Free The Missing by Sarah Langan Page B

thighs. The gesture was sexual. She gasped. Albert. Her Albert: How could he do this ?
    She was inside his lap. His arms and legs held her in place like a vise. “Stop!” she shouted. His lips were drawn high over the blackness of missing eyeteeth, and his face was a snarl.
    He lurched forward and pressed his wet mouth against her ear. She wriggled, and decided that if neces- sary, she’d bite off his nose while trying her best not to swallow anything. She could smell the bread alcohol. The smell of vinegar and shit. “Where did I go wrong, Meg?” he whispered, and she stopped struggling. She went still. His voice was low. Reasonable, but not at all kind.
    Impossible. There was no way. And yet, she knew to whom that voice belonged. “Where did I go wrong?” he
    asked again, and suddenly she was a young woman, dropping out of law school to marry a Jew her father didn’t approve of, and on the morning of the wedding, instead of telling her that he’d always love his little girl, he’d asked: Where did I go wrong?
    “Daddy?” Meg’s voice was halting and childlike.
    He pulled back and she looked at him, this man. A black gap in his mouth, a ruined face, white hair. His bleary eyes were full of resentful affection. The only kind of affection, she realized, that she’d ever under- stood. But her father was dead, wasn’t he? Long ago she’d made her peace and let go of him, the man for whom nothing she’d ever done was good enough.
    In a quick move he was standing, and she was in his arms. She saw it coming, but there wasn’t time to fight. He tossed her against the Plexiglas like a hollow-boned bird. She heard the whistle of air as she flew, and then a smack, and wiggling plastic like techno music. When she looked up from the ground, it took her a second before she figured out how she’d gotten there, or what that snapping sound had been.
    To her own dismay (wasn’t she supposed to be a fighter?), she didn’t get up off the floor, but instead curled into a ball and played dead. When nothing hap- pened she peeked out and saw Albert opening the door to the children’s room. Then came the sounds around her that she hadn’t noticed before. “Shut up! Shut up!” Sheila was singing. Bram tore his Corpus Christi Senti- nel into pieces and flung them in Albert’s direction, as if trying to confetti him to death. The children’s section was ominously quiet.
    Her left ankle hurt like fire, but she hobbled toward her office. She stopped when she realized that the only reason she wanted to get there was to call Fenstad. She wanted to hear his steady, calm voice. She wanted, ri-
    diculously, to tell him that she might not like him, but she definitely loved him.
    Across the way something smashed. Had Albert pushed over a bookcase? Then a small voice cried, “Help,” and adrenaline coursed through her blood so fast she could feel the rush: A kid was in there with Al- bert. A little kid.
    On a hobbled foot, she started to charge. But then she stopped. She needed a plan or he’d swat her like a fly. Her ankle hurt so bad that she was biting on her lip to keep from fainting. She scanned the reference room. There was something she was looking for. Something she could use. She looked at the bookcases, the too-big couches, the computers (electrocution?), the Bic pens not nearly sharp enough to poke out an eye, and then she saw it near the newspapers: Sheila’s two-foot chain-link lock. “Shut up!” Sheila sprayed with spit as Meg lifted it off the table and limped into the children’s library.
    Albert was standing on the rainbow carpet with his back to her. He’d cornered Caitlin Nero and her daugh- ter, Isabelle, behind a Barbapapa chair. Everyone else was gone.
    Meg sneaked up behind him. She saw sparks and her peripheral vision went hazy. This pain in her ankle was no sprain: Her leg was turning blue. She bit down harder, until she tasted blood, and it kept her focused. Then she loosened the chain in her hands so