Chapter 4
It was late in the afternoon on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving when Amy’s desk phone rang. There were only a few possibilities, either it was one of her birthday buddies making an internal call, or it was her mother. She answered with dread pitching in her stomach.
“Amy!” Her mother sounded panicked.
“Mom, I’m okay,” she said, beginning with the foremost way to calm her mother down. “What’s going on?”
“They let him out! Amy, they let him out!”
Amy took a deep breath. The news didn’t hit her the same way it did her poor mother and her uncles. The terror he instilled was theirs, not hers.
“We knew this day would come, Mom. And remember how worked up you got when she got released five years ago. And we haven’t heard word one from her.”
“Amy,” her mother’s voice cracked.
“Okay. Calm down. Where are you?”
“I’m at work.”
Vera Trinkus worked for her brother, a tax accountant with his own business. “Where’s Uncle Clint?”
“Out at a meeting.”
“Okay, so take Glenda and walk the two blocks down to the store to see Beth.” Amy knew that her mother’s good friend and co-worker would have no problem accompanying her to the store where Vera’s sister worked.
“Okay,” her mother agreed. “But first, tell me where you are?”
“I’m at work. I’m safe.”
“Do they have security there?”
“Yes. They have a security contractor and there are always like a dozen guards stationed all over the complex.”
“Where exactly are you in the building?”
“I am in my cubicle in the finance department.”
“Is that in the middle of the building or on a quiet floor, or…?”
“It’s in the middle of a large central area,” Amy explained. “There are two other departments up here so there’s like twenty or thirty cubicles. And I am personally surrounded by like six other people in their cubies. Then my boss has his office about twenty feet away.”
“Your boss. Your temporary boss? That man?”
“Carlos, yes.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“I don’t know…”
It was at that moment Carlos appeared around the wall of her cubicle, a concerned frown on his face. “Is everything all right?”
Amy nodded. She held her hand over the phone and tried to swallow back her utter embarrassment. What must this conversation sound like on the outside?
“Max,” he said gesturing to the cubicle beside her. “Said it sounded like you were on the phone with a terrorist or something. Describing the offices?”
Oh, God. Great, now her mother had caused her to be the office freak. “It’s my mom,” she admitted.
While Amy was trying to deal with the fallout of family panic at the office, her mother was still occupying one ear with babble about how she should get the chance to talk to Carlos so he could fully understand the danger Amy might be in. Amy sat there like a statue, eyes glued on her boss, phone pressed to her ear, when Carlos curled his fingers in a gesture she understood completely. With great trepidation, she handed the phone over to him.
“Ms. Trinkus. This is Carlos Diaz.”
Amy held her breath, her gaze focused on Carlos as he listened to the paranoid rambling her mother was prone to. When Carlos provided her mother with strong assurances that he would take care of Amy and ensure the building’s security, Amy knew she would have to spill the whole story to him. There would be no way around it now.
“Ms. Trinkus. I will put Amy on a plane to San Diego myself tomorrow morning.” For the first time since the conversation began, he looked down at Amy, still perched in her office chair, feeling incredibly small. “So you won’t have to wait until Thursday to see her. Then you’ll have five whole days to squeeze her tight.”
At that moment, Amy imagined, her mother was already in love with Carlos. When he had further soothed Vera, he gave her a sweet goodbye and hung up the phone. Then he turned to Amy. “We need to talk.” His tone was severe, which wasn’t unusual. In fact, it was the norm. But it made Amy’s insides twist. Nonetheless, she nodded and stood.
Neither of them spoke as they headed to his office. As they walked through the puddle of cubicles scattered through the area, Amy felt as if she were on display. Every eye in the department was on her as she took her march of shame across the stiff carpet and through the tall wooden door of Carlos’ office.
Once Carlos was all the way into his private space, he spun around and leaned against his desk, his lithe frame looking far more casual than his tightened jaw. Amy closed the door behind her. The faint click of the knob engaging caused her to cringe.
“Amy, I don’t know what’s going on. And I normally wouldn’t pry into an employee’s personal life. But from the conversation I just had with your mother, I am very concerned about your safety.”
“I’m going to tell you the entire story.” Amy tried to keep her tone strong and confident, even though she felt anything but. “First, you should know that my mother is over exaggerating. I am not in any danger.”
“Okay.” He let out a heavy breath. “Let’s sit then.”
He walked around to the other side of his desk and planted himself there while Amy took a seat in the massive chair across from him. This particular piece of furniture had always made her feel small, but today it seemed to completely shrink her down to the size of a child’s doll. Which was appropriate, she supposed.
“When I was four years old, I was kidnapped.”
Most people gave an audible gasp when hearing this statement for the first time. Some dropped their jaws. Others clapped hands over mouths. Carlos’ face made one small movement. His brow furrowed.
Amy’s hands twisted in her lap. Her eyes fell so they could aptly focus on the contortionist act her fingers were performing. “A couple. A man and a woman took me. She was my nanny. My mother worked days and my father gave her enough money to have an in-house nanny, rather than taking me to daycare. Cassandra was her name. She took me. She and her boyfriend had me for over two weeks before we were found in a hotel room in Nevada. I have no memory of any of it. But, as you can imagine, it was extremely traumatic for my mother, my uncles, and aunt. My grandparents were alive then, too. Even my cousins, who were pretty young, were affected.”
Amy paused to gauge his reaction. She looked up at the handsome man across from her. Carlos merely nodded for her to continue, the furrowed brow still very much intact.
“Anyway. I went to therapy for the next twenty years, as did my mother, though I don’t think it helped her much to be honest. And the couple went to jail, for a long time. Between the kidnapping charges, crossing state lines with a minor, and…other charges…they got a lot of time. Five years ago, Cassandra got released. She’s in the sex offender database and we know that she’s in Houston. Rodney got released today and will also be registered. The D.A. expects him to join her in Houston. He’s already been asking for a parole transfer there. I am thirty years old and I don’t expect to ever lay eyes on either of these people. But my mom…she’s…”
“Upset,” Carlos said. “And I don’t blame her.”
Amy let out a deep breath. “I tried to prepare her. The D.A. called us months ago and told us to expect this. I’ve tried to get her to accept it. I even got her to go back to her psychologist recently. But…”
“I don’t blame her,” he said again. “Are you really as all right as you seem?”
“I am. I don’t remember a single thing about that time. If I hadn’t seen the mug shots I wouldn’t know those two people if I met them on the street.”
“But you are worried about your family,” he guessed.
She nodded.
“Go home and pack, Amy. I’ll pick you up in the morning.”
****
After Amy left that afternoon, Carlos had Kenny book her a plane flight home, then he made an overreaching phone call. His brother’s brother-in-law, Sam, worked at the San Francisco district attorney’s office. It didn’t take Sam long to contact a colleague in San Diego and get the goods on Rodney Goethe.
Amy’s assessment had been correct. Rodney had asked permission to move to Houston and seemed to be headed to meet up with his old girlfriend. He was also forbidden to contact Amy or her family as a condition of his parole. There was no reason to think he posed a threat to her. Still, it was unnerving.
The next morning, as he drove Amy to the airport, he tried to repress the urge to smother her in the same way he imagined her family did. When he’d picked her up she hadn’t allowed him up to her apartment. Instead, she and her roommate had been waiting with her luggage on the building’s wide porch.
It occurred to Carlos as the three of them stood at the trunk of his car while Marcel slid the one small suitcase inside, that if Marcel wasn’t so obviously gay, Carlos would be jealous of the other man. It was another in a line of startling realizations when it came to Amy.
The ride to the airport was awkward as hell. After a long silence that was anything but comfortable, he decided to address what had happened the day before. “Listen, Amy. I realize I may have overstepped my bounds yesterday. I mean, between making you tell me about your past, and booking you a flight, and talking to your mom…”
“It’s fine, Carlos. I’m used to it.” She let out a heavy sigh.
He narrowed his eyes and rubbed his chin as he watched the road ahead. “I shouldn’t have added to that. I do see you as a grown woman. I know you are capable and independent and I know you don’t need my protection.” A deep silence overtook the car for a long beat. “I just wanted you to know that.”
Amy didn’t move, not a muscle. Carlos tightened his grip on the steering wheel and tried to remember to breathe in and out. Time ticked by. Eventually its passage was marked by the tink, tink, tink of the turn signal. Carlos pulled into short term parking, rather than sliding into a spot at passenger drop off.
Amy still didn’t make a sound as he parked the car and stepped out. She stayed put, allowing him to walk around the car and open her door. She followed him, mute, as he pulled her suitcase out of the trunk and kept it in the hand opposite her.
She glanced briefly at him before walking toward the terminal. That’s how they moved through the crowded Oakland airport, like mimes coincidentally occupying the same space.
When they reached the entrance to security, Amy stopped and turned to face him. “How did you do it?”
“Um…what?” he asked, feeling flabbergasted, not only by her unexpected and unexplained question, but also by how near she was to him. How her face, tipped up to see his, was so stunning.
“How did you know exactly what I wanted to hear? No one. No one has ever said to me what you did in the car, and it was exactly what I always wanted to hear. Damn,” she said under her breath, her eyes darting down to his chest for a moment.
Then, as if the whole thing weren’t already surreal enough, she reached up on her tiptoes. On instinct, Carlos leaned down. And she kissed him. Her aim may have originally been for his cheek, but she caught the corner of his mouth. Her lips lingered, soft and warm for a blissful moment. Then they were gone.
Before he could even process what had happened, she grabbed her suitcase from his hand and practically ran away from him, blending into the line for security and blurring his vision.
****
“Do you think my mom is finally chilling out over the Rodney thing?” Amy asked her cousin.
During the traditional Trinkus family Black Friday shopping trip, Amy and Gina had managed to escape the rest of the clan and slip off to get a soft pretzel together in a noisy corner of the food court.
Gina tore off a piece of pretzel and dunked it into the tub of mustard. “I don’t know Amy. There may not be anything you can do to keep her from obsessing over that man. It doesn’t matter that he’s already crossed the state lines and is hundreds of miles of away with all kinds of eyes on him. She’s traumatized, Amy, and that’s not going to go away, probably ever.” Gina popped the pretzel into her mouth and gave Amy a sympathetic smile around her full mouth.
Amy sighed and toyed with the half of her pretzel that remained on her paper napkin. “I just wish she could be as cool about it as I am. I wish she could take a page from my book. I don’t know, maybe that sounds stupid, or even arrogant.”
“Or ignorant.”
Amy’s head snapped up and she stared into her cousin’s hazel eyes. “What?”
Gina abandoned her pretzel and leaned back in the plastic chair, folding her arms across her chest. “You have been affected by the kidnapping more than you will ever admit, Amy. I love you. And that’s why I want you to admit it.”
“If you’re talking about the lack of a sex drive thing, I’m pretty sure that’s…um…resolving itself.” Discussing this in the food court over high carb snacks wasn’t exactly high on Amy’s list. But with their family constantly hovering through the Holiday weekend, it was as good a time as any.
Gina leaned forward quickly, planting her elbows on the table between them and causing it to tilt unsteadily to one side. Her long, strawberry blonde hair fell over one shoulder and her eyes widened. “What do you mean?”
Amy leaned in to match her cousin’s posture. Foreheads nearly touching, she confessed. “I have a crush on a guy.”
Gina sucked in a hard breath. “Are we talking like a celebrity crush?”
Amy tilted her head to the side. “What?”
“Never mind.” Gina waved her hand dismissively. “Who do you have a crush on?”
“My boss.”
Gina threw her head back and laughed. Amy didn’t think it was funny.