CHAPTER 25

“Señora, think,” Hector Rodriguez urged. “Did anyone give you or the girls anything to take back to the States?”

“What about that guy John?” Manny suggested. “Or one of his friends.”

At least in dry clothes, if not freshly showered, Caroline sat on the edge of the bed staring at the upside-down lettering on her T-shirt that read “Relax! God’s in Charge,” as though expecting some divine answer to the question. But nothing surfaced from the disbelief spin-drying her brain.

Hector Fuentes was with the World Customs Organization, and the Mohawk “kid,” who’d taken an interest in Annie, was actually Manuel Santos, a United States postal inspector. Agents under Manny’s Mexican counterpart, a short mustachioed gentleman by the name of José Caro, searched the hotel rooms from top to bottom for clues as to what happened to the girls.

“It wouldn’t have to be big,” Hector said.

Postal inspectors. A light came on in the dark confusion of Caroline’s brain. “There was a card.” She glanced sideways at Blaine’s chiseled countenance. They’d both been walking, talking statues since their return to the hotel.

“Tell us about the card,” Hector prompted.

“John Chandler gave Karen a birthday card to post in the States to his mother.”

Blaine swore. “She knew better than that.” He referred to Karen, but the piercing look he gave Caroline left no doubt that he meant her too.

“He asked for it back, but Karen lost it. It . . . it had twenty dollars in it.”

“Karen lost it?” Manny repeated.

Caroline nodded. “So we bought another one yesterday and gave it to John last night at the disco.”

“Then he split before I knew it,” the younger agent lamented.

“I sent Caro’s men to Chandler’s hotel and stuck with the girls.”

Caroline couldn’t believe Manny was an undercover agent, much less that he was almost thirty. Nothing was what it seemed, and what was real, she wished with all her heart was not.

“Señora.” Hector handed her a worn newspaper and pointed out the headlines. “As you can see, it was not twenty dollars in that card, but $50,000 or more.”

Caroline read enough to see that a priceless stamp collection had been stolen in Mexico City. She handed the paper to Blaine. This couldn’t be happening. She’d read about horror stories involving tourists and contraband, but Karen and Annie weren’t just good kids; they were chaperoned by their parents.

“Why didn’t you say something about the card?” Blaine shoved the paper back at Hector, but his accusing glare was for Caroline.

He raked his fingers through his salt-stiffened hair and stared at the ceiling as if begging for a patience that wouldn’t come. “How could you be so thoughtless?”

“It was just a birthday card for his mother. He said he didn’t trust the Mexican postal service to get it there on time. I thought it was sweet.”

“I knew there was something wrong about that kid. But you,”

Blaine derided, “you had to see the good in everyone.” He pivoted, like a loaded gun with no viable target, aiming some of the blame at Hector. “And where were you when all this was going down?”

Caroline refused to let him see the hurt, how his derision shattered her. She remained as she was, hoping her stare was as cold as she felt inside. She was determined not to take it again. Not from Frank or from any man . . . even Blaine. There was nothing to be gained by starting a shouting match on who could have done what when. What was done was done. It was time to pray for God to reveal anything she might have overlooked and for guidance now.

“Waiting for them to make a move,” the inspector replied, a far cry from the happy-go-lucky tour guide he’d pretended to be. “We knew he’d pass the goods along, but not when.”

“We’d hoped to intercept it at customs,” Manny informed them. “Find out who gave the goods to the girls and get the address so that agents stateside could catch Rocha’s accomplice there.”

“But you can be sure Jorge Rocha is at the center of this,”

Inspector Caro said from the adjacent doorway.

“If you know who is behind this, then why not arrest him?”

“Because we need witnesses, señor,” Caro replied, immune to Blaine’s accusing tone. “He has slipped through our fingers many times.”

“So why aren’t you combing the streets, looking for the girls?”

“Or the beach,” Caroline added. After an inventory, she’d found the girls had taken their swimsuits—wherever they were.

“I have officers investigating their disappearance as we speak.

We are checking all the tour services and the beach.” Caro gave Caroline a sympathetic look. “It is a good sign that there was no evidence of struggle.”

How could they tell? she wondered, taking in the disarray of the room.

“They took time to change clothes—”

“Or had changed and were going to join us on the beach when the room was invaded,” Blaine inserted, deflating Caroline’s hope.

Despite his wildfire of accusation, Caroline felt the same pain and panic that grazed Blaine’s face.

“And the maid did not hear anything unusual,” the inspector pointed out, unaffected in the line of Blaine’s fire. “There is no blood on the scene.”

Blood. The mention of the word curdled in Caroline’s stomach.

She closed her eyes. God help us, she prayed for the umpteenth time.

“Caroline! We just heard.” Dana rushed by the guard at the door to where Caroline sat on the bed and hugged her.

Randy was right behind her. “Blaine,” he said, seizing the man’s hand in a stiff handshake. “What can we do?”

“Is it kidnappers?” Dana asked, searching the faces of the investigators. She stopped at Manny, incredulity breaking on her face.

“You’re a cop?”

He made a grimace of a smile. “I look young for my age.”

Little by little, Dana and Randy were filled in. John and Javier Rocha were suspected couriers for a contraband organization under a thug named Jorge Rocha. No, Jorge didn’t bother with drugs. He dealt with black-market collectibles. John and Javier evaded crossing the border with the goods by cajoling naive young women to do the job for them. Their game fell apart when Karen evidently lost the package with a valuable collector’s stamp in it.

Now, Karen and Annie were missing.

“But we have no sign that the girls’ disappearance has anything to do with the stamp,” Caro pointed out. “At least, not yet.”

“Still, they wouldn’t have gone anywhere without telling us,”

Caroline insisted. “I know my Annie.”

“And I know my Karen,” Blaine said. “She’s unpredictable, rebellious . . .” He exhaled heavily, giving up the rest of his assessment. “I don’t know what to do with her.” Razor-sharp emotion tore at his voice. “I don’t know what to do, period.”

Caroline resisted the urge to put a reassuring hand on his arm, but she needed to say what was on the T-shirt she’d grabbed in the frenzy to dress. “Relax. God’s in charge. All we can do now is pray for God’s speed.”

Blaine shoved his hands into the pockets of the slacks he’d hastily donned in the time it took the authorities to respond to his alert. “You pray,” he challenged. “I’m going out on the streets to see if they went off on their own.”

“We have men on the str—” the Mexican inspector started.

“It beats just sitting here, waiting.” Blaine pivoted toward the door without a glance at Caroline.

Randy fell in beside him. “I’ll go with you, buddy. Two sets of eyes are better than one.”

If Blaine wouldn’t accept God’s help, at least he had a godly man with him in Randy, Caroline thought, staring at the door long after it closed behind them.

The manager brought breakfast for two to Caroline as well as a fruit and cheese tray for the detectives. “We are all at the hotel praying for your chiquitas,” the manager told them in heavily accented English.

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. St. Matthew’s words flowed in mental concert with the man’s assurance. Caroline felt the peace blanketing her despair.

As the word spread, others from the Edenton group continued to come, in twos and threes. The inspectors determined that the other families had no more idea where the girls had gone than Caroline and Blaine. The Butlers, Señora Marron with Rick Scalia and his mom, Mrs. Atkins and Eddie, and the Petermans with Kurt and Wally. Caroline’s hope was battered as one after the other claimed to have no idea of Karen and Annie’s whereabouts.

After the questioning by the inspectors, Señora Marron led them in fervent prayer that the girls would be safe, wherever they were, and that they would return to Blaine and Caroline soon.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—”

The charged silence in the room broke with a strangled sob.

Kurt turned into his mother’s shoulder with ragged tears.

Reverting to day care-mom mode without second thought, Caroline went to the distraught boy and squeezed his arm gently as she’d done since he was a toddler. “Everything is going to be fine, Kurt. I believe in God’s promise. There is an explanation for all of this.”

“But it—” He sniffed. “It’s my fault.”

For a split second, the collective heartbeat in the room stopped.

Finally Dana held her son away from her. “Kurt, what are you talking about?”

“Do you know anything about the girls?” Manny asked, interrupting the call on his cell phone.

Kurt shook his head. “No, I don’t know where they are . . . honest,” he added at the inquisitive tilt of his mom’s head.

Caroline’s suspended breath gave way with a dying flicker of anticipation.

“But I know where the card is,” the boy said.

“What?” said Manny.

“Where?” Hector asked at the same time.

Kurt cleared his throat, and blinked the irritation from his eyes.

“In the mail.”

“I think you’d better explain more than that, young man.” Dana Gearhardt narrowed her gaze at him. “Every little detail, please.”

Kurt cut a sidewise glance at Wally, launching Mrs. Peterman into inquisition mode as well.

“Wally!” She pinched her son’s upper arm. “Just what do you have to do with this?”

Round-eyed, Wally rubbed the offended spot. “Nothing. I just helped Kurt get the card from Karen’s stuff and mail it.”

“Where did you mail it?” Hector asked.

“Cuernavaca,” Kurt told them. “Remember, I asked where the post office was?”

“That was three days ago,” Hector figured aloud, turning to José Caro. “It’s probably still in the Mexican system somewhere.”

“From the beginning, boys.” Manny pulled out two chairs from the table by the window and motioned for the youngsters to take a seat.

It was bizarre watching the studded, tattooed, and fire-engine-red-haired young man interrogate Kurt and Wally. But then, there had been Blaine’s marriage proposal in front of a goggled and finned audience. The whole trip had been surreal. Maybe if Caroline pinched herself, she’d wake up and find it was all a dream.

Kurt had witnessed John giving Karen the card and heard his spiel about poor postal service and wanting his mom to get it on time for her birthday. Suspicion, tinged with a dislike of his com- petition, prompted him to intervene. The morning they left for Cuernavaca, he and Wally lifted the card while helping load the luggage, then mailed it in the colonial town.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Dana asked when Kurt finished.

“I’m no snitch. Besides, me and Wally talked it over. If we just mailed it, there wouldn’t be any problem with customs at the airport— just in case there was something weird in it.”

“But we didn’t think there was,” Wally put in hastily. “We thought it was just a dumb card.”

Kurt sighed, shaking his head. “We just didn’t want anybody to get caught with something they shouldn’t have had—even if it was just a dumb card.”

“Any chance you remember the address?” The skepticism in Hector’s voice betrayed his hope, or lack of it.

Kurt shook his head.

“But we have it,” Wally spoke up, drawing all the attention to him. “You remember,” he told Kurt. “We decided to send it priority so the post office wouldn’t lose a mom’s birthday card.” He glanced at Dana and Caroline as though checking to see if that brought them any grace. “Anyway, they gave us a receipt with the address and all on it. It’s got to be in one of the souvenir bags.”

“We need that receipt, guys,” Hector informed them.

Wally and Kurt left to search their bags.

“So maybe Rocha doesn’t know the card is missing . . . just that his courier is.” Manny toyed with one of the studs in his ear, lost in speculation.

“Which probably means that he’s focusing on John Chandler, not the girls,” the young man said, going on to explain. “If I were Chandler and had flubbed the deal, I’d split, leaving Rocha clueless . . . which is what it appears he and his roommate did.”

“Okay, so the couriers split. So what about this?” Hector countered, taking in the messy room with a sweep of his arm. “Why would Rocha’s men search the room?”

Manny wasn’t certain. “Maybe he caught John or Javier and knows the card is missing. He’d send someone to double-check their story before he slit their throats. Or maybe he’s just covering his bases, determining where the card isn’t. Rocha leaves nothing to chance.”

“Maybe,” Hector acknowledged. “Or maybe he’s getting rid of all the loose ends.”

“But the girls know nothing about Rocha or the stamp . . . just a greeting card,” Caroline spoke up, her beating heart on her sleeve.

Manny shrugged, “Man, I can’t put my finger on it, but I throw in with Caro.” He glanced at the unmade beds where the girls had shed their sleep shirts. “Missing swimsuits tell me Rocha has nothing to do with the girls’ disappearance. The fact that two teenage girls are so unpredictable falls in their favor.”

“Annie might have been swayed by Karen,” Caroline conceded.

“It just isn’t like her not to leave a note.”

But all things were possible. Again Caroline focused through her tears at the upside-down slogan on her T-shirt. Clenching the cotton-knit promise in her fists, she just knew Manny was right.

Four hours of stopping at every shop and café along the beach-side boulevard and showing the photo strip of pictures that Karen and Annie had taken in a vending booth pounded Blaine’s anger into exhausted frustration. No one had seen his daughter. He and Randy were just going over plowed ground.

“Oh, sí,” clerk after vendor told them. “I see her picture with the policía before you.

”

The situation was out of his control. He was out of control. The minute he’d launched his attack on Caroline, he’d wanted to take it back. But the trigger had been tripped, and the relay of his exploding nerves wouldn’t stop. How could she just sit there so calmly when her world was falling apart?

Relax. God’s in charge. Blaine pushed the uninvited message out of his mind.

If he’d flown into Ellie like that, she’d have taken up the gauntlet and beat him to a pulp with it, pointing out everything he’d done wrong from the day they’d met. But Caroline hadn’t. Sweet Caroline. Frightened Caroline. Calm Caroline.

“Here we go,” Randy said, returning with two espressos from a sidewalk cafe. “Black as sin.”

Blaine took the offered cup. “Did you have to use that word?”

At Randy’s quizzical expression, he explained. “I’m feeling guilty right now . . . the way I spoke to Caroline. The way I—what is that word the kids use—dissed her faith.”

“You were under incredible stress.”

“So was she, but she had that blasted T-shirt.”

“No, Caroline has the faith of a saint and defends it like a pit bull. It shows in everything she does . . . or wears,” he added with a slight smile. “Let’s take a load off our feet.”

Blaine walked after him to one of the empty bistro tables. A myriad of scenes flashed through his mind. The day at the pyramids when Caroline explained how God hung the first clock in the moon and stars. The way she comforted Karen—and him—at Guadalupe.

He’d felt closer to God that day than he could ever remember, as though God had sent this angel to comfort him and his daughter, to put to rest the pain Ellie’s death had left behind.

And he’d had the nerve to call her naive. Maybe she saw more clearly through those rose-colored glasses than he did with twenty-twenty vision.

“Aren’t you going to sit down?” his companion asked.

Blaine obeyed, consumed in thought.

“He is in charge, you know. It doesn’t always seem like it, but there’s a reason for everything. What goes bad, God turns to good.

I’ve seen it happen time and again.” Randy blew the steam from the coffee, giving Blaine time to digest his words.

“But how do you know that?” Blaine asked. “That it wasn’t coincidence.”

“You have to know God . . . personally. Being able to recite Scripture alone doesn’t do it. Going to church every Sunday doesn’t do it. It’s the one-on-one relationship that matters.” There was that hint of a smile again. “You walk and talk with Him just as a child does an imaginary friend. Except God isn’t imaginary.” Randy’s confidence gave way to wonder. “I know it sounds weird, but truth is stranger than science or fiction.”

The way this trip had come about and evolved, Blaine couldn’t argue that. “How do you know it’s God sending you a message and not just what you want?”

“That’s where studying the Word comes in. If your answer is in keeping with the guide He gave us, then it’s Him.”

“Yes, but what about all the interpretations? One group believes one thing, another something else.”

“Key word is study. God will reveal His meaning for you. I’m always finding something new in passages I’ve read time and again.” Randy snorted as though he still found it hard to believe.

But he did believe. There was no doubt in Blaine’s mind about that. Like Caroline, Randy lived his faith, not in flamboyance, just plain day-to-day living. He’d rallied to Blaine’s side like a comrade in arms . . . like another messenger from above.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to pray.”

A blade wedged in Blaine’s throat, cutting on all sides. Unable to speak, he nodded his assent.

“Heavenly Father, give Blaine and Caroline and the girls strength and courage in this hour of need. Give the police wisdom and speed in bringing justice to those who deserve it. And deliver our children safe into the arms of their parents. In Jesus’ name . . .”

Blaine couldn’t have said it better himself. Fact was, he couldn’t assemble his wits enough to say it at all. Yet, the heaviness in his chest seemed to ease, as if lifted by an unseen hand, and the mention of the name Jesus freed his voice enough for an “Amen.”

Conviction took the reins of his shattered thought process. The trip was no coincidence. These godly people were not here by chance. God saw Blaine’s need and sent him earth angels. Surely, He was in charge.