Hidden Threat (40 page)

And she was juiced.

She bounded up the steps and plugged her charger into her cell phone, laying it on her nightstand. She stretched, raising her arms and bowing her back like a cat might.

She sat on her bed and thought for a moment. The best way she could describe what was happening was that two parallel universes were colliding with utter force. In the past, it had been no big deal. Her mother’s universe—which she now understood to be comprised of deception and lies—had always dwarfed whatever straightforward purpose her father would come bearing.

Those collisions often produced sparks and tension well beyond the average human interaction. And through all of her observations, Amanda was coming to the conclusion that both her mother and grandmother enjoyed the manipulations and the mind games. It was as if Lake Moultrie
’s dirty secrets and poisonous ethos had found better packaging and marketing up here in Spartanburg. Thus, in Amanda’s young view, simple and straight-forward had always lost out to manipulative and ill-purposed. Hell, that had been the pattern of her life.

How could so many good memories just fade away, as if they had never existed at all? What secrets of power did her mother and Nina know that others did not? They always seemed to be getting their way. Were people really just means to whatever ends you sought, she wondered?

She
pulled the thumb drive out of her backpack and plugged it into the computer. After a series of commands, she finished storing all of the digital media inside her computer and then looked at the thumb drive. It had a long lace that was intended to be used as a lanyard so she could carry the portable drive around her neck without fear of losing it.

She laced the cord around her neck, pulling her hair back to allow the necklace to rest against her skin. She opened the file on her computer and clicked on the “Grandmother Letters” file that her father had created. There were only a few documents in the file, all of which had been scanned. She opened the first one, marked, “
The Beginning.”

“
. . . instead of divorcing Zach right away, you should get pregnant first. A baby will provide you with a steady source of income and will be more influential with a judge when you finally do leave him. You’ll get child support for at least eighteen years and a kid will give you a better shot at getting alimony for life.”

Shaking her head slowly and whispering to herself, she skipped to the next letter labeled Divorce.

“
. . . I’m not sure what you are waiting for. It’s about time you divorced Zach and moved back to South Carolina. I’m tired of you moving around and am ready for you to be home. When you file, make sure to be as aggressive as possible: kick him out of the house, antagonize him with the hopes that he hits you, try to get a neighbor to stand up for you. Your main thing should be to threaten his career. Once you do that, he will probably give you anything you want.

“
Break your locks, hide some valuables and call the police. Make sure when you do this that he has no one who can account for his time. You will need to make four or five charges against him for one or two to stick. That has been my experience. If he doesn’t respond to that immediately, then think about how you can say he ‘does’ stuff to Amanda. She’s only three and is easily influenced to say whatever you want her to say, though she is very close with Zach, and you will need to be careful there. You may need to do some prep work yourself if you choose to use this scare method.

“
Remember, Amanda is your ace in the hole; prepare to use it at the right time.

“
Love, Nina.”

Amanda leaned back in her chair and sighed with such force that her breath blew her bangs up, separating them. Her grandmother, the Wizard of Oz, she thought to herself, pulling the levers behind the scenes. Had her mother ever stood a chance?

After a moment of thinking, she determined that her mother did have a choice. She could have decided to ignore the long reach of Nina Hastings’s icy fingers. Nina, it turned out, needed her mother and herself within her fold for her own selfish purposes. She figured that it wasn’t so much the money as it was the love, the attention, and the avoidance of loneliness.

She felt nauseous. She pushed away from the desk, descended the steps and pushed through the front door just as the UPS man was preparing to knock.

“
Perfect timing,” he said. “Are you Amanda?”

“
That’s me.”

“
This box is for you. Just need you to sign right here.” Amanda grabbed the pen, scribbled something that looked like a signature and retrieved the small box from his outstretched hand.

The man stood there for a second, as if he had another package.

Preparing to continue her quest for oxygen, she looked up at him, a young man in his mid to late twenties.

“
Is there something else?”

He shuffled his feet a second and then said, “I’m sorry about your father. I served with him in the Airborne. He was a great man.”

Amanda paused, then stepped toward him and wrapped her arms around his big shoulders. He hugged her back.

“
Sorry,” he said. “We’ve lost so many. I just never thought he would be one of them, you know?”

“
Thank you. I really appreciate it. Please, never forget him.”

“
That, ma’am, would be impossible.” He turned and walked back to his boxy brown truck, backed away, and waved good-bye.

Amanda motioned back with a slight wave of her hand. She walked down the steps and then onto the bench in the garden toward the end of the porch. The bench was a wrought-iron flowered design painted totally white. Set against the azaleas and dogwoods, it was a peaceful respite. Using her good fingernail, she sliced open the package, which was about the size of a cigar box.

Inside the clumsily wrapped package was thin wrapping paper balled up around a dirty Velcro wallet. Through the clear plastic cover she could plainly see her photo from several years ago. She was surprised by her reaction. She didn’t cringe at the fact that she had no makeup on or that her hair was not highlighted. The angle of the camera had not even captured her good side. She didn’t care.

This was clearly her father’s wallet. She opened it and saw the Saint Michael’s medal, silver and worn. She removed it from the pocket and held it between her fingers.

“
Protect us,” she whispered, and looked up into the sky. “Please?”

She saw a small note inside the wallet. Opening it, she read:

Amanda, This is your dad’s. Never lose hope.

I’ll be in touch.

Love, Uncle Matt.

She began crying uncontrollably. Hope? How can I lose something I don’t have, she wanted to scream. She shook and bent over her knees, screaming voicelessly into the garden. For the first time she felt entirely alone. Fear was an invisible finger tracing up her spine to her neck, which began to constrict. Her breaths became rapid and shallow, the onset of panic. Guilt was a tightening noose around her throat.

Forgive me. Please.

CHAPTER 54

Afghanistan

Wednesday Morning (Hours of Darkness)

Colonel Garrett’s mind drifted into and out of consciousness as if he were looking through a dusty Coke bottle from the inside. Distorted shapes and sounds formed around him. He registered a shadow bending over him, then pulling away. Something was touching him; he wasn’t sure what. Voices were sometimes loud, other times soft, and frequently absent altogether.

His hands and legs did not appear to be bound, but it was a passing thought. He was uncertain of his status. Dead or alive? Captured or free? The energy it required simply to think about it drained him. His mind began to swoon again. It occurred to him that he may have been drugged. Lightheaded and peaceful, he succumbed to the welcoming respite.

His mind played on themes from his youth, with Matt and Karen on the farm, and the happy times with Melanie and Amanda and Riley. They were a welcome distraction from the pain and fatigue his body was suffering on the cold, hard ground.

He awoke to the sound of metal sliding along the dusty floor.

“
Eat.”

Having no motor control over his limbs, he couldn’t move his body to perform the simple task of nourishing himself. His body was aching for energy, yet he was unable to translate the urge into action.

Soon he found his mouth being stuffed with something. It was some type of meat, which he readily devoured. He gnawed at the rubbery substance and swallowed. His mind registered that it might be lamb. At least he hoped that was the case. More of the meat came and was followed by a tin cup to his lips. He drank the water like a man with a mouthful of anesthesia after a day of dental work, the liquid spilling across his face.

The apparition vanished as soon as its feeding chore was done. He found a soft spot on the blanket for his head and rested again, his mind swimming and taking him back to an even less pleasant time.

Zach was about to deploy to the Philippines; 9-11 was still a fresh wound, and he had rapidly signed up for any mission that would get him into the fight. Like many soldiers, he knew combat and its difficulties, but he also knew that the country and its soldiers needed the best leadership it could muster to win this war against the nation’s enemies.

Amanda had been ten at the time, and he had called Melanie to orchestrate a visit prior to his departure overseas. Having driven the five hours from Fort Bragg to pick up his daughter, he had an uneasy feeling that something was amiss.

He had learned to expect the unexpected in almost all facets of life, but the one realm that continued to catch him off guard was the new tack that had begun with Amanda. It was part disbelief and part debilitating love. His mind could perceive, yet never understand, some of the actions that had taken place at the hands of Amanda’s mother and grandmother. Yet, his heart refused to believe that anyone could be so cruel, especially to their own flesh and blood. Which was why he was continually surprised.

At the exit off I-85, he pulled into a RaceTrac gas station to get his wits about him. Normally he would call Amanda and chat the remaining fifteen minutes to the house. She had been distant on the first call and then had not answered his two subsequent attempts.

Driving always gave him time to think. Sometimes he would listen to a book on tape. Other times he would drone along, staring at the white passing stripes, and try to understand where it had all gone wrong.

His discussions with Riley had given him enough insight into the idea that a child who was once close with her father, if sufficiently manipulated by the mother, could develop a split personality, of sorts. Nothing clinical, she had told him, but the child would develop an outward ability to ‘handle’ the noncustodial parent—the father typically—while remaining loyal to the custodial parent, the mother in most cases. Further, Riley had pointed out, in a case like Amanda’s, her pre-existing love for her father, though muted, was expressed in the form of not wanting to hurt him.

As he pulled up to the guard shack at the gated community on the outer reaches of Spartanburg, the guard stepped forward.

He rolled down his truck window and said, “Hi, I’m here to pick up Amanda Garrett, please.”

The guard was a hefty female wearing a white shirt with a sewn-in patch that said “RONCO Security.” She was a block of a woman, no shape or pattern to her. Her face was oval, and she looked mad at the world.

“
Just a second,” she muttered. Walking to the far side of the shack, she waved at someone. A uniformed police officer for the city of Spartanburg appeared while Zach was idling in his truck at the shack. The gate was a standard wooden arm with a cantilever that lifted the barrier when block woman pressed a button. He was trapped.

“
Sorry to do this, Mr. Garrett, but I have a summons to issue you to appear in court next week.”

This couldn’t be happening. Then it occurred to him, of course, that this was the famous baited ambush. Amanda was the bait, and he was the target. The attack could not have been performed better by Sun Tzu himself. Naturally, he had to deploy in three days and could not appear in court the following week. He had no attorney and was only hoping to spend a couple of days, perhaps his last days ever, with his daughter before heading off to combat.

“
Well, I’m heading overseas Monday, can’t this wait?”

“
I’m sorry, it can’t. My orders are that I have to issue this to you if I can find you. And here you are.”

Zach took the document and signed the police officer’s paper on the wooden clipboard. He opened the document and began to read it, but block woman raised her voice. “Come on, buster, you’re holding up traffic.”

The arm lifted and his spirits sank, but he pushed forward anyway. He heard the woman mutter, “Deadbeat,” as he was moving past the gate.

He pulled into the parking lot of the country club and did what not many Airborne Ranger captains would readily admit to—he cried. He processed the last three years of pain through his system, weeping at his own ignorance. But he grieved mostly for Amanda. He had failed her.

His overriding thought was that if Amanda’s mother was capable of doing this to him at this time, what on earth had she been doing to Amanda?