Afraid of the Dark - James Grippando [1]
TFANC. Time for a new coffeehouse.
Vince spooned away the foam as McKenna’s text messages continued to load on his smart phone. The wireless transfer from McKenna’s memory card to his occurred in seconds, no way for McKenna to know what had hit her. Message after message, line after line, nothing but teenage babble. Vince was actually feeling pretty fortunate to be single.
How do parents keep up with this insanity?
Vince scrolled through McKenna’s messages, coffee in one hand and his cell in the other. Reading this stuff was downright painful. OMG. LOL. CU L8R. It was the endless electronic version of Exhibit A in the case against the existence of intelligent life on Earth. One last swig of coffee—and then he froze. The most recent message hit him like a 5 iron to the forehead. It was thirty-five minutes old. McKenna had sent it to Jamal—the ex-boyfriend.
FMLTWIA.
It was alphabet soup to just about anyone who wasn’t in high school, but Vince had seen the Miami Police Department’s crib sheet on teenage sex and texting—“sexting.” FMLTWIA had stuck in his mind only because it was among the most vulgar. He had known and loved McKenna since she was a ponytailed little girl with half of her teeth missing, so it shocked him that she would even know what it meant. The thought of her actually sending such a message to her ex—supposedly ex—boyfriend made him sick to his stomach. Vince suddenly felt an avuncular need to intercede, to step in where his friend Chuck would if he weren’t eight thousand miles away.
Vince dialed McKenna’s cell. There was no answer, but Chuck’s spyware also had GPS tracking ability. A simple punch of a button on Vince’s cell would reveal the exact location of McKenna’s phone, which 99.9 percent of the time meant the exact location of McKenna. It wasn’t something he did lightly, but this kind of sexting wasn’t just the high-tech version of the “truth or dare” games that kids used to play when Vince was in school. The on-screen coordinates told him that McKenna was at home. Vince dialed the landline for the Mays residence. No answer, which didn’t mean that McKenna wasn’t there—but it did mean that McKenna’s mother wasn’t. McKenna was home alone. Alone with Jamal.
FMLTWIA. Fuck Me Like the Whore I Am.
Vince didn’t shock easily; and yes, it was a different world now. But if Chuck was right—if seeing Jamal was playing with fire—then this was gasoline. His hand was shaking as he dialed McKenna’s mother on her cell.
Shada didn’t answer. Now what?
Vince had no specific instructions from Chuck on what to do if Jamal came around while Dad was out of the country. But his friend’s words came back to Vince—that son of a bitch is going to hurt McKenna—and the FMLTWIA text message hardly bespoke a teenage girl with healthy self-esteem. He knew he had to do something—fast.
Vince bolted from his chair, hurried to his car, and burned rubber out of the parking lot. Steering through traffic with one hand, he speed-dialed McKenna again and again. He could tell that her phone was powered on—it took five rings before going to voice mail, not the instant transfer that indicated a cell was off—but she didn’t answer. Another call to her mother also went unanswered. He dialed Chuck in Mumbai, even though it was four A.M. there. The call immediately went to voice mail, and Vince stammered at the beep, not sure what to say. He settled on something vague but urgent.
“Chuck, we’ve got a bit of a situation here. Call me immediately.”
One hell of a message to wake up to.
Vince put the cell in the console and focused on driving. It was early evening, but it felt much later. Sunset came early in January, and the junglelike canopy over Coconut Grove blocked the famous Miami moonlight, making for dark residential streets. Cyclists and joggers