Chapter 2 #2
Glenna frowned as the memory of a phone call from Dwight as he passed through a base in Europe popped into her head.
Is that Italy?
Why is someone calling me from Italy?
It has to be a wrong number.
She didn’t know anyone in Italy. She didn’t know anyone outside of the Portland metropolitan area.
It was probably a scam call, some automated voice telling her she’d won a cruise she’d never take or that her Social Security number had been compromised.
She went to hit the ignore button, but something stayed her thumb.
It was a strange, irrational pull. A sensation like a cold breeze on the back of her neck. Dwight had always talked about the “combat intuition,” that instinct that told you to move right instead of left, to duck before the shot was fired, and she was almost sure that’s what she felt now.
She glanced toward the kitchen to make sure Bernie wasn’t watching, then she retreated into the narrow hallway that led to the restrooms and pressed ‘Accept call.’
“Hello?” she whispered.
For a moment, there was only silence on the other end, punctuated by a faint, rhythmic humming that sounded like machinery.
Then, a man’s voice broke through—deep, gravelly, and carrying a distinct Chicago lilt that felt strangely familiar, even though she was certain she’d never heard it before.
It was a voice that commanded authority.
“Glenna Harper?”
Oh God. What now?
Glenna stepped farther into the shadows of the hallway, her hand trembling as she pressed the phone to her ear. “Who is this?”
“My name is Tyrone Power,” the man said. There was a pause, a weight in the silence that made Glenna’s breath catch. “I was a friend of Dwight Jennings. We served together.”
The floor seemed to drop out from under Glenna’s feet. She leaned her shoulder against the damp wallpaper of the hallway, her knees buckling.
Dee’s friend?
Why is he calling me now?
Dwight hadn’t had many friends. He’d talked about his “brothers” in the Raiders, but none of them had reached out after he’d died.
Not one. She’d assumed they’d forgotten him, or that they saw her as a complication they didn’t want to deal with, especially when Dwight’s aunt had refused to allow her and Kelsey to go to his funeral.
“Dwight’s been gone for years,” she managed to say, her voice trembling with a mixture of shock and sudden anger. “Why are you calling me now? Where are you calling me from? Are you in Italy?”
“Glenna, I know you have no reason to trust me,” the man—Tyrone—said. His tone was level, but there was an underlying vibration of something else. Something like urgency. Or grief. “But I’m not calling to talk about the past. I’m calling about your daughter.”
Excuse me.
What?
Glenna’s heart stopped. She didn’t mean that metaphorically. For one harrowing second, the pulsing in her ears ceased, and the world went grey.
“Kelsey?” she choked out, her voice rising in a panicked spiral.
“What about Kelsey? How do you know about her? Is she okay? Did something happen at the foster home?” A million terrifying possibilities flooded her mind.
Had she been hurt? Had she run away? Had the state finally signed the papers and changed her name?
“She’s safe, Glenna,” Tyrone said quickly, his voice softening. “She’s safe…” There was a pause that seemed to stretch forever until he tagged on “…and she’s with me.”
Glenna let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. It made no sense. It was impossible. “With you? What are you talking about? She’s in Oregon. She’s in a foster home here in Portland. You’re in Italy. This is... this is some kind of sick joke.”
“It’s no joke.” The sheer gravity in his voice stopped her breath. “I don’t know the whole story yet, Glenna. I don’t know how she got from the US to over here. But we found her. My team and I... we rescued her from a bad situation in France a few days ago. We didn’t know who she was until today.”
Oh my God.
My baby.
Glenna’s head was spinning.
France?
Rescued?
The words felt like they belonged to a movie, not her life. Her world was greasy diners, bus schedules, and trying to find a way to get her daughter back. It wasn’t international missions and mysterious men named Tyrone.
“I don’t believe you,” she whispered, though her chest was beginning to heave with something so violent it hurt. “I don’t... I just spoke to her social worker two weeks ago. They said she was fine. They said she was doing well with her ‘new family’.”
“They lied to you.” Tyrone’s voice turned cold.
“Or they’re so incompetent they didn’t even notice she was gone.
Glenna, listen to me. She’s right here. She saw my tattoo; I have the same one Dwight had on his shoulder, and she told me her daddy had the same magic bird tattoo.
That’s why I’m calling you. It took some digging, but… ” his voice trailed off.
Glenna closed her eyes, tears finally spilling over and making hot tracks down her cheeks.
Dwight’s Raider tattoo. Kelsey used to trace it with her tiny fingers every night before he left, calling it the ‘magic bird.’ She’d even tried to draw it on herself with markers once.
It was a detail no random scammer could possibly know.
“I need to see her,” Glenna sobbed, her hand clutching her stomach as if to hold herself together. “I need to hear her voice. Please. If you’re telling the truth... please let me talk to her.”
“That’s why I’m calling,” Tyrone said. “But you need to be somewhere private. Somewhere safe. Can you leave where you are?”
“I’m at work,” Glenna said, looking frantically at the restroom door. “I... I can’t just leave. My boss?—”
“Forget your boss,” Tyrone interrupted, his voice brooking no argument. “This is your daughter, Glenna. Go to the restroom, or the parking lot, or wherever the hell you can get five minutes of peace. I’m going to patch you through to a video link. You need to see her, and she needs to see you.”
“Okay,” Glenna gasped. “Okay. Give me a minute.”
She didn’t even think about the consequences.
She didn’t care about Bernie, or the shift, or the fact that she’d probably be fired before she reached the exit.
She ducked into the single-occupancy employee restroom and slammed the deadbolt home.
The room was small, smelling of pine-scented bleach and old cigarettes.
She stood in front of the cracked mirror, her hands shaking so hard she almost dropped the phone.
“I’m here,” she whispered. "I’m alone.”
“Sending the link now,” Tyrone said. “Hold on.”
A chime sounded on her phone. She tapped the notification with a trembling finger. The screen flickered with a spinning circle of data as it struggled to connect across thousands of miles.
Glenna held her breath as her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird.
Please let it be her.
Please let this be real.
How can this be real?
There has to be some kind of mistake, right?
This has to be some kind of sick joke.
The screen cleared, and the quality of the footage was high—much higher than her phone should have been able to handle.
It was a wide-angle shot of a room that looked like something out of a high-tech command center.
Monitors lined the walls, and the lighting was a soft, clinical blue.
In the center of the frame, sitting on a massive, wooden table, was a little girl.
She was wearing a yellow T-shirt with a ketchup stain on the front.
Her dark hair was in two messy, lopsided pigtails.
She was holding a small, tan puppy that was trying to lick her chin, and she was laughing.
It was a sound Glenna hadn’t heard in months, and it brought her to her knees, “Kelsey?” Her voice was barely audible over the rush of blood in her ears.
The little girl on the table froze. She tilted her head, her dark eyes—Dwight’s eyes—widening. She looked around the room, her gaze landing directly on the camera or screen that was recording her. “Mommy?”
The man in the background—a broad-shouldered figure with dark hair and a presence that seemed to fill the room—moved closer to Kelsey.
He was handsome in a hard, scarred way, with brown eyes that held a depth of weariness and resolve.
He looked exactly like the kind of man Dwight would have trusted.
He pointed at Glenna. “I told you I’d find her, Kels.”
Kelsey’s eyes welled with tears, and her lip started to wobble. “Mommy! Mommy, come get me. Mommy.”
Glenna collapsed onto the floor, her back sliding down the cold tile of the bathroom wall.
She clutched the phone to her chest, then pulled it back so she could see every pixel of her daughter’s face.
“Oh, baby,” The words were torn from the deepest part of her.
“Oh, Kelsey. My sweet, brave girl. Mommy’s here.
I’m right here.” She had no idea how she was going to figure it out, but there was nothing in the world that would stop her from getting to her baby.
“I’m coming, I swear I’ll come for you.”
“Mommy, the bad men took me on a plane,” Kelsey sobbed, the puppy forgotten as she stared at the screen. “I was so scared. I wanted to come home, but they wouldn’t let me. They said you didn’t want me anymore.”
The rage that surged through Glenna in that moment was unlike anything she’d ever felt. It was a cold, white-hot fire that burned away the exhaustion and the fear.
“That was a lie, Kelsey. A big, terrible lie. I have never stopped trying to get you back. Not for a single second.”
“The man with the magic bird saved me,” Kelsey sniffed and wiped her nose with her sleeve. “He has Daddy’s magic bird, Mommy. He said he was Daddy’s friend.”
Glenna looked past her daughter at the shadow of the man in the background. Was that Tyrone? He was standing with his arms crossed, watching the reunion with an expression she couldn’t quite read—a mixture of grim satisfaction and an aching kind of empathy.
“Is he being nice to you, baby?” Glenna asked, her protective instincts flaring even through the screen.