“And don’t make me sorry I called.”
Her voice wobbled now, reminding him that whatever the lead-up, they now found themselves in a parental nightmare, and sniping at each other wouldn’t fix it. He rubbed his gritty eyes and let out a breath. “I’m sorry about you and Jack.” Whatever. “Are you sure she’s not with him?”
“Of course I’m sure. She’s not with Jack, or Ami, or any of her friends, or either of her grandparents. Give me some credit, please.”
He rubbed his eyes again and thought of her frantically running through her call list trying to track down her daughter. “Sorry.”
Her sigh carried over the line. “Look, I’m sorry, too. For many things. And I’m not explaining this well. She left a note in her room saying she’d made her own plans for the summer, so after calling all the likely suspects and some fairly unlikely ones, pressuring her friends for any little crumb of information she might have shared, I finally wised up and checked her credit card.”
“She has a credit card? Christ, she’s barely fourteen.”
“Welcome to modern parenthood, Ford. She has a cell phone, a laptop, an Uber account, and credit card—debit card, technically—linked to an account I oversee. I’m supposed to be able to control how much money she has and where she can spend it, but it seems she figured out my credentials, logged in, and set things up so she could book some travel.”
Something heavy gathered in his gut and slowly started sinking. “Where’d she go?”
“She’s, ah…she’s headed your way.”
“My way?” He swung back around, arm out to entreat a wall mural. “Why would she come to Alaska? How does she even know about me?”
Another long sigh flowed over the line. “She overheard Jack say something about not being her real father when he came over last week to pick up some of his things and got into it with me. Naturally, he dropped that bomb and then left me to clean up the damage. I didn’t know what to do. I decided to be honest. I-I told her about you, showed her an old picture. I didn’t give her a lot of details, but…she’s smart. She took the information and researched. I checked the browser history on the desktop in her room. She found you. Found social media sites for that bar you own up there. Hell, I don’t know.” Her hollow laugh echoed in his ear. “She may have your home address, your social security number, and your mother’s maiden name by now.”
Smart? Maybe. Sneaky? Definitely. He tucked the phone to his ear with his shoulder, then grabbed pen and paper from the empty check-in desk. “Tell me what you know.”
After a few minutes of listening and scribbling notes, he confronted a nerve-wrenching fact. His daughter—the one he hadn’t seen in over thirteen years—was arriving in Anchorage at eleven thirty that evening. Apparently, she wanted to meet him in the flesh. Good, because he’d be there waiting when she de-planed. He’d scare her straight and put her rebellious butt on the first flight home.
“How will I recognize her?”
The question earned him a laugh—a real one. “You’ll recognize her. Just look for yourself, in teenage-girl form.”
Relief lightened her mood. He wasn’t there yet. “Could you send me a recent picture?”
“Yes. Of course. Ford…?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Thank you.” The quaver snuck back into her voice. “Please send our baby home to me.”
How’re you going to keep her there?He didn’t ask the question. “I’ll get her. I promise. It’s going to be okay.”
He hoped to God he could deliver on that promise.