Thread of Hope

just wasn’t sure what that was.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket as I walked, but couldn’t get myself to dial her number. I’d been alone for a long time and I wasn’t used to sharing my thoughts with anyone. Elizabeth was always on my mind, but I kept her to myself. She wasn’t something I shared. In hotel rooms and on long walks, I would talk to her. But I rarely talked about her and the prospect of doing so, even with the one person who missed her as much as I did, wasn’t enticing.

I shoved the phone back in my pocket and kept walking.

Horton Plaza was much as I remembered it. Downtown’s only shopping mall, with the avant-garde design, crowds of shoppers and homeless people seemingly intermingling at the fringes of the complex.

I found a sixty-dollar navy coat on a clearance rack in one of the department stores. Because I hadn’t packed anything other than jean, shorts, and a couple of shirts, I found a pair of dress pants, a button-down shirt and some black dress shoes to complete my coaching ensemble. I might not know what I was doing, but I’d look the part.

As I exited the store, I glanced at the reflection in the glass doors and picked up two guys following me. Two guys I’d already met.

I stopped, turned, and looked directly at Trevor Boyle and James Hanley, Jordan’s men.

I held up the bag full of clothes. “Sale. Couldn’t turn it down.”

The friendly pretense they’d carried out before was gone. Both wore decidedly unfriendly expressions on their faces.

“Let’s go,” Hanley said, nodding toward the walkway.

“I like it better here. And I'm not done shopping.”

“We could carry you out,” Boyle said.

I stared at him. He was maybe six feet tall, on the south side of two-hundred pounds. Not quite as big as me and not nearly as angry with the world.

“You could try,” I said.

Hanley pulled back his coat far enough so I could see the nine-millimeter tucked into his waistline. “Let’s go.”

We started walking. We were on the west side of the mall, near the parking structure, away from the crowds. The sunlight was bright, almost blinding, after being inside in the artificial light.

“Where is she?” Hanley asked.

“Who?”

Boyle moved and jabbed me in the kidney with a fist.

I grunted and dropped my bag to the ground. He moved again and I stepped to the side, grabbing his shirt collar. I swung him around and sent him to the pavement.

Hanley’s hand moved toward his waist. I stepped into him and grabbed his wrist, pushing it in against his body. I swept my right leg behind his knees and knocked him off balance. I threw my right elbow into the center of his chest. The air whooshed out of him as he fell back. I yanked the gun out of his pants as he fell toward the ground.

Boyle was crouching, ready to jump at me. I pivoted and stuck the gun on his nose. “Don’t.”

Boyle’s eyes narrowed to the gun. I swung my foot forward and kicked him in the balls. He fell back, clutching at his groin, his eyes rolling up in his head.

I turned back to Hanley who was now sitting up. “Who?”

Hanley was rubbing his chest. “What?”

“You said ‘Where is she?’ Who is ‘she?’?”

Hanley’s eyes dropped down to slits. “Meredith Jordan, you asshole.”

Meredith’s name was like a hammer to my chest and it took me a moment to process it. “Meredith?”

“She didn’t come home last night,” Hanley said, still massaging his sternum. “We need to find her.”

“And Jordan sent you after me?” I asked.

Hanley nodded.

“Did he report her missing?”

“I don’t know. He just told us to find you.”

“Why didn’t he send Gina?” I asked.

He frowned. “I have no clue, man. We work for Mr. Jordan. We don’t ask questions. We do what he tells us.”

The color was coming back in Boyle’s face now, but his hands were still glued to his crotch. He wasn’t in any condition to come at me.

“Jordan really thinks I took his daughter?” I asked, not believing even he was that stupid.

Hanley shrugged. “I don’t know. But he’s pretty crazy right now. She didn’t come home from school and he can’t find her.”

Crazy probably didn’t describe it. I remembered the feeling all too clearly and I wasn’t sure there was a word that captured it.

“I don’t have her and I don’t know where she is,” I said. “So leave me the fuck alone.”

I started walking away.

“My gun?” Hanley whined. “Hey, come on, man. That’s mine.”

I dropped it in the bag with my clothes. “Tell Jordan to buy you a new one.”

THIRTY-THREE

As I walked back to my hotel, the urge to go look for Meredith Jordan kept poking at me. I’d spent the last several years looking for kids exactly like her and it was as if someone had turned my switch on.

But I had no idea where to look and I needed to remember that while she may have been the key to getting Chuck free, she wasn’t the reason I returned to Coronado. I didn’t need to be picking up random causes along the way. My obligation was to help Chuck and I would find a way to do that without her if I had to.

I grabbed lunch on my way back to the hotel, found an iron and ironing board in the closet of my room and managed not to burn myself or the clothes as I worked the wrinkles out of my new outfit. After a half hour of flipping channels, I dressed and headed to the high school.

Robert Stricker was the only one in the gym when I walked in.

He lifted his head in my direction. “Coach. You’re early.”

“Nothing else to do.”

He nodded at the stack of chairs against the wall. “You’re in luck. I got things for you to do.”

“This where you tell me what my salary’s gonna be?” I walked over to the chairs.

“Yep. You’ll love it. Gotta bunch of zeroes in it. Unfortunately for you, it starts with a zero.”

I put my hands on a couple of the chairs. “You don’t have a problem with me coaching tonight?”

“Kelly’s without an assistant,” he said, not looking at me. “You're background check cleared. She wants you to fill in. She’s okay with it, I’m okay with it.” He glanced at me. “Long as you behave.”

I pulled two chairs off the wall and added them to the row that he’d begun. “You hear anything about Meredith Jordan missing?”

He froze before he could set the next chair down. “What are you talking about?”

“Those two…associates that escorted me out of your office? They came to see me this morning. Jordan’s gone off the deep end because she didn’t come home last night.”

He set the chair down. “Hadn’t heard that. If she wasn’t at school today, she can’t play tonight.” He tilted his head to the side. “And if that’s the case, you guys are seriously screwed.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because Episcopal is as good as we are. When Meredith’s playing. Without her, we’re gonna be hurting.”

“So you’re more worried about the game than the fact that she’s disappeared?”

His face clouded with a shot of anger and he kicked the chair into place. “That’s not what I meant.”