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Nine: In Santo Domingo

Jake hit the mute button on his television's remote control when a commercial started shouting at him. He already knew he was spending too much on car insurance without the loud hysterics of the T.V. He chuckled wryly to himself at a loud clang from the other side of the trailer as a slew of skateboarding teenagers overcame the insurance commercial and tried to silently convince him how much more awesome he would be if he would drink more of their soda.

Now, if only he had a mute button for his wife.

Crystal had been in the bathroom all morning fixing their toilet, punctuating each twist of her wrench by swearing irritably. The toilet had never actually been broken, but evidently it had been flushing too slowly to satisfy Jake's wife. As much time and effort as she was spending on it, and as many curses as she was shouting, the toilet would probably be able to suck the tiles right off the bathroom walls once she was done with it.

Jake kept the television muted when it finally returned to the baseball game he'd been watching. Two teams he didn't really care about were tied at zero in the sixth inning, so if anything worth seeing ended up happening when he wasn't watching, he'd be able to catch the instant replays that they'd be showing for ten minutes afterward. Levering himself up from the foot of his bed, he threw on a tee shirt and left the bedroom, crossing the trailer's little living room and kitchen to Crystal's latest office.

As he stepped through the open doorway, she flicked the newly reassembled toilet's handle and watched the inner workings of its rectangular tank as it flushed. It looked and sounded like it was working fine to Jake, but his wife just rolled her eyes and swore again. "If you need to do your business, you picked the right time. I was just about to take this thing apart again."

"What exactly's wrong with it, hon?" Jake asked, against his better judgment.

"What's wrong with it?" Crystal repeated. "I'll tell you what's wrong. When we first moved in here, this thing could flush and refill in three seconds flat, that's what. It was like it was built by NASA. Now look at it." She flushed the toilet again and took a step back away from it, gesturing pointedly at some flaw that was obvious to her, but that Jake couldn't notice for the life of him. "Like watching a turtle try to swallow."

Jake sidled up beside his wife, pushing her toolbox out of his way with a foot so that he could wrap an arm around her shoulders and hug her against him. "I think it's working just fine."

"Good thing," Crystal muttered. "I'll probably never get it running like it was before."

"Probably not," he agreed. "You got that handle fixed, though." Before, they'd had to hold the toilet's handle down until it finished flushing, or else it would stop in the middle of its process.

"I guess I did," she admitted reluctantly, then pushed away from him. "Stop cuddling, I'm filthy. Do you need to use it, or not?"

"I just came to see why you're feeling so industrious lately," Jake said with a grin, ignoring the greasy stain his wife had left on the side of his shirt.

Crystal picked a pair of wrenches up off the floor and bent over the back of the toilet again, reaching in and tightening something that likely wasn't loose in the first place. "You know why."

That Jake did. His wife had spent the entire car ride home from the airport late the night before making sure he'd never forget why. "Marc sounded fine on the phone this morning. He'll call again once he reaches Brazil, and when he lands in Australia, too. You need to stop worrying about this, Crystal."

"It's not the plane ride I'm worried about, and you know it," she said irritably, clanking around the toilet's innards absently. "He's never been so far from home before. What if he decides he likes the outback better than Ohio, and doesn't come back? What if he meets some strange girl and goes and gets her pregnant? You know how those Australian girls are."

Jake laughed. "Have you ever met an Australian girl?"

"You know what I mean," she said, never looking up from the toilet.

"Yeah, I do," he replied, stepping around the tools scattered about the bathroom's floor and circling his arms around Crystal's waist, hugging her again from behind. "I miss him, too."

She stood stiffly in his embrace for a long moment, then slumped wearily back against him, letting her wrenches clatter to the floor around their feet. "Great," she sniffled. "You made me start crying again, you dolt."

"That doesn't have to be a bad thing," he murmured into her hair.

Holding his forearms in her greasy hands, she let out a long, pent up sigh. "I'm not ready to be a grandma."

Jake laughed again, giving his wife a little squeeze. "You're not going to be a grandma," he assured her. "Not yet, at least. Henry and his family are going to be keeping him so busy, he won't have time to look at any of those Australian floozies."

"What about Henry's daughter?"

"Little Alex?" he exclaimed. The Lindburgs had visited Suzan, Tim, and Brandon a few years ago, and Jake had met them shortly before they left for wherever Henry was stationed at the time. Henry's daughter had been no more than a munchkin back then. "She can't be older than..."

"Fifteen," Crystal finished for him. "Old enough to get into trouble."

"Who's old enough to get into trouble?" their daughter asked from the restroom's door, rubbing her eyes blearily. Julia was the same age as Alex.

If Alex was anything like his daughter, Jake would be concerned, too, but when they'd met, she'd been a perfect angel, nothing at all like the stereotypical orphan he'd been expecting. "Look who decided to wake up," Jake said instead of answering his daughter. "It's after one, girl."

"And it's Saturday," she retorted. "Besides, I've been up for a while. Was talking to Amy on the phone. She said she saw an ambulance pick up one of Marc's friends down her street, but she thinks he was just having a bad hangover or something. Anyway, I only came out because Mom stopped cussing, so I knew something was up." She looked back and forth between her parents' faces. "You guys need some privacy?"

Crystal shrugged out of Jake's arms and wiped her nose with the back of her grimy hand. "We were just missing your brother," she said, crouching in front of the toilet to collect her scattered tools.

"Jeez, he's only gone for a few weeks," Julia left them to rummage through the kitchen cupboard for her breakfast. "You're acting like he's joined the army or something."

"You never know," Jake said. "Brandon's uncle makes military life seem pretty pampered. Marc might just ask to sign up after he sees how well the air force has treated Henry."

"Oh, don't you even joke about that." Crystal stuffed the last of her wrenches into her toolbox, a loud clang punctuating her sentence. "No son of mine is getting shipped off to the Middle East to die fighting someone else's war."

"Of course not, dear." Jake crossed the kitchen and sat on one end of the living room couch, pulling his boots in front of him from beside the couch.

Julia followed him into the living room, toasted pastry in hand. "Going somewhere?" she asked as he pulled a boot over his foot.

"Thought I'd go out and pick up some lunch." It wasn't as though the baseball game back in his bedroom had really been keeping his interest.

"Bring back a burger for me, 'kay?" Without waiting for his response, his daughter headed back toward her bedroom. The phone rang on the living room's small coffee table just as she passed it, but she ignored it and slunk to the end of the narrow hallway, pulling her door closed behind her. She never paid any attention to any phone except her cell.

Jake cursed at her and stumbled across the room with one boot half tied on his foot, snatching up the phone on its third ring. "Hello?"

"Hello," a vaguely familiar voice answered. "Is this Jacob Daniels?"

"Sure is. Just call me Jake, though," he said gruffly. No one had called him by his full name since his school years.

"Hi, Jake," the man on the phone's other end said. "This is Henry Lindburg."

"Henry!" Jake said loudly, surprised. In the kitchen, his wife slammed closed the refrigerator door and hurried into the living room's doorway, waiting anxiously. "What can I do for you, Henry?" Jake went on. "Surely the boys haven't reached Australia yet."

"No, they haven't." Some underlying tone in Henry's voice made Jake decide to sit back down on the couch. His stomach had begun fluttering for some reason. "Suzan hasn't called you yet, then?"

"Suzan?" he repeated. "No, it's been a few days since I last spoke with her."

A sigh came from the phone, and Jake didn't know what to make of it. He was growing more uneasy by the second. "I got a call from a friend about an hour ago," Henry said. "The boys' flight had to make an unscheduled stop in Santo Domingo. Evidently one of the passengers went missing shortly before they flew over the Dominican Republic."

"Which passenger?" Jake asked, trying to keep the tension out of his voice even though he had a sickening suspicion he already knew what the other man was going to tell him. He just hushed Crystal when she asked him what was going on.

He had to hold back a relieved breath when Henry said, "Brandon, from what my friend was able to tell me." That wasn't the name Jake had been afraid he would say. "I called Suzan before you, of course, and told her to call you and Crystal once we were done talking, but I guess..."

"What about Marc?" Jake cut in when the other man hesitated.

Crystal rushed to sit on the couch beside him, nearly head butting him in her haste to move her ear close to the telephone's speaker. "What about Marc?" she repeated.

For an infuriatingly long moment, Henry didn't say anything. When he did speak, it was slowly and carefully, as though his words might shatter a thin layer of ice on which they all stood. "There's no way to put this delicately. When they discovered Brandon missing, Marc was asleep in his seat. A flight attendant and the flight marshal both tried to wake him up, but couldn't. He was still unconscious when they landed."

Crystal had her mouth covered with a hand, and was clearly holding her breath. "I don't understand," Jake said hoarsely, finding it difficult to make himself breathe, as well. "What do you mean, 'they couldn't wake him up'? Was Marc hurt?"

"I still don't know all the details myself," Henry said. "From all I've been told, Marc had no visible injury. They'll probably keep him quarantined at the airport until they're sure it's safe to move him to a hospital, if he's still unconscious."

"Why wouldn't it be safe to move him to a hospital?" Crystal demanded, and Jake repeated the question, even though he knew Henry must have been able to hear his wife, as close as she was to the phone's receiver.

"That's actually the main reason I called you. Before too long, you'll be getting a call from homeland security. They'll ask a lot of questions about Marc, whether he has a history of drug abuse, if he's affiliated with any gangs or underground organizations, that sort of thing. Their biggest concern is going to be whether or not he was dosed with a chemical toxin of some sort, something contagious."

"You mean he was poisoned?" Crystal exclaimed. Jake didn't bother repeating her this time; as loudly as she'd shouted, he thought Henry might have been able to hear her without using a telephone.

"No," Henry assured them. "No, that's all just government precaution. Once they're convinced that he's in no way involved in terrorist activities, they'll send Marc to the nearest hospital if, of course, he still hasn't woken up. Then they can find out what's really wrong. That's why it's important that you stay calm when the government calls and answer their questions as quickly and truthfully as you can."

"There has to be something we can do other than answer questions," Jake protested.

For the first time, he could hear the stress in Henry's voice. "I know what you mean. Samantha's been pacing a trail through our carpet. We haven't even told Alex yet. All we want to do is go out and search for Brandon, but there's not much we can do from here."

"Will you fly up to Santa..." Jake began. "Wherever you said they were, Santo Diago?" He felt like someone had taken a fork and scrambled his brains. This was all too much to take in.

"Santo Domingo. We'll book a flight if everything hasn't been settled in a few hours, but it won't be easy to find open seats on such short notice. I'm just hoping this is all some kind of mistake."

"What," Jake said, "you think this friend of yours is pranking you or something?"

"No, he's not quite that kind of friend. He could have been confused on the details, though. That's what I'm hoping." When a few seconds passed in uncomfortable silence, Henry went on. "Look, I'd better let you go so the lines will be free when homeland security calls. I'll be in touch as soon as I hear anything else."

Jake said, "Bye," dully, but couldn't make himself lower the phone even after he heard the click of the other man hanging up and the droning dial tone began buzzing in his ear.

"This can't be happening," Crystal groaned beside him. She was slumped with her head against the couch's low back, staring at the ceiling and gripping her wavy brown hair in a clenched fist. Abruptly, she sat forward and pushed Jake's arm down to his side, prying the phone out of his numb fingers. "Jake, you were right. We have to be able to do something other than answer some politician's questions."

Jake turned his head slowly to look at his wife, and the intensity of her gaze, both terrified and determined at the same time, shook the shocked haze away from his mind. He nodded and bent to finish tying his forgotten boot. "Do you think you can dig out our passports and get us tickets for a flight to the Dominican Republic?"

"I could try, but we don't have that kind of money, Jake."

"We've saved up enough," he said, reaching across Crystal's legs for his other boot.

"But that's Marc's college fund," she protested, but sighed when Jake just gave her a wry glance. "Right, not much need to worry about that. Should I get three tickets, or should we have Julia stay with one of her friends?"

"Get five," Jake said crisply. Finished lacing up his boots, he crossed the small living room to their front door.

"Five!" his wife repeated. "Who else is going?"

Jake opened the door and stepped outside. "Tim and Suzan," he answered over his shoulder.

He left the door to swing shut on its own, but Crystal was there before it could latch closed. "And where will you be while I'm playing travel agent and answering the government's inquisition?" she called after him.

"Helping them pack," he said, but couldn't be sure if she heard him since he neither turned back toward her nor raised his voice.

It was a short walk through the trailer park to Suzan and Tim's place. The Saturday afternoon was sunny, if more windy than usual, and the neighborhood kids were out in force with Frisbees and super soakers, darting through the trailer park's many lawns. A small gang of young boys whipped around the corner of a mobile home and made as if to ambush him with their water guns, but the lead hooligan took one look at Jake's face and drew up short. "Something wrong, Mr. Daniels?" he asked, trying not to appear out of breath.

"Nothing you need to worry about, Will."

The boy took him at his word. As soon as he walked past, he heard the other three boys shout indignantly as Will turned his super soaker on them all and took off into a narrow gap between two trailers, his laughter turning into high pitched screams when his friends caught up with him and returned fire.

The commonplace, lighthearted atmosphere was at stark odds with Jake's mood. It was supposed to be dark and stormy when someone heard their child was in trouble and might have been hurt, with lightning and thunder punctuating every ominous thought. At least, that's how it was in the movies. This sunny weekend was turning his protective parental anger into confusion and doubt. He and Crystal were probably blowing the situation way out of proportion.

For better or worse, though, he found himself at Tim and Suzan's porch before he could second guess his hasty decision to gather them up and fly out of the country. He knocked on their door, waited a few seconds while he heard someone shuffling about inside, then helped himself into their shabby living room when Suzan opened the door for him.

She stepped aside meekly, a wadded up tissue in the hand not holding the door open, her eyes rimmed red with tears. "Jake! I'm sorry, I should have called. Are you all right? Has Crystal heard?" she said in a sniffle-stuttering rush.

"We're dealing with it as well as we can. Where's Tim, Suzan?" he said curtly.

"He's in the bedroom. I didn't want to wake him up until I knew something to tell him. He was on night shift until three this morning." She closed the door and skirted around Jake toward her kitchenette, a simple stove, refrigerator, sink, and cupboard in the corner of the living room. "Can I get you something to drink? Maybe a sandwich? I bet you haven't had lunch yet." Instead of opening the refrigerator, though, she leaned against the sink with her back to him, steadying herself with her hands on its rim.

"No thanks," Jake answered, turning away from her toward the trailer's two small bedrooms without sparing her a second glance. From the moment he'd met Suzan so many years ago, he'd known how hopeless she was. At the first sign of any trouble, she would stick her head in the sand like a startled ostrich, finding any distraction to give the illusion that everything was all right. The fact that she didn't have her husband's breakfast ready and waiting by now spoke volumes of the distress she was trying to hide.

Jake pushed open Tim and Suzan's bedroom door unceremoniously, and covered his mouth and nose with a hand in disgust. The thick smells of cigarettes and liquor he was used to, but they battled Lysol and some other scented air freshener in a way that curdled the knot that had been lodged in his stomach since Henry called.

Tim lay sprawled across his bed with his sweat stained sheets tangled around his legs and waist, his face sitting in a small puddle of drool fed from the corner of his open mouth. Jake made himself lower his hand from his nose. The room's stench suited the man who was somehow able to sleep in it.

"Wake up, Tim," Jake said gruffly. When the other man didn't so much as stir a muscle, he stepped over a heap of discarded laundry to the room's window and drew the thick, burgundy curtains aside, letting a beam of sunlight shine straight onto Tim's head.

Tim grunted a curse and flopped onto his other side to turn his back to the sun, keeping his eyes clenched shut. "Close the curtains, woman!" he bellowed hoarsely, shouting even though he clearly thought his wife was already in the room with him, and he proceeded to mutter oaths at her.

Jake could hear Suzan's hesitant footsteps back in the living room. She was probably restraining herself from scurrying into the bedroom with the two men to do as she'd been told. "I said, 'wake up, Tim,'" Jake repeated, and the other man rolled onto his back to squint up at him.

"Jake? What do you think you're doing?" he said, his voice slightly less hostile than when he'd thought he was addressing his wife. "Close those curtains, would you? I'm trying to sleep here."

"It's almost one-thirty," Jake said stubbornly. "You need to get up."

"Give me a break. I had a late night," he slurred, clearly hung over.

Jake was careful to keep his voice level and steady. He didn't want the drunkard to know how much disdain he had for him. "Your son's gone missing, Tim."

"No, he hasn't. He's gone to play with the kangaroos with Suzie's brother."

"His plane landed in the Dominican Republic when they couldn't find him on board," Jake said in that same, emotionally neutral tone.

That at least got Tim to prop himself up on an elbow and blink slowly at him. "What, they leave him behind in Georgia, or something?"

Jake shook his head. "From what Henry told us, it was important enough for them to cancel the flight before it was more than a few hours out of Atlanta. Like 'national security' important, so I think Brandon must have been on board when they took off."

Tim slumped back against his pillow. "If you've been talking to soldier boy, you'd better make sure all your facts are straight. You can't believe a word that guy says, Jake."

That likely just meant that Henry had something bad to say about Tim. "He said my son's unconscious, and that no one's been able to wake him up."

Tim squinted at him again. "You serious?" When Jake only kept staring at him grimly, he rested his head on his pillow again and folded an arm over his eyes. "Sorry to hear that. Don't know what you expect me to do about it from here, though."

"We might be able to do something from Santo Domingo."

Tim barked a crisp, humorless laugh. "Right. That'll be the day."

"Crystal's getting tickets right now. You need to get up and pack in case she's able to book a flight for this evening."

"You're a funny man, Jake."

Frowning, Jake grabbed a fistful of the other man's sheets at the foot of the bed, and in a single, swift tug, yanked them off of Tim, who just kept lying with his arm draped over his face, covered by nothing save his red and gray striped boxers. "Get up and pack, Tim," Jake repeated.

The hung over man growled irritably, but he finally sat up, crossing his legs and planting his hands on his knees. "I never knew you to be so flighty. This sounds like another of those airliners' stupid oversights. You really think my kid pulled a Houdini mid-flight? Where would he have gone to? More likely he was reading and walking at the same time again, stumbled onto the wrong plane, and the airlines are just trying to cover up the fact that they didn't notice."

"I don't know what to think," Jake admitted, but he didn't relent. "All I know is that something happened to my son, and he might need my help. That's all I need to know." He let himself show a little embarrassment, when all he really wanted to do was grab the other man by the ankles and fling him onto the floor. "You're right, though. I'm probably overreacting, making decisions too hastily. I shouldn't have told Crystal to buy your ticket without asking you first. If I hurry back, I might be able to stop her before she finds a flight."

"Now hold on a minute," Tim said when Jake made as if to leave his bedroom. "I never said I wouldn't go."

"So you're coming?"

"I didn't say that, either. It's not that simple. Give a man time to think, would you? You're just making one rash decision after another. I'd have to take time off from work, and I'm already on the outs with my boss. I don't want to leave Suzan all alone for too long, either."

"Suzan's coming, too," Jake reassured him. "At least, she is if I don't hurry back and stop Crystal. The airlines won't give us full refunds if we have to return those tickets." He waited a moment longer, but turned to leave the bedroom when Tim just yawned and scratched sleepily at the back of his neck. "I'll tell my wife you're not coming. Sorry to wake you, Tim."

Tim cursed at him vehemently. "Okay, okay, I'll come, you pushy jerk. Just get out of my room so I can get dressed."

One foot already in the hallway, Jake did so, pulling the door closed behind him. Tim could usually be prodded in the right direction, with enough effort, but it wasn't something Jake ever enjoyed having to do.

When he returned to the trailer's living room, he found Suzan pushing shut a big suitcase full to bursting with neatly folded clothing. "I'm ready," she said, looking up at him with red-rimmed yet dry eyes after shutting the suitcase's clasp with a sharp click. "When do we leave?"

Maybe she wasn't completely hopeless, after all.

***

Hospitals in the Dominican Republic were more similar to those in the United States than Jake had expected. The only real difference was that everyone spoke Spanish. The rooms were comfortably lit, with old box televisions mounted on the walls for quiet entertainment, and each room had several lightly padded chairs for visitors. The small cafeteria had a surprising variety of food that, less surprisingly, all tasted exactly the same. The doctors and nurses were all too busy to answer his questions and concerns, even when they could understand him.

Also, just as in Ohio, he had to step outside when he needed to smoke.

He'd thought shivering through Ohio's cold winters while smoking on the sidewalks outside of restaurants and movie theaters had been a pain in the neck, but he'd take a freezing blizzard over Santo Domingo's sweltering, humid summer heat any day. At least there was a wide, blue awning offering shade along the outside of the big building's front wall, but even wearing only khaki shorts and a thin tee shirt, a river of sweat was pouring down Jake's body.

He shouldn't have been smoking at all--Crystal always lectured him about setting a bad example for the kids when he did--but he had trouble fighting off the addiction whenever he wasn't keeping himself busy. Several of the hospital's television channels were in English, but there were only so many soap operas and talk shows he could take. The only other pastime available without walking down the city block to a nearby bar was burning dangerously close to Jake's lips at that moment.

He breathed in one last draft of the cigarette before dropping it into the ash tray next to him with a sigh and a grimace, trying to decide whether to light another, or to go back inside. Boredom was a cigarette company's best advertiser, but in the end he pocketed the pack and his lighter and turned toward the hospital's big, glass front doors. He didn't like leaving his son alone for long, in case Marc should wake up and find himself abandoned in a sterile white room where almost no one could speak a word of English.

Crystal had been able to find tickets for a series of short flights from Columbus to Santo Domingo. On such short notice, the five of them had only been able to sit together on one of the three legs of their trip, but they'd been able to arrive in Santo Domingo on the morning after Henry had called and informed them about their sons' situations. By that time, Marc had already been cleared to move to the nearest hospital, where they'd found him hooked up to an I.V., still unconscious.

At first, Jake had feared his son was in a coma, but Marc had stirred several times through that afternoon and night, never long enough to do more than groan and mutter something too quiet for anyone to make out. As Jake walked through the hospital lobby toward its elevators on the day after they'd landed, his sweat nearly freezing in air conditioning that overcompensated for the heat outside, his son still hadn't woken enough to open his eyes.

He stepped into the elevator when its doors slid open with a quiet ding, rubbing his forearms in the air conditioned chill. His wife and daughter were probably enjoying the beach with Tim and Suzan. They'd taken a bus to the coast from their hotel that morning to clear their minds and work out the last couple days' stress. Crystal had wanted to stay by Marc's side again that day, too, of course, but Jake had somehow managed to convince her that she could use time relaxing by the ocean more than he could. He wasn't sure if that was true or not, as great a toll as the last two days had taken on him, but the truth of the matter was that he didn't want to be away from their son any more than she did. Besides, he hadn't thought to pack his swimming trunks.

There were few things to do in the hospital while his son recovered from whatever had afflicted him, but at least he didn't have to suffer Tim's never ending string of complaints. Jake would have been able to sympathize with the other man had the complaints had anything to do with his missing son; Marc was only unconscious, and seemed to be slowly getting better, while no hint of Brandon's whereabouts had been found. All Tim did, though, was gripe over and over about the humid weather, about the cafeteria's bland food, about the foreign water and the diarrhea it had caused that had kept him up all night, going into more detail about all of his many grievances than anyone wanted to hear. Jake should never have convinced him to come along. Once Marc was able to wake up long enough to tell them what had happened to Brandon and him on the plane, Jake hoped Tim would turn his attention to something other than annoying the hospital staff into giving him free antacids.

The elevator doors opened again, and Jake stepped out into the fourth floor hallway, making his way past a small patient seating area to Marc's room. Walking through the open doorway, he almost bowled over a short Dominican nurse. They both laughed awkwardly as they tried to get around each other, and she yammered a stream of Spanish that Jake couldn't hope to understand.

He almost turned away from her when she finally stepped around his side, but she reached a hand out and touched his forearm to get his attention. "Your...son..." she said very slowly with a kind smile, struggling with the English words. "He speaks Spanish...very good."

For a moment, he could only stare at the little woman, thinking he had walked into the wrong room. Marc didn't know a single word of Spanish, aside from "taco" and "burrito." Then he realized that whatever language it might be, his son would have to be awake to be speaking it. The nurse forgotten, he spun and was at Marc's bedside before he knew his feet were moving.

Marc watched him with wide eyes as he reached down and picked up his son's hand, and Jake was reassured by the strength in the fingers that clasped his forearm in return. The boy was panting like a rabbit waking up in a wolf's den. "It's all right, Marc." He noticed that his son's I.V. had been pulled roughly from his arm, a small drop of blood drizzling down the crook of his elbow. "How do you feel? You've been out for a couple days."

"Thirsty," Marc said, but didn't let go of Jake's arm when he turned to call back the nurse. "I told the woman who was here before you. She told me she would return with water."

Jake felt a concerned frown crease his forehead. His son was speaking with a slight accent, one Jake couldn't quite recognize. But then, the boy's head must have still been fuzzy from being unconscious for so long. Jake was just glad he could talk at all. "All right, son. I'll stay with you." Then he remembered what the nurse had said. "But when in the world did you learn to speak Spanish?"

"Spanish?" Marc repeated slowly. "I don't understand. Please, can you tell me what happened to everyone else?"

"Your mother and sister are at the beach with Suzan and Tim," Jake answered, but by his son's blank stare realized that he must have meant the other passengers on his flight two days earlier. Marc couldn't even know what country he was in. "Sorry, son. I'm just glad you're awake. Guess I'm getting ahead of myself." He crouched next to the hospital bed so that he would be closer to his son's eye level. "Where to begin? Your flight had to set down here in the Dominican Republic after Brandon went missing. That's something everyone's hoping you'll be able to tell us about."

"But the other..." Marc cut in.

"The other passengers were held at the airport until the government was sure they didn't have anything to do with Brandon's disappearance, or with you going under like you did."

Marc released Jake's arm, then, as if burned, letting his own arm flop onto the thin sheet over his lap, where he stared at it with his eyes as wide as they could go. When he looked back up at his father's face, he seemed to be trying to hold back tears. "Please," he said, his voice catching on the word, "can you at least tell me where Dola is?"

Jake's worried frown deepened. Who on Earth was Dola?