Jeff Shelby - Thread of Hope

“Not a bad thing.”

“No, it’s not. But she’s rebelled against it. Not like you or I ever did,” he said. “Loud, letting the whole world know. She’s done it very quietly.”

I stayed quiet.

“Last semester there was some sort of dance,” he said, now tapping his hands lightly against the table. “Something happened at home, I don’t know what it was. But Jordan cut her off.”

“Cut her off?”

“Gave her some sort of weekly allowance,” Chuck said, the wrinkles at his mouth and eyes tightening. “Probably a lot bigger than you or I ever got. But an allowance. She needed the allowance to buy tickets to the dance. It was some sort of formal deal, like a prom or something, I guess. To buy her dress, too, and a bunch of other crap, I guess. But he cut if off and she had no money to go.”

I kept quiet and let him continue.

“She was pissed at him,” Chuck said. “And she wanted to go to the dance. She needed money.” He paused, stared at his hands for a moment. “And she did something really stupid.”

I thought about everything I’d learned from Gina, from the Jordans, from Meredith’s friends and now from Chuck. I assumed her getting cut off was one of the things Jordan had done to attempt to sabotage her relationship with Derek. So Meredith needed money. She was rebelling against her parents. If prostitution was her way of filling those two needs, it was far more than stupid.

“She told you all of this?” I asked. “Everyone tells me you were spending a lot of time with her, but…”

“No,” he said, cutting me off. “She didn’t tell me. I saw her.”

“Saw her?”

Anger edged into his eyes. “Working.”

“Couple of weeks ago, I was over on Harbor Island.” He named one of the high rise hotels near the airport. “I’ve been doing some work on my place and I needed a place to stay, so I spent a couple of nights at the hotel,” he said, shifting in the bed. “Got bored in my room, went downstairs to grab a beer at the bar. She was sitting there, dressed up, looking like she was about twenty-five. Didn’t recognize her at first.”

The nurse that walked me down to the room stuck her head in the room. “Sir, time’s about up.”

“He’s fine,” Chuck said, his voice the loudest I’d heard it yet.

I held a hand up to him and turned to her. “I’ll be outta here in just a minute.”

She nodded and disappeared.

“I’m fine,” he said. “You can stay.”

“Finish the story,” I said.

Annoyance flashed across his face.

“She was with some guy, older than both of us,” he continued. “There were drinks in front of each of them. He had his arm around her and she was trying to act natural, but you could see she was uncomfortable.” He stared across the table at me. “I knew it was one of two things. She was either dating this guy in some sort of weird-ass relationship or he was paying for her. It was obvious. Hotel bar, near the airport, you know what I’m talking about.”

I did. San Diego wasn’t Vegas, but there was enough high-end prostitution to go around. Expensive hotels near the airport and downtown were prime targets and while maybe the men thought they were being discreet, anyone with a brain could add it up correctly.

Chuck lifted one of his hands and flexed his fingers slowly, wincing. “They didn’t see me. So I walked around the bar-it was one of those square deals in the middle of the room-and tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around and nearly fainted. She couldn’t even speak.” He brought his hands back to the table. “The guy immediately panicked, couldn’t get away fast enough and I let him go. I walked Meredith outside.”

“You let the guy go?”

“I was more worried about her than some piece of shit john.”

“Okay.”

Chuck glanced at me, then continued. “I took her to my car and she cried for about fifteen minutes. When she was done, I asked her what the hell she was doing. It wasn’t a weird-ass relationship. He was paying for her.”

My gut bounced. An eighteen-year-old girl turning tricks. She wasn’t some runaway or drug addict. Meredith was a kid from an unbelievably wealthy home with seemingly every opportunity in the world. It was ridiculous.

“She told me about the dance from last year, that’s when it started,” he explained. “She said she didn’t intend for it to go beyond that one time, but it was a ton of money and whoever she’s working for kept pressing her into service. I’m not sure how, but I can imagine.”

I could, too. Most threats would be enough to scare an eighteen-year-old girl into doing something she didn’t want to do.

“I lit into her,” Chuck said. “I was furious. But all I was doing was scaring her more. I asked her a ton of questions, but couldn’t get much out of her. Whoever is controlling her has her wound pretty tight. I told her I was going to tell her parents and she just absolutely lost it. Worse than when we first walked out of the hotel. She begged me not to.” He looked away from me, taking a couple of deep breaths. “There was something in how upset she was. I’m not sure what it was. But it wasn’t just that she didn’t want me to tell her parents so she could avoid getting in trouble. There was something else there that I couldn’t get out of her. So I made a deal with her.”

He took another deep breath and I could see he was laboring. “I gave her a week to get out and to tell her parents. I’d keep my mouth shut, but she had to get out. At first, she wouldn’t agree and I told her then that we were driving to her parents to tell them. Finally, she agreed.” A small smile appeared on his face. “And it was almost like she was relieved, like she was glad it wasn’t just her secret anymore and that she was being leveraged.” The smile evaporated. “So I drove her home. As she’s getting out of the car, she tells me thanks and makes me promise again. I promise again. She looks at me kind of funny, then says ‘No one’s ever kept a promise for me.’”

His eyelids were sagging and I knew he was on the verge of drifting off. “I know how stupid it sounds, Joe. But that got me. I think there’s a lot of shit in her life and I was trying to be solid for her, be someone she could count on. Stupid.”

I agreed. It was stupid. His heart was in the right place, but his head needed to be smacked around.

“Three days later, I’m in here,” he said.

“So why the fuck didn’t you say something when she started telling everyone you hurt her?”

“Because I made her a promise. I told her a week and I meant a week.”

I tried to hold onto my temper. “The second she lied about you hurting her, that promise was a pile of shit, Chuck.”

He stared at me for a long moment. “Maybe. But you weren’t in the car with her. You didn’t see what I saw. My guess is that she did try to get out, that she told whoever she’s working for that she wanted out and he’s the one that beat the shit out of her.”

“Even more of a reason for you not to have kept your mouth shut,” I said.

“Maybe,” he said. “But I figured I could keep an eye on her while she figured it out. She named me for a reason. Because I was the only one who knew what was going on. She knew I’d keep my promise.” He stared at me. “I trusted her.”

“Lot of good it did you,” I said, frustrated with him for far too many reasons to lay out right then.

The door opened and the nurse came all the way in the room this time. “Sir, please.”

I stood.

“When did your seven-day promise expire?” I asked.

He thought for a moment, his eyes closing. “Two days ago.”

The day Meredith Jordan disappeared.