We didn’t wait for another set of instructions. This lockdown was bullshit. I was sure they were trying, but I was also sure they didn’t want anyone to miss their flight.
“You can’t cut the line,” Erma protested when Brad pushed through the crowd to get out. So many camera phones were pointed in our direction it was a wonder anyone was looking where they were going.
Except Brad, who was unfazed. “Hell I can’t.”
We were out in the terminal in another minute. Erma wringing her hands, Brad holding one of mine. How long had he been holding my hand? Publicly?
I didn’t even care. He needed to hold my hand as tight as he could.
“What were we saying when she was near us?” I asked, hoping there was a clue there.
Brad shook his head, looking over the crowded terminal. People saw him and tittered, or stared, or elbowed their friends. A couple of security guards passed us, all eyes on the corners and walls, looking for a little girl.
“We have to keep moving. Mom, you go that way.” He pointed the same direction the security team went. “Keep your cell phone on. Cara and I will go this way.”
Erma complied, and Brad and I walked. I let go of his hand, but he grabbed it back. He was shaking. I didn’t think I’d ever feel him shake, but for the first time he looked powerless and out of control.
I couldn’t blame him. I felt the same way.
CHAPTER 70
BRAD
I had everything I wanted, but everything I needed was getting torn away. I was trying to hold on to a career I’d fought for, and I was losing something I didn’t even know I needed. Cara was leaving, and Nicole was gone.
I’d never felt so alone. I’d never panicked so hard. I’d never felt so out of control.
“We’ll find her,” Cara said. We weren’t looking at each other, but everywhere, past everything, everyone, watching for a moving object in a sea of movement.
“Sure.” I said it just to say something, but I didn’t know what right I had to be confident. The terminal was endless.
“She’s a survivor. She’ll probably find us.” Cara scanned corners. What would I do without her if I lost my daughter?
Her mother, Brenda, didn’t have a staff. Didn’t have a security detail or tons of time to teach Nicole anything. She’d been an overworked coffee shop employee who sometimes couldn’t find child care. With all that against her she did a great job. She never lost Nicole. She raised a girl who was healthy, smart, and well mannered.
And what had I done? Nothing. Denied her. I never even asked how she was. Never told Brenda what a good job she was doing. If I could do it all over again, I’d make it so Brenda didn’t have to work. I’d free her from her job so she could take care of our daughter full time, and I’d step in and be a part of her life.
Too late for all that.
Maybe not. Maybe if I found her, I could change things. Maybe I had the power to give Nicole everything Brenda couldn’t. Maybe I could finish the job right.
“It’s just that she’s used to small spaces from her mom taking her to work,” Cara said. “So if she’s mad or scared, she could be in a freaking cabinet.”
I stopped, yanking Cara’s hand back.
“What?” she asked.
“You know. When her mother couldn’t get a sitter?”
Eyebrows up, chin raised, in a split second Cara and I were on the same page.
Cara, being the woman of my dreams, had been on the same train of thought. Once we found Nicole, I was making changes, and she was going to be a part of it.
CHAPTER 71
CARA
“Ah! Coffee Chain!” I said. “Do you think?”
“No, but we don’t have any better ideas.” Brad stopped a woman in her twenties holding a paper cup with a blue logo in one hand and a wheelie suitcase in the other. “Hey!”
Her face registered annoyance then shock.
“Oh my God, are you—”
“Yes, I am. Where did you get that coffee?”
She swung her arm back in a general direction, speechless.
He kissed her on the cheek and pulled me away. We got to the end of the hall, looked left, then right, and found a Coffee Chain almost immediately. The sign was big, but the shop seemed eternally distant. We ran. That coffee shop was our only hope. If she wasn’t there, we didn’t have a next part of the plan. We’d have to start searching all over again.
So we ran, crashing into travelers, hopping over suitcases, dodging when we could. Brad was fast, and he pulled ahead. When I got to Coffee Chain, I walked into pandemonium. Brad was behind the counter, bulldozing through the objections of the manager, slapping open cabinets. Someone was calling security. A dozen people were photographing the entire thing.
Despite the chaos, I could tell one thing. Nicole wasn’t drawing ponies in the cabinets.
What had Brad and I been saying that made her run away?
You take her.
No, you take her.
She was five. She had no way of knowing we weren’t trying to get rid of her. She thought she was being pushed off again. She’d get yet another home.
Which was what I was consigning her to if I left.
I put my hands over my mouth and looked at the floor.
I was breaking up a family.
My family.
I looked at my shoes and considered what that meant. How much of a commitment that was, and how the rules changed when the stakes were so high.
A slight pink glow flashed against the floor and one side of my left sneaker. It happened so fast I should have missed it. But I didn’t.
I looked left, to a standing three-panel ad for frothy autumn drinks. And down, to where the panels lifted two inches from the floor and I could see the flashing lights of a certain little girl’s favorite sneakers.
I pulled back the partition, and my heart dropped down while my breath flew up.
Nicole Garcia-Sinclair crouched in the space where the floor met the wall with her arms wrapped around her knees. She picked her head up when the partition disappeared.
“Brad!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. She started crying. I scooped her up in my arms, one arm under her knees, one under her arms.
I didn’t care if she was crying. She could cry all day and night.
“I love you, Nicole.” I held her close and spoke with her tear-soaked face near mine. “I love you. I love you so much.”
Brad came to us and ladled her with kisses, reaching around the both of us, helping me hold her and pulling us all together at the same time.
“Thank God,” he said. “Thank God, and Cara. Thank you.”
The relaxed guy without a care in the world was back, but different. The relief and joy in his smile were as real and honest as another person’s could be. All the other stuff? Well, that was just stuff. That smile was the man I loved, and it was for me and Nicole.
“Daddy,” she sobbed. “Who’s going to take me?”
He didn’t look away from her, but his hand squeezed my elbow.
“We’ll figure it—”
“We both are,” I interrupted.
I cringed at my own words, hoping Brad hadn’t changed his mind. Had I overstepped? Was I promising her something I couldn’t deliver?