“I don’t know,” Peter replied, pausing to ponder their options. “I don’t--”
“We’re wasting time,” Mark interrupted, letting out an indignant huff. “Grace is missing, and we’re sitting here with our thumbs up our asses. We need to--”
“Canyou shut up for a second so I can think?” Peter boomed, his eyebrows narrowing in frustration. “I know we need to do something. But we can’t just go and hold up the entire Kelly family and run in there, guns blazing.” He sat down and scratched his head, his lips pursed as a pensive look spread across his face. “How do you think I feel?” Peter’s lip trembled in a rare display of vulnerability from the normally steely-eyed patriarch. “That’s my daughter out there.”
“And she’s my sister!” Mark sputtered, his hands curling into fists at his sides for a moment before releasing. He breathed heavily, looking around the room as if Grace would suddenly materialize if he looked hard enough.
A tense silence fell over the distraught father and son. Several seconds passed as the two stared at the floor, around the room, then back at the floor again before Mark finally spoke up once more.
“Okay,” he said breathily, his voice eventually becoming more calm and calculated. “Listen. We need to confront the Kellys. That doesn’t necessarily mean we go in there ‘guns blazing,’ though.” He held up his hands and made a dramatic finger quote gesture, enunciating the words “guns blazing” in a slightly mocking tone. “We need to see if they know anything. From one concerned family to another...you know?”
Peter nodded, his head hung low in shame. “I can’t stay here any longer knowing my daughter is out there somewhere,” he agreed. “I don’t care what we have to do.” His normally dark brown eyes appeared jet black in the dim lighting, giving him an almost menacing appearance.
“And if they’ve hurt her…” Mark began, but Peter held up a hand to silence him.
“Then they will pay, and they will pay dearly. An eye for an eye, I’ll gut the bastard myself; but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Mark,” he replied exasperatedly. “We’re going to try to be as civil as possible.”
Mark sighed but eventually nodded in agreement, rolling his eyes. “Fair enough.”
“Wait,” Peter said, pausing as if an idea had suddenly popped into his head. “Hold on. They were talking in my office. I remember.” His eyes widened in realization. “I think they left together after the end of the match.”
“What?” Mark asked, a bit dumbfounded. “Can we play back the security tapes?”
“I believe so, yes,” Peter stood up and strode across the room before disappearing into the back office for several seconds. “Let me find it,” he called out. “Here it is! I think I found the tape from that night.” The older man poked his head out from behind the office with a tape in hand, holding it up proudly. “This ought to tell us what we need to know. Hopefully it was actually recording that night.”
“That bastard,” Mark hissed. His face contorted into a disgusted scowl. He quickly got up from the chair he’d been sitting in to follow his father into the dingy office. “Play it.” He looked over at the tape and bit his lip nervously.
Peter nodded wordlessly and popped the tape into a VHS player with one hand and reached for a small remote with the other, carefully pushing a series of buttons.
The small television screen in the office buzzed and flickered to life after a few tense moments of Peter struggling with the remote. He toyed with the fast forward, pause, and play buttons on the controller, staring intently at the screen for any sign of Grace or Kilian.
“Wait! Stop! Look!” Mark gesticulated wildly at the television, pressing a finger into the screen. “I think that’s Kilian.”
Peter leaned in a bit closer to the screen and squinted at the grainy footage. “I think you’re right,” he confirmed. “There’s Grace talking with him.” He nodded at the corner of the screen where Grace and Kilian were just barely visible, apparently having a heated discussion.
Mark and Peter watched the footage intently, both of their expressions shifting from anger to mild relief back to confusion and, finally, pure rage upon noticing Grace and Kilian leave with a very familiar map and journal.
“Are you kidding me?” Mark growled as the video ended and the footage turned to snowy static. “What was all that back and forth about? Where the hell are they going with the map?”
Peter was speechless, his face turning red with bafflement and fury. He shook his head in disbelief for several seconds before finally speaking up. “No,” he said flatly, “No. He had to have taken her by force. There’s no way she would have let him...” He paused yet again, rubbing his temples roughly.
“We need to go find them,” Mark started for the door, but his father reached out and pulled him back by his shirt sleeve. “What?” the younger man asked dumbfoundedly, as if slightly outraged his father didn’t have the same reaction.
“Wait,” Peter sighed. “We can’t just go confront the Kelly family now. Not just the two of us, anyway,” he added. “There’s way too many of them. We’d be walking into our funerals.”
Mark struggled in his father’s grip at first but relented after a few moments. “God damn it,” he hissed, a look of disappointed realization spreading across his face. “You’re right,” he conceded. “So, what, then?”
“I don’t know yet, exactly,” Peter replied, appearing to be deep in thought. “But it has to be done quietly and carefully. We can’t play games with that family.” He sat down and stroked his chin pensively as Mark stared at him in anxious anticipation. “You’re going to have to follow them from a safe distance for a while. Keep tabs on them.”
“Okay,” Mark said tentatively, awaiting further explanation. He swallowed a growing lump in his throat, suddenly becoming overwhelmed with fear but refusing to show weakness in front of his father. “Sure. I’ll try to get Grace alone and bring her and the book back,” he reasoned, running a hand through his messy brown hair and shifting his posture slightly in an attempt to hide the fact that he was trembling. “So what should I do about Kilian, then?” he asked, his voice full of dread.
Peter’s expression became dark and serious. “If you can get ahold of him,” he stated bluntly, “throw him into the fucking Atlantic.”
Mark nodded, willing to do anything for family.
“But listen to me, Son,” Peter said sternly. “We aren’t the only ones looking for that book. You need to be fast and discreet. Okay?” His dark brown eyes stared intently into his son’s. “I mean it. There are a lot of other people who want it just as bad as we do.”
“Yeah,” Mark replied shakily. “Wait a minute. Who else is looking for it? Who else knows--?”
