Chapter 6: Picking Up the Pieces

During the walk there was a mixture between uncomfortable silence and talking about how they were going to get Jessica back and how they were going to satisfy their obligations to the client, as well as a very quick call to Jill to tell her they were about to get on a Riverside train, and that they were down a car. As they approached the train station they had not really settled anything and George went up to the window and purchased two tickets to Union Station. They had got there just in time for one of the last trains to Los Angeles, leaving just before 7. By the time they got seated George’s phone rang. He almost threw up; it was Sharon.

“Hello?” George said.

“I just talked to Jill,” Sharon said, “I ... If it was anyone but you I’d ... What are you going to do?”

“You’re taking this well,” George muttered, “Sharon, Acky and I are here on the train to LA. I haven’t talked to Jill or Josh in hours. As soon as I get home we are going to ... we are going to figure out what to do. Where’s Miguel?”

“After what you did about David...” Sharon paused, “I know what you are capable of. Screaming like I feel like doing won’t help. I’ll kill you after you get her back. But Miguel will kill you as soon as he gets home from work. He’ll be here soon.”

“I need him,” George said, “And his car.”

“I don’t...” Sharon paused again, “I don’t like it when you work together. Miguel ... he isn’t...”

“I know he isn’t,” George said, “But he can. I need him.”

“If you lose him too...”

“You won’t have to kill me,” George said, “I’ll do it for you, if someone else doesn’t beat you to it.”

“I’ll send him over,” Sharon said.

“Actually, could you have him pick me up at Union Station first?”

“I won’t ask,” Sharon replied, and hung up.

Akilah dialed a number on her phone, for her local Enterprise. They hadn’t actually lost a car completely before, but damage requiring repair was not unheard of.

“Jim, hi,” Akilah said into the phone, “Acky Abati. I need a car. Something quick, but not too conspicuous. Mm-hm. The Deville is a bit loose. No, not a Mustang; four doors. Chrysler what? It is fast? Of course I want the LDW! A few hours. Yes I will see you then. Good day.”

“What did you get?” George asked.

“I do not know it, a Chrysler 300M.”

“I’ve seen them; I didn’t know Chrysler made fast cars.”

They arrived at Los Angeles Union Station a little after 8 in the morning, and Miguel was sitting there out front. The events of a few years back had changed him. He had needed to do things that were hard for him to accept, and it had hardened him. He was still a good man, but the hard edge was in his eyes. The hardening had also made him calmer, and he knew George. He knew that choices that would lead to these decisions would only hurt somebody he cared about like Jessica if he had no choice.

He was standing there next to his car. He worked for George from time to time, when George needed an extra hand, he was not working, and other circumstances lined up, especially if he needed a hispanic. Miguel drove a 1997 Ford Taurus SHO. It was a good sleeper, even without any modifications to make it seem sleepier. It was an ugly car, a dissonant collection of random ovals that made it look like a swamp creature; even so, the Ford Taurus was an omnipresent car and usually not fast. Equipped as it was with a 3.4 liter DOHC Yamaha-built V8 engine producing 235bhp, it could keep pace with almost anything that wasn’t racing it. Its dark green color added to its sleeper status.

“Hey, Miguel,” George said.

“George, Acky,” Miguel acknowledged,

“I’m sorry I fucked up, Miguel,” George said with uncharacteristic hesitation, “I, uh, I need your help with fixing this. I need your car, your cool head, and your discretion. I don’t know exactly how, or even what’s going to happen. I expect that her captors will call us and try to use her to provide leverage over my client’s husband, but I’m not sure. I don’t think they were counting on capturing a teenage girl who has no real attachment to the situation. You know my planet theory...”

“Yeah, yeah,” Miguel said with a little impatience, “The whole idea that when orbits don’t make sense you are not seeing a planet or number of planets. What you mean to say is that you don’t understand why they acted the way they did. What exactly happened?”

George gulped, and found that he couldn’t find his tongue. Akilah stepped in for him and gave him a brief but honest run down of what happened, including with cautious honesty that the reminder to abandon untenable situations had come from her.

“I’m so sorry,” George finally got out hoarsely, “If I even dreamed they were going to be waiting with machine guns, she wouldn’t have been within miles of that place, I swear to god.”

“George...” Miguel paused to choose he words with care, “I don’t blame you, man. That is fucking crazy, all that force ... I have a thought.”

“That some person in the town must be in on it,” Akilah suggested.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Miguel said, “That’s way too much of a show of force for some little hick town like ... Brawley was it?”

“Yeah, Brawley,” George said, “It occurred to me, too. That’s one of the reasons I want you in on this; I need you to sign off on the plan. Well ... I also need Sharon to keep her head. There is no point to giving in to whatever their demands are, obviously. We need to ... uh...”

“Use a lot of fucking force,” Miguel finished for him, “I get it what you mean, George. What does Jill think of what happened?”

“Uh, we haven’t discussed it yet,” George replied, “I wanted to discuss it in person.”

“I think you want to give her the chance to punch you in the face,” Akilah said with a deadpan serious face. She was jesting, but her sense of humor tended to be on the dry side.

“Funny. But maybe true anyway,” George sighed.

“I will fight for you, beloved, do not worry.”

George sighed again, and said: “Let’s get back to the yard.”

They got into Miguel’s car and drove away.

Jessica woke up in a room that smelled of mildew and sourness. Her head hurt and she felt ... foggy. She remembered the car coming into hers, and forcing her to stop. She had realized immediately that this had been a mistake. She had been trained to drive without hitting things, and to stop in the event of an accident. But George wouldn’t have wanted her to care about damage to the car, he would have told her to do her best to keep driving. She hadn’t been trained for this, but boy had she heard stories.

They had dragged her out of the car, she had a vague feeling of an explosion in her head, but that was it until now. She felt her head where it hurt the most and found a small bump. She realized she had been coshed. She was scared. She knew these were dangerous people, the real deal, not some story book fantasy. She tried to put that out of her mind, and hoped George would rescue her.

She shakily got to her feet and walked around a bit. There was another person in the room with her, an older man. He was on the floor with a blanket on him, head resting on his arm, asleep. The room had a ceiling, floor, and walls made of stainless steel, with some stainless shelving in it. It smelled like an old refrigerator that had been unplugged for too long. There was a door on one wall. There had been a handle of some sort to open it, but this had been removed. She pushed on it, and it moved about a millimeter, but that was it.

She was scared. She had been angry, and so deeply concerned with proving herself. Jimmy, her brother, her best friend, had gone off to college and she had felt alone, and like she was treated like a kid. She hadn’t gotten into a good school like he had. She had been angry. Now she had led herself into one hell of a mess.

She was cool and collected, like she had been way back when her father, David, had sexually assaulted her. Many times, over years. It had been trapping, it had been terrifying, it had been imprisoning. If she could live through that, she told herself, this should be a cake walk.

Miguel waved at an Amtrak worker at the gate who recognized him and drove over to the parking lot near the turn table; he slotted in next to a 1998 Volvo C70 convertible in Nautic Blue, Jill’s 19th birthday present. She had started working on learning to drive immediately, but she shared George’s Mercedes for a time.