Ask Anything by RLEE

Ask Anything

by RLEE 

Prologue

            Another lifetime ago, I thought I knew pain.  That was before I’d lost any sense of time, my sense of self along with it.  Whatever it was, it was like watching one of those home movies on a film projector. The picture was grainy and interrupted occasionally with black and white snow inside the screen; the scenes themselves were choppy, going from a blip of a woman screaming underneath me in darkness, to a lengthy shot of a small space full of people–indistinguishable figures under the harsh fluorescent lighting.  From there, it became static, then black, and then I returned to a chair in the center of a white room.  Tight straps pinned me to the chair so that I couldn’t move anything except for my eyes.  That was when she appeared before me. 

            “Help me!  Please!  I don’t want to die!” she begged. 

            I tried to answer that I would save her, but it was as if my jaw was glued with cement.  The paralysis was absolute, the energy of my panic wasted from inside.  They were going to kill her, and me, and as a prisoner inside my own body, I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

            “Dad!” she shrieked.  “Daddy!”

            Starr!  Starr!  The sound of my muffled voice was trapped inside my mouth. 

She began to fade. My breathing came in slow and steadily relaxed, even though I had been trying with all of my strength to yell out.  Then her name disappeared from my mind.  Just like that, she was gone.  So was I.  With that knowledge, everything else went blank. 

               

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Two weeks ago

           

The morning was a dingy gray when The Sun became as frustrating as any other job out there.

I’d always been a multi-tasker.  For example, I could manage a newspaper staff, sue the pants off of an investment company, and eat a tamale at the same. Well, I hadn’t exactly finished that second one yet, but I was getting there. 

            “I don’t need another apology,” I said into the desk phone that was cradled between my ear and shoulder.  “Look, I already talked to one of your representatives about a reimbursement, and he gave me the ‘no can do’ speech.”

            The voice on the phone replied smoothly, “Mr. Manning, we do understand that you were a victim of identity theft.  The most we can do is drop your name from TERRA’s list of shareholders.”

            “That’s…generous of you,” I said, masking most of the menace from my voice with a forkful of tamale.

“A reimbursement for the assets you’ve lost over the past three years is not possible at this point.  Had we known two years sooner, before TERRA turned into a privately owned company, we might have been able to offer you more compensation.”

“Right, only two years ago some black ops agency was jabbing me with experimental drugs until I was catatonic.”  The guy on the other end laughed.  He thought I was kidding.  Greedy little piranha, I fumed.  You’re shark bait now.  I didn’t even bother resisting the next words that wanted to slide past my tongue.  “Hey, I’m glad I’m amusing you.  How’s this for laughs?  I’ve been talking to some more of your former ‘clients’ and found out they’re just as pissed off at you as I am.  Maybe more.  So laugh all you can now, because TERRA’s representatives are going to be on the unemployment line very soon.”  Satisfied that I’d finally shut the jerk up, I slammed the phone onto the receiver.

One knock at the door later, Mr. Ribbs had let himself inside my office.  I had no idea what his first name was; but then again with a surname like his, who needed a first name?  Ribbs was all muscle, like some winner from a bodybuilding competition.  But for some reason, he preferred to hide his impressive physique under an ugly tweed blazer.

Standing up from the chair, I addressed him with grave professionalism.  “Ribbs.  I’m assuming here that you got the job done?” 

Instead of speaking–something he’d only done twice in my presence so far–he handed me a list of the former clients that were ready to support my case against TERRA.  At least, they were ready to support my case as long as I “supported” them.  I knew it sounded like hypocrisy, wasting more money on people that would help me sue a company that robbed me.  But what was twenty grand compared to the million-dollar sinkhole that my long-lost twin brother had funded in my name? 

As I examined the document, a female voice said from the doorway, “Mr. Manning?”

I didn’t even look up to greet my Ask Anything columnist.  “Hello Brenda.  You’re fired.  Ribbs, good work. Keep in touch.” I returned to my chair, still perusing the list.

After Ribbs was gone, I glanced up to see the spitting image of a middle-aged Christina Ricci staring at me.  “‘You’re fired?’” she repeated, with a bold amount of incredulity that reminded me of my wife. 

“Sure, you heard me.”  Idly, I spun halfway around in the chair, wondering why Brenda couldn’t be more silent but efficient, like Ribbs.  Then again, why couldn’t Ribbs have been more like Brenda?  If he’d been more sociable I would have taken him to Rodi’s for some beers.

“Mr. Manning, you can’t be serious,” Brenda said in protest.

Finally tucking the list away in a file cabinet, I turned my attention to last Friday’s edition of The Sun.  “Dear Ask Anything,” I read aloud.  “My brothers and I are facing a serious dilemma.  Our mother is on life support, and the time has come to decide whether or not to pull the plug–.”  I broke off and gave her the look that she’d have to have been a total idiot not to read as Are you frickin’ kidding me?  “You get, like, hundreds of letters asking for your advice each week, and you choose this one?”

Confused, she said, “It affected me more than most of the letters.  I thought I could help.”

I wagged an index finger at her as I read, “Dear Grieving, I regret to inform you that the only possible resolution to this dilemma is to seek family counseling for yourself and your brothers.  The rest is up to you–.”  I interrupted myself again, this time with a chortling laugh.  “What kind of rotten advice is that?  Did you also tell the White House that raising the national credit limit would ease the deficit?”

A fire lit in her eyes, and she snapped, “Well, what would you have suggested?”

“That’s the point, Brenda.  I wouldn’t have answered that question to begin with.”  I handed her an email that I’d printed off from a reader.  Maybe things will compute for her if she reads it herself.  At least, I hoped that’s what would happen.

She cleared her throat.  “To whom it may concern at the staff of The Sun, I am sorry to say that I will miss reading your Ask Anything column.  The idea of an advice column that will reply to any kind of question is a good one, but lately it’s been a huge disappointment…”

Brenda slapped the piece of paper back down on my desk.  I wasn’t smiling.  “You can collect your things downstairs,” I told her. 

Crossing her arms, she said firmly, “You have to give me another chance.”

I was trying to be serious, but I couldn’t help laughing again.  It seemed like she would have gotten along really well with Blair.  She was stubborn, driven, and bold.  She also gave really lousy advice. 

“You’re going to regret this, Todd Manning,” she spat.

The humor of the situation died.  I stood up, towering over her.  I never took a threat lightly.  For a moment, she hesitated, her big brown eyes locked in on my face.  A face like mine was pretty hard not to gawk at, even without the scar that slit across my cheekbone like a scarlet thread.  It was a mark of my hell-raising days.  I must have graced the front page of at least two hundred tabloids, so anyone in Llanview who wasn’t at least familiar with my name had to have been living in a bomb shelter for the past twenty years.  Unless, of course, it was just a tourist.  Either way, they usually didn’t last long here.  Not if they crossed me.

“Get out,” I said, my voice soft and dangerous. I watched her turn around, never once taking my eyes off her retreating back.  It was only when she reached the door that she ran like the room was going to swallow her whole.

“Good riddance,” I muttered, sitting back down to finish my tamale.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Someone once asked me how I slept at night.  My best answer to that was that I didn’t sleep at night.  I drank a six-pack, watched Dexter on DVD and pretended that I lived in a world where even serial killers could become productive contributors to society.  After the morning I’d had working against TERRA and Brenda, I wanted to do just that.  But when I came home to my penthouse at one-thirty in the afternoon, I found that Blair had beaten me to the television.

I tossed my keys on the coffee table and sat down on the couch beside her.  In a bored monotone, Blair explained, “The remote control is broken. It’s stuck on The Bold and the Beautiful.”

            “Oh.”  I glanced at the tall blonde woman on the screen and said, “Isn’t that what’s-her-name?” I snapped my fingers.  “Bambi.  That’s Bambi, right?”

            “Something like that,” she answered, then said in an agitated tone, “You know, I can’t believe she’s tried every man in town and she still wants that same old loser.”

            On the screen, Bambi Or-Something-Like-That exclaimed to said loser, “But I swear, I only slept with your brother because I thought you were dead!”

            I frowned at Blair, who was looking downcast about something.  “Beats the hell out of me.  What’s wrong?”

            She sighed.  “A guy named Hansel Ribbs called, saying you owed him two thousand dollars.”

            Oh great, now Ribbs talks.  Shell-shocked, I said stupidly, “Wait a second, his first name is Hansel?

            She stood, forcing me to get up to face her.  “Mm-hmm.  He said he did you a favor.”  Someone might as well have thrown a large icepack at my neck, that was how tense I was.  “Todd?” she prompted with her usual southern belle-cadence in her voice.  She crossed her arms as she waited.  “What did you do?”

            My poker face came too little, too late.  She didn’t have to know what I was doing in order to know that I shouldn’t have been doing it. 

            Dropping all traces of a friendly overture, she said, “Whatever you’re doing, you need to stop, Todd.  You could get all of us into a huge amount of trouble!”

            “That’s not going to happen,” I said firmly.

            “That’s what always happens!  Your plan goes wrong, and your family is left to deal with the mess.”  Blair added, “And what about Jack?  Do you want to send him the message that it’s okay to do this sort of thing?” 

A weak argument, given how much my son hated me.  “Aw, c’mon Blair.  He’ll probably want to do the opposite of anything I do just to stick it to me.  You know he’d throw a parade if I was gone.”

Blair talked over me like she didn’t even hear.  “He’s only sixteen and he’s already gotten into trouble with the law!”

            I protested, “I wasn’t here for that–.”

            “So what? You think you aren’t responsible for how he’s turned out?” she shot back.  “He grew up finding out his father had raped a woman! How do you think that affected him?”

 I stared out the window behind her, momentarily transfixed by the way the sky brightened before it dimmed again.  My self-loathing had always been there; like the scar on my cheekbone, I could never, ever forget it. Every time a glimpse for redemption came my way, I’d blink and it was gone.

            “He also knows that you gave him away as a baby and made me believe he was dead,” she continued.  “Now on top of that, he’s not only coping with the loss of the only father he can remember having, but with the revelation that you’re his biological dad.  So don’t you dare tell me that what’s going on with our son is not your fault!”  Giving me one last glare of disgust, she stormed up the staircase. 

I watched the light slowly filter behind the drifting clouds.

             

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

            In the evenings, Blair sang at the nightclub Capricorn.  Seeing how she hadn’t been in the mood to invite me and I didn’t really do well with crowds anyways, I stayed behind.  I guess I was becoming a bit more predictable with age because I had a couple of visitors.

            Standing in the doorway, I grinned at them.  “Tired of having your own place?”

            Starr shrugged and shifted little Hope from one arm to the other.  “It gets a bit boring.  No drama at all.”

            “I feel for you.”

            She giggled, something that I’d missed about her since she’d moved into her own apartment.  “Are you going to invite me in or not?”

            I pretended to ponder.  “Hmm...” She gave an exaggeratedly scandalized scoff, and I said quickly before she could leave, “All right, all right, I was only kidding!”

            Once Starr and Hope were settled on the couch, I said to the little one, “Hey Peanut, how would you like some butterscotch pudding?”

            “Yuh!” Hope replied, a big smile on her face.

            Starr chimed in, “Ooh, make me one too!”

            As I started mixing the pudding powder in with the milk, I asked, “So how are you doing on your own?”

            “Well, it’s a bit overwhelming. Hope doesn’t really like daycare all that much. I might have to take Aunt Viki up on her offer to babysit while I’m at college, even though I don’t want to bother her.”

            “You wouldn’t be bothering her,” I countered.  My sister was essentially the living patron saint of Llanview, and her mansion was like a fancy homeless shelter.  “Viki’s house was once so full of kids that she could have run her own daycare center.  But hey, here’s a bright idea.  Why don’t you let your mom babysit Hope here at the penthouse?”  Starr bit her lip but didn’t answer. “Uh-oh, what’s with the face?” I asked, bringing the pudding bowls to them.

            “No, no, it’s nothing.  Thank you…” She winced.  “I just don’t think Hope should be around you and Mom when you guys fight.”

            “Who told you we’ve been fighting?”

            “Jack.”

            “Oh,” I muttered.  “That figures.”  He probably didn’t tell her we were arguing about him though.  Mostly about him, I reminded myself.

            With an apology written in her eyes, Starr continued, “Look, I love you both and I want you to be a part of my daughter’s life.  But you and Mom fought a lot while I was growing up, and I was caught in the middle of it.  Hope won’t be.”  She kissed Peanut’s head and smiled.

            “Sorry,” I murmured.

            She nodded and put her hand on my shoulder.  “So, what was it tonight?”

“What?  Oh, the fight.”  I sighed.  If there were two people in the world that I could have told anything to, they would have to have been Starr and Viki.  “I’ve been working on something.  Your mom doesn’t know the details, but she read me the riot act anyways.”

Her eyes were wide with intrigue.  “What are you doing?”

“Um…trying to sue a company that your uncle helped fund with my money.”

Starr blinked.  “That…sounds legal?”

“I’m suing with claims that I paid people to falsify,” I admitted reluctantly.

“Oh, okay.” She gave a nervous laugh.  “Aren’t you going about this a bit–.”

“Yes, I am. But I plan on getting back every penny of the million dollars Victor gave TERRA.  What I’m paying these people is like pocket change in comparison.”

Looking thoughtful, Starr put a spoonful of pudding in Hope’s mouth and asked me, “Are you sure that this is worth it?  I mean, do you really need the million dollars?”

I raised my eyebrows.  “Have you seen the bills for the penthouse lately?”

“Fair enough,” she chuckled.  “Then are you sure that what you’re doing is the best way to get your money back?”

I shrugged.  “Do you have a better idea?”

She took a bite of pudding before responding.  “Maybe.  There’s this guy on campus–I think he has a crush on me, but whatever–and he works as an intern for TERRA.  I could talk to him for you.”

             The manner in which she reached out to me with this gesture, genuinely and without any reservations, moved me so much I was afraid to accept it.  Every glimpse of redemption, I thought sternly.  “Shorty, you have no idea how much it means to me to have you on my side.  But I don’t want to involve you in this.”

            She rolled her eyes good-naturedly.  “Oh, please. Dad, if it keeps you from getting sent to prison, fighting with Mom, or even losing any more of your money, I am more than happy to help.”

            It was more than I deserved.  I knew that.  What I didn’t know is how much I would come to regret it.         

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

The Sun, four days later

 Dear Ask Anything,

I am in my late forties, yet my wife is an unconventional lover.  I’m more of what you’d call a “bed of roses” type of guy, while she prefers to have sex every night involving studded leather costumes, handcuffs, etc.  How can I convince her to let our relationship become more natural and mature?

~Pained in Pennsylvania

Yikes.  If Brenda had been around to see this letter, she would have answered back with something along the lines of, “You and your wife should try counseling, blah, blah.”  My fingers clacked a response on the keyboard.  When I was done, the message on the monitor was as followed:

Pained,

Well, what can I say?  That you and your wife are a bit old for playing S&M?  If she really likes torture sex, and you are, as you put it, a “bed of roses” person, then torture her with the Christian Slater film by that name.  By the way, your wife sounds like a red-hot babe, and I would seriously rethink the whole “natural and mature” relationship if I were you.

I moved onto the next letter. 

Dear Ask Anything,

People are starting to ask questions about my line of work.  It might not be legit, and I’m afraid to dig any deeper.  I’m trapped because they warned me I can’t leave until my probation’s over, and I also really need the money.

~Business Blues

            Hmm…

            I moved on to the next letter. 

            Dear Ask Anything,

            My former boss is a jerk who cut me off without a dime.  I want to get my severance pay, but he won’t even let me into the building! How can I get justice for what was done to me? 

            I smirked and typed Nice try, Brenda. 

            Hey, this was fun.  I looked at the very last one for the day.

I am having a hard time accepting my biological father. After spending so many years thinking one person was my dad, then finding out he wasn’t, then doing the same with another man, I don’t want to go through the ordeal of bonding with a new dad again.  I really don’t have anything against my real father, but I don’t think he understands. What’s the right thing to do here?

            ~Torn in Three

            The second I was done reading, the memory of my night with Starr and Hope seemed to fade.  It just didn’t seem to be enough in light of being rejected by my other two children.  Jack had called me Scarface when I first showed up to reclaim my life from Victor.  And Dani…well, she hadn’t called me anything at all.  She pretty much crossed the street whenever she saw me.  But now, with this letter, I did understand her position.  The way she was treating me wasn’t personal.

            I opened a drawer under my desk and put the email in there for safekeeping.  I must have spaced out for a few minutes, because the next time I found myself paying attention to what I was doing, the phone had somehow wound up in my hand.  It was already ringing on the other end before a girl’s voice answered, “Hello?” 

            As she repeated, “Hello?” I put the phone back on the receiver. What was I thinking, calling Dani’s phone? It’s not like I could have mentioned the email to her outright.  It might not even have been her email.  Who are you kidding, Manning? a small voice taunted in my ear.  You know it was her.

            As much as I hated to admit it, times like these were when I most often asked myself, “What would Viki do?”

            And because Viki wasn’t going to materialize at The Sun to answer me, I was going to have to go to her. 

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Viki was rushing out the door when I arrived at Llanfair.  “Where’s the fire?” I asked, intentionally blocking her path.

She sighed, “Well, it was in the kitchen.”

“Hold on, you mean there was an actual fire?”  I could barely believe it.  Llanfair was supposed to be safer these days than the Vatican itself.  “Is everyone all right?  Clint and the kids?”

 “Bree is here for a visit, so I was just trying to bake some cookies with her.  I think everything’s fine now, so don’t worry.”

“Okay, I won’t,” I said a bit too quickly.

She narrowed her eyes at me.  “I was just on my way to pick up some store-bought cookies, since our oven seems to be broken.”

            Seizing the opportunity, I said, “Great, I’ll come with you.”  Any other person I knew would have been ticked at my self-invite, or in some cases even horrified.  Not Viki.  She just sighed again with some more impatience and let me tag along.  In no time, we were at the grocery store and I was telling her all about Jack and Dani, and Dani’s confession about her ambivalence, and about how messed up Victor had made everything by taking over my life for eight years.

Viki was her usual empathetic self.  “Oh, Todd, you’ll just have to give the kids time, especially Dani.  I went through the same thing as you when I found out Natalie was my daughter.”  She plucked a box of semi-sweet chocolate chip cookies off a shelf.

“Yeah, I guess if Dani had made it through high school believing that some drunken beauty-school dropout was her father, and if she actually wanted to get to know me now, then it would be the same.  You should get these,” I added, putting a package of Keebler’s Coconut Dreams into her cart.

“Bree doesn’t like those.”

“She doesn’t?” I looked at the chocolate-drizzled coconut flakes on the wrapping, and shrugged. “Her loss.”  Viki must have realized that her pep talk didn’t really work this time, because she wound up buying me the Coconut Dreams.

“I’m sure the kids will come around,” she told me upon our return to Llanfair.

I stared down at my feet and mumbled, “What if they don’t?”

“Their loss,” she said warmly.

           

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Five days later

I hadn’t seen Starr since the night she came over.  She’d been sending me quick texts to say stuff like working on it and nothing yet.  In the meantime, I was at The Sun more than usual, replying to the most ridiculous questions that people should have been able to figure out themselves.  How did they even make it this far in life without any common sense?

Dani’s letter remained inside my desk.  Every now and then, I was tempted to answer it.  But what was I supposed to say, Hey kid you’re not the first person in this town to grow up believing someone else was your father? Nah.  Give this new guy a chance?  Yeah, right, like she was going to listen to that. 

Soon I got burnt out working at the office, and so I finally decided to take my work home with me. I was reading a letter from “Suicidal Sue” when Blair came in the door with Jack.  Jack was scowling as Blair grabbed his arm and said, “Jack, listen to me!  I don’t want you doing this ever again!”

“All right, fine.” He jerked his arm away.  Then he noticed me sitting at my chair.  “What are you staring at?” he snarled.

“Jack,” Blair warned.

“Someone who didn’t get enough hugs when he was little?” I guessed.

Blair shot me a dirty look.  “Our son tried driving to school today. Without a license!”

“So what?” Jack yelled loud enough for the entire East coast to hear.  “I didn’t total the car!”

“Whose car did you use?” I wondered.

Blair snapped, “Mine!”

“Oh,” I said with a shrug and turned back to the letter.

“What do you mean, oh?”

“Oh, as in next time he can use my car?”  I wasn’t in the mood to tag team with Blair against Jack.  When it came to choosing between her or my kid, there was no contest.  Even if this kid couldn’t stand me. 

            Jack, who evidently wasn’t expecting me to side with him, just stared at me like I’d crashlanded from Mars.  With a sigh, Blair said to Jack, “Just go upstairs and do your homework, okay?” 

He nodded and mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like, “Whatever.”

I expected Blair to read me the riot act as soon as Jack was in his room, but she just leaned on my chair and asked, “You haven’t heard from Starr, have you?”

I froze.  Something was wrong.  “No,” I said.

“I talked to Viki.  She said that the daycare center called her since she’s listed as the emergency contact.  Apparently Starr didn’t pick up Hope today.”

My throat went dry as I asked, “Then who has Hope?”

“Who do you think?” Blair threw up her hands.  “Viki took her to Llanfair! Todd, I haven’t heard from Starr in days.”

I nodded.  It was dawning on me that I hadn’t heard from her in awhile either.  And it was very unlike Starr to not check in with at least one of her parents every other day.  I got up, grabbing my jacket and my keys.

“Where are you going?” Blair asked.

“I’m going to go look for Shorty.  I’ll be back soon.”  Before she could protest, I was gone.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“Okay,” I muttered under my breath inside the car, turning the steering wheel.  “Who would be the last person to speak to a girl before she goes missing? Ruling out the parents, it would have to be her friends.  And since I don’t know many of her friends…”

My stomach clenched as I approached Tea Delgado’s house.  This was going to be awkward as hell.  I knocked on the door.  The person I wanted to see opened it.

“Hi…” said Dani, sounding nervous.  “Mom’s not home yet.”

“That’s okay, I wanted to talk to you. Can I come in?”

            She hesitated.  “Um…”

            For crying out loud, I wasn’t a vampire who could come and go as he pleased after one invitation.  I interjected, “This is about Starr.  She’s missing.”

            Dani’s expression changed from wary to panic.  “I heard from her two days ago,” she fretted, stepping aside to let me pass.

            “And?” I prompted.

            “She said she thought was being followed.  Like, she’d see a black car following her sometimes.  Yesterday we ran into this woman who totally flipped out on her.”

            “What?”

            Dani explained, “Yeah, this crazy woman followed us around yelling about how you were a ruthless monster who needed to die.”

            Suddenly, I went ice cold.  It was as if time stopped, my breathing along with it.

            Dani studied me.  “Do you…know who she was talking about?”

            Nodding, I drew a long breath.  Then I said quietly, “I need you to come with me.”  Brenda, I thought.  Looks like I have a few questions to ask you, for a change.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

            I’d made it a habit in my life to not trust a lot of cops.  And I definitely didn’t want to see Commissioner Bo Buchanan.  He was about as effective as a dog chasing its tail.  Yet see him I did.  He looked at me as I told him about what was going on with Starr and he grunted in response, “So you’re telling me your daughter has only been gone for a couple of hours? Manning, couldn’t she be hanging out with her friends at this time of night?”

            I glared at him; fortunately, Dani backed me up.  “With all due respect Commissioner, Starr wouldn’t have let Hope stay at a daycare center past working hours. She was also pretty sure someone was stalking her.”

            “The woman from The Sun? Brenda?”

            “Yeah, listen Bo, can you bring this woman in already?” I said with blunt impatience.  “She harassed my daughters the other day, can’t you bring her in for that?”

            Bo sighed, “Manning, you know that we usually don’t file a missing person report unless someone has been gone for at least forty-eight hours.”

            So that must why Llanview never finds its missing citizens. Anger was starting to build up inside me.  Most people I knew felt hot in the face when they got angry, or couldn’t think coherently, or started venting and crying, me me me!  But I could think straight.  Well, methodically, anyways.  My rage felt like my lungs had been replaced with an iron furnace and someone turned on the fire.  God, it hurt, and I knew I could hurt others with it too. The incompetence of the Llanview PD was the last straw.

            “Listen,” I grit my teeth at Bo.  “If anything happens to my little girl because of some stipulation you have on not finding someone before forty-eight hours have gone by, so help me but you and this entire force will be held responsible.”

            Bo Buchanan didn’t quiver.  I hadn’t expected him to.  I didn’t expect him to say, “All right, Manning, we’ll bring her in,” either.  But he did.

            The thought of anything happening to Star made me sick, especially since I knew that it was somehow my fault.  Dani and I waited in Bo’s office for about two hours.  Every now and then she would say something useless, and then fall silent again.  I couldn’t really say much either.  Finally, Brenda arrived with two officers escorting her inside.  Then Dani cried, “This is her! She’s the one who chased Starr and me down the street the other day!”

            I shot up to get at her.  “Where the hell is my daughter!”         Her police escorts caught me by the arms.  Damn it, so close!  I was ready to kill her.

            “Get this son of a bitch away from me!” Brenda shrieked at Bo.

            Bo said sharply to his men, “Get him out of here!”  Next thing I knew, Dani and I were being pushed out of the room. 

Dani began to sob.  “This is all my fault.  I should have told someone sooner…”  She buried her face in her hands, tear drops sliding past her fingers.

My heart throbbed painfully inside my chest.  I put my arm around Dani.  “No,” I hushed.  “No, this is my fault.  I made another enemy and now Starr’s paying for it.  I should have known.  Oh God I should have known…”  She looked up at me as if she’d never seen me before in her life.  After half an hour, the door to the questioning room opened.  Brenda stepped out, looking rather…sorry.  No, she couldn’t have been sorry.

“They’re letting you go?” I realized, aghast.

She shook her head in remorse.  “I didn’t kidnap your daughter, Todd.  I told the police what I could about yesterday when I saw her.  There was this black car circling around the block, and that’s all I know.”

I was too shocked to say anything. Dani, however, asked, “Did you see the license plate?”

“No.  I saw who was behind the wheel though.” She held me under a direct gaze.  “It was that man who was in the office.  The day you fired me.”

“Ribbs,” I whispered.  No way.  It didn’t make any sense.  There was another piece missing in the puzzle, and I was going to find it even if it killed me.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

            I was deep in thought as I took Dani back to her house.  “There’s something I can’t place my finger on,” I mused.

            She asked, “What is it?”

            I thought about what Starr had been doing for me.  She was talking to someone about TERRA, and a few days later she was gone.  What did that have to do with Ribbs?  He could have been working for the company as a spy.  Yes, considering how I used TERRA’s resource contacts to find him, that made sense.  But I’d never told him anything about Starr.

            A memory of the letter from “Business Blues” swam around in my head for a bit.  “Of course,” I hissed.  Dani jumped at my inflection.  “Starr found out something TERRA didn’t want her to know.  Ribbs knew I was trying to discredit TERRA, and was afraid the truth would come out.  So he took her.” I strode over to the entrance and flung open the door.  “The son of a bitch took her!”

            Dani chased after me. “Where are you going?” she asked, alarmed.

            I stopped long enough to say very seriously, “Danielle, I need to ask you something.”

            Wide-eyed, she whispered, “Ask me anything.”

            “If I don’t come back from TERRA headquarters tonight, will you get the word out about what’s going on?” She nodded, tears swelling in her eyes again. 

            I’d almost turned around when I heard, “Dad…” Stunned, I let Dani throw her arms around me.  I embraced her back tightly, and she whispered, “Please come back…”

            “Okay,” I said softly, my heart breaking into a hundred pieces at this bittersweet moment.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

            I’d researched the hell out of TERRA, but I still didn’t know exactly what it was.  Internet results for it repeated basic vocabulary for an investment company: stocks, shares, quotes, bonds, etc.  But when I got to its headquarters, it all became clear to me.  TERRA was just a cover.  If the guy who’d called himself “Business Blues” had been the one Starr talked to, then that meant TERRA was running illegal operations.  But for what?

            I saw Ribbs waiting outside the headquarters building.  He was standing under a fir tree, a gun in his hand.  That didn’t intimidate me in the least.  “Where is she?” I demanded in a low voice, getting close enough for him to shoot me at point-blank range.

            He could probably have broken my spinal cord with his pinky, but I didn’t care.  He just stared at me.

            “Inside,” he grunted finally. “It’s unlocked.”

            I knew what I was going to be walking into.  Again, what did I have to lose by going in there? Starr was my world.  Hope needed her mother more than her mother needed me.  I pushed open the door to the dark building.  I couldn’t see a damn thing.  A tense thirty seconds had passed.  Then I heard it.  Footsteps.  I looked to my right.

 “We’ve been expecting you, Todd Manning.”

I struggled not to run towards the voice and beat the crap out of its owner.  Clearing my throat, I said, “Where’s my daughter?”

“We’ve been taking care of her for you.”  That voice.  I knew it from the phone–it was the same jerk I talked to last week! 

“Then let her go.” 

“She’s in no condition to go anywhere,” he said in his eerily smooth telemarketer-from-hell voice.

My heart nearly stopped.  “What did you do to her?”  No answer.  I tried again.  “Whatever you want from me, I’ll give it to you.  I–I’ll drop the lawsuit, give you a million more dollars if you want.  I’ll make everyone forget everything I’ve been saying about TERRA.”

“It’s too late for that.  This facility has been compromised.”

Okay, now I was officially freaked out.  The blood must have been draining from my face.  “Facility?”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet, Mr. Manning?” 

A presence I hadn’t noticed before brushed behind me, but I reacted too late.  Something sharp was stabbed into my neck and then I was released.  The spinning sensation of vertigo washed over me. Everything was so dark that I honestly couldn’t tell I had been injected with something until my knees buckled into an agonizing fall.  While I was half-asleep, the other half did somehow end up figuring it all out.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

            It was the first of many needles.  Sometimes they’d give things that made me fly, and that felt wonderful.  But mostly what they gave me made me crash hard.  Every now and then, they’d talk to me during my lucid moments.  I heard screaming and it might have been mine after they told me they’d killed her.  I knew deep down it had to be a lie.  If Starr had been dead, I would have known already.  Yet, truth or lie, it still broke me.

            Sometimes I’d remember where I was.  I’d been tortured by this agency before, but this division was even nastier than the last one.  Maybe it was because my mother wasn’t the Big Boss at this one; I couldn’t figure it out.  And then it just stopped mattering.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

The Present

I can hear Starr’s voice.  “Dad, please come back to us…” 

Finding my voice, I whisper, “Shorty…I’m so sorry.  My fault...”

“No,” she chokes out.  “I wanted to help you.  I just wanted to know that someone was always going to be on your side, even when everyone else wasn’t.”

I never thought I’d wind up in Heaven, yet here she is with me.  She seems so real.  I turn my head, suddenly aware that I am lying on some kind of table.  “You’re here with me…” I smile.

She sniffles.  “Yes, I’m here.  So is Mom.  Jack, Dani, Aunt Viki…I even brought Hope.”

What? I bolt up at once.  They can’t all be dead, I think, looking around wildly.

Blair comes over and kisses me.  “We were almost too late. Thank God Dani called the cops the day after you went missing. The agency can’t hurt you any more, they’ve all been arrested.”

“Starr? You’re okay?” I ask.

She smiles sadly.  “A little shaken up, but they didn’t hurt me at all. They kept talking about how you’d come for me.”

“Are you okay?” a concerned voice asks. Everyone looks up, scarcely believing that it’s Jack. 

“Yeah,” I tell him.  “I was out of it most of the time.” Dani comes over by me, and I say, “Thanks for coming through.”

She laughs through her tears.  “I promised, didn’t I? You’re my father.”

Meanwhile, Jack shifts his weight, looking uncomfortable. “Dad…I’m really sor–.”

I hold up my hand.  “You can make it up to me by letting me teach you how to drive.” He smiles like I’ve all of a sudden turned into his favorite athlete.

            With Hope in her arms, Viki walks up to me and says, “You are very, very lucky Todd.”

            “Yeah,” I agree.  More than you all will know.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Epilogue

            The Sun, next day

            Tomorrow, the latest Ask Anything column will read as follows:

Dear Ask Anything,

I am having a hard time accepting my biological father. After spending so many years thinking one person was my dad, then finding out he wasn’t, then doing the same with another man, I don’t want to go through the ordeal of bonding with a new dad again.  I really don’t have anything against my real father, but I don’t think he understands. What’s the right thing to do here?

            ~Torn in Three

            Dear Torn in Three,

            This only seems like a difficult situation. The right thing to do here, however, is very simple.  When your real father asks if you’d like to go to a concert or a movie with him later today, you say YES! 

            Thanks for writing!

            ~Ask Anything

THE END

This selection is posted for author, RLEE.  You can also see her work at Cataz's Site

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