Chapter 33 Jordan
THIRTY-THREE
JORDAN
What an ugly photo. Of my evil stepmother.
—@TayCamp
Amber met Jordan on the porch. Her eyes were tired, her hair was disheveled, and she was already wearing her pajamas. When she wrapped him in a hug, he squeezed her back gratefully. The coconut smell of her shampoo was a respite from the campfire smell that still lingered over their cul-de-sac.
“How are you doing?” he murmured.
She kissed him and then leaned back. “A little embarrassed to have called you home. But Sydney . . . she’s had a rough day. I think I just needed a change of parent.”
Ever since their teenager was a toddler, Amber and Jordan had played tag team during difficult emotional episodes. Jordan always wished they’d been able to have more kids but didn’t know how this strategy would work if they were outnumbered.
“How are you?” Amber asked.
“Still standing.”
“That goddamn Silverman.”
The way she said it raised the fine hairs on the back of his neck. They broke off their embrace.
“What about him?” he asked.
“You haven’t seen the meme from the press conference?”
“No, and I don’t want to.”
“You need to. But come inside first.”
She took Jordan’s hand and led him into the house.
In the kitchen, he declined her offer of leftover pizza—he had wolfed the burgers while driving home—but accepted a beer since she already had one open for herself.
They stood together at a corner of the breakfast bar while she called up the meme on X.
There were two pictures, side by side. On the left, Jordan had been captured looking like a doofus, with his mouth open and eyes half closed. On the right, a luminous Cara Campbell, wearing an off-the-shoulder dress, playfully waved bye-bye.
The caption: SOMETIMES THEY GET AWAY.
“You have got to be kidding,” he said, giving her phone back.
“I thought everyone would see Silverman for the joke he is, but here we are. He’s making this his one and only campaign issue.”
“Out of my hands at the moment,” Jordan said, tipping back the bottle for a swallow. “I figure maybe it’s not such a bad idea to let the Feds chase her, while I keep as many of my people as possible out of danger.”
“She’s not actually dangerous, is she?”
“There’s danger any time you have a bunch of armed, excited people running around in the woods.”
He still hadn’t told her about his own close call.
Amber squeezed his arm. “Sydney’s really upset about the meme. And Bree, obviously. She stayed super optimistic, even after seeing her in the hospital, but I think reality’s starting to set in.”
Leaving his half-finished beer in the kitchen, Jordan went to Sydney’s room, where she was sitting cross-legged on her bed and staring at her phone like it was a Magic 8 Ball. When she looked up, her red eyes and flushed cheeks made his heart ache.
“Hey, honey.”
“Hey, Dad.”
He sat on the foot of her bed and wiggled her big toe. It was an old joke: when she’d told him she was too big for hugs, he’d insisted she would never be too big for him to hug her big toe. Her eyes brimmed with tears, then overflowed, but she wasn’t crying, not exactly.
“It’s hard, huh?” he said.
“At first I was just, like, well, if anyone’s going to snap out of a coma and be normal again, it’s totally going to be Bree. Even after we went to the hospital. But she’s probably always going to be messed up. Her life is going to be so hard. Assuming she, you know . . .”
“She’s at one of the best hospitals in the country.”
Sydney suddenly changed the subject: “People are assholes.”
“Some of them are.” He played along, waiting to see where she was going.
“I can’t believe they memed you.”
“It goes with the job.”
“Yeah, but it’s already on a top-ten cops-are-a-joke list on Reddit. Such bullshit.”
He let go of her toe and poked her foot with his finger. “Maybe I don’t need all the stats.”
“You have to find her and shut them all up, Dad,” she said earnestly. “You probably shouldn’t have come home.”
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He checked it reluctantly. A 310 area code.
“I was getting tired of looking at Beto and I wanted to see you and your mom,” he said, rising from the bed. “Sorry, honey, I have to take this.”
He answered in the hall.
“You wanted, like, an update? How about this: the fire is hot but the trail is cold,” said AJ Wen.
“We’ve chased a butt load of false sightings by area civilians, some of them mischievous.
But we think they’re still in what you so poetically call the backcountry.
Absent any bodies or signs of life, our working theory is that they’re hiking together for some reason yet unknown.
We’re continuing to search with planes and helicopters, but the odds of finding them are getting less and less likely. ”
“You going to tell that to the media?”
“Too busy.”
“Look, Wen, if you’re in charge, then you’re in charge. I can’t tell people what I don’t know.”
She sighed. “OK, tomorrow. I’ll make a statement.”
“What are the next steps?”
“Your people continue to support my people. We’re going to wallpaper all surrounding towns with wanted posters and blanket the media with her picture.”
“And me?”
“This is a federal task force. Last time I checked, sheriffs are paid at the county level. I’ll call you if I need anything.”
When she ended the call, Jordan put the phone in his pocket so he wouldn’t throw it down the hall.