Lost Girls Read online

  “I’m going back to the plaza.”

  “Don’t do this, Jill.”

  “I’m not doing anything. I just want a beach wrap. That’s why I came here in the first place.”

  “And I’m not waiting here until the last minute so I have to run to the ship on my blistered feet. You do this every time.”

  “Then go back now. I’ll meet you there.”

  Theresa’s eyes drifted back to the couple behind her. “I’ll wait here, but hurry.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  Jill scooted away from the table, tempted to turn toward the couple in the back booth again, but decided against it. “I’ll pay you later.”

  Theresa shrugged and blew smoke at the ceiling while Jill hurried for the door.

  The marketplace was still bustling, crowds inching their way through acres of brightly colored clothes. She found racks in a booth and was sorting through them when a woman tripped behind her, falling into and nearly pushing her to the ground. Then, to add insult to injury, their heads bumped as they stood to face each other.

  “Oh, my,” the woman said, looking dazed; she was young and pretty and dressed in an expensive gold top over white capris trimmed in gold. She was a native, Jill thought, her skin brown, her teeth dazzling, her luxurious black hair pinned back with tortoiseshell clips.

  “I am soooo very sorry.” She steadied herself against a lamppost to inspect the broken heel of a flimsy gold dress sandal. “I need to start keeping real shoes in the car.” She grinned. “Marie.” She stuck out a hand to shake.

  “Jill,” the girl answered, taking it.

  Marie looked at her neck. “I have that very same heart, it’s a Tiffany, right? It looks much better on you. I like it with your blond hair.”

  “Your hair is beautiful.” Jill stooped to pick up a sarong on a hanger that had fallen to the ground.

  “Like straw.” The woman grabbed a handful and shook it self-deprecatingly. Then she tossed her sandals into a barrel of fly-covered trash.

  “Wow,” Jill said, staring at the Gucci labels.

  “Who would repair them?” Marie shrugged. “Besides, they had bad energy, I wore them to please my ex. You’re looking for a sarong?”

  Jill nodded, replacing the hanger and continuing to flip through the racks.

  “Occasion?”

  “Pool party,” Jill said. “I’m on one of the cruise ships.” She thumbed over her shoulder in the direction of the harbor.

  “I design them.”

  “Them?” Jill looked sideways.

  The woman spread out her hands. “Sarongs,” she said, “though actually I design most everything you see here. I’m a garment manufacturer in Santo Domingo.”

  “Get out.” Jill grinned.

  Marie shrugged. “We supply half of the booths in El Conde.”

  “Really,” Jill said, impressed.

  “The high-end resort boutiques as well. You know the Hispaniola Hotel. We have a shop there. The silks do well.”

  Jill nodded, raising her eyebrows. Her mother and father visited the casino there.

  “You’re so young.” She stepped to another rack of wraps.

  Marie laughed. “Not so young anymore, I just buy good makeup. It hides the wrinkles very well.” She looked around, glanced at a diamond Omega on her wrist. “Oh, Lord. Speaking of hotels, I’m meeting my husband at Las Cañas, you know the place.”

  Jill shook her head.

  “Overlooks the pool at the Hispaniola. Great way to end the day.” Marie turned to leave. “Safe trip. Where are you from, by the way?”

  “Chicago.”

  “Oh, I love Chicago,” the woman said wistfully, a final wave before she walked away.

  Jill pushed her way through more sarongs and a moment later heard her name being called.

  “Jill?”

  Marie was standing a dozen feet away, hands on hips.

  “You know, I don’t even know who I am anymore. Really, I mean I know it’s hard to believe, but I was actually raised with manners. Come follow me”—she swept a hand in her direction—“I’ll give you something worth taking back to Chicago, an original from my collection, pure silk and free for the pretty girl I almost knocked over.”

  Jill hesitated.

  Marie made a face. “You can’t be seen in one of these. I won’t have it.”

  “I couldn’t,” Jill said.

  “Of course you could, it’s called kindness and it’s the first thing I should have said, not the last.”

  “Are you sure? Don’t you have to run?”

  “The stock van’s on the way to my car. I keep a box in the back in case one of my shops calls in. Just do something nice for a tourist when you get back home to America.”

  Jill smiled and ran to catch up, keeping step as they pushed their way through bodies from Parque Colón to Parque Independencia, dodging cars across a busy street, cutting through alleys until they reached one filled with teeming Dumpsters and windowless doors. Marie stopped at the side of a pink cargo van, unlocked a side door, and rolled it back on its hinges. Then she climbed inside and Jill could see a rack of clothes and cardboard boxes on the floor.

  Marie pounded the top of one of the boxes with her fist, broke the strapping tape, and peeled the lid open. “Jump up,” she coaxed. “Pick any of the smalls, you’re going to love these.”

  Jill climbed in as Marie flipped through labels, then she heard footsteps charging up the sidewalk behind her. Jill started to turn but by then the door was sliding closed and a knife appeared at her throat.

  “Not a word.” Marie’s voice was no longer pleasant. “Lie on your stomach and put your hands behind your back.”

  “No!” Jill yelled. “Please, no.” She struggled.

  Marie pushed her face into the clothes piled on the floor of the van and scratched the side of her neck with the point of the knife.

  A man got behind the wheel and started the engine.

  “Put your hands back,” Marie hissed once more, and Jill did.

  Marie taped her wrists, then her ankles, and last her mouth. The whole thing took a minute.

  Marie got up and Jill arched her neck to see the curtain between the cab and cargo area swinging sideways with the motion of the van leaving the curb.

  Marie went forward, leaving her in the dark.

  The van sped through narrow streets, bumping curbs on sharp turns. The back of Jill’s head thumped hard against the ribbed floor. She took deep breaths through her nostrils, trying to calm her pounding heart. Five minutes passed, then ten. No one had seen what happened. No one was chasing them. She had simply disappeared.

  Her sister wouldn’t worry for a while. Probably not until her next margarita was gone. By then it would be time to head back to the ship and even then she might not bother to look for her. She would probably pick up her sandals and limp on back for a shower before dinner.

  What had happened? she kept wondering. Why her? Had they been following her? Did they know who she was?

  She’d heard in school that kidnappings were commonplace in South America. Taking people off the streets was a new form of income for criminals. But they must know there was no way to reach her family. She had told the woman who called herself Marie that she was on a cruise ship.

  She tried to quell the panic as the van rushed from the marketplace. The ride was a blur of ear-piercing merengue, city street sirens and angry horns as the driver jerked right and left, sending her rolling between the wheel wells and random boxes of clothes in the back of the van.

  She was sure that at any moment the driver would pull over behind some tenement house and rob her and throw her out with her empty purse, but the van just kept on rolling and city blocks turned into city miles.

  Where were they taking her?

  Jill felt a trickle of warm blood from where Marie’s knife scratched her neck. Her cheek was grinding into the dirt on the metal floor. Through a blur of tears she saw her purse lying near the curtai
n. Why wouldn’t they have looked in it? It was just lying there, a brand-new leather Coach with four new hundred-dollar bills her father had given her when they left Miami. If the kidnappers wanted money, why didn’t they take what was in her purse?

  She lifted her head and looked behind her. Spanning the width of the back door was a steel rod thick with beach towels and flimsy sarongs on wire hangers. Next to her on the floor were open boxes and random pieces of clothing lying about. Were they really street vendors or was the van only a ruse? Only meant for one thing? Bait to lure someone like her into an alley?

  She heard the sounds of blaring horns, clashing music, shouting people, the high-pitched whine of a motor scooter zipping by. Then the van sped away from it all; a ramp, a freeway, something was taking them away from the city, until at last there was nothing to hear but the dreary hum of tires.

  She knew what would happen when her mother found out she wasn’t on the ship. She would have a freaking meltdown. She would insist that the ship be searched. When they didn’t find her her mom would insist the whole island be searched. She was never going to accept excuses from the police. She would call Uncle Adel. He was a United States attorney for the northern district of Illinois. Jill’s father was a millionaire ten times over, but his brother Adel had clout in Washington. Adel, Jill’s father was always saying, could fix anything.

  Sooner or later she’d be told to make a call, either to the ship’s mobile operators to reach her parents or to relatives back in the States. That’s what kidnappers did.

  She wished they hadn’t taped her mouth shut. She could have told them her cell phone was in her purse. Her father had bought SIM cards so that the girls’ cell phones would work in the islands. He wanted them to be able to reach each other if ever they were separated.

  Minutes later she heard a muffled noise, a familiar melody coming from the direction of her purse. Her ring tone, her cell phone!

  Marie was moving out of the passenger seat and pushing aside the curtain to reach for the purse on the floor.

  It could only be her sister or her parents, Jill knew. If it were Theresa she would be pissed. Wondering where the hell she was at. She hoped her sister would take the call seriously when Marie answered. She hoped she wouldn’t say anything stupid or hang up thinking she was playing a joke.

  Marie snatched the purse and unsnapped it on her way back to her seat in the cab. Jill strained to hear what she would say.

  The phone continued to ring, third ring, fourth ring…

  This was it, she thought.

  Fifth ring…

  They wouldn’t have to go through the police now. Everything would be over and done with before anyone knew she was missing.

  Sixth ring…

  For God’s sake answer it! Answer the freaking phone!

  Then she felt a rush of air, a window was being lowered. A moment later the window closed and there was silence.

  Jill felt at first like she was falling, like she had lost grip on a line tethering her to the world. For a moment she was confused about where she was, somewhere cold, somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be. A bead of sweat ran off her scalp, tickling the back of an ear. She shivered, teeth beginning to chatter. She felt her chest rise and fall as she began to breathe more rapidly.

  It was so wrong, so senseless, and yet so telling. If they didn’t care about the money in her purse or reaching out to her family, then she had real reason to worry.

  For the first time Jill began to think the unthinkable.

  Minutes turned to an hour; the van eventually slowed to a stop. The driver was speaking to someone outside the vehicle. She heard the crinkle of documents, official but casual conversation. It was a border crossing.

  There was only one border in all of Hispaniola, Jill was certain, the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Jill could only visualize it as one thing.

  A gate into Hell.

  When the van began to move once more, she knew she was leaving a very important crossroads behind. She knew she would never be at this place and time again. She knew that with every new mile the unthinkable was becoming a reality.

  The van soon stopped for gas, but then it drove on for several more hours. Jill began to become confused again; at one point she thought she heard her mother and father talking; she was a little girl in the back of their car. She lost all track of time. In lucid moments she noticed the roads had begun to deteriorate, they were beyond the boundaries of civilization. She needed to pee, she needed to relieve the muscle cramping in her arms, she needed to rinse the bad taste from her mouth, but most of all she needed someone to tell her she was okay. That everything was going to be okay.

  The road twisted on for miles, dirt and stone under the tires. Then they slowed and distant voices brought her back to reality, someone was outside the van, muted laughter, creaking gates, a hundred feet, and the van came to a stop. The driver’s and passenger’s doors opened and closed.

  The cargo door slid back and she looked up into the face of a gaunt black man. He was standing behind the glare of a spotlight. A pistol was holstered on his belt. He had one good eye, a brown eye; the other looked like a large white marble.

  Marie climbed in next to Jill, cut the tape that bound her limbs, and pulled her up by the shoulders, avoiding eye contact as she nudged her toward the door.

  Jill dropped her legs over the side and her sneakers hit the dirt. Her eyes were blinded by the spotlight. The woman threw her purse on the ground next to her, money still inside.

  The black man handed Marie a thick brown paper bag, which she tossed to the driver and then she pulled the cargo door closed behind her. A moment later the van’s taillights disappeared behind the closing gates.

  Jill stood there alone, shivering in the midst of armed men.

  They were at the foot of an immense stone building; it looked old and was tall, with spires like a church.

  She could see coils of barbed wire inside the fenced compound. Two men wearing black shirts and jeans stood at the gates. One, with a hat, had dreadlocks. The other was older and fatter and he eyed her hungrily.

  A military truck was parked next to them, a canvas tarp covering the cargo bed. A panel truck painted with fruit sat incongruously by a rusting fuel tank on legs emblazoned with a fading Texaco star.

  The man with the glass eye nodded and two of the armed men grabbed her arms, pulling her to a set of bay doors that led into the foundation of the old building.

  Inside was a catacomb of hallways. They took her to a large room lit by a string of bare lightbulbs. A row of wooden doors against one wall had small open panes cut into them, covered with wire screen.

  She was led to the center of the room and the men stepped away from her.

  She began to speak and the one-eyed man slapped her hard across the face.

  Jill could taste blood as he grabbed the collar of her shirt and ripped it open from the neck to waist, scattering buttons like pearls in the powdery dirt. He pulled the pistol from his belt and put it against her forehead.

  “Take off your clothes,” he said.

  “Money,” she whispered hoarsely. “My father has—”

  He pulled the hammer back on the gun.

  She took off the shirt and let it fall to the dirt.

  The pistol never wavered.

  She felt dizzy, about to faint, but somehow she kept on her feet. She undid her skirt and let it fall to the ground, her top and bikini bottom. She was made to kneel in her socks and Nike sneakers.

  And it began.

  6

  CARIBBEAN SEA

  There was a moon on the ocean, lights ablaze over the superstructure of the gleaming white Constellation, the flagship of the Caribbean Star fleet as it slipped from the harbor of Santo Domingo on a glassy black sea. The decks were crowded with tourists recently returned laden with sundries from the islands, beaches, and marketplaces.

  It would soon be the dinner hour and a reggae band played poolside as guests filtered belo
w, transformed from beachwear to tuxedos and evening gowns, rising to collect in cocktail lounges, waiting for their appointed seating in one of the ship’s many ballrooms.

  By 8 P.M. they were sitting at the captain’s table, the room aglow with white candles. Golden champagne effervesced in delicate flutes. All around were smiling faces, teeth white and skin burnt red as they recounted their adventures in the Dominican Republic. It was a trouble-free place, this floating palace. The world was held at bay for thirteen days at sea. There were no frantic knocks upon their doors, no letters from the government or attorneys in the mail, no middle-of-the-night wrong numbers to set your heart aflutter. Temporary though it might be, for two weeks the ship was a sanctuary from the trials of an unforgiving world.

  Or so Carol had thought. It would hardly have seemed possible for this ship to be the setting for the worst moment in a person’s life, but that’s what it had become. That’s what it always would be.

  “Mom?” Carol looked up from the dinner table to see her older daughter standing at her shoulder.

  She admired her daughter’s dress. “You look beautiful, Theresa.” Theresa had four other dresses packed, so had Jill and her mother, all bought last April in Bloomingdale’s or one of the boutiques along Oak Street, overlooking Lake Michigan.

  Carol reached to touch Bob’s arm, to direct his attention to Theresa’s dress, when something on her daughter’s face stopped her.

  “What is it, Theresa? Are you okay?”

  “Have you seen Jill?” Her daughter looked distraught.

  Perplexed, Carol looked around the dining room, last at the captain, who was talking to a waiter in a tux. “She’s not with you?”

  “She left me in a bar by the marketplace in El Conde. She wanted to buy a wraparound skirt. We’d been looking at them earlier.”

  “El Conde?” Carol repeated. There was the slightest flutter in her stomach.

  She forced a smile, taking a deep breath, convinced she had heard it wrong. Theresa must have misspoken. Theresa had meant to say a bar near the ship’s atrium. Jill was shopping for a wrap in one of the ship’s stores and Theresa had been waiting for her in one of the ship’s bars. That made more sense. And Lord knew it wouldn’t be the first time Jill hadn’t been on time. She could be so irresponsible at times. She could so easily get distracted.