Where’s Kira?
Rebecca had been so busy banging at the piano that she’d forgotten her daughter. She grabbed her phone, expecting a text.
Nope. She found herself looking at the usual lock-screen picture of her kids, Kira and Tony standing together, fireworks overhead, red, white, and blue strings across the night sky. Even during the bad years in D.C. Rebecca had insisted they spend Independence Day on the Mall, go in the early afternoon with a blanket and picnic basket. The tradition had taken hold. Rebecca could track their progress as a family by their faces. In this year’s photo, only a couple of weeks before, the two wore big mock-goofy smiles and looked relaxed. Happy.
“Bri—”
Her husband was already holding his phone. “Nothing.”
She looked to Tony. He shook his head.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Brian said.
“Oh, you’re sure?” Rebecca knew she should control her temper, but the alcohol was coursing through her and fifteen years at the bureau had taught her to hate meaningless reassurance.
Especially since Brian didn’t know what she did.
“It’s Barcelona. Not Beirut. And it’s not like it’s five a.m. Just getting started out there.”
“She always texts.”
Rebecca called Kira. The phone rang until it went to voice mail. “Tony, try her please?”
“Voice mail,” Tony said.
Rebecca texted Kira: K where are you? Call me now please.
“Maybe she met a guy,” Brian said. “Or is that what we’re afraid of?”
“What was the bar she said she was going to?”
“The Mansion,” Tony said. “Supposed to be cool.”
Rebecca hesitated. She imagined Kira sitting in the corner of the bar, making out with some hot Spanish guy. Was she really going to be a helicopter parent? Thwack-thwack-thwack, I’m not letting you out of my sight for more than an hour… Kira was nineteen. Soldiers went to war at nineteen. People got married at nineteen.
“How about we give her until two and if she’s not home by then we go over there and drag her out by her hair,” Brian said. “Even in D.C. the bars don’t close until two.”
“Okay, two.”
Brian sipped his wine, crisis averted.
“Umm…” Tony said.
Rebecca looked over. Her son had the unmistakable look of a teenager about to confess, sheepish and defiant at once. She hated when her kids kept secrets. Unreasonable, she knew. Teenagers were entitled to their own worlds. Pushing too hard only caused a backlash. Yet she couldn’t help herself.
“You know something, Tony? Now would be a good time to share.”
“Don’t be mad.”
“We’re not mad,” Brian said. “We’re listening.”
Brian reassured. She too often slid into anger.
“She had a date tonight,” Tony said. “I promised I wouldn’t tell.”
“We were with her all day,” Rebecca said. “When did she make a date?”
“His name’s Jacques. She met him last night in Paris.”
Now she was genuinely confused.
“He wanted to hang with her up there. She told him we were leaving this morning. He said he’d come down to see her.”
Rebecca closed the windows against the street noise. The room was instantly hotter, airless. She felt the sangria washing through her and made herself focus. “This guy yesterday, he was by himself?”
“Yeah. A grad student at the Sorbonne.”
French grad students weren’t Kira’s type. Not as far as Rebecca knew. “What was he studying?” Like it mattered.
Tony shrugged.
“When exactly was this?” Brian said.
“Last night, this café on the Place de la République, the Toucan, I think it’s called. We were sitting, he came in, like a minute later he was with us. I left, but they talked for an hour at least. She was totally into it.” Tony spoke with the dull envy of a virgin who expected he’d be that way forever.
“And this guy, Jacques, he came down here to see her?”
“That’s what she told me, that was the plan. He texted her this morning.”
“Why didn’t she tell me? Us?” Though Rebecca could already guess the answer.
“She said you’d freak. He’s older, like twenty-six.”
“Do you remember what he looked like?” Rebecca said.
“Short hair, almost like a military cut.”
“Was it black?”
“I think brown. He was good-looking. Tall. Ripped. White. He didn’t really look like a student. Kira said he was a personal trainer on the side.”
At least Rebecca understood Kira’s interest better. Tall and ripped was more her type.
“Did she say anything else?”
“Just that they were going to meet at that place at eleven.”
Timing that meant Kira hadn’t planned to come back here before one at the earliest.
“Do you know if she told him anything about us, about me? Like where I worked?”
“I told you, I left them alone, but I don’t think you were a big part of the conversation, Mom.”
“Can you give me and Dad a second?”
“Really?” Tony looked dismayed, no surprise.
“Really.”
“Yeah whatever.” He walked out.
“Did you notice anything weird in Paris?”
“The baguettes were stale that one place.”
Brian had a habit of joking at the worst possible times. She told herself he deflected tension with humor. Though she wondered whether at his core he had some unmeltable male immaturity. Even after they were married and had kids, so many men worried more about fantasy football than becoming fully formed adults.
But she was only distracting herself from the conversation they had to have.
“I’m serious, Bri. Did you notice anything weird when we were there?”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘weird.’ ”
Sometimes she feared marriage was nothing more than endless simultaneous gaslighting. You’re immature! No, you’re crazy!
“Because a month ago the agency”—the CIA—“passed us a tip that the Islamic State was looking to kidnap the family of an American diplomat or any USG personnel in Europe.” The FBI loved acronyms; USG was standard shorthand for “United States government.”
“How come you didn’t tell me?”
“It wasn’t actionable. Didn’t mention a specific country. Plus, the story was they were looking for a kid, snatch-and-grab, maybe on the way to school. I didn’t want to bother you with it.”
Plus, she knew what he would have said: Come on, Becks. The Islamic State barely exists anymore. If you changed your mind about the trip you don’t need a fake terrorist plot.
“Okay, you got this tip.”
“But that was the end of it, pretty much. No follow-up. I basically forgot. But the reason I mention it, yesterday in Paris, I swear I felt like somebody picked us up outside the hotel—”
“As in we had a tail?”
“Two. Male and female. I saw them on the Métro near the Arc de Triomphe and then at Sacré-Coeur. Then I thought maybe I saw the woman later.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“What was I supposed to say? Anyway, the guy I saw wasn’t tall and had black hair. It can’t have been the guy Kira met.”
Now that she’d told him, the story sounded ridiculous to her own ears, the product of too much sangria. In the unlikely chance that this kidnapping plot was real, the original version made more sense. Grab a kid. She figured Brian would tell her to relax, finish her wine.
Instead he stood. “Come on. Let’s check the bar.”
She realized she’d hoped he would tell her to relax. “You sure?”
“Better safe than sorry. Hey, Tony…”
Tony popped into the room like he’d been listening in the hall. Maybe he had. Not that it mattered.
“We’re gonna go find your sister,” Brian said. “If she texts you, tell her to stay where she is and text us right away.”
“And promise you won’t go anywhere,” Rebecca said. “Promise.”
“I promise. Is everything cool?”
“Kira’s about to get grounded for the rest of her life,” Brian said. “But it’s fine.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you—”
“It’s fine, Tony.”
The tension in Brian’s voice suggested he feared otherwise.
As they left the apartment, she pulled out her phone—nothing, ugh—and found The Mansion on the map. “You think she’s there.”
“Of course she’s there. Don’t get too mad at her, Becks.”
“Just a little mad.” She saw neither of them wanted to consider the possibility that Kira had left the bar without telling them. Because Jacques might not be an Islamic terrorist, but he was still a guy…