The Lost Daughter. Diane Chamberlain

eject button. “What do you want to hear, Marty?”

      “I don’t know.” He sounded desolate all of a sudden. “Stones, I guess.”

      She put in the cassette, and “Under my Thumb” filled the van.

      “Turn it down,” Tim said.

      She did. She would do whatever she was told to keep peace in the van.

      Tim turned onto a highway, and Marty grabbed his shoulder from behind. “I told you not to go this way!” he shouted.

      “Let go of me.” Tim’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “It’s a straight shot from here, Marty.”

      “Stop it, you two!” she said. “We have to pull together, okay? Y’all told me this would be easy and now you’re at each other’s throats.”

      The two men shut up, probably stunned into silence by the fact that she’d confronted them more than by her request to stop fighting. No one said a word for nearly an hour. She put on the Eagles when the Stones tape was finished, then tried to get comfortable as she watched the terrain grow flatter, broken up by miles and miles of tall pines. The small houses were acres apart from one another. Some of them were well maintained, with white wrought-iron railings on the front steps and gazing globes in their yards. Others had sheet plastic over the windows, sloppily patched roofs and weedy, knee-high lawns.

      “We’re in the boonies, boys and girls.” Marty finally broke the silence.

      “The boonier, the better,” Tim said.

      Marty leaned forward between the bucket seats and pointed to an opening in a grove of pines. “Turn here,” he said. She could smell tobacco and beer on his breath.

      Tim turned onto a narrow one-lane road.

      “Now, watch for a road off to the right,” Marty said. “It’s about a mile down, I think.”

      He knew the couple who would put them up for the night, and he’d been to their house once before.

      “Is that it?” Marty leaned even farther between the seats to peer out the front window.

      CeeCee spotted a road veering off to the right.

      “Yeah,” Marty answered his own question. “Turn here.”

      Tim did as he was told. They were on a rutted dirt road, so tightly surrounded by pines and shrubs that the sun was stolen from them and branches scraped the side of the van. It was three in the afternoon, but it might as well have been evening for all the light on the road.

      They grew quiet as they bounced along. The cassette tape ended, but CeeCee didn’t even notice. In the silence, she could almost hear her heart beating. In a few minutes, everything would change and their journey would begin in earnest. Guiltily she hoped something would interfere with their plan. The kidnapping was to occur the following night. Maybe the woman would be ill and unable to teach her class. Maybe the people they were going to stay with would talk Tim and Marty out of the whole crazy idea.

      She’d told Ronnie and George that she was taking Thanksgiving week off to visit a high-school friend who now lived in Pennsylvania. George was annoyed, but Ronnie was so supportive that CeeCee felt guilty.

      “You need to get away,” Ronnie said. “You’ve been so down since the breakup with Tim.”

      She wasn’t depressed, but she’d apparently done a good job of acting as though she were. She saw Tim nearly as much as before the so-called breakup. She’d lie to Ronnie about meeting a friend for dinner, then go to Tim’s house for lovemaking and reassurance that everything would turn out all right.

      “You sure this is it?” Tim asked now, after they’d driven through the dark tunnel of trees for several minutes.

      “Yes, I’m sure,” Marty said. A house suddenly appeared in a small clearing on the right. “That’s it,” he said.

      The house was tiny, the white paint peeling. Smoke rose from the crumbling top of the brick chimney. A rusting swing set stood near the woods, and a little girl swung on it, leaning back so far that her long blond hair dusted the ground. Three cars, ancient and rusting, sat in the weeds on the other side of the house, and a truck and an old VW bus were parked next to them.

      “Looks like Forrest has a leak,” Marty said, and CeeCee noticed a man on the roof spreading a piece of blue sheet plastic over the shingles. He stood up as they pulled in behind the old cars, and he hesitated a moment before heading for the ladder that rested against the eaves.

      Two mangy dogs, barking and baring teeth, ran up to the van as CeeCee and the men started to get out. She was afraid of the dogs, but she didn’t want Tim to think she was a chicken. If she couldn’t handle two dogs, how was she going to handle the task she’d agreed to?

      “Hi, fellas,” she said, holding her arms close to her sides. The dogs sniffed her legs, tails rising into uncertain wags.

      The man climbed down the ladder from the roof and approached them. He was tall, bearded and big-boned but not overweight. He looked like someone accustomed to physical work. He wiped his hand on the rag hanging from his belt, then reached out to shake Marty’s.

      “What’s the buzz, bro?” he asked.

      “Not much,” Marty answered. “This is my brother, Tim, and his girlfriend, CeeCee. And this is Forrest.”

      The little girl ran from the swing set and grabbed on to Forrest’s leg. “Is this the company?” she asked.

      Forrest rested one big hand on the child’s head. “Yes, honey,” he said, then to the three of them, “And this is Dahlia.”

      “I’m five,” Dahlia said.

      CeeCee laughed nervously, charmed by the little girl’s blue-eyed beauty. “Wow, five,” she said. “Are you in kindergarten?”

      “Mommy teaches me,” Dahlia said. “Where does your hair end?” She let go of her father to walk behind CeeCee. “It’s all the way to your bottom!” she said, delighted. “I’m going to grow my hair that long.”

      “Leave her alone, Dahlia,” Forrest said. His voice was gruff, all business. “You guys have any trouble finding us?”

      “No problem,” Tim said. “We’ll just have to figure out how to get from here to the cabin.”

      It was the first time the cabin had been mentioned on this trip, but as much as she would have liked to, CeeCee had not forgotten about it. That was where she would create the prison for the governor’s wife.

      “I’ve got a map you can take a look at,” Forrest said.

      “Great.” Tim nodded.

      They followed Forrest through the front door. The inside of the house was an unexpected contrast to the ramshackle exterior. There was a fire in the small fireplace and the living room smelled of smoke and something else, something savory. The furniture was old and threadbare, but the room was neat and cozy. They walked through the living room into a kitchen, where a woman, dressed in a long pale yellow skirt and blue-trimmed peasant blouse, pulled a loaf of bread from the oven.

      “Smells good in here,” Tim said.

      The woman set the bread next to two other loaves on the counter and shut the oven door. She did not look pleased to see them.

      “Naomi,” Forrest said, as he lifted Dahlia onto his shoulders. “You remember Marty?”

      “You shouldn’t have come here, Marty,” the woman said. Her shoulder-length hair was light brown, part of it caught in a barrette on the back of her head.

      Marty ignored her comment. “This is Tim and his girlfriend, CeeCee,” he said.

      A small cry came from the corner of the room, and CeeCee noticed a cradle near the doorway. Naomi walked over to it and lifted a baby into her arms. She walked out of the room,