With that realization—she’s alive, in the dark, and something is terribly wrong with her body—comes a wave of sheer terror. A flood of icy adrenaline that freezes her brain like an arctic blast.

Why can’t she feel her hands, her feet, what’s wrong with her? Was there an accident?

The memory floats up like a bubble through honey: she didn’t have an accident. There was an attack. Just as she and Seth are disembarking the aircraft. She has the cell to her ear, telling her mother something important. Something about trouble, about calling the cops. Before she can finish asking her mom for help, a man on the runway is pointing something at them—a gun, a weapon?—and there’s a sharp, needlelike pain in her abdomen, then darkness.

Not a bullet, something else. A powerful drug. Was that the needle slamming into her abdomen? Is that what happened? Does that explain the vast numb tingling? The thickness of her thoughts? The sensation that her mind has been wrapped in a fluffy blanket?

Kelly’s experience with drugs is somewhat limited. Beer and chronic at parties, and that one time she and Sierra dropped Ecstasy at a warehouse rave in Long Beach. The X was fun—she danced for hours and hours—but at the same time a little scary because part of her kept chanting, “Three! Four! MDMA, methylenedioxymethamphetamine!” She’d made the mistake of looking up the drug’s chemical name on the web, read what it did to the brain, the neurotransmitters, and couldn’t quite shake the uneasy feeling that little bits of her mind were frying like that stupid ad from the last century, your brain on drugs, sizzling like an egg in a pan.

Whatever is causing this—it feels like her thoughts are slurring—it isn’t like ecstasy or marijuana or alcohol. It’s something much more powerful. So powerful it’s amazing that her body continues to breathe—she can feel the air in her nose and throat, the gluey dryness of her mouth—and her heart, yes, she can pick up on the slow thump of her pulse. Much too slow to keep up with her jittery thoughts, the panic that’s rising like a tide, or the burning sensation she’s just now detected in her abdomen.

Seth, what about Seth? It was his plane, his flight plan, his delivery. What went wrong?

What happened? Where is she? Is Seth okay or did they kill him?—three lines of a chorus that slowly rises into a scream of fear and confusion. She can’t make her mouth work, so for now the scream stays inside her mind. Silently screaming a heat-seeking name, over and over, endless loop.

MOMMY HELP ME PLEASE HELP ME MOMMY PLEASE HELP HELP HELP MOMMY MOMMY MOMMY HELP HELP HELP

Hot tears leak from her paralyzed eyes. She’s five again, terrified beyond endurance, and she wants her mommy.

12. The Man Called Shane

It’s Fern who suggests trying the name on the card. Having called for an update and gotten an earful—anxiety makes me vent—Fern has agreed that the computer files are vitally important.

“It’ll all be there,” she assures me. “These kids, they keep everything in their e-mail and blogs, or on MySpace.”

“Kelly’s not on MySpace” is my instant retort.

“Really? How do you know?”

“She promised. We agreed it was too dangerous. All that stuff in the news about perverts.”

Fern sighs, thinks I’m being ridiculous. Teens lie about everything, get over it. “Okay, fine, she’s the only girl in Valley Stream without a page on MySpace, whatever. What about her e-mail? Her address book files? Whatever whippy snippy thing the girls have going this week. You need to get in there.”

“I need help, Fern. And it has to be fast. Today.”

“Agreed. So call the consultant, see if he can recommend an expert.”

“Consultant?”

“You said the cop gave you a card. So call. What can it hurt? Takes you three minutes. Worst case, he can’t help. Best case, he looks like Johnny Depp.”

“Fern!”

“Admit it, when Johnny D’s on the screen you are stuck to the seat like a sticky bun.”

Swear on a Bible, if I was lying in the wreckage of a major vehicular accident, gasoline leaking, wires sparking, Fern could still make me laugh. After decades, all the way from that first day in first grade, she knows where the laugh button is, and when to push it. Plus she’s right, I have to stop letting anxiety and panic get the best of me. I have to get my little house in order for my daughter’s sake. Get on the horn, Jane, start making some noise, get things rolling. The world is full of computer geeks, I just have to find one who can get started right now, no excuse, no delay. And if the old retired fogy from the FBI can’t help with that, then he gets crossed off the list of helpers, on to the next.

Randall Shane

Former Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation

Consultant, Special Cases

Special cases, what does that mean, exactly? Only one way to find out. Punching in the number, I rehearse my opening gambit. Try to sound cool, calm and collected. All of which vanishes the instant a thick male voice comes on the line.

“Shane.”

“Um, I need, ah, to speak to, ah, Randall, um, Shane?”

“This is he.” Sounding more than a little gruff. Like, get on with it lady, what’s your problem?

“It’s about my daughter,” I blurt out. “She’s gone. Missing.”

His tone is no longer impatient. “Go ahead, I’m listening.”

“They gave me your card,” I tell him in a rush, clutching the phone with both hands so it doesn’t slip out of my fingers. “I don’t know the boy, isn’t that stupid? I mean I do know his first name, it’s Seth. But not his last name, or where he lives. Nothing! I never heard of him until yesterday and by then it was too late. They can’t, the police, they need somewhere to start, I understand that, really I do, but I don’t know anything and now she’s gone and she was supposed to call and she did and she said she needed help and then the phone got cut off and something really bad has happened I can feel it in my bones a mother knows you know?”

“Okay,” says the voice. “Take a deep breath. Hold it for a count of ten and then let it out slowly. Okay?”

“‘Kay,” I manage.

“I’ll count. One. Two. Three …”

As he counts I can feel my heart slowing, and I’m thinking he may be an old fogy, he might be a scam artist, but he’s got a great voice and would be calming and reassuring even if he was reading from the phone book. Or counting, for that matter.

“Okay,” he says. “Good. Now, if you could tell me your name.”

I tell him.

“Jane Garner, fine. Here’s how it works, Mrs. Garner. I’m going to ask you a few questions and then we’ll decide if I can be of assistance, okay? We’ll start with the note your daughter left. What exactly did it say?”

My brow furrows. “I mentioned the note?”

“Not exactly. You mentioned a promise to call. I assumed that promise was in the form of a note, but I suppose it could have been a voice mail.”

“It was a note,” I tell him. “I’ve got it right here.”

As I read him Kelly’s note, part of me concludes that we’ve been in conversation for, at best, a few minutes, and already he’s established that he’s paying attention. Listening. Which is not what I carried away from my conversation with Jay Berg, the Nassau County detective, who let me run on more out of professional politeness than actual interest. As far as Berg had been concerned, my daughter took off with a guy, end of story. Whereas Mr. Shane seems to be taking me seriously. Or at least taking the situation seriously.

“Okay,” he says. “Got it.”

I can hear him taking notes, the mouse squeak of a felt-tip pen. He reads it back, and I agree he’s got it, word for word.

“Now the call,” he says, “As best you can remember.”