Lisa Gardner - Touch & Go

Once at their destination, they would receive fresh instructions regarding the next phase of operations.

At which point their charges might or might not become fair game.

Whatever. It was not their place to reason why.

They took a job. They executed it at the highest standards of performance. Then, at least in this case, they would be paid such a fucking shitload of money, Radar personally planned on never working again. White sandy beaches, sweet rum drinks and large-breasted women. That was his near future. Hell, maybe he’d even marry one of the large-breasted women. Have a couple of babies and settle into paradise. Fish all day, have sex with his beautiful wife all night. Sounded like a plan to him.

So when the van had first pulled over, tucking into an old campground, where it was quickly obscured by walls of dense evergreens, Radar had administered a fresh round of sedatives. For the sake of napping, fishing and large-breasted women everywhere, he’d given an extra-large dose.

Radar had started packing up his gear, mentally skipping ahead to three hours’ sleep, when his internal sensor had once again begun to ping. The woman. Something about the woman.

He’d studied her closer. Noticed that her face had lost some color, was covered in a faint sheen of sweat. Her eyes were not open. In fact, her eyelids appeared squeezed shut, twitching even, as her breathing accelerated rapidly.

She didn’t look so good. Maybe from the sedative, though it was mild enough. He took her pulse, listened to her heart, then checked her temperature. Nothing. She just looked…wrong. Car sick? Flu? Shock?

Maybe she was dreaming, he’d decided. Judging by her heart rate, not a nice kind of dream.

And not his problem.

Radar packed up his bag, climbed into the back and within minutes was out cold.

Three men in a white cargo van, asleep.

Then the first man opened his eyes, sat up in his seat, started the engine and turned back onto the winding mountain road.

Eleven o’clock Saturday morning, one white cargo van headed due north.

Chapter 8

IN THE PAST SIX MONTHS, ever since That Day, I’d taken to avoiding sleep. There was a phase, maybe around the second or third month, where I was nearly phobic about evenings. If I just stayed awake, kept my eyes open, my body moving, somehow, I could keep tomorrow at bay. Because I didn’t want it to be tomorrow. Tomorrow was too scary a proposition. An unnamed deadline where I’d have to make major life decisions about my marriage, my family, my future. And maybe, tomorrow was just too sad. Tomorrow was loneliness and tenement housing units and Friday-night cockroach raids and every lesson I had learned in childhood and wanted so badly to leave behind.

So for a while I didn’t sleep. I roamed the house. Ran my hand across the granite countertops in the kitchen, remembered the day Justin went with me to the quarry, where we gazed at slab after slab of natural stone. At the exact same moment, we’d both pointed to this one, then laughed like two schoolkids, giddy to discover we shared the same favorite color or pet or sports team.

From the kitchen, I’d journey down to the wine cellar, housing bottles I’d meticulously researched and stocked to impress Justin, his business associates, even his crew. You’d be amazed how many drywallers, plumbers and other general contractors know their wines. With success, everyone cultivates tastes, until even the most rugged dirt hauler can appreciate a well-balanced Oregon Pinot Noir or a more robust Spanish red.

Justin was sleeping in the basement apartment at that point. The au pair’s suite, people called it, except we’d never had a nanny, preferring to raise our daughter ourselves. The door was at the opposite end of the hall from the wine cellar. During my nightly roamings, I would stand in front of it, sheltered by the deep dark of a windowless basement. I would place my hand upon the warm wood and wonder if he was on the other side, actually asleep. Maybe he’d gone back to her. Or maybe, a thought so painful it bordered on nearly intoxicating, he’d brought her here.

I didn’t open the door. Never knocked, never tried to peer beneath it. I would just stand there, thinking that at one time in our marriage that would’ve been enough. My mere presence would’ve spoken to him, beckoned him like a magnetic force, until he would’ve thrown open the door, grabbed me into his arms and kissed me hungrily.

This is what eighteen years of marriage does to a couple. Minimizes the polar fields, mutes the laws of attraction. Until night after night, I could stand in a darkened hallway just eight feet from my husband, and he never felt a thing.

Inevitably, I would return upstairs, arriving outside my daughter’s bedroom. Again, no knocking, no entering, no disturbing of a private space where I wasn’t wanted anymore. Instead, I would sit on the floor in the hallway, lean my head against the wall and picture the white-painted shelving unit positioned on the other side. Then, by heart, I would systematically catalog each item that had been placed there. Her ballerina music box from the first time we took her to see The Nutcracker . A jumbled pile of her most beloved childhood paperbacks, Where the Red Fern Grows, Little House on the Prairie, A Wrinkle in Time , placed haphazardly on top of her more neatly organized hardcovers such as the Harry Potter series and the Twilight saga.

She’d gone through a horse-crazy phase, which would explain the herd of Breyer horses now relegated to the back corner of the lower shelf. Like her mother, she had an eye for beauty and an urge to create, hence the random collections of polished seashells and artfully strung sea glass she still added to each time we visited our second home on the Cape.

The top of her dresser held two vintage china dolls, one brought back by Justin from Paris, another she and I had found together at an antiques store. Both had been expensive, and once, both had been treasured. Now, their sightless blue eyes, glossy ringlet hair and frothy lace dresses served as makeshift jewelry stands for piles of beaded bracelets and long snarls of nearly forgotten gold necklaces. More piles of silk-wrapped hair bands and decorative hair clips adorned their feet.

Sometimes, when I entered the chaos of my daughter’s room, I wanted to toss a match. Scorched-earth policy and all that. Other times, I wanted to take a photo, draw a map, to somehow immortalize this complex web of toddler dreams, young girl obsessions and teenage desires.

In the dark of the night, however, I simply sat and named each treasured item over and over again. It became my rosary. A way to try to convince myself the past eighteen years had had some value, some worth. That I had given love and that I had been loved. That it hadn’t all been a lie.

As for the rest of the days, months, weeks currently unfolding ahead of me… I tried to tell myself I had not become the clichéd middle-aged woman, abandoned by her cheating husband, alienated by her teenage daughter, until she now existed as a mere shadow in her own life, with no identity or purpose of her own.

I was strong. Independent. An artist, for God’s sake.

Then I would get up and wander out to the rooftop patio. Where I would stand in the faint ambience of city lights, my arms wrapped tightly around my body for warmth, taking step after step closer to the edge…

I never managed to stay awake an entire night.

Five thirty A.M. was probably the longest I made it. Then, I’d find myself curled up once more on top of the king-size bed in the master suite. And I’d watch the dawn break, tomorrow forcing itself upon me after all. Until I closed my eyes and succumbed to a future that happened whether I wanted it to or not.