed for the kitchen. I’m putting on more coffee. Who wants some?

The three adults remaining at the table raised their hands.

Unleaded this time?

If you have it, Carole said.

The lamb-slick plates slid as Christensen set them beside the sink, and the clatter of that little avalanche filled the kitchen. When it settled, and after the applause from the dining room died down, Christensen heard another sound. He cocked his head toward a muted, distant rumble from upstairs—the rush of water through the house’s ancient pipes. In winter he would have assumed it was the radiators. But it was late summer.

He checked the microwave clock—nearly ten—and followed the sound out another kitchen door and into the living room, where Annie and Taylor were transfixed by a shooter game he’d expressly forbidden them to play. He went to the base of the stairs and listened.

’Lis? he called.

She’d showered earlier. He stepped onto the first stair, and its groan echoed through the ground floor. At the landing, he heard Brenna call his name. She was at the bottom of the stairs when he turned.

Everything OK? she said.

Just checking on Melissa. You know.

Brenna nodded. She knew. Melissa had never been an easy child, not since the day Christensen and Molly adopted her as an already troubled five-year-old. The mild antidepressants and other meds helped, but the intervening years hadn’t changed her much, and in many ways Christensen, the vaunted psychologist, always felt he’d somehow failed her. After graduating from Penn State at twenty-three, she’d moved home and never left, and for the past few weeks she’d seemed brittle enough to shatter. She seemed to enjoy her job at a downtown graphic-design studio, or at least said she did, and was even saving a little money. He hoped she was nearly ready to get her own place.

I’ll brew the coffee, Brenna said. Ask her if she wants me to make her a plate before I put everything away.

OK.

Jim? She touched his hand on the banister. That toast—it was beautiful. She leaned up to kiss him again, and this time there was a promise in it.

The stairs ended at the midpoint of an upstairs hallway, and Christensen turned left, following the sound of running water toward the kids’ bathroom at the far end of the hall. The door was closed, but bright light sprayed in a golden crescent onto the hardwood floor beneath it. Melissa was filling the tub; it sounded nearly full. He tapped lightly with one knuckle.

’Lis?

He tapped again.

Aunt Carole and Uncle Michael are getting ready to take off. You want to say goodbye?

A strange sensation came over him, hard to pinpoint at first, but warm and wet and a little bit startling. He looked at his feet. He’d slipped off his shoes during dinner, and now cold water was seeping through the gap at the bottom of the bathroom door and soaking his socks. He knocked harder this time.

Melissa?

He tried the doorknob, an ancient thing for which he’d long since lost the skeleton key. It turned, but his push didn’t budge the door. She must have slid the deadbolt on the inside. He bent to the keyhole, squinting from the dim hallway into the harsh glare. What came into focus took his breath away: a fresh spray of blood across the white tile surrounding the tub. On instinct and adrenaline, Christensen put his shoulder hard to the door and splintered the wood frame into which the tiny deadbolt slid.

His daughter was naked, her face nearly as white as the bathroom tile but submerged in water the color of a pale merlot. Eyes closed, head dipped to one side, she could have been sleeping.

In a single motion, he shut off the water and reached deep into the tub, trying to find the drain. She hadn’t stoppered it, but the heel of her left foot was resting atop the hole, blocking the water’s flow. He lifted her foot away, and immediately felt his daughter grab his triceps with surprising strength.

Daddy!

Her voice was a hoarse whisper. When he turned, he saw that the hand clutching him was attached to a wrist that gaped open—a smooth, almost surgical crossways incision. Each of his daughter’s weak heartbeats pushed another spoonful of blood into the cold, crimson pool.

I’m here, baby. I’m here.

Her eyes flickered open. Daddy!

Christensen grabbed his daughter’s forearm and squeezed, trying to stem the flow of blood. He pulled a towel off the nearby rack, shook it out and twisted it into a makeshift tourniquet just below her elbow. Melissa winced at the pinch, then began to shiver.

Cold, she moaned.

Hold this tight, Christensen commanded. Hold it! He turned back toward the open bathroom door. Bren!

Melissa began thrashing her arms. Her diluted blood soaked his face, his shirt, his hair.

Mi-cah! she screamed.

Brenna! he called again. I need help! Bring the phone!

Melissa’s grip tightened even as her eyes seemed to fade. She clung to him like she was drowning.

Christensen could hear the scrabbling of furniture in the dining room below and hurried footsteps on the stairs, but the wait seemed to last forever. When a figure finally appeared in the bathroom doorway, it wasn’t Brenna but Annie, Melissa’s fifteen-year-old sister. Her eyes went wide and she made a sound, a shocked and short-circuited Ah! She gagged but didn’t throw up.

Annie, get Brenna. Now. Tell her to call 911.

His younger daughter didn’t move, just stared at them like a stunned deer. Christensen turned back to Melissa. Her eyes were still open, staring at her father’s panicked face but seeing something else, something terrifying.

Hang on, baby. Hang on.

She clutched at him, but he pried her fingers loose and motioned Annie forward. Listen to me, Annie: hold the towel just like this, he said, and finally she responded. Keep it twisted tight.

He pushed past Annie, heading for the upstairs phone. The grown-ups were just mounting the stairs, one after the other. In his wake, Melissa’s frail and fading plea: Please don’t let me sink.

Chapter 3

Someone had tried to make Mount Mercy Hospital’s tenth-floor visitor’s lounge a calming place of potted plants, pastel colors, and cushy chairs arranged in intimate clusters. They’d almost succeeded. Dorsey didn’t exactly unclench as he entered, but the lounge was a welcome refuge from the agony down the hall. He looked back at Jim and Carole pacing outside Melissa’s room. If he followed his instincts, he’d be pacing with them. Not just because she’d lost so much blood, but because even from Jim’s dining room he’d heard her scream the name.

It was 4:30 a.m., but he hit three buttons on his Blackberry and waited. First time he’d ever bothered Hickton at home. Tough. That’s what retainers were for—access when needed.

Robert? Michael Dorsey, he said when his attorney answered. It’s your lucky day. When was the last time this was considered a billable hour for you?

Hickton cleared his throat. What can I do for you, Michael?

"Sorry about the late call. But it’s about the New York trip. I’m going

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