He took off as fast as his little legs wouldtakehim.
“Is it Jake?” Kyle asked, and his face shone with the first glimmer of hope in fiveweeks.
“I… I don’t…” she said, her voice filled with confusion, and then suddenly the grip on my arm tightened and she let out a short gasping sob. “Yes, baby, yes it’s me. Where are you? Areyouhurt?”
We all stood transfixed, waiting for something, some confirmation. Dad, his face flushed, rushed into the kitchen with Quinn at hisheels.
“Please, if this is a joke, it’s not funny,” Mom said in a tremblingvoice.
Dad’s wide, expectant eyes constricted to narrow slits and the optimism he’d run in here with was gone. We’d had these prank calls before. The sheer cruelty of some people never ceased toamazeme.
“Hang up! Don’t play this game. It’s just another sicko!” Dad blasted out the words as he slammed his fist on thecounter.
“I don’t know, Scott. It sounds like him, but he’s talking like a child, calling meMommy.”
“Then it’snothim.”
“But he says he’s been stabbed. He says he’s dying. You have to hear the way he’s coughing…” Mom stopped in mid-sentence. Something the caller said stunned her, and I watched her face crumple before me. “Of course I do, baby. Tell me whereyouare.”
“What did he say to you?” Dadasked.
“He asked if I remembered him. Why would heaskthat?”
“Because he’s playing with you,Michelle.”
“Listen to this cough,” she said, as she pressed the speaker button on the phone. The sounds of violent, guttural coughing startled the whole lot of us. I’d never heard anything like it. Liquid bubbled up with every hack. Dad’s anger immediately switched tobewilderment.
“Who is this?” my father asked into the phone, but there was no response, just more coughing. “What nickname do you callGrandma’sdog?”
We all anxiously awaited the caller’s reply. The FBI had instructed us to have a question that only Jake would know. That way if he called, we could confirm his identity. We had used it once before to flush outafake.
“I’m taking it off speaker mode,” Mom said frantically. “I can’thearhim.”
“Because he’s not answering, Michelle,” Dad replied, defeated. “It’snothim.”
“No. They usually hang up by now. Something’s not right. You can’t fake a cough like that,” Mom said, switching the phone off speaker and returning the receiver to her ear. “Honey, just tell me what you call Grandma’s dog, and then we can come get you. Just try to remember for me.Please.”
Anticipation hung heavy in the air, and since we could not hear what the caller was saying, we watched Mom’s reaction instead. Whoever was on the line was not answering, but he wasn’t hanging up either. Mom gripped the counter, her knuckles blanched a petrified white. Dad shook his head, angry and disillusioned. Then Mom’s eyesgrewwide.
“What did you say? I couldn’t hear you. Say itagain.”
A sob escaped my mother as her knees buckled and she slumped to the side, nearly taking me down with her. “He said it. He said ‘Roadkill’.”
* * *
The minute the nickname “Roadkill”left my brother’s mouth, everything changed. Jake’s kidnapping went from a relief mission to rescue operation in two seconds flat. While my father was on the phone with the FBI, my mother tried to coax as much information from Jake as possible. We’d been coached for such a moment, although realistically, none of us ever truly believed itpossible.
Thankfully, tracking the origin of a phone call in the digital age was near instantaneous, and law enforcement was on their way to him in a matter of minutes. Securing Jake’s immediate safety now became top priority. From the little information my mother was able to gather from him, my brother was anything but safe… or sane, for that matter. Everyone but Jake seemed to understand that if he were caught on the phone by his knife-wielding abductor, he would not live long enough to berescued.
“Jake, put the receiver down and go hide. The police are ontheway.”
But Jake, confused and at times incoherent, wasn’t listening. He’d been on the line for nearly five minutes now, and every second he remained put him furtheratrisk.
“Give me the phone,” Daddemanded.
“No.” Mom held the receiver tighter in her grip. “Heneedsme.”
“The guy stabbed him, Michelle. What do you think he’s going to do when he finds Jake on the phone? Give ittome.”
