“Oh, that’s right,” I say, disdain loud and clear in my voice. “You’re not the only one using him as bait.”
• • •
An hour later we pull into a truck stop. They have a Burger King inside. Eli suggests if we get anything, we take it to go.
I’m starving, but I can’t bring myself to eat. Still I do go in to use the bathroom, and come back out to find Ashley buying a pack of cigarettes. She’s upgraded this time to a pack of Marlboros.
She gives me a sheepish look and shrugs. “I figure at this point, dying from cancer wouldn’t be so bad.”
We head outside and she tears open the pack and then turns back to the truck stop, exasperated. “Forgot to buy a lighter.”
“Here”-I pull the gold-plated lighter from my pocket-“use this.”
She has to shakes the lighter a few times for it to produce a flame. She hands it back to me but I wave it off.
“Keep it. Eli told me it’s a good luck charm and that I need to hold on to it, but quite honestly he can go fuck himself.”
Currently Eli is gassing the Buick, Marta in the backseat.
Ashley turns her head to exhale a puff of smoke, her gaze never leaving me. “Despite what you may think of him and Marta, they saved your lives.”
“Did they?”
“You’re honestly going to act like it’s not true?”
“Do you have any siblings?”
“No.”
“Must be nice, being the only child. You get all the attention, right? In my family-and I’m using the word family pretty loosely-attention wasn’t so easily doled out. You heard Eli-he was never around, so Marta basically raised us the few times we were all together. Maybe once or twice a year we’d get together, otherwise we were shipped off to boarding schools. I was the youngest-at least, that’s what they told me, but obviously it was a lie-so I didn’t get nearly as much attention as the rest of them. I mean, Christ, they named me John Smith. Just how fucking generic is that?”
Ashley doesn’t speak for a long beat. She just stands there, smoking, studying me, until she finally shakes her head in disgust. “That’s complete bullshit. You realize that, don’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just because you messed up and made bad choices in your life, you can’t blame your parents.”
“They’re not my parents.”
“Of course they are. So what if they didn’t actually give birth to you-they were still the ones who raised you. And so what if your father wasn’t around much-you know now he was keeping his distance to keep all of you safe. Christ, can’t you be thankful for anything?”
She’s right, of course. I am being unreasonable. Fact is, I’m being a fucking douche bag. But it just blows my mind, thinking about how much different my life may have been had I been the oldest, or even one of the middle children, and not the youngest. Would I be any different? Would I somehow have, I don’t know, tried harder in school and in life in general? Look at what Melissa accomplished. Had she done all that because she was the oldest? No, probably not. Even if she had taken my place as the youngest child, she no doubt would have accomplished the same very thing, and that’s what really pisses me off. That in the end I have no excuse for the shitty life I’ve led. Always wanting to blame my parents, my father especially, or whoever there was for not being happy, when in reality it’s always been my fault. Not that this is a newsflash. I’ve always known it, or at least suspected it, but it’s not until now that I finally swallow the truth. And the truth, well, it tastes like shit.
“I’m sorry.”
Ashley waves it off. “Don’t worry about.”
“No, I mean about this whole thing. I’m sorry you got in the middle of this. I’m sorry that your friend was killed.”
She goes quiet, staring off into the distance.
“Was he a close friend?”
She nods slightly. “A coworker, but yes, I guess he was a close friend.”
“And then there’s Melissa.” I shake my head. “You really should just leave.”
“Where would I go?”
“I don’t know. Hole up in some motel room or something. Just wait this out, see what happens afterward.”
The truck stop is relatively busy. Cars and tractor-trailers coming and going. A Massachusetts state police cruiser pulls into the lot. It parks only four spaces away from where Ashley and I stand.
“Or maybe you could talk to him.”
Ashley watches the trooper as he extracts himself from the car and heads inside.
She turns back to me. “How would I know for sure he’s trustworthy? He might be like the cop that tried to kill you back in Jersey. He might be one of them.”
“These people can’t be that powerful. It’s just not possible.”
Ashley drops the spent cigarette to the ground. “I think all your dead brothers and sisters and their families would disagree, don’t you?”
• • •
Eli finishes gassing up and moves the Buick into an open spot nearby. He gets out and heads toward us, the New York Giants hat on his head, his face tilted down, worried just like the rest of us about the cameras.
“You two aren’t eating anything?”
We tell him no. He says he’s grabbing something and will be right back out. Ashley smokes the rest of her second cigarette and we head back to the Buick. She gets in the front, I get in the back.
Marta is still playing with her iPhone.
I ask her, “David still alive?”
“So far it seems he is. I called his office asking for him and they said he was already in surgery.” She tilts the iPhone’s screen toward me. “I’ve pulled up a map of the facility. It’s like any other major hospital, a complete maze. Plus there are cameras everywhere.”
“So we just don’t walk in and grab him?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“What if we try contacting him?”
“John, I know you think Eli and I are being selfish right now, but this is our only option. We can’t contact David, at least as things currently stand. Like Eli said, they’re not going to touch him until they know we’re in the area.”
“So we’re just going to, what, wait outside and hope one or the other shows up first?”
Marta sighs. She puts down the iPhone, rubs her eyes. She glances toward the truck stop. “I might as well use the restroom while we’re here. We have another two hours ahead of us.”
Once she’s gone, I tell Ashley, “I’m not letting my brother be bait. That’s complete bullshit.”
“I agree, but right now I don’t think we have much choice, just like your mother said.”
“She’s not my mother.”
Ashley sighs.
I ask, “What are you still doing here anyway? Seriously, you should make a run for it.”
“I want to see this through.”
“Why?”
“I have my own reasons.” She pauses a beat, then lets out a deep breath. “I’m a journalist, okay? Almost all my career I’ve done fluff pieces on celebrities. My whole life has been shallow like that. For once, I’d like to do something meaningful.”
“So what, you plan to expose these people?”
“If I can, yes. I can’t stand what they did to Melissa and her family.”
“You heard what Eli said before. They’ve already tried bringing this to the press. Each time it ended in a reporter’s death.”
She’s quiet for another beat, then says in a soft voice, “I still have to try.”
I glance out the window and watch the trooper exit the gas station and climb into his cruiser. He backs the car out of the space and heads for the exit. Coming in the entrance at the same time is a large ambulance. It doesn’t park in front of truck stop but in one of the spaces farther back. Two EMTs steps out and head inside.
I ask, “You still want to help me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Because I think I have a plan.”
thirty-eight
The Medford Medical Center sat near the heart of the city, a sprawling twelve-story building that encompassed an entire block. It had a helicopter pad. It had a garden. It had a fountain. It had basically everything you would expect from a modern day non-profit medicine mansion. Even from a half mile away, as they drove closer and closer to the hospital through the city streets of Medford, they could see the large glass structure shimmering in the midday sun.