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Mac felt better when he returned to the restaurant after going to the gym. He parked down the street where he could see the back door, then settled in to watch. Several people came in and out, but none that came close to matching the young woman he was looking for. It was a Tuesday night, so there weren’t a lot of customers, and the restaurant closed at 9 p.m. Even then, with everyone gone, he still hadn’t seen Maiah Fairchild.
He got out of his SUV, strolled down the sidewalk past the restaurant. There were no signs of anyone still there. He walked back toward his car, and then into the parking lot by the kitchen door. No sounds. No one still cleaning up. Mac went up to the back door as if he had every reason to be there and shook the door handle. It didn’t open. He pulled out his keys, and with a twist of the small pick that dangled from the keychain, the flimsy lock opened up.
They needed better locks. It had been a long time since he’d even tried to pick a lock, and that little pick was more a memento than a working pick. A toothpick would have done the trick on this crappy lock. He shook his head.
Most people had very little awareness of their personal security. It floored him all the time. Janet had barely locked her doors before she’d come under attack. He doubted she was a lot better now, truth be known. Must drive an FBI agent from D.C. nuts.
He let himself in and looked around the back of the restaurant. A big kitchen. A walk-in freezer, and a couple of small storage rooms. He paused in the second room. A mat was rolled up in the corner.
Maiah had been living here, he thought. And while some would consider this to be spartan quarters, he figured a girl who grew up in a refugee camp probably thought they were grand. But she wasn’t here now, and there were no clothes, no pack.
She’d fled, he thought disturbed. Why?
And where?
He went back outside, locked the door and pulled it closed tightly. Where would a young girl from a refugee camp go?
She’d gone to Kate, and then fled again. He wasn’t sure what order that had happened in, however. He walked down the sidewalk toward the water along Boat Street, trying to think like a scared 17-year-old girl in a foreign country. Where would she go?
And then he knew — there was a homeless camp not far from here under the University Bridge overpass. There had always been homeless people in Seattle, just like any major city, but there seemed to be more now. He’d been into a few of the camps — dangerous places, even for a former Marine like him. But Maiah might not see it that way, considering where she grew up. Actually, considering where she grew up, a U.S. homeless camp probably looked palatial.
He walked a bit faster now that he had a destination in mind. The sun was setting. Even in August, it would be dark soon. Would she come with him, though? He stopped and thought about that. She’d had a couple of days to go to ground, and no, she wasn’t going to go with a strange man. Not even one who came in her half-sister’s name.
Mac pulled out his phone and called Angie. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
“A bit sore,” Angie said. “But I’m watching the most entertaining evening show, my friend.”
Mac glanced at the time and sighed. The evening news had just started — had they led with that story? Probably. “Hate to pull you away from it, but I think I know where Maiah is, and I’m going to need backup.”
“Backup? And you call me?”
“Well? Would a 17-year-old girl leave a homeless camp with me? Or with you?”
Angie laughed. “When you put it that way — where are you?”
Mac told her and went back to get his car and move it closer to the overpass. While he sat waiting, he called Shorty. “I’ve got a name I need a background check on,” Mac said.
“Busy right now,” Shorty replied. “Great show on TV I’m watching.”
“Funny,” Mac said sourly. “You remember Kate Fairchild?”
“Sure,” Shorty said. “The woman who dumped you and got engaged a month later?”
“That’s the one,” Mac agreed and tried not to grind his teeth. “She’s married and pregnant, by the way.” He told Shorty about her visit, and his search for her half-sister.
“But I’m curious about her father,” Mac told him. “Things just don’t add up.”
“Starting with he’s supposed to be dead, and apparently isn’t? And add in some insurance fraud for spice?” Shorty said.
“Yeah. All of that,” Mac replied. “His name is Samuel Fairchild, DOB 2/24/1960. Born in Snohomish.”
“All right,” Shorty said. “I’ll take a look. After I finish my show.”
“Tape it for me, will you?” Mac asked.
“Trust me, I’m recording this one for posterity,” Shorty said, and ended the call.
Mac leaned his head back against the head rest and wondered just exactly what the TV stations had aired. Then he pulled out his phone and Googled Mae La refugee camp.
It didn’t take long for a familiar car to make its way down Boat Street toward him. Long enough for him to realize how ugly the situation was in the Myanmar border region, and how desperate people must be. Why wasn’t that more prominent in the news? He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, wondering about Seattle’s response to the refugee crisis. Kate had said there was a Karen refugee community here.
Mac watched to make sure it was Angie’s car before getting out. She parked behind him.
“Where are we going?” she asked. Mac gestured toward the foot of the University Bridge. Angie sighed. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”
Even at this time of night, the traffic going over the bridge roared overhead. The trucks geared down for the bridge — a draw bridge originally built nearly a century ago. It crossed the Ship Channel that allowed boats to go from Lake Washington to Lake Union. Mac used it to avoid the I-5 freeway when he needed to get from home, or the office, to the university. He hated driving on I-5.
But the homeless camp was right at the water’s edge, a collection of tents pitched among the dry grass and shrubs that surrounded the bridge pillars. It wasn’t as scary as the one under the Viaduct downtown. Mac had gone into that one a year ago, and it had scared him — and he’d been armed at the time. But that one was mostly men with alcohol or drug problems, and a lot of veterans with PTSD. A lot of angry men, who would have mugged him for his shoes, if he hadn’t been with the Preacher, a respected member of the homeless community.
This one had more families. In some ways it was even more disturbing with its tidy dome tents, and neatly stacked boxes of possessions. It could almost pass for a camping trip into the Cascades. He snorted at that memory. Angie might be happy to go camping regularly as a guide, but he’d be happier never seeing a mountain campsite again.
But what did it say about the country that there were families living under a bridge? Mac shook his head. Nothing good. And this looked quasi-permanent.
Angie glanced at him and slid her arm under his. “You OK?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Triggers some old memories,” he admitted.
“Were you and your mom homeless when you were a kid?”
“Sometimes,” Mac said. “Usually just brief periods until she could get some money together or find a new man. But we usually lived out of our car then. She had this big Caddy. Most single mothers do that — cars are safer. You can park along some suburban street and move along when cops finally get called. Down here are families — maybe some older people. The scary one is under the Viaduct downtown.”
They were wandering through the area now on the bike path. Mac tried to keep his shoulders from hunching — no use looking any more intimidating than he already did — but it was hard. Old memories die hard, no lie.
“I’d like to come down and photograph this,” Angie said softly.
“Not alone,” Mac cautioned.
“No, I won’t come alone,” she promised. “But yeah. I’d like to come back. Talk to people, you know?”
Mac nodded. Angie was good at getting people to talk to her. He’d come with her and stand back and let her do it. It would be an amazing piece.
“There,” Angie said softly. “Off to our left.”
Mac glanced where she was looking. Bingo. A small young woman was laughing with some kids near a tent. She’d attached herself to a family, Mac thought with approval. Smart. A single woman alone down here would draw attention. The kids were brown, and Maiah fit in — although when he looked closer, he thought the family was probably Mexican, not Asian. “You talk to her. I’ll talk to the father,” Mac said. “Use Kate’s name.”
Maiah saw them coming, and looked poised to flee, but Angie called out quickly, “Kate sent us. She’s worried about you.” Maiah paused, and studied Angie for a moment, and by then Angie was beside her, talking softly.
Mac turned to see a wiry Mexican man of about 40 stand up. “We mean her no harm,” Mac said softly. “She has family — an American half-sister — and she got worried when Maiah didn’t show up for class.” The man hesitated and studied him.
“She said some men were hunting for her,” he said. “But she said they were Burmese. I’m not sure what that is, but you’re American.”
Mac grinned at the man. “And Mexican,” he said. Might be the first time he’d claimed that, he thought ruefully, at least with any confidence. “I plan to take her to her sister, and I’ll see to it that she’s safe. My word on it.”
The man nodded. “She shouldn’t be down here,” he said, then added, a bit bitterly. “None of us should be.”
“No,” Mac agreed. “But thank you for taking her in.” He pulled out his wallet and found a business card. “I owe you,” he said. “If you need help — or if men come looking for her — send someone out to call me. And I will come.”
The man took the card and looked at it curiously, but he pocketed it without comment. Mac looked in his wallet. He usually carried quite a bit of cash — you never knew when you might need it — but it was in large bills. He took out the 20s that he had and handed them to the man.
The man started to protest. “We don’t need charity,” he said stiffly.
Mac thought that was an obvious lie, but he understood pride. “For the next girl you have to rescue,” Mac said. “Not everyone would take someone in like this. Mucho admiración.”
The man hesitated and then he took the cash. “Mucha admiración,” he corrected. “You aren’t much of a Mexican, are you.”
Mac laughed. “No,” he said ruefully. “Mi Espanol esta muy malo.”
The man grinned briefly. “It is too bad when our children lose the language.”
Mac looked at him with curiosity. “It is,” he agreed. He held out his hand. “I’m Mac.”
“Paulo,” the man said, and shook Mac’s hand.
Angie brought Maiah over and introduced Mac as a friend of Kate’s. Maiah thanked Paulo and then went to hug his wife and the children. She grabbed a pack. Angie stayed by her side. Mac approved. He half-expected Maiah to get cold feet and take off, like she had with Kate. But she didn’t.
She refused to let him to take her pack when he offered, however. Well, cautious was never wrong, and Maiah had grown up in a tough world. Mac walked on the street side of the two women and scanned the neighborhood for anything suspicious. He didn’t see any watchers, but it paid to be careful. He’d learned it young too.
“Ride with me,” he said softly to the girl, when they reached the two vehicles. “I have some questions for you before we reach Kate.”
Maiah hesitated, but then she nodded and got into the SUV. “Will you come too?” Mac asked Angie. “This could get difficult.”
Angie nodded. “I’ll take some more ibuprofen,” she said, “but I’ll be right behind you.”
Mac gave her the address just in case. “It’s Kate’s mother’s house. Naomi Fairchild,” he said.
“Should be interesting. Does she know?”
“Kate was going to go tell her,” Mac said. He pulled out his phone and sent a quick text message to Kate updating her.
Kate responded right away. Mac read it with a grimace. “Naomi sent Kate home, but Naomi will be expecting us.”
Angie squeezed his arm and got into her car. Mac waited until she started it, before getting into his SUV and turned the key. “I’m Mac,” he said, repeating the introduction.
Maiah nodded. “I am sorry to cause so much trouble.” Her English was accented, and a bit stilted. As Kate had said, it was if she hadn’t had much practice using it.
“I don’t think it is your fault,” Mac said, speaking slowly. He navigated the turns that would take them back onto the Ave and then across to the other side of campus where the Fairchilds lived. “Let’s start with these men you’re hiding from. We are going to Kate’s mother’s house, and you will be safe there. I will see to it. But the more I know, the better I can protect you.”
Maiah told him what she knew, which wasn’t much. She’d gone to see Kate because her father had told her once about her older sister, and she thought Kate might be able to help her straighten out the citizenship paperwork. But she realized that Kate knew nothing about her, and thought her father was dead.
“It was told to me, that he and his first wife divorced,” she said with some difficulty. “I did not know.”
Mac nodded, encouragingly. “Go on.”
She’d realized she had upset Kate, and that Kate was pregnant, and she ran away. “It was a cowardly thing to do,” she said. “I realized later that running away didn’t make it better. But then I saw them. Two men, Burmese soldiers, were waiting outside the building where I have class. I turned and walked back to the restaurant where I stay.”
“Soldiers?” Mac asked.
She nodded. “They were wearing American clothes, but you can tell.” She glanced at him. “Like you.”
“I was U.S. military,” Mac agreed. “But it has been eight years now since I got out.”
“But you still look like it,” she insisted.
“I probably do,” he said. He pulled over and parked across from the Fairchild House.
Maiah gasped. “She lives there? She must be very rich.”
Mac glanced at the old, somewhat ramshackle, Victorian in all of its colors. He liked the house a lot, but it wasn’t the house of a wealthy person. Not in America. “No, she’s not rich,” Mac said. “She takes in boarders and works on campus. But it is a great house, isn’t it?”
Maiah nodded, still staring at it.
“So tell me quickly,” Mac said. “You saw the men, and you went back to the restaurant.”
“They had already been there. Mr. Amarin was upset, and afraid. He told them he didn’t know what they were talking about, but he said he didn’t think they believed him. For my own safety, I must go. So I left. I had seen the refugee camp by the river, and so I knew I could go there, and be safe.”
Homeless camp, Mac thought, but then didn’t bother to correct her. Was there a difference? And she thought of it as a safe place....
“Do you know why they would be looking for you?” Mac asked.
She shook her head. “It must have something to do with my father,” she said. “But why they would come here? I do not know this.”
“Your father is alive?” Mac asked.
She hesitated. “I am not sure,” she admitted. “Mama thought he must be dead. That is why she sent me here to the university. To declare my citizenship and start college. Dad didn’t want me to come to the United States. He didn’t think U.S. citizenship was that important — I have Thai citizenship. Mama is Thai. Dad thought I should go to a university there — there are excellent ones. But Mama thinks I should claim it — and it is easier now, before I turn 18 than it would be later. Papa has been missing for eight months.”
Mac sorted through all of that. Samuel Fairchild had a lot to answer for, he thought grimly.
“OK,” he said easily. “Let’s go inside. Kate went home to her husband, but her mother, Naomi is expecting us. Naomi is a good person, Maiah. Maybe the best person I’ve ever known. She is kind. You can trust her.”
Maiah glanced at him skeptically, then looked back at the house. “I like the house,” she said softly.
Mac smiled. Hard to fear a woman who painted a house like this, he agreed. “Let’s go.”
Naomi met them at the door with a smile for Maiah. “Kate told me she’d met you,” she said. “I’m so glad Mac found you.”
Naomi was in her 50s, Mac thought. She looked like an older edition of her daughter — the same brown hair color, although Naomi’s hair was cut shoulder length, unlike Kate’s, the same softness to her face and body. She smiled at Mac. “It is good to see you again, Mac,” she said, and gave him a hug. He hugged her back awkwardly. “Come inside.”
“Naomi, this is my girlfriend, Angie Wilson,” he said, pulling Angie forward. “Angie, this is Naomi Fairchild.”
“Come into the living room,” Naomi said, smiling at Angie with welcome. “Would you all like some iced tea?”
Angie sat down next to Maiah on the couch. Mac followed Naomi into the kitchen to help with the iced tea. He’d learned these kinds of manners in this home, he thought with amusement. “Are you all right?” he asked softly.
Naomi nodded. “Let’s get Maiah into Kate’s room, and then we can talk. She must be exhausted.”
The door to the basement opened, and a young man with floppy brown hair peered out. “I thought I heard your voice,” Timothy Brandt said. “What are you doing here?” He reddened. “Sorry, that came out wrong.”
Mac laughed a bit. Timothy — Tim, Mac thought he preferred these days — Brandt was Janet’s son, a relationship Tim had only learned about two years ago. He was truly one of most socially clumsy people Mac had ever met. Mac tolerated him for Janet’s sake.
“Is everything OK with M... Janet?” he asked. He came into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of tea.
“Janet’s fine,” Mac said. “You could call and ask her, you know.”
“We talk,” Tim said defensively. “But it’s not like she’d tell me.”
True enough, Mac conceded. “No, she’s fine,” he reassured him. “This is about something else entirely.”
And it shouldn’t surprise him that Tim was curious — he was his mother’s son after all. Tim followed them out to the living room where he stopped and stared at Maiah. Mac glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. Tim just shook himself, and then took a seat in the chair next to the fireplace.
“I’m Tim,” he said with as close to a pleasant smile as Mac had ever seen on his face.
Maiah tipped her head down, letting her hair hide her face. “Maiah,” she said.
With a warning glance at Tim to behave, Naomi offered Maiah the glass of tea. “Not what you’re used to,” Naomi said with a smile. “But try it.”
Maiah obediently took a sip. “Thank you,” she said softly. “I am sorry! I should not be here,” she blurted. “I did not know!”
“Of course you should be here,” Naomi said firmly. “You are the younger sister of my daughter. And you will stay with me and go to college! This is what I do, after all. I take in young Christians to live here, so that they can go to college.”
Maiah stared at her. “You thought my father was dead.”
“I was told that, yes,” Naomi agreed. “And it is a mystery we will have to solve. But that is for Samuel to explain. It has nothing to do with you.”
Maiah considered that, and then she nodded. “I do not know where he is.”
“And that is something for me to solve,” Mac interjected. “You said he left eight months ago? Do you know where?”
She looked troubled. “I heard them fighting about it,” she said, and sounded guilty. “Mama didn’t want him to go. It was dangerous. I think he was going to go to the villages on the other side of the border.”
“Had he done that before?” Mac asked.
Maiah nodded. “But it got more dangerous each time, Mama said.” She giggled. “And she said he wasn’t getting any younger. Papa didn’t like that.”
Mac grinned at her. “Probably not,” he agreed. “Why did your father go?”
“Word had come,” Maiah said slowly. “Some relatives of our church — their village had been burned. They were trapped and needed help to escape to the refugee camp. Papa did that kind of thing.”
Mac wondered what other kinds of things Samuel Fairchild did when he crossed the border. Two Burmese guards had not come after Maiah because her father was a missionary.
“Maiah, you must be very tired,” Naomi said. “And you should return to class tomorrow. Timothy? Would you show Maiah where Kate’s room is? Kate said she should stay there.”
Tim sat down his glass. “Sure,” he said. “It’s upstairs. Can I carry your pack for you?”
Everyone stared at him, even Angie who barely knew him. What have you done with the rude young man and who is this guy, Mac thought with amusement. All we needed to do was introduce him to a pretty girl in trouble?
“I’ll go up with you,” Angie said, when Maiah hesitated. “Come on. And let him carry the pack. You’re exhausted.”
Mac waited until he heard the door to the second floor hallway close before turning to Naomi. “Did you know?”
“Know what? That my husband was still alive? That he’s got another family in Thailand? No, of course I didn’t know,” Naomi said. It was the first time he’d ever heard her get snippy.
“Sorry,” she said with a sigh. “You didn’t deserve that. It’s just....”
Mac waited. One thing he’d learned as a journalist was to let people take their time to tell their story.
“At the time, I was just heartbroken,” she said. “These men — strangers — show up and tell me Samuel is dead. They give me a death certificate and contact information for a life insurance company. It felt a bit strange, but I assumed they were from the mission board. Quite frankly I was too upset to pay much attention. I loved him very much, Mac, and I couldn’t believe he was gone. And I didn’t want to question any of it — I was just relieved that there would be some money. I was working on campus as a clerk in financial aid. They don’t make much money. And I had a 12-year-old daughter who was very bright and would need college someday. So I just took the information, contacted them, and then used the money to buy this place. I felt like it was a way to serve the Lord, and to raise Kate near the university. And it has been a good life.”
“But?” Mac prompted.
“But,” she agreed. “After the shock wore off, and I stopped missing him every day, I started to wonder about a number of things. It was odd. He had been living in Thailand working in the Mae La camp without me for some time. He came home for Christmas, that last year, and that was all. I suppose I knew the marriage was in trouble, maybe even over, but we didn’t believe in divorce. And I assumed that when Kate was in college I’d rejoin him on the mission field. Then he was gone. I missed him! Just knowing that he was there — somewhere — and that I loved him, and he loved me, was this warm thing in my heart. And then he was dead.”
She paused and shook her head. “Sorry to dump this on you.”
“Go ahead and dump,” Mac said quietly. “You need to tell someone, and if there’s trouble coming for Maiah and for you and Kate, I need to know.”
She smiled at him fondly. “Because, of course, you think you must come to our rescue. I’m grateful, but Mac, you don’t owe us this. I’m afraid it could get very messy.”
“I don’t think you realize how much you gave me during those six months,” he said with a rueful smile. “You all showed me what a home was like. I was just thinking that I knew to go to the kitchen to help you with the drinks because of you and this place. You domesticated a half-wild animal, Naomi.”
She laughed.
“And you taught me what I wanted for a home — and yes, what I didn’t,” Mac said steadily. “But I doubt that Angie and I would have a chance at a permanent relationship if it wasn’t for that. I didn’t know how to be in a relationship.”
Naomi was relaxing and laughing more now, and Mac smiled at her. “Besides, this is something I know how to do. Find out things and protect people.” Or find out things and attack people, he thought; there was that too.
“Like you did for Janet Andrews,” Naomi said. “And others, if I read the stories right.” She sighed. “So, when the shock and the grief subsided, I started to wonder. Mac, we didn’t have life insurance! We were young, poor missionaries. Where would we have had money to spare for life insurance? And I would have been the one to pay the bill — I handled all of that, right up until his death.”
Mac’s gaze sharpened. “You handled the income from the Mission Board?” he asked.
She nodded. “I took out what we needed here, and then I put the rest in a bank account that he could access there.”
“Did the income stop when the men came to tell you of his death?”
Naomi looked puzzled. “Yes? Of course it did — he was dead!” Then she stopped. “Except he wasn’t, was he?”
Mac shook his head no. “Do you have any financial records from that time?” he asked. “I asked Shorty to start backtracking him. But this might be a thread he can pull that might unravel the mystery.”
“I’ll look,” she promised. “They’re probably in a box in the basement.”
Just then the door on second floor opened and Tim and Angie came down. “She’s all set,” Angie said cheerfully. “I’m sure you two have more talking to do, but Mac, you’ve got to be at work in less than six hours. So maybe you should talk more tomorrow?”
Mac stood up. “I’m worried about her going to class tomorrow,” he said. “Those Burmese guards were waiting there last week. That’s why she fled to the camp.”
“I’ll go with her,” Tim offered quietly. “I’m not much of a guard, but I’m better than nothing.”
Mac considered that. Tim had stepped up when he was needed in the past, and it had cost him a lot to do it. “Have campus security on speed-dial,” Mac said. “Are you taking summer classes?”
Tim nodded. He was on a fast-track through his biology program, if Mac remembered right. He was planning on being a doctor — and everyone who knew him winced at his lack of a sympathetic bedside manner, but doctors were needed on the mission field, and that’s where Tim was headed.
Mac almost felt sorry for his future patients.
“I’ll work around her schedule,” Tim said. “She’s in that immersive program. You can’t miss many days or you fall behind.”
“I’ll let the campus cops know there’s a situation,” Mac promised. Angie was moving toward the door — a hint if he ever saw one. “And you have my number too.”
“Come for supper tomorrow, both of you,” Naomi invited. “And maybe we’ll have more answers then.”
Mac thought it was more likely they’d end up with more questions, but he just nodded.
“Home,” Angie said, outside. “And we need some sleep.” She grinned. “And you need to see the clip from the evening news before you go into the office in the morning.”