Rick Mofina - In Desperation

I’m in trouble, Jack. It’s an urgent matter of life and death…

Before he realized it, he was gripping his cell phone and calling. He stepped out onto his balcony and into the morning heat bathing the city as the line clicked through.

“Hello.”

A woman had answered.

“Cora?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, emotion rising in her voice. “Is this Jack?”

“Yes.”

“Oh God, is that really you?”

He went numb at the sound of her voice, somehow different with the passing of time, yet somehow the same as it pulled him back across two decades to Buffalo.

He is twelve and trembling in his bedroom; his heart is aching. He flinches as doors slam and screaming rages in an Armageddon between Cora, Mom and Dad.

“We know you’re taking drugs, Cora!”

“You don’t know anything! Stay out my life! I’m almost eighteen!”

“Please, honey, listen! We love you!”

“I’m leaving to live my own life! I’m never coming back!”

Cora left, all right. And no matter what they did, or how hard they searched, they never saw her again.

She’d become a ghost.

Now that ghost was pleading across a lifetime, over a phone line between Phoenix and Juarez, Mexico.

“Jack?”

“Yes, I got your email.”

A long crackling filled the chasm that yawned between them.

“Jack, they took my daughter! Help me!”

“Your daughter? You have a daughter?”

“Yes, and two men dressed like police officers came to our house last night and took her!”

“Call the police.”

“ No! They said they’d kill her if I went to the police!”

“What?”

“They said the man I work for owes them a lot of money.”

“Who do you work for? What the hell are you involved in?”

“Listen, I think the kidnappers are drug dealers. It’s like the stuff you’re writing about now in Mexico.”

“Damn it, Cora, are you still screwed up with drugs after all this time?”

“No, Jack, I’ve put that behind me. I’m a secretary for a courier company. Jack, I don’t know why they took my daughter!”

“What about your husband? What’s he doing to help?”

“I’m not married.” Cora released a great sob as she continued. “I don’t know why they took Tilly. That’s her name, Tilly. She’s all I have!”

It was their grandmother’s name.

“She’s my little girl. She’s eleven years old and they said they’ll kill her if I don’t help them get their money back. Help us, please! I don’t know what to do, or who to turn to!”

Gannon hesitated.

“Jack, she’s your niece!”

My niece .

Gannon’s breathing quickened as he looked out at Juarez, trying to comprehend what was happening. In a matter of minutes, he’d gone from being alone to having two people in his life.

Two people who desperately needed him now.

It was a ninety-minute flight from El Paso to Phoenix.

He could be there in a few hours.

Phoenix, Arizona, Mesa Mirage

Four hours after Cora’s call, Gannon’s Southwest flight landed in Phoenix. Now, as his 737 taxied to the gate, he resumed questioning the wisdom of setting aside his story in Mexico to rush to Arizona.

Am I making a mistake?

He had tried to reduce his risk. Before lifting off, he’d called Isabel Luna at El Heraldo, telling her that he had to leave Juarez for an urgent personal matter in the U.S. Now, in the seconds before the pilot cut the engines, Gannon emailed Melody Lyon in New York, informing her that he’d temporarily left his assignment to fly to Phoenix. He knew that wouldn’t go over well and by the time he stepped from the jet, Lyon had called him to confirm it.

“What the hell are you doing in Phoenix? Your assignment’s in Juarez.”

“Something came up.”

“Who authorized this trip?”

“I’ll pay for it.”

“I don’t care. I want you in Mexico. That’s your story.”

“I know, but-”

“I was under the impression that you were working on securing the assassin’s profile. The WPA needs that story, Jack. The Associated Press and Reuters have been killing us. Why are you in Phoenix?”

He couldn’t reveal the truth-damn it, not yet. Hard-pressed, he searched the terminal for an answer.

“I have an inside lead on a possible kidnapping.”

“A kidnapping in Phoenix? I haven’t seen anything on it.”

“No one knows. It’s just emerging.”

“Did you alert our bureau there?”

“No. Not yet. Melody, don’t tell anyone anything yet. Let me follow this.”

“Is this connected to the drug wars?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure what this is. I have to check it out. If it falls through, I’ll be back in Juarez tonight. All I’m asking for is a little time, please.”

“I’ll give you twenty-four hours and I want updates, Jack.”

As Gannon’s cab wove through the east valley suburbs, doubt continued gnawing at him. Ever since he’d broken a global exclusive out of South America and the Caribbean a few months ago, senior WPA editors had been pressuring him to deliver another big story.

So what was he doing here? Was he making a mistake by ignoring a potentially huge story out of Mexico?

And for what?

Cora.

It was tearing him apart. His sister was a stranger to him. She was messed up when she’d run away from their family. It had devastated their parents. How could he forgive her for what she’d done?

And now this.

What if she was still messed up?

But she had found him, now, after all this time. Something he’d buried deep and long ago warmed to that fact. And she had a daughter, his niece. How could he turn his back on them? They were family. That’s what he told himself as his cab turned down Cora’s street and came to a creaky stop in front of her address. Gannon paid the driver, approached the house with his stomach tensing and rang the bell.

Twenty-two years since he’d seen her .

The door opened to a woman in her late thirties.

Cora.

The sun lit her face, made a bit fuller by time. The way the corners of her eyes creased reminded him of their mother and father. A bittersweet smile blossomed as she spoke his name.

“Oh, Jack!”

She engulfed him on the step, nearly knocking him backward. She held him tight as she sobbed. Gannon felt something in his throat rising, his eyes stinging, for he never believed he would ever see her again.

They went to her kitchen and in the brief awkward quiet punctuated by Cora’s tears, they studied each other. As her red-rimmed eyes took stock, Gannon felt as if he was twelve again, holding the attention of his hero.

“I knew you would grow up to be a tall, handsome man.”

She had become a fine-looking woman, a mother, he thought.

“Help me find Tilly.”

“I’ll do what I can,” he said, absorbing all the changes in her as each of them grappled with the time that had blurred their memories over two decades.

Cora offered a weak smile, worry lines cutting deep around her mouth, replacing the gleam that had always lifted him before the day she walked out on everything back in Buffalo. A tsunami of remembrance, outrage and regret rolled over him, and Cora saw his mood dim.

“I’ve been a terrible sister.”

“You should have come home.”

“I wanted to. So many times, but I couldn’t face you, Mom and Dad.”

“They died not knowing about your life, your daughter, their granddaughter.”

She turned away.

“I know. I saw it in the Sentinel on the internet.”