Khai was feeling desperate.
And he didn’t like desperate.
Desperate was what he felt when he had stood in his office years earlier having handcuffs slapped on him and charges read out loud. Desperate was what he felt as he sat in a courtroom listening to false evidence piled against him. Desperate was what he felt as he was driven onto the compound of FCI Lompoc in Santa Barbara for the first time, knowing the low security prison was about to be his home for the next couple years.
He thought he was done with desperate when he finally got out. But then the feeling snuck up on him again as he watched his brother and sister-in-law mourn the loss of their first child. And it was here today again as he stopped his car on a side street several blocks from Portia’s home.
He’d looked everywhere for her. Everywhere. His tank was almost empty from driving around Brooklyn. He had even headed over to Queens where her church was and looped by her mother’s shop. There was no one at the Solid Step Footwear offices or the coffee shop down the road where she had lunch sometimes. The twenty-four hour supermarket was a bust as was her gym. And the fact that neither Derek nor Milo had called him told him she had not showed up at home either. She was nowhere.
Portia was nowhere.
The thought sliced through him like a shard of ice creating more space for the desperation to seep in. He couldn’t breathe.
He shoved at the door and stumbled out into the dark night, pacing the ground around his car door.
Where was she? He couldn’t stop looking but he didn’t know where to look anymore. He pulled out his cellphone and sent a text message to Max, knowing he didn’t have the stomach for a voice conversation.
Anything?
It was almost three in the morning, but he knew his friend was up looking. All his people were looking. For her.
The return message was swift.
Still looking.
Not what he wanted to hear. The pressure in his chest increased. The thoughts he tried to push away filtered in. What if something had happened to her? This was New York. It was winter. Anything could happen. She could have slipped on the ice on the sidewalk and be lying unconscious. She could have been taken. Someone could have grabbed her and shoved her into an alleyway somewhere and...
He dialed another number before he lost it completely.
“I can’t find her. It’s been two days since anyone has seen or spoken to her. I’ve looked everywhere, Kristoffe.”
“Hey, bro, take it easy.” His brother’s soothing voice came through the line. “Try and take a couple deep breaths. It’s going to be okay.”
“You don’t know that,” Khai snapped. “You can’t know that. She’s been gone for two days. Do you know what the odds are for a missing person after two days?”
“Hey, it hasn’t been a full two days yet,” Kristoffe said. “She spoke to her friend yesterday, right? You told me that.”
“Yeah, but she didn’t see her.
“But as far as you know, she was okay as of yesterday.”
Khai sunk to the ground. He rested his back against the side of the car. He closed his eyes, covering his face with his hand. Kristoffe was wrong. Portia wasn’t okay yesterday, or the day before when he had last seen her. She hadn’t been okay for a while.
“I shouldn’t have left her alone.” His voice cracked with the words that had been eating him up all evening. “When I saw her on Tuesday night, she was a wreck. I shouldn’t have left her alone.”
“Khai, I know you’re not going to like this, but I have to say it. You can’t fix everything. You can’t fix Portia’s life for her, no matter how much you may want to. You can’t save her. Only God can, and you have to trust Him to do it.”
Kristoffe was right. Khai didn’t want to hear that. But at the moment, he had no argument for it, because it was the truth. He couldn’t save Portia. If what Derek said was right, then Portia may have been spiraling days before she even dropped off the map. Skipping meals, purging. God knows what else, and none of them had seen it. Not her mother, her best friend or even her own twin. They had known her most of her life, seen her at her worst and they missed it. Khai had known her less than a year. Why did he think he could have done better?
“I can’t lose her, Kristoffe. I can’t.”
The voice that said the words didn’t sound like his. But he knew it had to be, because the words were a direct echo of his heart.
He heard his brother sigh. “What can I do?”
Khai pressed the fingers of his free hand against the center of his forehead as if trying to touch the pounding headache that plagued him for the past two hours.
“Can you...can you pray?”
There was a long pause on the other end.
“Of course, Mandy and I have been praying since—”
“No,” Khai cut his brother off. “Can you pray, now? With me. I need...I need to hear it.”
Kristoffe needed no further prompting.
“Our Father, the One who knows and sees everything. You know why we are here. We come to You because we know You have all the answers. You know where Portia is at this moment. We pray that You reach out and wrap her in Your protection. She is Your child and she calls You father. Hold her in Your arms of love and safety. Let no weapon prosper against her. Loose her from the chains of illness and distress that may be binding her and give her freedom in You.
“And I pray that you be with her family and loved ones as they search for her now. Give them wisdom to know what to do, give them hope to fuel their search for her, and give them the peace of knowing that You have it all under control. I pray that especially for my brother, and I pray that even through this Khai may learn to trust in You. We thank You and praise You for what You have already done and will do, in Jesus name we pray, Amen.”
As his brother’s prayer ended that familiar feeling of restlessness swept over Khai. He stood and paced.
“Thanks. I gotta go.”
He barely heard his brother’s response to stay in touch before he ended the call.
Something strange was happening in him. Something he didn’t understand.
He leaned his hands against the top of the car and took in a few deep breaths, trying to calm the shaking inside him.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he closed his eyes. “God, I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to trust You like my brother and Portia do. But I need You to prove to me now that You can hear me. Maybe it’s wrong for me to ask like this but I have nowhere else to go. I love her. She says I shouldn’t, that we can’t. And maybe she’s right, because she loves You more. But if she loves You that much You have to help her. You have to save her.”
His fingers curled and uncurled from fists. “Please save her. And I...I promise, I’ll come to You willingly.”
Khai felt the promise tangibly as if he had written it on paper and signed his name to it. He recognized it for what it was. He had just put his free will on the table. He had put his issues with Trent on the table. He had put his future on the table and offered it up to a God he had been playing tag with for a long time.
But he was serious. This prayer was for Portia, but it wasn’t just about her. It was about all the prayers in the past he felt like God hadn’t answered. Prayers for his niece not to die. Prayers for him to not end up in prison. Prayers for his parents not to get divorced. Sporadic prayers born from moments of desperation, which it seemed had all been unheard. Prayers that forced him to see life as something he had to manage on his own. But if God answered this prayer for him, just this once, then maybe, maybe Khai could trust Him with everything else.
And he really hoped the man in the sky came through.
Because he was getting extremely tired of desperate.