Taken (19 page)

I
was
going back. I asked him, “How, exactly, will I get back?”

“Uh, you will call Mickie, or Victoria. I expect they will send Highlands security here to get you. I’ll hide out and watch until you’re safely in their custody, and then…I’ll go.”

After a few blocks, I asked him, “What’s in the south?”

“That’s where I live.”

“That’s where Dr. Reyes lives?”

“Yes.”

“But you just shredded his identity, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I’ve shut down his clinic, too. I’ve found a bigger space that I’ll be moving to.”

“As who? You can’t be Dr. Reyes. You can’t be Dr. Meyers.”

“As someone new. Anew version of me. Slightly older, I’m thinking.” We pulled onto the Florida Turnpike ramp. “The clinic will have good diagnostic equipment. Refurbished, but good.”

“Equipment supplied by Albert?”

“That’s right. That’s the plan.”

“And you don’t think anyone is ever going to find out who you are?”

“No. People down there have more important things on their minds. More important than a dead rich guy who couldn’t fly a helicopter.”

As we drove in his run-down Daimler alongside Ferraris and Peugeots and Porsches, he added, almost boisterously, “And you know what, Charity? I can’t wait! I can’t wait to get there and move in and set everything up and get started.” Again, in a flash, I remembered my father the way he used to be, back when my mother was alive. He was boyish, and idealistic. He was someone to look up to.

We drove for about ten miles in silence except for the wheezing of that old car before he finally spoke again. “I said, on Christmas Eve, that you only get one chance to choose your path in life. I asked you to think about that. Did you?”

“No,” I admitted. “Not really.”

“Okay. Well, that’s good, because it’s not true. I was lying. You get as many chances as you want; as many as you dare to make for yourself.”

We pulled off the turnpike and into the rest area. I looked at the long row of cars parked ahead of us and realized something: I was back in civilization. I was free to run to any one of these cars and knock on the window and announce who I was. I asked him, “Aren’t the Highlands security guards looking for me now? And the police?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because your ex-stepmother knows what’s good for her. She followed my instructions. She told the authorities exactly what she was supposed to tell them and nothing more.”

We pulled into a diagonal space. I said, “You mean, Mickie did what was best for Mickie?”

My father shook his head sadly, but he spoke with a measure of forgiveness. “It’s not her fault. It’s mine. I never should have married her. I was so unhappy when I met her. I was like…a recluse. A hermit. All I did was work; you know that.”

“You had no life.”

“Not really. I was stumbling along, down the wrong path. And Mickie happened to be standing on it.”

“Does she really think you’re dead?”

“Oh yes. She’s already filed a claim on my insurance.”

“What about me?”

He looked down at the steering wheel. He spoke softly. “Obviously, if you call her tonight, she’ll know you’re okay. If you don’t call her? I expect she’ll draw her own conclusion, a limited conclusion based on what she saw on the vidscreen tonight and what she’ll hear from Victoria.”

I suddenly remembered the scene in the field. I warned him, “You’d better not have hurt her!”

“Who? Victoria? No! Heavens no. She ran away from us, and we let her run. She left the bag right there on the seat. We even waited for her to come back and drive away before we set off after you. She was fine.”

“No, she wasn’t fine! Not if she didn’t have me! She was upset.”

He cringed. “Yes. You’re right. I don’t know what I can say about that except, again, that I’m sorry.”

“You used her like a pawn, too.”

“I suppose we did, but that wasn’t the plan. Mickie was supposed to deliver the currency.”

The thought of Victoria driving home without me filled my eyes with tears. My father waited for a long time before adding, “Anyway, however this plays out, based on what we know about Mickie, you’ll probably wind up as the subject of her next vidseries.”

My anger at Mickie overtook my anger for him. “That’s so phony! She doesn’t care crap about me. How can she do that?”

“Because it’s all just video to her. Mickie Meyers is what you see on the vidscreen. There’s no one else in there. When the camera goes off, she ceases to exist.” He shut off the engine. “Come on. We need to get you some solid food.”

I nearly said, “That’s what Mom told you once,” but I stopped myself.

I followed him into the rest area’s food court, a circular room of salad bars, Smart Water stations, and fast-food outlets. I half expected someone to point at me and yell, “That’s the girl on the ‘Taken’ flyers!” But no one paid any attention to us.

We both ordered Mexican pizzas and liteshakes. I pointed out, “This will be my first solid food in three days.”

My father grimaced. He picked up the tray and led the way to a clean table in the back with no other diners near it. He looked around to be sure no one was listening, then he began: “Do you remember what Victoria called Albert tonight, out in the field? Were you listening to that?”

“I was listening. But what? What did she call him?”

“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde! She called Albert that. And she was right, to some extent. But she should really have called
me
that.”

“Victoria is always right.”

“She is. Yeah. She’s great.”

We each took a bite and reflected on Victoria. Then he spoke again: “But it’s really like the Jekyll-and-Hyde story in reverse. Dr. Henry Jekyll became an evil character, Edward Hyde. Edward Hyde grew ever stronger and took over the life of the good but weak Henry Jekyll.

“For me, the opposite happened. Every time Dr. Reyes appeared at the clinic and helped heal wounds and stop infections and save lives, he became stronger. And Dr. Hank Meyers, hiding behind his walls, hoarding his currency in his vault, became weaker. Soon I was actively plotting how to escape into Reyes full-time. I made Hank Meyers into even more of a selfish buffoon, with the golf and the helicopter and the college football. The more self-indulgent Hank Meyers became, the less chance there was of anyone relating him to the selfless Dr. Reyes.

“Then one day Albert came walking into my clinic, in regular clothes, of course. He had brought his sister there for help. I froze when he looked at me. I thought my double life had been exposed and all would be destroyed. But Albert had a secret of his own. He had lied to get medical coverage for his sister, and he was in a lot of trouble with RDS.”

I said, “I actually know this part. Dessi told me.”

My father looked confused again; then he remembered. “Oh. Right. Neve.”

“Sorry. Go on.”

He collected his thoughts. “Okay. RDS contacted me about firing Albert, but I said no. Instead, Albert and I made a deal. I would protect his lie, and he would protect mine. And I would give his sister the best medical care I could.” His eyes widened. “Then, just on his own, on his days off, he started to help out at the clinic, too! He assisted with the more complicated procedures, like the cleft palate surgeries.”

“As Dr. Lanyon?”

He looked amazed. “Yes. How did you know that?”

“I just figured it out. Dr. Lanyon was another name that you used. Dessi used it during the kidnapping. So if Albert used it during a cleft palate surgery, a girl who wanted to thank him with a
tornada
would carve an
L
on it.”

He pointed at me. “That’s very good. Yes. He showed me that doll. He was proud of it.” His voice rose. “Of course he was! What else did he have to be proud of? Trimming Mickie’s damn Christmas tree? Washing my car? No. Albert plunged into the new life just like I had, full tilt.” His voice dropped. “And that’s when the kidnapping plot was born.”

I held up a hand to stop him. “That’s what I can’t understand. Why did you have to attack me like that? Your own daughter.” He looked wounded. I added, “Why couldn’t you just divorce Mickie, move out with me, and open your own clinic down south?”

He pressed his pointer fingers together. “Because we wouldn’t
belong
there, and people would know it. There are bad people down there, Charity. Lots of them. Bad poor people. Poor doesn’t equal good, believe me. They’d go after a wealthy doctor and his daughter. We would never have been safe.”

He rolled his eyes. “And your ex-stepmother? Would she ever leave us alone, with a story like that to tell? No. I knew I had to give Mickie
another
story, and now she has it. Her husband is dead; her stepdaughter has been taken. She’ll run with that one for years.”

A noisy family of four sat at the table next to us. My father leaned forward and whispered, “The final, ultimate question was: Could I leave Dr. Henry Meyers behind forever? And the answer was, I could, except for one thing—my daughter. You. I wanted you to have the chance to join me, Charity. To join me in the kind of life that we once had, where we were free. That’s what this was all about. And, as crazy as it might sound, I think it was the right thing to do.”

He sat back, as if he had rested his case.

Now it was my turn to reply. He wasn’t going to like what he heard. “Okay. Thank you for the explanation. But…what you did was outrageous, and dangerous, and it did hurt a lot of people. Look at Dessi. Look at Victoria. As to the clinic doctor business, I think you should do it if it makes you happy. But it’s not for me. I have friends. I have school. I have Victoria.”

He replied, with an edge of desperation, “But you’d go to school. I have one in mind. It’s a Catholic school with real kids, not vidscreen kids.”

“What? I would go to school disguised? Like at Halloween? That’s nuts. That’s no way to live.”

“Listen! Listen. You forget who I am. I have a unique ability. I can change the way people look almost permanently. You could change your appearance and never have to worry about being recognized. You could have fun with that—choosing your new hair and eyes and all. You could change your name! I already have one for you. Listen to this: Caridad. ‘Charity’ in Spanish is
caridad.
You’d be Cari, and I’d be Dad.”

He smiled a heartbreaking smile at me. Heartbreaking because it was not going to be returned. I shook my head back and forth and whispered, “No. It’s a crazy plan. You should never have done this to me. My answer is no.”

We sat in miserable silence until he managed to say, “All right. Well, thank you for listening. And again, I am sorry.” A tear bubbled up in the corner of his right eye and rolled down his cheek. “You remember when you made that plea into the vidcamera, when you asked me to please help you? I was sitting in the house, just ten meters away, and I was answering you back. ‘I am,’ I said. ‘I am helping you.’ But I guess I was wrong.”

“Yes,” I told him. “You were wrong.”

He wiped his eyes with a napkin. “Maybe you’d like some time to think—”

“No.”

He folded the napkin carefully and set it down. “Okay, then. I’m sorry again. Just tell me when you’re ready to go.”

“I’m ready right now.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

As I stood up to leave, though, my mind began racing, like when I first came to my senses after the kidnapping. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. I was ready to go home to The Highlands. That’s all I had hoped for since the ordeal began. I was ready to go back. Wasn’t I?

After we had walked through the food court, I surprised my father with a question. “What did it say in Rockefeller Center? About useful service?”

He smiled curiously, and sadly. “You remember that?”

“Yeah. What was it?”

“‘The rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind.’”

“Yeah. And the part about selfishness burning up, and—what’s the rest?”

He held the door open and told me, “‘The greatness of the human soul is set free.’”

“Yeah.”

We stepped back out into the cold air. The moon was gone. The stars were shining brightly all around me. I stepped off the sidewalk into the wide parking lot and looked down. I was standing on top of a yellow line. It ran from my feet across many meters of asphalt and off into the darkness, into infinity. It was a thick line, cracked in many places, stained with tire marks and oil spots—the line that separated northbound traffic from southbound traffic.

Those were my two choices.

Northbound was life with Mickie and Victoria. Southbound was life with my father and, in a way, the ghost of my mother.

I stood on that line for what seemed like a long time, looking both ways. I thought about everything that had brought me to that point. I went back over what I had learned about myself in the last two days. And I thought about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

El Día de los Reyes

M
y father pulled the old Daimler into a dirt field. It was not a great parking spot, but we were both happy and relieved to be out of the car after the long drive from Miami.

We walked quickly toward the clamor of activity and excitement at the center of town, a celebration advertised by a red-and-white banner that spanned the main road:
LA IGLESIA DE LA NATIVIDAD WELCOMES YOU TO THE TOWN OF MANGROVE’S CHRISTMAS CARNAVAL, JANUARY
6, 2036.

We turned left at the banner and began a slow progress through the crowd: people dressed in wild, feathery costumes; people waving brightly colored lanterns; people squirting water at each other from plastic pistols.

Up ahead, I could see the stage lights and other preparations for a Mickie Meyers vidcast. Mickie and her crew had set up, once again, in the town center of Mangrove. I could see her standing with the mayor and Mr. Patterson on a short riser while an assortment of kids-to-be-used-as-props flanked the stage. The Highlands kids, with their lighter derma, occupied the area to the right. The Mangrove kids stood to the left.

We veered left, and I walked right through the Mangrove kids as if I were one of them, as if I had always been one of them. From behind, I heard my father whisper, “Don’t get too confident now, Cari.”

I smiled a perfect white smile. “I won’t, Papi.”

As before, a large vidscreen had been set up on the side of the stage. Until the show began, a stationary camera on top of the screen was scanning the faces in the crowd. I moved forward carefully until I could see both my father and me on it. My father had very dark skin, and the white hair and white bushy mustache of an elderly Hispanic man. He looked somewhat hunched, as if he’d spent a lifetime picking lettuce. (He did not look that way in his clinic, though, as Dr. Nueves.)

I looked more like his granddaughter,
su nieta,
than his daughter,
su hija.
I had a government ID card that said I was Caridad Nueves. It was a hortatory name, the same one my mother had given me. My straight brown hair was gone—it was now curly and black. My eyes were a deep brown to match it. My derma was three shades darker than it had been, too. I was wearing a Guatemalan corte jacket with deep pockets, and balsa-wood clogs that made me look ten centimeters taller. In my opinion, the girl on the vidscreen looked very much like Victoria.

I turned to watch the broadcast preparations. Lena hurried past me without so much as a glance. Then Mickie herself, while checking out the crowd, looked right at me. Clearly, she did not recognize me. Or my father.

I whispered, “Papi, Mickie doesn’t know you.”

He grinned. “No, Cari. She never did.”

Mickie’s attention switched to the two men standing next to her—Mayor Ortiz and Mr. Patterson. I edged close enough to hear her ask the mayor, “Why couldn’t you have started this party one hour later? Or moved it one street over?”

The mayor shrugged. “We only have one main street. And the Carnaval starts when the church says it starts. I have nothing to do with it.”

“Wouldn’t the church listen to you? Aren’t you the mayor?”

“I am. I am the mayor of Mangrove, which today is having its Christmas Carnaval as it does every year on El Día de los Reyes. If you want to do a show about that, you are more than welcome.”

Mickie shook her head angrily. “The show isn’t about that. It’s about my stepdaughter. My kidnapped stepdaughter. Don’t you know that?”

“Oh, I know it. She was taken from home, was she not, from The Highlands? With its great security? That would be an interesting show to see. And you could vid it right there, in The Highlands.”

Mickie pointed at the ground. “This is where she was held prisoner. In Mangrove. This is where the kidnappers lived.”

The mayor smiled slightly. “I don’t know about that. I heard it was an inside job.”

Mickie snarled. “All right. Forget it. Forget you. You’re never going to see your face on my show again, ever.” The mayor raised his eyebrows, indicating that he didn’t much care, which made Mickie even angrier. She went on: “And there will be no more Kid-to-Kid Days, either.”

The mayor smiled. “They really weren’t worth all the trouble for us. The extra security; the trash pickup. And then, most of our kids refused to wear those clothes anyway.”

Mickie opened her mouth to say something angry, but she never got the chance. A reveler in green sequins and pink feathers danced up beside her, raised a water pistol, and blasted her in the back of the neck. Mickie screamed like she had been shot by a bullet. She yelled, “My God! Lena! Get over here!” Then she ducked behind the line of bemused Highlands kids and started haranguing the security guards: “Did you see that? What if that was a real gun! I’d be dead now.” The guards, followed by the butlers, pulled out their Glocks. They aimed them at the feathered people in the crowd, who just laughed and squirted water at them.

I found a place about five rows back from the stage and waited, with about one hundred others, for Mickie to calm down, dry off, and begin the vidcast. The large screen went blank for a moment and then flickered on again with Mickie’s logo—a pair of rectangular red glasses beneath which, as if written by an invisible hand, appeared the name Mickie Meyers in lipstick-red cursive. Then the logo faded away and a new image appeared.

I stared at the vidscreen for several seconds before I could comprehend this fact: I was looking at myself, my old self from just one week before. My pale, unsmiling face, in grainy black-and-white, now filled the bottom two-thirds of the screen, while information about my kidnapping filled the top third. This was the “Taken” flyer that Patience and Hopewell had created and passed out all over Mangrove, at risk to their own lives. With my jaw hanging open and my lips moving slightly, I read the words: “Taken, January first, two thousand thirty-six, from The Highlands.”

The flyer then started to fade, and a live image of Mickie’s face filled the screen. She stared into the camera, rather grimly, and said, “This is Mickie Meyers, reporting from the town of Mangrove, a town sometimes associated with revelry and fun. But recently, it’s a town associated with a heinous crime—the kidnapping of my stepdaughter, Charity Meyers, and the murder of her father, Dr. Henry Meyers. The flyer that you just saw is part of a continuing effort to find Charity Meyers. That effort goes on, as I will explain to you later in the broadcast.”

Mickie followed Kurt and his camera to the center of the stage. “First, though, I would like to begin with a very special story. Isn’t it always at times like these, when evil seems to be winning, that a hero emerges? That’s exactly what happened here. Let me open this segment by reading a passage to you from one of the most popular novel series of the last ten years, brought to you by SatPub. I am, of course, referring to the Ramiro Fortunato Series for Young Readers.”

Mickie held up a familiar-looking book and started to read out loud: “‘Even though we needed the currency badly to fix a hole in the roof, I returned the bound-up wad of dollars to the elderly couple. They were so grateful. They called me a hero. But no, I wasn’t a hero. I was just someone trying to do what was right.’”

Mickie closed the book dramatically and explained, “The speaker is a young man named Ramiro Fortunato. In this series of books, he faces many challenges, some of them dangerous, but he always triumphs because he knows what is right. And he
does
what is right. But don’t just take my word for it.”

Mickie stepped down from the stage and walked into the crowd. At first I was shocked by such an un-Mickie-like move, and I started to back away. But I soon figured out that it was prearranged; a group of kids had been hand-selected to talk to her. Mickie extended the microphone and asked the nearest girl, “What is your favorite Ramiro story?”

The girl leaned toward it shyly and replied, “The one where he saw a lawn guy rob a kid’s bike and throw it in a van. Ramiro ran after the van so fast that he caught the guy and made him give the bike back.”

“Good,” Mickie replied. “Great.”

She turned to a short boy. “How about you?”

The boy smiled slyly. “Uh, I like the one where Ramiro Fortunato gets into a fight with a drug dealer.”

“Yes? Really? Go on.”

The boy went on. “Yeah. And he kicked his lily-white ass.”

The rest of the kids snickered. Mickie pulled back the mike. She muttered to Lena, “At least we’re not live.” Kurt set up next to her, the light came on, and she continued. “Like these children, one boy from this town grew up loving Ramiro Fortunato novels. He took them to heart. Then, one week ago, he had the opportunity to become a hero himself. You are going to meet that very special young man today.”

Mickie climbed back onto the stage, talking as she went. “You all know by now what happened to Dr. Henry Meyers and his daughter, Charity. It was a tragedy that struck close to the heart for me. And I want to thank all of you for your prayers and for your messages of hope.”

Mickie paused and looked upward. Even from my spot, some ten meters away, I could see her eyes moisten. As if on cue, tears rolled down her cheeks. They looked positively enormous on the vidscreen, like an avalanche of phony grief. Mickie gulped audibly and then continued: “It was especially moving to hear from parents who have gone through such a tragedy themselves, and who are still going through it. Still ‘living with it,’ as I am.

“What you might not know is the role a young man from Mangrove played in a daring rescue attempt. He did not succeed, but he did try. He did what he knew was right. And that’s why he is a real-life Ramiro. Let me introduce you to a young man who just wants to be called Dezi.” She turned to Lena and added rhetorically, “His mother must have been a big
I Love Lucy
fan to call him that. Right? Let’s bring him out.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. I looked around and caught my father’s eye. He raised his shoulders, as puzzled as I was.

At Lena’s urging, Dessi walked out from the side of the stage and stood next to Mickie. He looked terrified. I saw no trace of the anger, or the arrogance, that usually showed on his face.

Mickie took him by the elbow. She began by mispronouncing his name again: “Dezi, first of all, thank you for what you tried to do for me and my family.”

Dessi didn’t correct her pronunciation. He just answered nervously, “You’re welcome.”

Mickie held up her book. “Tell me, Dezi, when did you start reading Ramiro Fortunato novels? Was it as a child, as I’ve been told?”

“Yes.”

“Did your mother read them to you?”

“Well—”

“And then she died, tragically, leaving you those memories of reading together, didn’t she?”

Dessi shifted uncomfortably. “Sort of.”

“So, Dezi, I’d like you to tell the audience now, in your own words, what you did to become a real-life Ramiro.”

Dessi flinched as the mike was thrust in his face, but he did speak up. “I tried to help the girl who was taken. You know. Your daughter.”

“My stepdaughter, Charity Meyers. Yes. An upcoming series of shows will be dedicated to finding her and to bringing her home. Now, tell us how you risked your life trying to rescue her from a gang of kidnappers. They were armed and dangerous, weren’t they?”

“Yes. They had Glocks.”

“Glock semi-automatic machine guns?”

“Right. They were searching in a grove for something, or somebody. I thought that looked strange, so I investigated.”

“As Ramiro might have done.”

“Then I saw a girl hiding. She begged me to help her, so I did.”

“And that girl was my stepdaughter, Charity Meyers?”

“Yes.”

“So what did you do next?”

“I told her, ‘Come on, I know where we can get help.’ And we started running. We found some abandoned houses to hide in. But—but they caught us.”

“And what did they do when they caught you?”

“They knocked me out. I thought I was dead. But then I woke up in a house, and…I wasn’t dead.”

Mickie turned and looked purposefully at the mayor. “And that all happened right here in the town of Mangrove, didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So you risked your life to help this girl. You didn’t even know her, did you?”

“No.”

“So why did you do it?”

Dessi hesitated for just a moment before answering, “Because it was the right thing to do.”

Mickie lowered the microphone and looked at the audience. The people started to clap warmly. Mickie talked over the sound. “That’s the kind of heroism, the kind that asks for no reward, that he learned from the Ramiro Fortunato series of novels. And that is precisely why we think he
does
deserve a reward.” The people applauded louder. “And the folks at SatPub agree, Dezi, which is why they are giving you this: a complete set of Ramiro Fortunato novels, hardbound. What do you think of that?”

Dessi didn’t answer. He just shifted from foot to foot.

Mickie went on. “But that’s just the start of it, Dezi. When we were talking earlier, what did you tell me that you wanted to do with your life?”

“I said I wanted to be a doctor.”

“To be a clinic doctor.”

“Well, to be a doctor.”

“A doctor who runs a clinic that helps poor people like you.”

“That helps people like my mother.”

“Okay. Well, you might need a doctor yourself when you hear about this next gift. We are presenting you today with what college administrators call ‘a free ride.’ Based on your very impressive high school transcript, you will receive a full scholarship—tuition, room, meals, books—to the University of Miami.”

The audience broke into spontaneous applause. Dessi turned to the crowd and smiled shyly. His eyes started filling with tears.

Mickie continued, “You’ll be majoring in pre-med, I take it.”

He nodded, clearly overcome with emotion.

“And you’re going to work very hard?”

He managed to choke out, “Oh yes.”

“Because, Dezi, there is a catch. We’re going to be checking in on you from time to time. Is that okay?” She waited for a reaction. When there wasn’t any, she went on. “If you can maintain a three-point-five average, your free ride will continue right through medical school. What do you have to say about that?”