The redheaded crack whore came out of her apartment, dragging a bunch of kids. She took one look at Richie and me half-naked in the hallway and shook her head, smiling. I can now safely report – she had a solid mouthful ofteeth.
“Would you boys take that shitinside?”
Confused, I glanced to Richie and got my first real look at him… and his shimmering gold bikini briefs. “What the…? What are youwearing?”
“I was trying on stuff for this weekend when the earthquakestruck.”
“And you couldn’t slip on somepants?”
“Excuse me for thinking of you first and trying to saveyourlife.”
“You really should be more grateful,” the crack whore said, addressing me as she nodded toward Richie. “You’ve got a man who puts youfirst.”
“Right?” Richie said, flamboyantly waving his arms around. “I try to tell him how lucky he is, but sometimes he’s just soselfish.”
“Ugghh… I’m going back to bed. A SIX, Richie. Do not wake me up foranythingless.”
Goddammit, I needed agirlfriend.
4
Emma, 2004: Forty-EightHours
Forty-eight hours.It was the most crucial period of time in a stranger abduction case. That was what the police officer said. If Jake wasn’t found in those few hours, his chances of survival greatly decreased. Again, that was whathesaid.
It couldn’t be right. Jake had just disappeared, and now he was already being given a countdown to his death? No. This couldn’t be happening. We all stood there dumbfounded, still trying to make sense of what was unfolding before us, and then this horribly grim statistic… delivered in the most heartless and matter-of-fact ways. Glaring at the detached officer, I fought the urge to spit in his unsympathetic face. Who blurted out something like that to a victim’s terrified family? Was he just so desensitized to violence that the kidnapping of a thirteen-year-old boy received little more than the shrug of hisshoulders?
His words took a minute to really, truly register, but when they did, Mom slid to the floor and began to wail. Not a normal shrill sound, but a strange mewling, moaning one that peaked and ebbed in eerie intervals, conjuring up an image of a wounded animal in its dying moments. Dad bent over and clenched his knees, drawing air into his lungs in constricted, exaggerated grunts. Kyle, wrapped in a blanket, was folded into Keith’s arms. Both were covered in blood, looking like survivors of a deadly school massacre. I was just struggling to keep from punching the bearer of bad news. The police officer had instantly become the embodiment of all that was wrong in my rapidly shrinkingworld.
Grace and Quinn wandered around the house frightened and confused. They hadn’t even finished their dinner before the police were swarming through our kitchen doors. The call to action was swift. If Kyle’s story was to be believed, and it was, Jake had just been brazenly stolen. Kidnapped… that’s what everyone kept saying, but it wasn’t sinking in. How could this happen to us? To Jake? Oh, god, not to Jake. None of it made sense, yet herewewere.
My heart racing in my chest, I glanced at the clock. We had time. Forty-six hours. It would have been forty-seven had Kyle not spent an hour of it in hiding behind a garbage container before gathering the courage to run home. Still, there was no need to panic, I reasoned, grasping at any thread left dangling. There was still plenty of time left. Jake would be home soon, and then everything would be right in the universeagain.
Within hours, our kitchen had transformed from a family gathering spot to a command center. Mom was struggling to hold it together, but she seemed to have come to a shaky agreement with herself to hold the hysteria and crying at bay in order to focus on bringing Jake home. She understood that her level head and quick actions in those crucial hours were the most important things she could do to assist the FBI, who had immediately claimed control of the investigation. She and my father consented to separate interrogations, they allowed complete access to the family computers, and they gave their permission to a full and intrusive search of our home. Anything they asked, my mother rushed to oblige. Had they required her to throw herself into oncoming traffic, I was convinced she would have done it if it meant Jake’s safe return. Getting him home alive, in any condition, was preferable to thealternative.
I cleared Grace and Quinn’s plates and tidied up the taco fixings they’d dumped onto the table. The other six plates remained where they lay. Once Jake returned, he’d be hungry. It was getting late and past the little ones’ bedtime, but with the light and sirens and loud, frantic talking, there was no putting them to sleep. Grace went into tantrum mode and with every fling of her tiny, convulsing body to the floor, my mom would blast my name in frustration: “Emma, please!”Please what?Exactly what did she expect me to do about the littledemon?
Thankfully a family friend swooped in, packed their bags, and whisked Quinn and Grace away, effectively shielding them from the horrors of the dwindlingclock.
Kyle had also been taken away, but his ride was in the form of an ambulance, so there was no protecting him from the nightmare he’d just survived. Our next-door neighbor stepped in to accompany him to the hospital, as neither of our parents could be convinced to make the trip. Kyle was injured but alive, so his welfare took a backseat to Jake’s, who’d become Mom and Dad’s sole focus. I wasn’t sure I agreed with their decision to abandon Kyle in his moment of need, but my little brother was gone before an opinion could really be formed one way or another. I felt a pang of guilt that I hadn’t volunteered to go with him, but I was barely keeping it together myself, and if I had to listen to even one more minute of Kyle’s incoherent babbling and sudden terror-filled wails, I’d lose it. After he left, I picked up his dinner plate and placed it back in thecupboard.
Keithand I sat blurry-eyed and stunned in the darkened living room. Through the front windows, the flashing of the police lights colored the spacebetweenus.
“Do you think he’s okay?” Keith grimaced, wringing his hands together. He’d asked the same question probably fifteen times already. “You don’t think he’ll hurt Jake,doyou?”
No, he wasn’t okay, and yes, I did think the man would hurt him.Keith knew as well as I did that’s Jake’s situation was dire. You didn’t put a gun to a kid’s head and then take him out for icecream.
“Jake’s smart. He’ll be okay,” I offered up feebly. Whether I believed it or not didn’t matter. Keith obviously needed reassurance, so I gave ittohim.
My stomach growled in protest. I checked the clock: three in the morning. Jake had only thirty-nine hours left of the forty-eight hours he’d been given to live. Of course I understood it didn’t work that way, and he could already be dead, for all I knew, but my brain perceived those hours like the stopwatch of death. Every minute that passed was another minute of Jake’s life that wastickingaway.
“Are you hungry? I left the dinner on the table. I can heat something upforyou.”
Keith looked down at his hands, which were curling into fists over and overagain.
“Keith. Are youhungry?”
He looked up at me with bloodshot eyes, his despair clear to see. “Do you think Jake’shungry?”
