No Second Chance

My legs felt heavy, but I kept moving. I no longer heard the police. I quickly glanced behind me. The flashlights were far away.

“Over here!” I shouted. “Near Cabrini High!”

I started sprinting again. I reached the entrance to the chapel. It was locked. There was no sign of flannel shirt anywhere. I looked around, eyes wide, panicked. I had lost them. They were gone.

“This way!” I shouted, hoping that either (or both) the police and Rachel would hear me.

But my heart sank. My chance. My daughter was gone again. I felt the weight on my chest. And that was when I heard the car start up.

My head jerked to the right. I scanned the street and started running. A car started moving. It was about ten yards in front of me. A Honda Accord. I memorized the license plate, even as I knew that would be futile. The driver was still trying to maneuver out of a parking spot. I couldn’t see who it was. But I wasn’t about to take any chances.

The Honda had just cleared the bumper of the car in front of it and was about start up when I grabbed the driver’s side door handle. Lucky break finally—he hadn’t locked the door. No time, I assumed, because he’d been in a rush.

Several things happened in a very short period of time. As I started pulling the door open, I was able to see through the window. It was indeed the flannel-shirt man. He reacted quickly. He grabbed the door and tried to hold it closed. I pulled harder. The door opened a crack. He hit the accelerator.

I tried to run with the car, like you see in the movies. The problem is, cars move faster than people. But I would not let go. You hear those stories about people gaining extraordinary strength in certain circumstances, about average men being able to lift cars off the ground to rescue trapped loved ones. I scoff at those stories. You probably do too.

I am not saying that I lifted a car. But I held on. I wedged my fingers in and wrapped them around the divide between the front door and back. I used both hands and willed my fingers into vises. I would not let go. No matter what.

If I hold on, my daughter lives. If I let go, my daughter dies.

Forget focus. Forget compartmentalizing. This thought, this equation, was as simple as breathing.

The man in the flannel shirt pushed down on the gas. The car was picking up speed now. I kicked my legs off the ground, but there was no place to perch them. They slid down the back door and landed with a clunk. I felt the skin of my ankles being scraped off on the pavement. I tried to regain my footing. No go. The pain was tremendous but inconsequential. I held on.

The status quo, I knew, was working against me. I couldn’t hang on much longer, no matter how much I willed it. I had to make a move. I tried to pull myself into the car, but I wasn’t strong enough. I hung on and let my arms go straight. I tried hopping up again. My body was horizontal now, parallel to the ground. I extended my body. My right leg reached up and curled around something. The antenna on the top of the car. Would that hold me? I didn’t think so. My face was pressed against the backseat window. I saw the little car seat.

It was empty.

Panic seized me again. I felt my hands slipping. We had only driven maybe a twenty, thirty yards. With my face against the glass, my nose bouncing against the window, my body and face scraped and battered, I looked at the child in the front seat and a crushing truth pried my hands off the car window.

Again the mind works in odd ways. My first thought was classically doctor: The child should be sitting in the back. The Honda Accord has a passenger-side airbag. No child under the age of twelve should ever sit in the front. Also, small children should be in a proper car seat. That was, in fact, the law. Riding out of a car seat and in the front . . . that was doubly unsafe.

Ridiculous thought. Or maybe natural. Either way, that was not the thought that ripped the fight out of me.

The flannel-shirted man yanked the steering wheel to the right. I heard the tires squeak. The car jerked, and my fingers slipped away. My grip was gone now. I went airborne. My body landed hard, skidding across the pavement like a stone. I could hear the police sirens behind me. They would, I thought, follow the Honda Accord. But it wouldn’t matter. I had only gotten a brief glimpse. But it had been enough to know the truth.

The child in the car was not my daughter.

Chapter 29

Again I wasin a hospital, this time New York Presbyterian—my old stomping grounds. They hadn’t yet run X rays, but I was pretty sure they’d find a cracked rib. Nothing you could really do about it other than shoot yourself up with painkillers. It would hurt. That was okay. I was pretty scraped up. There was a gash on my right leg that looked like the work of a shark attack. Skin had been ripped off both elbows. None of that mattered.

Lenny arrived in record time. I wanted him here because I was not really sure how to handle this. At first, I almost convinced myself that I had made a mistake. A child changes, right? I had not seen Tara since she was six months old. A lot of growth occurs in that period. She’d have matured from wee infancy to an older toddler. I’d been hanging on to a moving car, for crying out loud. I had only gotten the briefest of glimpses.

But I knew.

The child in the front seat of the car looked to be a boy. He was probably closer to three years old than two. His skin, his coloring, was simply too pale.

It was not Tara.

I knew that Tickner and Regan had questions. I wanted to cooperate. I also wanted to know how the hell they had found out about the ransom drop. I hadn’t seen Rachel yet either. I wondered if she were in the building. I also wondered about the fate of the ransom money, the Honda Accord, the man in the flannel shirt. Had they caught him? Had he kidnapped my daughter originally—or had that first ransom drop been a con job too? If so, how had my sister, Stacy, fitted into it?

In short, I was confused. Enter Lenny aka Cujo.

He burst through the door dressed in baggy khakis and a pink Lacoste shirt. His eyes had that scared, wild look that again brought back memories of our childhood. He pushed past a nurse and approached my bed.

“What the hell happened?”

I was about to give Lenny an overview when he stopped me with a raised finger. He turned to the nurse and asked her to leave. When we were alone he nodded for me to go ahead again. Starting with seeing Edgar in the park, I ran through calling Rachel, her arrival, her preparation with all the electronic gizmos, the ransom calls, the drop, my dive on the car. I backtracked and told him about the CD. Lenny interrupted—he always interrupted—but not as often as usual. I saw something cross his face, and maybe—I don’t want to read too much into it here—but maybe he was hurt that I hadn’t confided in him. The look didn’t last long. Lenny gathered himself a piece at a time.