[ March 11, 2004 ]

TERRY

What do you do when you have to make a choice?

I have never been a 'toss the coin' type. I like to make my choices straight up. Then own them. I prefer logic to emotion. That said, I am quite capable of making a gut decision based on nothing more than instinct.

So, I'd made a decision. Only one I really could. I made the choice I did because she was the one I was responsible for more than anyone else. The one who had no one else.

If I could save only one, then there really wasn't a choice.

My eyes opened as I felt the subtle shift in the jet's speed. Looked out the window and saw the lake coming into view off the wing as the plane made a slow, elegant bank.

A disembodied, professional voice drifted over the intercom to tell me we were about to begin our descent into the Lakefront Airport.

My eyes drifted back to the table in front of me. Next to my opened laptop was a notebook and a bangle of gold and emeralds. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I realized I was saying a prayer. I fingered her bracelet. Just let me find her.

An hour later, I was almost incoherent with this impotent mix of frustration, fear and anger.

Why the fuck is she still running?

What the fuck was she up to? Why the fuck couldn't I guess where she was going? I knew her so well. Why wasn't I a few steps ahead of her?

The scenarios playing out in my mind ... the worry over the hell she was going through. Is this what it's been like for all those people I have helped over the years in this job I do? The incessant guilt that you were safe and your loved one wasn't? The nightmares you never shut out. The way you just wanted to trust in some white knight to come riding to your rescue? No. That's not me, is it? Have to get hold of myself or I'm no good to anybody. I'd never trust anyone else to do this for me. I'd do it myself. Maybe that's my downfall. Misplaced belief in my own honor.

I checked into a hotel for the night. Until she used a charge card, her cell or email, her trail was dead.

Again.

Jesus. She should give lessons in this.

Only problem with trying to drink enough to dull my mind from its obsessive worry about her was that then I'd worry about the other.

Two women. They both needed me. I could only help one. It was a sick world that I'd had to make this choice. Sick? You don't know the meaning of it. All the joy in our world seemed to be dying. Lay this at the feet of the witch Isobel. If only we'd known that day Max and I had met her in that dive in Portsmouth. We'd have made Jack a eunuch if it's what it took to get him to leave her arms. Instead, we'd been blind for too long to the danger she was. The spell she cast at her wedding had started a downward spiral of chaos and confusion among all of us.

And what she wrought on our clan. I swallowed down bile at the thought of the death. I felt a familiar numbness come over me. Closed my eyes. Thought about the funeral I was missing. Thought about how I'd had to forsake them all in a time when I should have been there. Helping Jack navigate the peril he'd be in. Seeing to details. Tidying up the nasty loose ends. Helping Max bring the family back together to weather the tragedy.

Max.

Christ. What have I done to him? What have I done to Uma? To Ann? To everyone who trusted me?

And where was I now when the pieces needed picking up? Out here chasing a woman who needed me to save her from herself. I'd chosen to help my wife because I loved her. And because it was the only way I'd get her back. I wasn't giving her up. Not now. Not without a fight. The choice was easy. Not that I wasn't dying over that choice because Uma deserved so much better from me than for me to desert her when she was desperate.

I heard her voice ... Uma trying to be strong when her world had just collapsed around her. "He took my baby. They left me alone." What do you do when you know someone else has paid such a price and it's your fault but you've had to make the choice that means you're abandoning her when she needs you?

She said she didn't want my help. But, inside here where I cannot lie to myself, I knew another truth -- she had needed me to help her. Even if only to be there as she went through this. But the cold reality was ... she was absolving me of responsibility and I let her because I could only make one choice.

Ann.

When the voice came back over the intercom to announce we were on final approach, I packed the laptop. Picked up her bracelet; tucked in my jacket pocket; let my fingers linger there on it like it was a lucky charm. I saw her face when I'd given it to her on our anniversary. She'd been wearing it last time I'd seen her. I tried not to picture what I imagined she'd looked like when she'd taken it off. She'd left it in her hotel room. In Paris. The first stop I'd made in trying to find her.

[ March 2, 2004 ]

TERRY

She had run away after walking in on me and Uma. Any other woman walking in on such a thing ... her husband making love with another woman ... she would have caused a scene right then and there. She would have attacked them or she would have cried out in anger.

Not Ann.

I could picture how her eyes would have shown absolute pain. I could picture the way shock would have turned her white. I could picture her stumbling away and forgetting her suitcase.

It's the only reason we even knew she'd been there.

When I'd seen that damned suitcase, my first thoughts were hardly coherent. All I could do was feel the sucker punch. Last fucking thing I'd have ever imagined would happen that day. This brief interlude between me and Uma that had been beautiful and sweet and fulfilling and ... and final. Yeah, we were taking a risk. Never imagined it would be a risk with real consequences. Never really imagined that the one person in the world who meant everything to me would bear witness to it.

When I could really think, I went through the motions. Calling Ann's cell. Leaving a message. Calling the desk to find out how she'd even fucking gotten a key to my room ... and by some miracle, was she still there? Learning she'd left in a taxi. Tracking the taxi down. Learning she'd gone straight to the airport. Getting her flight tracked. She'd landed in Paris maybe two hours before I'd found her suitcase. She had only about five hours on me by then. I flew to Paris.

Inside her hotel room, I understood I was now facing a larger nightmare. She'd packed up, hadn't checked out, just left without a trace. She had disappeared. I could find no clue where she was headed. Figured she was determined to not let me close enough to explain.

She didn't leave me a note. She would never have wasted written words on me just then. 

But she did leave me a message. It was terse, to the point and it hit home. The message was the one thing she left behind: her bracelet. The one I'd given her not three weeks earlier. Something she knew I'd picked out with great care and meaning. She was shedding me. I wasn't about ready to let her go. Not over this.

It made me concentrate. Tough to be in this situation where you have got to think like a professional when you're dealing with the most private, personal matters. I had a trace put on her phone, her credit cards, her email, her passport. I sat in her hotel room all night. Waiting.

[ March 3, 2004 ]

TERRY

She used her phone to call Heather in the morning. She was still in France. The trace's triangulation said she was in the Cherbourg area. I looked at a map. Tried to figure out where she was and where she was heading. Maybe back to England by train or ferry? It made me check car rental companies. No trace.

At least she was alive, I thought. Then realized I had to call Heather. Needed to know if she'd told Heather anything about where she was. Toughest call I might have ever made. I was ready to hear cold fury from Heather ... she'd take Ann's side ... she'd tell me just how badly I'd fucked up. But I got another surprise.

She answered the phone and her voice was pure Heather ... Just hearing it, something normal - not touched by this shit I'd brought down on all of us - made me smile. Fleetingly. "Hey, love. It's me."

She hesitated half a second too long. It told me more in one moment than all of the times Dino had ever come to me with suspicions about her. Christ. I knew there was only one other Aussie with my voice who'd ever address her with such familiarity. 

Her voice, soft and gentle. "Are you OK?"

"Are you?" I felt a hot stick of anger, partly at her, partly because I was just at the end of my rope with all this shit with Annie. God, it was killing me. I let it get the better of me. "Do you bloody know who this is?" I shouldn't have said it, but I did anyway. She knew it was me, but I wasn't about to let her little slip slide right on by.

Long silence from her. Then a sigh. "Is this about Ann?"

Fair go. I'd caught her out and she'd caught me. She was family though, warts and all. Same as me. If you can't be honest with the people you love ... I rubbed a hand over my face but when I spoke, my voice was still too sharp.  "Jesus, Heather, I don't have time for this. I know she called you. Just tell me what you talked about, love."

She took in a sharp breath in response and a moment to weigh her words. I hated to put her in this position but I would do it again in a heartbeat to get any scrap of information that might lead me to Annie. "Um ... nothing much, really. She sounded ... she didn't feel well. Said she was sick ... a bug of some kind. Said she'd tried to reach you but you'd been in a meeting. Just wanted to hear a friendly voice, I think." The tone of her voice said she thought it was a hell of a lot more than that. For someone with no professional training in this area, she read people very well. 

Still, I'm better. And I was far, far more desperate than she was. "That all? Nothing else? This is important. Did she say where she was?" I knew exactly how much I was giving away asking her flat out like that, but it couldn't be helped. I didn't have time to fuck about. 

"No. I assumed she was in Paris." Long pause from her. "The way she was with me on the phone ... this feeling I had that something was really, really wrong ... something she just wouldn't or couldn't give up ... She sounded so ... odd." Her voice got soft. "Coupled with that, you know how much the fact you don't know where she is gives away?"

She wanted to play that game? Fine. "You want to know how much that little pause of yours gave away to me, love?"

Stalemate. Twin sighs. Two apologies given over the top of each other. "Whatever's happened, Terry ... you know ... if you need to talk ..."   

So like Heather to couch it that way. To give me an out if I needed it. I did. Still, I knew I was scaring her with my intensity. I read her better than she reads me. I forced my professional voice out. "Everything's fine, Heather love. Sorry if I upset you. If she calls again, ask her to contact me?" I was lying through my teeth and she knew it but she let me have it. Let me save what little face I had left.  

"Of course." No hesitation now. She knew I wasn't fucking around with this and she didn't ask any more questions. Not now that she knew I wouldn't talk about whatever was going on. It was her way. She'd let me know she was there if I needed it though- and that would have to be enough. There was no way I'd give up anything about what had happened.   

But this ... this was chilling. I got this image of Ann. She was out there trying to deal with what she'd walked in on, a nightmare to her. She'd called maybe the one person I would have thought she'd have gone to for solace. And she hadn't said anything about what I'd done. She felt totally alone, isolated, with no one to help her during a time she needed help.

What would she do? I kept calling her cell; kept leaving messages. I called her office; they hadn't heard from her; I left messages. I emailed her. No answer to anything.

[ March 4, 2004 ]

TERRY

The next break came after I had driven to the coast, to Cherbourg. Just needed to be there in case ... just in case she popped up again. Was planning to start making the rounds of hotels with her picture when I was notified a call had come in on her cell. She was still in Cherbourg. Aware I'd need more help to get to all the hotels and guesthouses.  Pretty sure it'd prove all for naught. Knowing that she'd probably keep moving. From there, she could take a boat to Portsmouth.

But late that afternoon, I was notified ... the trace on her passport ... she'd taken a flight from Paris to London. I was in London maybe five hours after her. Picked up her trail at the airport. She'd rented a car. That was the closest I got to her for days.

[ March 7, 2004 ]

TERRY

The next fix on her came courtesy of Uma. Maybe I should have thought of it myself. Maybe I just didn't want to. It had been right there all that time. I'd been tracking Max for Uma, just like I had then started tracking Ann. When Max began using his cell and his credit card again, I knew he was still in London. I tried calling Uma for days to let her know and to check on her. When she finally answered, her voice ... Jesus. Fuck all if I couldn't hear her pain and her fear. I put on my calm demeanor; the voice I used for victims' families.

I pushed as gently as I could. Maybe I knew I'd find out what I didn't want to know. Maybe I was beating myself up by rolling around inside the hurt I'd caused Uma. But when she said everything was fine for her, I pushed a bit harder. Then this bit of truth jumped out of her mouth and I knew she regretted saying it ... but that, in her own way, she also had something she wanted to tell me but couldn't.

"He knows."

"What?"

"He knows. Max knows."

"How? How does he know?"

"I don't know. Work it out. Doesn't matter how. He knows."

Work it out. Work out how he knows. My mind leapt away from working it out. Instead, I had to find out ... Max was capable of anything if he found out his wife was cheating on him with his brother. What would he do? He'd do something, right? The thought erupted inside me ... must have been her voice and cadence ... I had to know ... had he beat her? Is that why she was sounding like she was both angry and distraught?

She said he hadn't hurt her. I knew better. She was protecting him like so many women do when their husbands beat them and there is a part of them that thinks they deserved it or called it upon themselves. My blood ran cold at the thought of what a man like Max could do to a delicate woman like Uma. I got this instant visual of Uma with a split lip.

Didn't think I could feel worse. Until later ... when I began to think harder on a few slips she made in this conversation ... "He was worse for wear ...Disheveled. Unwashed. Bruised and bloody ... Scratched...bruised...bloody..."

Inside my head, these snippets of lines between us ran over and over for hours after I hung up from her. Scary as all fuck to even contemplate what she was driving at.

"Terry, did you find Ann? You have to find her. She might be...I mean...she's...Terry, be careful..."

"Uma baby...are you worried that Max is going to do something?"

"No...Max wouldn't...he wouldn't....just be careful..."

How I worried these snippets over. Max being bloodied, bruised, scratched when he went home to Uma. Uma worried about Ann. Max hitting Uma. Something made me look at the log of Max's calls over the last few days to see if I could figure out if there was a clue here.

That's when I made the connection. It had been there before me the whole time but in my narrow focus, I'd missed it. I'd never even so much as looked at the log of his calls before. All I'd cared about was the synopsis report from the tracking surveillance ... I'd only wanted to know where he was, not who he was contacting.

The number screamed out at me from the log. He'd called her on March 4. He'd called Ann's cell two days after she'd witnessed my infidelity with his wife. He'd called her; she'd not been the one to initiate the call. The only call she'd accepted or made the whole day. The call had lasted less than five minutes. She'd had to have left almost right away to have gotten to Paris in time to make the flight she took to London. Only hours after that phone call, she was in London where he was. I looked at Max's credit card record. He'd rented a hotel room near the airport. Swank place. The kind of place that noticed things about guests but kept them discreet unless persuaded by money or official inquiry. I had little problem finding out what I needed to know. What I wished I hadn't needed to know.

He called her.

He knew about us before he called her. She would never have told him. How had he known?

He arranged everything. He reserved the hotel room. He called her knowing his wife had been with me. He called her when he was angry and looking to wound me as I'd wounded him. He called her when she was at her most vulnerable and most self-destructive. She had joined him at that hotel; the bartender remembered them. He had not coerced her to go to his room; she had gone willingly, eagerly.

The day shift brought me other news. A maid saw her leave. She'd looked roughed up. The maid had thought to call authorities but felt if the woman wasn't complaining, why should she?

Scary as all fuck. 

The image of what Max could do to Ann. Put it all together. Max had been bloodied and bruised after that encounter. He would have hurt her worse. She'd left the hotel wounded.

She'd driven off in that rental and it was like she'd dropped off the face of the earth. I had held out hope that she was just cooling off and would eventually come back to confront me. Now ... now I was more scared than ever at why she was still missing. I called hospitals. I called Dino. I had to ... she was injured and out there on her own. I had to find her before it got worse. I had to find her.

"What do you mean she's missing? I asked you just the other day what the fuck was going on ... you fucking call Heather and scare the shit out of her ... I ask you point blank, what the fuck is going on, is Ann all right ... you tell me it's nothing and you'll let me know if you need me?"

"Dino. Mate, I need you now. She's in trouble."

Barely a pause. "Then I'm there, man. You ask, I'll do it. What do you need?"

In his voice, I heard it. The instant recognition that this was serious. He had to understand what the stakes were. So I told him about me and Uma.

"Jesus fucking Christ." He said it low but even hushed, he didn't hide the anger. "She fucking walked in on that? Jesus, Terry. Ah, fuck, I'm the one who arranged the key card for her. She wanted to surprise you."

"She's running, Dino. And she's hurt. Physically, I mean." I told him about Ann and Max.

"This is fucking unbelievable, Terry. You fucked up, man. Big time."

I felt my jaw tighten at his tone. He was right. I didn't want to hear it. "We need to step up efforts to find her. Let's concentrate on that, shall we?"

"What will she do? What's she after?"

"I don't have a fucking clue, mate." I thought about it for maybe a second before I asked. "She's not contacted Heather again? If there's anyone ... it would be Heather, Dino. She has no real family left. I've called the magazine; no one's heard from her or they're not telling me."

"I'll call the publisher and discreetly ask. As for Heather ... hold on."

I sat there waiting on him. Trying to be coldly logical. Ann was still in England; she couldn't get out without using her passport. She was within driving distance of London. She was holed up somewhere; doing what? Had she dived further down into some sexual cellar? Would she even know where to look for that kind of action? Was she someplace with Max and Lily? Did Max know where she was? They hadn't called each other. But that didn't prove anything.

For the first time, I felt this insane rush of black anger. She fucked him. They did this on purpose.  It was washed away by instant grey guilt. She saw me making love to another woman.

"Terry, sorry. Heather hasn't heard from her." A pause. "Look, man, I told her why you needed to know. She doesn't have a clue where Ann would be in England. Her best guess would be that she'd have gone home. To New Orleans. Wonder why she hasn't?"

I could think of reasons. Every one of them was a nightmare for me.

Within an hour, Dino had taken over from me. He was contacting operatives in London, getting them to begin tracking her from the hotel. By the next day, we knew nothing more. Her trail was dead. We surmised she was using an alias and using the cash I found out she'd withdrawn from our account. It was enough to keep her hidden for a long time if she was smart. She was smart.

Two days went by. I could do nothing to help her. I kept trying to reach Uma. Never could.

And then everything went into overdrive. I was sitting on the balcony drinking when Dino called. Her passport trace had gone active at the airport in London. So close to me, I could have gotten to her in thirty minutes. I had missed her flight by two hours by the time Dino called me. He had made me calm down, sober up in a shower, get presentable and get ready. He knew I'd insist on following her. She was headed to Chicago. I was six hours behind her.

But by the time I made Chicago, there was no Ann in DC. She'd not gotten on the flight she'd booked in there. Nothing more than a diversion.

What was she doing?

Best guess? I figured she was heading for New Orleans ... using an alias to book a flight so we couldn't track her so easy. I took a commercial flight there. Once there, I showed her picture to security at the airport. We poured over video. I never saw her.

The next night, she used her cell and she checked her email. She was in Chattanooga, Tenn. What the fuck, I asked Dino, was she doing there? Just get there, he said. She'd logged on to her email using a hotel's server. We had her. I booked a private jet and flew through the early morning. I'd be there before she would even be up drinking her first cup of coffee.

She was gone at least an hour before I got there. She'd registered using an alias; paid cash for the room. She'd been driving a rental car.

Dino said, "So she leaves Chicago, driving due south. Gee. Wonder where she's heading, Terry?"

I had the jet turn us around and fly back to New Orleans.

Wasn't sure what she'd do when she got there. But I contacted her old boss at the newspaper; told him some lame story; asked him to let her know I was in town if she contacted him. With her cousin dead, she had no other family member I knew she'd contact but I still called her aunt and uncle. They hadn't heard from her in over a year. But you never know, right? Right.

Meanwhile all I could do was wait. I rented a car and drove around the city. Looked at places I knew because of her. Her loft. The newspaper. The lake. The Quarter. Eventually, I drove the highway I figured she'd drive in on. Just to do something.

[ March 12, 2004 ]

TERRY

Next day, phone call from Dino. Are you sitting down, he asked me. I heard it in his voice. Bad news. I stood up to take it full brunt.

Process server had come looking for me that morning. Sent with legal papers from a lawyer's office in New Orleans. Read them, I said.

When he told me what it was, something inside shut down.

She'd made a decision.

She'd not really hesitated.

I went to see the lawyer who'd sent the papers. She was expecting me. She didn't like me. Ann had left a letter for me with her.

One sheet. "Terry - If you're reading this, then you're thinking you should find me. Please leave this as it is. I'd ask your forgiveness, but it just doesn't matter anymore. This is all I could think to do to make things right for you again. You deserve so much better."

I showed it to the lawyer. Tell me everything, I ordered her, hearing that coldness in my voice that seemed to shake officious people like this.

Of course, the lawyer assumed I was the bad guy. I was. But not for what she thought. Ann had been in bad shape, but it was more the emotional devastation than the physical traces that worried her. Crying jags. Fearful. Distracted.

Where is she, I asked the lawyer as I was leaving. She wouldn't tell me even if she knew.

For some reason, it dawned on me where she was. If she was going to keep on hiding, it would be someplace she'd be able to hunker down and it'd be near New Orleans. It'd be a place she'd think I'd have forgotten but a place she felt safe. I remembered a few weekends we'd spent at this seaside cabin with her cousin Reggie. It belonged to his father. It was like a hideaway for the extended family, she'd once said. With her cousin dead, we'd had no reason to go there again.

In three hours, I was there. I watched the cabin. At first, the only sign of life was the rental car. I sat in my car, kept up surveillance and wondered the best way to approach her. Sat there all night and was no further. So close to her and now that I was? I didn't know how to go to her.

[ March 13, 2004 ]

TERRY

Early the next morning, I was standing outside the car, stretching the kinks out. I saw her walking down the back deck's steps, heading for the beach. Striding out; head down; dark glasses on even in the morning gloom as she walked in the damp sand, skirting the waves as she hiked down the beach. I screwed up my courage; decided to wait on her deck for her return. Lounged there, taking in the sun as it finished rising above the horizon. An hour later, she returned to the cabin. She was so far inside herself, she didn't notice me until she was almost at the top step of the deck.

She went white as a ghost and started shaking. First time she'd ever been scared of me. Sunglasses covered the worst of the purple that was fading from around her outer eye socket. Remnants of mottled bluing around a neck far too precious for such treatment.

"Annie girl." I whispered it to her as I rose from the chair. My hands were up to calm her; ready to open up to invite her into my embrace.

Happened so fast. One minute she was standing there, her left foot hovering over the top step ... the next instant she was trying to get away ... but in her haste, she just blindly stepped back ... missed the next step down and ... fell with this startled shriek of my name.

Didn't get there in time. Even as I was jumping down those wooden steps, she was crumpled at the bottom on the cement stoop. I knelt there over her, saying her name, checking her pupils, feeling her pulse, examining her quickly to see if there were obvious injuries ... wondering when this nightmare was ever going to be over.

She didn't come to again until I'd carried her inside. Just on the edge of wondering if I should get her to doctor. Was kneeling next to where I'd laid her on the couch, running my hands on her scalp, checking for blood. She gave this deep moan and then her eyes opened. It was like another woman was looking at me. Giving me this slow, sedate smile.

From the first words out of her mouth, things never were the same.

"I'm so sorry for what's happened. And you may think this is so inappropriate for me to say in light of everything, but I've missed you. Missed touching you. Missed making love with you. Missed feeling special to you. Let me comfort you, Terry."

All I could do was stare at her and wonder if she had lost her memory when she hit her head. What else could explain that a woman so afraid to face me was now happy to see me?