Vicious Cycle (24 page)

Zeke got out, shoved Jordan away, and kicked the back door shut. “Kid stays with me,” he said. He got in and slammed his door. The car lurched back onto the road.

“No!” Jordan ran after him. “No, come back! She’s mine! You can’t take her!”

There was no traffic in either direction, no one to see her and help her. She ran until she couldn’t see his car anymore, until she was about to collapse. Staggering to the shoulder of the road, she fell to her knees.
God, please help Grace! I don’t know what to do!

E
mily sat alone in the den, watching the video game figures move around the screen, waiting for someone to control them. She couldn’t control herself, much less some alternative universe.

Thoughts of those crack rocks went through her mind, making her mouth dry. Her heart started pounding. If she went back to that gutter where Lance had thrown them — could she reach down the storm drain and find them?

The moment the thought crossed her mind, she snatched it back. No, she couldn’t think like this. She had to do something. She had to talk to her counselor.

She grabbed the cordless and took it into her room. It was the first time she’d actually called Esther — she had to
dig around in her purse for her business card. When she found it, she punched the number.

Esther answered quickly. “Esther’s desk.”

“Esther, it’s Emily.”

“Emily! Great to hear from you. How’s it going out there?”

She wished she could tell Esther it was going great, that roses were blooming and friends were popping up, that she hadn’t even had a thought of using drugs. But she had to be straight with her. “Not that great.” She told Esther about their struggles with Jordan, the trip to Belker’s warehouse, the problems she was having.

“Girl, get thee to an AA meeting.”

She sighed. “I don’t know where they’re having any this time of day.”

“That’s no excuse,” she said. “Do you have a computer?”

“Yes.”

“Then get on it and go to
AA.org
. You can type in your zip code and see where all the meetings are. Some of them meet at noon.”

“I thought you didn’t like AA.”

“I like the groups that are good. They aren’t always good. Some of them are like sober nightclubs, all about hooking up with the opposite sex. But usually the ones meeting this time of day have people who are serious. You could also try the Christian version, Celebrate Recovery, but they usually only meet once a week.”

“I just don’t want my whole life to be about addiction. I don’t want my days to revolve around those meetings, and I don’t want all my friends to come from AA.”

“Emily, just take it a day at a time. You need a little strength right now.”

Emily sighed. “Okay, I’ll go to the next meeting I can find in town.”

After a pep talk, Emily hung up and went to the computer, pulled up the web site, and found a meeting that would start in thirty minutes at a church about ten miles away. She grabbed her purse.

Lance came out of his room, still looking sour. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“AA meeting.”

He looked skeptical. “I’ll go with you.”

“Lance, I’ll be fine. I don’t need you to babysit me.”

“That’s what you said yesterday.”

She hesitated. “I know. I just … You can’t spend your life carrying my problems. Play your video game. Do your homework. I have to work this out.”

“But if you work it out the wrong way, the whole family blows up again.”

“I won’t do that. I promise.”

“Are you sure? Because it would really stink if you did.”

“I’m sure. That’s why I’m going to AA. And, Lance, if I was going to use, I’d use. You couldn’t stop me.”

“I stopped you yesterday.”

“That was because, deep down, I really wanted to be stopped. But now I’m nervous and depressed and lonely. And Esther thinks the meeting will help.”

He sighed and leaned against the counter. “I could go and pretend to be an alcoholic.”

She laughed. “That would be fun. But no. I have to do this alone. And just in case there’s anyone who knows us, I don’t want your reputation ruined.”

“It’s Alcoholics
Anonymous.
I thought it was confidential.”

“Yeah, well. Trust me, Lance. I’m doing what I need to do to stay healthy. But I can’t take you with me.”

When he finally let her go, she drove to the small Episcopal church. Several people stood outside, smoking before going in. There were only a few cars here. She hated the small groups, where she couldn’t blend into the crowd. But, swallowing back her trepidation, she went in.

She took a seat at the back of the room and tried not to make eye contact with anyone. But she couldn’t miss the ragged guy sitting across the room, reeking of smoke, his face unshaven for days. He looked like he’d just crawled out of some alley. What was she doing here?

A guy sat down next to her and mumbled a quick hello. She answered without looking directly at him. He slid down in his seat, crossed his legs, and began doing a rapid drumbeat on his legs.

Not sober. She looked around the room as others came in. Sober. Not sober. Sober.

There were people here who could lure her back in. If someone stuffed one more rock into her pocket, she didn’t know if she could resist.

Her mouth went dry. Her heart pounded. Heat prickled her skin, and she began to sweat.

No, she couldn’t do it. She sprang to her feet and headed for the door. Rushing through the doorway, she bumped into a woman, stopping them both. “I’m sorry,” Emily said.

The woman had a frizzy halo of red hair. “Where are you going?”

“Out. Away. I don’t think this is the right meeting for me.”

“How do you know? We haven’t even started yet.”

“I just … I’m a year sober, okay?” She kept her voice low. “I’m trying to stay that way.”

“Just come back in and sit down.”

Emily shook her head. “I can’t. The smell of smoke, the look in some of their eyes … It’s just not what I need.”

The woman touched her arm and gave her a sympathetic smile. “Just got out of treatment, huh?”

How did she know? “Yeah. Just yesterday.”

“Good for you.”

“What?”

She lowered her voice. “Good for you for having some discernment. Truth is, this probably isn’t the right group for you. I come because I lead it. I work the night shift, and it’s not far from my house. A lot of these people come from the shelter down the street. They’re forced to come. They have to get a form signed saying they were here, or they can’t sleep there at night.”

Emily swallowed and glanced back in.

“I keep doing this one because these people need hope. And some of them get it. I was like them about ten years ago.”

Emily found that hard to believe. The woman, who looked about forty, was clean and nicely dressed. “Really?”

“Yeah.” She took Emily’s shoulder and walked her outside, away from the door. “Listen, I have a really great AA home group that meets at seven o’clock once a week. It meets tonight. Why don’t you come to that? I think it’s a healthier group.”

Emily shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Seriously, most of us in that group have been sober for a long time. And there are also some who are just days or weeks sober. We take them under our wings and help them. But it’s a safe group. You’d like it. You could find a good sponsor there.”

“Where is it?”

The woman gave her the address — even closer to Emily’s house than this one. “Okay, maybe.”

“What’s your name?”

“Emily.”

“I’m Jan. Nice to meet you. Hang in there, okay? It gets better.”

Emily felt better as she crossed the tall grass and got back into her car. Maybe that was the kind of meeting she needed. As she started her car, she noticed Drew, one of Belker’s dealers, approaching one of the smokers. What better place to find new customers?

Disgusted, she drove home, praying that God would help her. The last thing she wanted was to go back to drugs. Her addictions had almost gotten her killed. She didn’t want to repeat those mistakes.

Would it be this hard if all this with Jordan hadn’t happened? If Emily could have come home to a celebration and not had to think about drugs for a while?

The Jordan factor had definitely complicated things. If the girl wanted to throw her life away, Emily had to let her. She couldn’t fool herself into thinking she could save Jordan or her baby. That was codependence, an enemy to recovery.

No, all she could do was pray for her friend and ask God to protect baby Grace. But for now, Emily’s first priority had to be keeping herself on track.

B
efore going back to the police station, Kent went to the hospital to talk to the nurse who’d released the baby to Jordan. This wasn’t just a case of an indecisive birth mother. She could be planning to sell the baby after all.

The nurse described the man who’d been with Jordan. After a call to Detective Dathan, Kent managed to get a copy of the security tape in the nursery and hallway when Jordan checked out of the hospital. He’d sent the picture of the man to Barbara’s cell phone, and she’d identified Jordan’s half-brother. There was a bulge in the waistband of his jeans, under his shirt. A gun, probably. That explained why Jordan had gone along.

So if Zeke had Jordan and the baby, that probably meant he was going ahead with selling the child. With every moment that passed by, the baby was in greater danger.

He asked Detective Dathan to put out an AMBER Alert for Jordan and the baby, and an APB on Zeke Rhodes. Then he called Lance and drilled him about the man and woman he’d seen in the Rhodes’s home that day, trying to take the baby.

“The man looked a little like Sean Penn,” Lance said, “but his hair was kind of light brown and cut short, like a buzz cut that had had a couple of weeks to grow out. The woman’s hair was black, shoulder-length, with straight black bangs. I didn’t think of it then, but it might have been a wig. It didn’t go with her skin, you know? She was really pale, and her eyebrows were light.”

“How old would you say they were?”

“Old. Probably the same age as you and Mom.”

Kent breathed a chuckle. “How were they dressed?”

“The man had on a black bomber jacket, and the lady had a trench coat.”

“Do you think you remember them enough to help an artist draw a composite sketch?”

“Sure,” Lance said. “That’d be cool.”

Since Dathan was tied up getting information on Zeke Rhodes’s vehicle, Kent took a moment to call the police chief.

“Detective Harlan, good to hear from you.”

“Chief Levin, I hope I haven’t disturbed you again.”

“Not at all. Detective Dathan is keeping me informed on this case. It sounds like a case of child trafficking, doesn’t it?”

“No question. And it’s bigger than this one case. Listen, I got a description of the man and woman who were trying to take Jordan Rhodes’s baby. Do you think we could get a composite artist to work with Lance to get a sketch of them?”

“We don’t have our own here, but I could get one from another city. It would take a while to get her here.”

“Might be worth it. He thinks the woman was in a wig, so maybe we could put some different hair on her. I’d like to put this out to the press. See if we can catch them and track down this baby.”

“I don’t know about that,” Levin said. “Dathan already put out an AMBER Alert, even though it’s a little iffy. Since the baby’s mother’s involved, it’s not really a kidnapping. I can’t go to the press with accusations against this man and woman, because we have absolutely no evidence that they’ve done anything wrong.”

“We have Jordan’s statement. And if we tell the press, maybe somebody else who’s been approached about selling their baby would come forward.”

“Let’s wait until we have a little more evidence. Giving that information to the press could open a real can of worms, and give the perps time to get out of town. Jordan never saw any money change hands. I agree with your conclusions, but we can’t pull the press in until we’ve got a little more on them.”

Kent wasn’t surprised. “I understand, but I thought it was worth a shot. Could you brief your patrol officers and fill them in on what we’re looking for?”

“Yes, I’ll do that right away. Track down the baby, and my guess is you’ll find the traffickers too.”

“I sure hope so.”

“Listen — keep me updated. We’re trying to make a good impression so you’ll come work for us. Given that any more thought?”

“Actually, I have. I’d like to talk more about that when all this is over, if you have some time.”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

Kent hung up, disappointed that there wouldn’t be a press conference. He refocused on the description of the traffickers, hoping he could find them before they skipped the country. “Hey, Dathan,” he said.

Dathan looked back at him. “Yeah?”

“Could you come with me to Juvie and interview the guys who were arrested Saturday night? Lance says they knew about these traffickers. Might be they could give us a little more information.”

“Good idea,” Dathan said. “Let’s go now.”

J
ordan sat for several moments, trying to make her head stop spinning and her breath settle. She heard a car coming, half a mile up the flat road. She forced herself to her feet, stumbled toward the road, and tried to flag it down. But it kept going.

She tried to get her bearings. They were on a lonely road outside of town. What roads had they taken to get here? Which direction? She had seen some buildings, a store and gas station, people. She heard a plane overhead and looked up. The plane banked and then came in low, descending, apparently about to land. But they were still too far above her to notice her.

She could walk home. She took in a few deep breaths, then started back in the direction they’d come. She couldn’t be that far from home. They were still on her side of town,
she thought. She’d see something she recognized soon. She just had to keep walking.

She was about to collapse when a minivan turned onto the street and came her way. She waved her arms. This time it slowed, then pulled over beyond her. Jordan stumbled to it and got in.