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  “Has Jarvis said anything lately about any problems, or anybody bothering him?” Rachel said.

  “Nothing. He’s been happier than ever. He knows the NFL is right down the road and has been playing his butt off. He’s just been at peace with the whole situation. It’s his dream.”

  “What about his family? Had he talked to any of them in the last few days?”

  “Only his mother,” Sterling said. “She calls fairly regularly and yanks his chain. That’s about all she’s good for.”

  “Do you know what they were talking about the last time?”

  “Jarvis didn’t say, but I could tell he was a little bothered by it. I got the impression it had something to do with that New Orleans agent she’s been pushing. Jarvis had told me about that. I think he told Billy, too.”

  “So you think Clarise was pressing him about who he’s going to sign with?”

  “I’m sure it had something to do with money. She has some serious issues, and usually Jarvis just blows her off and goes on about his business. It’s been that way as long as I’ve known him.”

  Sterling mentioned meeting Clarise last summer when he and Jarvis took a trip down to the Gulf. They were staying with another friend in Pensacola and dropped by the house in Autumn to pick up some old beach stuff that was stashed in a shed around back. Jarvis was in a hurry to get in and out. He made a quick introduction and they moved on.

  Sterling was glad of that.

  “How about something to drink?” Rachel said.

  “Thanks. Anything cold would do. It’s a pretty good ride out here.”

  Rachel returned from the kitchen with a couple of iced teas and sat back down on the couch.

  “I know Jarvis loves you like a brother,” she said. “He trusts you more than anybody on campus. Let me ask you, where do you think he is? What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know,” Sterling said, “but I’ve got a bad feeling in my gut. He wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize his future. I mean, he’s going to be a very rich man soon.”

  “Well, we need to find him. Today. Right now. Let us know if you hear anything at all.”

  Sterling quickly finished his tea, and Rachel walked him to the door.

  “By the way, there wasn’t much I could tell the police this morning,” he said. “Except that I was with Jarvis after the game and he left with you guys on the boat. I told them we had a couple of beers and everything seemed fine.”

  “That’s all right. Just the truth.”

  “They did ask me about the drugs, too,” Sterling said. “They wondered if I had been using with Jarvis, or seen him using with someone else after the game. The cops also asked about Billy, how well I know him and how often I’ve seen him and Jarvis together. I didn’t have anything bad to say, but he’s not going to come out of this whole thing looking good.”

  “Let’s just hope Jarvis is okay. We’ll deal with the rest of it as it comes.”

  Rachel stood on the porch and watched as Sterling mounted his bike and pedaled away. Within moments, she was dialing on her phone.

  “Call me as soon as you get this,” she said. “We need to talk.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The patient slowly lifted his gaze and took in the muted surroundings of Tranquility Bay.

  After a week at the drug rehab center near Panama City, Florida, his mind was beginning to clear.

  Detoxification, the first step in a twenty-eight-day, in-patient treatment program was behind him now. Still to come, according to the poster on the wall: therapeutic intervention, life skills development, and relapse prevention.

  Life skills development? Dante Thompson chuckled to himself. What appreciable skills might a black man from the projects develop after years of trafficking cocaine?

  “How do you feel today, Dante?”

  The bespectacled counselor with gray hair and a neatly trimmed beard smiled as he waited for the answer. He was sitting behind a desk that took up much of his small office, directly across from his haggard patient.

  “Okay,” Dante said. “Better.”

  The man flipped through the patient’s file with a nod. He said his name was Donald Cameron, and that he would be monitoring Dante’s progress at the state facility. For better or worse.

  Cameron scanned the paperwork like he’d apparently done for countless wayward souls through the years. Another addict who was battling tall odds was temporarily in his care.

  “I just want you to know that we care about you here,” Cameron said. “We want you to get better.”

  The spiel sounded to Dante like a reflex action by the counselor. Outside of coaches, he hadn’t experienced much caring in his life. He had, in fact, been pretty much on his own from the beginning.

  Before he was ten, he was drinking and smoking pot with his mother. The descent had begun. His skills as an athlete set him apart, helped him escape several scrapes with the law as a teen-ager. But he was clearly traveling a dangerous path.

  Not even a baseball scholarship to Florida State was enough to turn him around. Dante was eventually kicked off the team for failing too many drug tests. He dropped out of school and out of sight, leaving his two younger siblings to fend for themselves. If he couldn’t see to himself, how could he help them? The guilt just added to his burden.

  For the last several years, Dante had reverted back to selling cocaine – his father’s legacy – as part of a gang that operated in the Panama City area. Fortunately, he had avoided being killed along the way, or serving a long jail sentence. Instead, he became just one more addict on the streets.

  Now, finally, Dante was being forced to dry out and start coming to grips with his stark reality.

  “We haven’t really had a chance to talk,” the counselor was saying. “When they brought you in here, you were in pretty bad shape. Where were you going?”

  “I was looking for my father.”

  “Where is he?”

  Dante stared at the clock on the wall and tried harder to focus. What day was it? He spoke haltingly.

  “I don’t know. He’s been missing for a while. I heard he was in New Orleans, but I couldn’t find him. Then I heard he was dead. I just wanted to be sure.”

  “How did you end up here? I mean, I know how you ended up here. A lot of people the police come across in your condition end up here. But why were you in Panama City?”

  “My father used to have friends here.”

  “Do you have any other family members?” Cameron said. “I understand you’re from a small town up the road. You seem to be getting around.”

  “I haven’t lived in Autumn in a while. My mother is still there. I have a younger brother who moved away and a sister ...”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. We never found her.”

  “So she’s missing, too? It’s usually helpful when patients have a supportive family, someone they can count on. We’d like to let them know.”

  Supportive family? Dante couldn’t grasp the concept.

  “My mother is in worse shape than I am,” he said. “I talk to my brother every now and then. He’s a college football player.”

  “Where does he play?”

  “Tennessee. Jarvis Thompson, All-American receiver. He’s the only real man in the family.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He’s the only one who was strong enough to get away and stay away.”

  “Maybe we can get in touch with Jarvis, let him know what’s going on with you. I’m sure he’d want to help.”

  “I don’t want him to know. He’d be disappointed. I was supposed to be better than this. I had my chance and wasted it.”

  Cameron closed the case folder and dropped it on his desk. He smiled that detached smile, again.

  “This is a process, Dante, and it�
�s not easy, as you’ve probably already discovered,” he said. “But we’re going to help you work through it and get on with your life, maybe find a job. Getting well takes time, and you have to want it. You have to be strong.”

  “Right. Strong.”

  “We try to work together here. We have a group therapy session this morning, down the hall in our main conference room, and I’d like for you to join us. Starts in fifteen minutes. We just get to know each other a little better.”

  “I’m not looking to make new friends.”

  “It’s about support. Trust me, it’ll be good for you. If you want, you can wait out in the main hall and watch TV until we’re ready. It usually stays on one of the sports channels this time of year, because most everybody around here but me is into football. You like sports?”

  “I used to.”

  “I’ll let you know when it’s time.”

  Dante got up and shuffled out the door, toward the television in the far corner of the big room. He couldn’t believe his blurry eyes as he got closer. A headshot of his brother was on the screen behind the SportsCenter host, who was talking away. Missing Receiver, the caption said.

  Missing?

  Dante quickly found the remote control and turned up the volume. He was able to catch the last of it.

  Knoxville police are currently looking for Thompson, who caught four touchdown passes in the Vols’ upset of top-ranked Alabama on Saturday. The agent’s brother remains in critical condition in a Knoxville hospital.

  The blood started to rush to his head, and Dante dropped into the nearest chair to digest the news. So Jarvis had snapped and was on the run? It didn’t seem possible.

  Ten minutes until group therapy.

  Dante got up again and began walking down the residence hall. By the time he reached his room, he was almost running.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Billy’s demeanor in the heat of battle had always impressed colleagues. He was measured, analytical, on point.

  He could take a complex legal case and break it down, make it seem simple and be thoroughly convincing. Or he could start with the most basic premise and inflate it into something grand to fit his point of view. A master salesman, they called him.

  That approach had carried him near the top of his class in law school and earned him a reputation as a young attorney to watch in Atlanta. If anyone seemed destined to blossom into a courtroom star, it was Billy. The evidence was mounting.

  A few years into his career, his law firm had become involved in a lengthy, well-publicized fraud investigation known as the Allied Global Shipping case. Several companies doing business in the Gulf of Mexico had been losing millions of dollars, and officials couldn’t figure out why. The case soon became a cocktail of crooked politicians, accountants, lawyers, and various state and federal agencies.

  Billy, with his keen attention to detail, had been brought in from Atlanta to assist a legal team, and within a few days deduced how a crime ring had been using duplicate cargo lists and a few well-placed employees to cook the books. In hindsight, it was a simple scheme, but no one else had seen it. The operation, which had been going on for years, was shut down and its leaders sent to prison.

  Billy was hailed for his role and offered a lucrative promotion at his firm. His professional future was set. But instead of cashing in, within months he defied conventional wisdom again and went back to his first love. Sports.

  It seemed like a perfectly foolish choice now as he slumped at his desk to assess the damage of the impending Jarvis Thompson fiasco.

  One of the best college football players in the nation had simply disappeared. His brother was nearly beaten to death. There was the cocaine and the cash. And all of it at Billy’s own house, right under his nose.

  If the public wasn’t already suspicious enough of sports agents and their games, this should set everybody in the profession back a few notches.

  Billy was keenly aware that image was everything when it came to representing high-profile athletes. Yes, perceptions mattered. He had thrived with that basic premise. Now he had to wonder whether his business could survive the brewing scandal.

  Sitting in his office, with messages streaming in and the media spotlight getting hotter by the hour, Billy needed to come up with his best plan yet. It started with Mark Fletcher, the private investigator in Atlanta. If anyone could help bring some perspective and order to the situation, it was Fletcher.

  “Sorry to bother you again, man, but I’ve got big troubles here,” Billy said.

  “I heard,” Fletcher said. “I was getting ready to call. How can I help?”

  “I have to pick up a trail on Jarvis. I just hope there’s one out there. This is more bizarre than anything I’ve ever run across.”

  “What’s your read on the situation? Did Jarvis do this to your brother?”

  “I don’t believe it, but the circumstances aren’t good, and his background makes him look capable. Or somebody could have showed up in the middle of the night, out of nowhere, and beaten up John and taken Jarvis. Seems pretty farfetched; those are two big boys you wouldn’t want to mess with. But who knows what to think at this point? Jarvis could be dead for all I know. Could have drowned even.”

  “Let’s think positive here,” Fletcher said. “If he didn’t do it and isn’t dead, he can’t be too far away. But that means other people are involved. Bad people, obviously.”

  “What I’m wondering,” Billy said, “is whether the things we talked about last time may be coming into play somehow.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean somebody is sending a message here, a very pointed message. Jarvis is a victim, just like my brother. He’s out there, somewhere.”

  “You talking about Sonny Bradley?” Fletcher said. “I can’t imagine even a sleaze like him playing this kind of game. This is dead serious. The whole country is watching.”

  “If not him, the guy who is calling the shots down there. Frank Romano. I’ll bet he’s not above this kind of in-your-face caper.”

  There was a pause and Fletcher sounded intrigued.

  “So what can I do that the police can’t?” he said.

  “I think this all starts down in Florida and extends back to New Orleans. There are a lot of people with an interest in Jarvis, in his future earning power. His mother would be right at the top of the list. While the cops are checking everything up here, why don’t you see what you can find out about his family. Clarise, Dante, Charles … any of them could be involved in this somehow. Maybe all of them are.”

  “I have to be here day after tomorrow to take care of some personal business, but I can be down in Florida in just a few hours and start digging. Might find out something quick. I’ll throw some stuff in a bag and take off now.”

  “I would appreciate it, Mark. My career may be riding on how this plays out.”

  “When will I hear from you again?”

  “I’m waiting to see how my brother comes out of this first. If he’s going to be all right and we still haven’t heard anything from Jarvis, I probably need to pay Clarise a visit. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to see me. I’ll call you late tomorrow.”

  “Let’s hope the situation clears up before you have to do that,” Fletcher said. “Just let me know.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The front-page headline in USA Today said it all: Where is Jarvis Thompson?

  Billy tossed the newspaper aside and stared out the window on a morning flight to Pensacola. From there he’d rent a car and make the short drive over to Autumn. Clarise Thompson would be waiting.

  Billy had never dreaded a trip more than this one. Clarise’s mood swings were unpredictable under the best of circumstances. Add this kind of stress, where her fantasies were hanging in the balance, and anything was possible.

  He just needed to look into her g
lassy eyes, see if she knew anything, try to figure out what she was up to.

  Even now, with Jarvis missing and everything in limbo, Clarise was working on her own twisted agenda. Billy was sure of that.

  The winds off the Gulf were picking up, and it looked like a storm was moving in as the small prop plane made its choppy descent into Pensacola. The last time Billy flew down, when he visited Autumn three years ago, it was quite the memorable occasion. Jarvis had decided to go to Tennessee and play football, an announcement that resonated across the country. But there was no celebration in the Thompson household. Clarise hated the idea. She wanted her son at Florida State, still in her little sphere of influence.

  When Billy showed up at the door with an armful of orange UT garb, you would have thought the devil himself was making a house call.

  He had already intervened more than once to try to keep the pride of Autumn on the right track. Considering all the forces that conspired against him, it was amazing Jarvis was still in his camp. The family had always been like a train wreck playing out in slow motion, with plenty of casualties.

  The agent pulled his lap belt tight. He knew full well the characters he was dealing with.

  Clarise surely fit the clinical definition of a sociopath. She was never capable of loving anyone other than herself, even before the bleakness and desperation had taken hold of her life. Now it was far too late.

  Dante, the eldest son, was smart and a talented athlete. He had a chance to make something of himself but ended up a broken man, a drug dealer who flamed out in his attempt to earn a legitimate living.

  For his part, father Charles periodically showed up at the house with a variety of substance abuse problems on full display. A quiet and fatalistic man, he’d usually crash for the night and move on. There was little emotional attachment.

  It was always that way with Charles. His relationship with Clarise produced three children but was nothing more than an intermittent series of one-night stands, fueled by alcohol and drugs. They were divorced before Dante was even born, and she made sure none of their children would ever be saddled with the Ratliff name.