Betrayals

Thirty-One

Mai didn’t relax until she was sitting on the subway into Boston, with Logan Airport and the long, long transcontinental flight behind her. She had hoped to be able to take a cab, but she had only twenty dollars left after buying her plane ticket-and she was lucky to have that much. Because she was over twelve she could buy a ticket without an adult. However, she had to pay full fare, and since she was flying on short notice, a one-way ticket was more expensive than she’d anticipated. But if she waited and took the 12:30 a.m. flight, she could get a cheaper fare. It meant hanging around the airport awhile, risking that her grandfather might figure out what she’d done and come after her, and staying up all night.

The other choices, however, were to go back to Tiberon and face the music or steal her way onto an earlier flight. What did airlines do to stowaways?

She’d bought the ticket for the red-eye.

She wasn’t too worried about getting around Boston. Given her longtime desire to go there, she’d bought a dozen different guidebooks and had practically memorized them all. She knew that the subway would take her downtown and she could walk to Winston & Reed, the Winston house on Mt. Vernon Street, the Eliza Blackburn House, even Rebecca Blackburn’s studio. Surely her father would be at one of those places. But where to begin?

It was just eight or so California time, after eleven in New England. Mai exulted in how much Boston met her expectations and in her adeptness at getting around in a new city. Her grandfather would just be getting up now and discovering her note. She hoped he’d understand. Her dad wouldn’t-no question about that. He’d probably send her to reform school.

But she was worried about him, and if he couldn’t understand that, then maybe she belonged in reform school. He’d always told her everything, always included her-but not this time. She didn’t know who the white-haired man was or why her father had reacted to him like that, with a gun and that mean, mean-looking face. She didn’t have any brothers or sisters, no cousins yet, and she’d never known her mother. She adored her grandparents but most of the time it was just her and her dad. She couldn’t stand the idea that something would happen to him. What would she do without him?

She wiped tears off her cheeks with the backs of her hands and blamed them on the stiff wind as she walked across the wide plaza of Government Center, up toward Beacon Hill. She would try her great-aunt’s house or the Eliza Blackburn House first. Her grandmother, who’d grown up on Mt. Vernon Street, had shown Mai pictures of the Winston house when she had visited Nova Scotia last summer. She thought she’d recognize it when she saw it. And the address of the Eliza Blackburn House was listed in one of her guidebooks, with an acidic comment about its current state of disrepair.

Her dad would be okay, she told herself.

And so would she.

Jared cursed and fumed and tried to hold back his terror as he drove Rebecca’s car out to Logan Airport. She had offered a choice of the car or her truck. Thomas had muttered something about how many vehicles one person needed. A recording of a heart-stopping bestselling thriller had come on when he’d started the engine. Only R.J. The cornered innocent was about to bloodily uncorner himself when Jared popped the thing out. He settled for silence.

And speed.

And his relentless anxiety.

Mai.

“The little devil stole a few hundred dollars from me and made her escape like this was some kind of prison,” Wesley Sloan, more worried than annoyed, had told him. “She must have slipped into the car with George when he went to the airport. She left a note saying we shouldn’t worry, she was joining you in Boston and would be fine.”

Mai the optimist.

“I’m sorry, Jared. She’d pleaded illness yesterday afternoon, and we just left her alone for the night. I didn’t check on her until this morning.”

“Dad, it’s all right. I don’t blame you.”

“It’s not as if she’s been kidnapped. Jared, she’s a resourceful girl. She’ll manage. I’m on my way out to the airport now to find out what I can, but if I were you, I’d get out to Logan as soon as possible and check every incoming West Coast flight.”

Jared hadn’t wasted any time.

He got stuck in tunnel traffic and made a wrong turn in the airport and had to fight traffic to come back around and try again. Then he had to wander around forever to find a place to park. He cursed and fumed some more.

It was nearly noon and had been a bad morning from start to finish. Sleeping too late, getting up to the cold, raw reality of what had gone on between him and R.J. in the night. Loving her. Wanting her again. Not wanting to mess up her life again. Quentin was his cousin and that wasn’t one of those things anyone could change.

Thomas and Rebecca had already been up grumbling at each other in the kitchen when Jared had stumbled in shortly after nine. They’d fixed coffee, juice, toast and wild blueberry jam, and ate breakfast in the garden, where the sun was shining between dark, threatening clouds. Jared had already decided to pay Quentin another visit. Perhaps he knew something about Gerard; perhaps Jared had misjudged him. In any case, they needed to talk. Thomas, however, suggested he exercise caution and not plunge ahead until he could assess the possible consequences of action versus inaction. Jared, however, had had fourteen years too many of inaction.

Munching on a piece of toast slathered with jam, Rebecca had explained to Thomas the theory that she, Jared and Sweatshirt had discussed just before dawn.

Thomas refused even to hear her out. “Rebecca, enough. The best thing you and Jared can do is go to San Francisco and let Jean-Paul, Annette and Quentin sort things out for themselves. Gerard has no bone to pick with you two or Mai. He came to San Francisco to see for himself whether or not Quentin’s being Mai’s biological father was common knowledge-something he could use. He doesn’t need to touch her to get what he wants.”

They’d just started to argue the point when Wesley Sloan had called.

Jared finally parked and raced into the airport. Every major airline flew into Boston. There were scores of connections Mai could have made to get herself to the east coast-scores of places she could have missed a flight, gotten on the wrong flight. Chicago, Denver, St. Louis, Dallas. Jared pushed back his panic. There were computers, checks and balances, security people. He’d find his daughter.

As he passed a bank of pay phones he decided to stop and call Tiberon for an update.

Maureen Sloan answered on the first ring. “Jared, I’m so glad it’s you. Wesley just called. Mai was on a 12:30 a.m. flight out of San Francisco.”

“Has it arrived?”

He heard his father’s wife inhale sharply. “Over an hour ago.”