by Dana Nussio
“Now if I have the story right, Aiden was already asleep when you showered. Was he in the bedroom?”
He pointed to the closed door at the rear of the apartment, built exactly like Sarah’s. At Nadia’s nod, he stalked back toward the entry. “And you believe the door was locked when you entered your bathroom?”
“I thought it was.”
After flipping on the light near the door, he opened it and examined the locks and doorplate. “I don’t see any signs of forced entry.”
Sarah’s chest tightened. Could that mean that her babysitter had been lying about locking the door, or had she only forgotten? Besides Ted, Nadia was the person she knew best in Brighton. How well did she really know her? Everyone had a price. Had one of Michael’s friends figured out Nadia’s?
But instead of staring down her neighbor, Jamie appeared to be examining the distance from the front door to the bedroom.
“Is there any chance that Aiden might have heard someone knock while the shower was running, and answered himself?”
“I guess he could have.” Nadia met Sarah’s gaze and then lowered her head.
Sarah swallowed. She knocked on that same door every night she worked, and sometimes Aiden beat Nadia to the door, no matter how many times both women warned him that only adults should answer. Could he have answered the knock, expecting his mother, and opened the door to his abductor instead?
“Is it okay if I check the bedroom?” Jamie didn’t wait for Nadia’s answer before entering the room, its overhead light still on from when Sarah had found it empty.
Jamie’s gaze moved from the rumpled quilt that had been folded like a sleeping bag on top of the bed, to the window with drawn drapes. Then he stepped closer to the bureau, where Nadia’s hefty purse rested near a tidy perfume bottle collection. Like the closet door, all the drawers were closed. He jotted something in the notebook.
Sarah had to force herself to stay in the doorway with her babysitter instead of rushing in and upending every bottle and sock drawer, searching for answers. She’d asked for his help. Since Jamie was Aiden’s only real chance now, she had to at least let him try.
When Jamie returned to the bed, he paused next to the smallish pillow, still dented from Aiden’s usually sweaty little head. Sarah couldn’t stop the whimper that slipped from her lips.
“Does anything look out of place, Ms. Antonov?”
“Mrs. Antonov. I’m a widow,” Nadia corrected as she shuffled into the room and looked around. “I don’t think so.”
“There are no signs of a struggle here, either,” Jamie noted.
Sarah closed her eyes, but she couldn’t shake the image of some awful person, someone who Michael knew well, carrying her son out of the building, careful not to wake him so he wouldn’t scream. Or drugging him so he didn’t have the chance.
When she opened her eyes, Jamie was writing something else down.
“About how long do you usually run the water in the shower?”
“Maybe ten minutes?” Nadia told him. “Why do you ask?”
“That’s how long an abductor would have had to get Aiden out of the apartment before you might have heard something.”
Instead of writing this time, he glanced back at the bed. “Does Aiden always sleep on a quilt like this when he’s here?”
Nadia nodded. “He calls it his sleeping bag and pretends he’s camping. I even give him a flashlight that he plays with until he goes to sleep.”
“Did you give him one tonight?” He walked around three sides of the bed then pulled off the quilt and shook it out.
“I’m sorry. I can’t remember.”
Sarah’s hands clenched at her sides. First the door, and now her babysitter couldn’t remember about the flashlight. How could she have trusted her with her son?
“And Sarah, doesn’t Aiden also sleep with a dolphin named Willy?”
“How do you know...” She blinked several times. “Oh, right. He always keeps it in his backpack, so he has it when Nadia picks him up.”
“It isn’t here, either.”
Immediately, Sarah rounded the bed, bent and searched under it herself. Nothing.
“Couldn’t whoever have abducted him also have taken Willy?” Nadia suggested in a shaky voice.
“I suppose that’s possible,” Jamie said, “but would that person also have stopped to take the flashlight and Aiden’s backpack, his jacket and his shoes?”
“What do you mean?” But even as she asked it, Sarah hurried out of the room toward the front door. Once she rounded the side chair, she stopped and stared at the spot where Nadia usually stacked Aiden’s things for when Sarah picked him up each night.
Everything was gone.
“I don’t understand,” Sarah said.
“It’s pretty clear that, for whatever reason, Aiden left this apartment all on his own,” he said.
“Oh my God.” She stared out into the night, which seemed to have become darker. “He’s out there somewhere. Maybe he’s lost. He’s probably cold and scared.”
“This is all my fault,” Nadia announced. “I should never have showered while he was here.”
Jamie spread his hands wide as if to calm them. “It’s no one’s fault. The only thing we need to worry about now is bringing Aiden home.”
As a fresh wave of anguish nearly closed off her throat, Sarah rushed for the door, but instead of following her, Jamie hurried in the opposite direction. Back to the bedroom.
“What are you doing?” The last word was almost a shriek, so she took a deep breath, grasping for a calm that wouldn’t come. “We already know he isn’t in there. He’s out there somewhere.”
Though she pointed to the door, Jamie continued into the bedroom as if she hadn’t spoken. Sarah stomped after him, but he didn’t look back. He only stared at the bed as if he expected it to cough up information.
“Jamie, this isn’t getting us anywhere.”
He raised a hand, signaling that he wanted her to stop. “Let’s think about this.”
“Don’t you get it? There’s no time to think. My baby...is missing.”
This time he looked over his shoulder at her. “I know. So, let me do this for you.”
He shifted the books on the bedside table, smoothed the comforter and even lifted the blanket again.
“I’m guessing this is the first time Aiden’s ever run away. He’s six. Not an expert yet. He’s probably left a few clues.”
Jamie crouched down next to the bed, peeked under it and smoothed his hand over the carpet.
“What do you think he left?” Nadia murmured.
“If I knew that, wouldn’t I already have found it?” He shook his head as he lifted Aiden’s pillow off the bed, fluffing it and removing the child-size imprint in the process. “Sorry. I’m just as frustrated as...”
His words fell away as a piece of notebook paper drifted from inside the pillowcase and landed on the mattress. Jamie snapped it up. On one side was the message Sarah could remember writing herself, reminding him to be good for Nadia, but Jamie barely paused on that before turning it over to the side written in a child’s hand with a purple marker.
“He left a note?” Sarah said. “What does it say?”
But before she could get close enough to read it herself, Jamie stuffed it in his pocket.
“Hey, let me see that.”
“He’s on his way to my house.”
She could only stare at him. “Your house? Does he even know where you live?”
“Generally. But he wouldn’t know how to get there.” His words came out in a hurried clip that mimicked his walk to the front door.
“Why would he know...generally?”
Jamie glanced back over his shoulder, his jaw tight. “Because he asked me, and I told him.”
“You told a six-year-old boy, who clear
ly hero-worships you, where you live?”
This time he turned to face her. “Okay, it was a boneheaded move, but can you bust my chops for it later? After we find him?”
“I’m sorry. I’m just so—”
“Scared?” He didn’t wait for her to respond before adding, “Then your son is probably feeling the same way right now. Are you coming or not?”
She grabbed her coat and followed him out the door, mouthing “sorry” to Nadia for all the assumptions she’d made about her.
Maybe Aiden wasn’t in the hands of one of Michael’s friends the way she’d always dreaded, but he was out there all alone, probably sorry for venturing out on his own. They had to find him. They just had to. Good thing she wouldn’t have to do it alone.
Jamie loved Aiden. He’d proved that long before tonight, when he was probably breaking dozens of departmental rules, and maybe a few laws, to conduct this off-the-books investigation. Now, even if he didn’t agree with her decision not to involve other agencies, he seemed determined to find Aiden and wouldn’t stop until they did.
Whether it was this one huge realization or so many small ones that had convinced her he was someone she could trust, she wasn’t sure. But once this was all over, once Aiden was safe and warm and grounded for life for scaring them, she would finally trust Jamie with the whole truth.
Chapter 14
They were never going to find him.
Jamie bit his lip as the realization descended on him in a fog that only made his surroundings appear more opaque as he drove along four-lane Grand River Avenue for the umpteenth time. As he had every time he’d driven this stretch of road that lead past Brighton’s quaint downtown, he hoped the six-year-old adventurer would leap out and say “boo” while remaining safely on the sidewalk. But just like each time before, Sarah sat silently in the passenger seat, scanning the sidewalks for her son. And Jamie couldn’t find him for her.
“Do you think we passed him and we just didn’t see him?” she asked.
Her words startled him. They were the first she’d spoken in more than an hour. He couldn’t even give her an encouraging answer.
“Probably not.”
“But dark clothes and a navy backpack and jacket weren’t the best choices for running around in the dark, were they?”
He didn’t answer, but his hands tightened on the steering wheel, though his muscles already ached from being in a constant state of flex for two hours. His head throbbed from straining his eyes to see a tiny figure who wasn’t there. Anywhere.
“Now tell me what you said to Aiden about where you live,” Sarah said in a tight voice. “And why?”
“I already told you that I said I had a house on First Street near Mill Pond Park, and he said he loves it when you take him to Mill Pond Playground.”
“Which means he would remember what you told him.” She repeated her earlier words.
She sat straighter in the seat and started tapping her fingers on the door handle in a relentless drumbeat.
“But as I said before, that doesn’t mean he had any idea how to get there.”
“We always walked when we went there.” She shrugged. “We walk everywhere.”
“He’s six.”
“Have you met my son?”
“Fair enough.”
But because they’d already had this conversation out loud once, and half a dozen times in his head, he focused on the road again. Though at first the situation hadn’t seemed quite as sinister as Sarah had imagined it, the likelihood that it could become so increased with each minute that passed and with each mile they covered in this tiny city without locating Aiden.
They were wasting too much time. At this point, he didn’t even care if the Brighton Police Department had already picked Aiden up, and all hell was about to break loose when the officers in his own department figured out how he’d been spending his after-work hours. At least the child would be safe.
“We’re not going to find him, are we?”
“Sure we are.”
She’d just put words to his thoughts, and yet Jamie couldn’t let her believe it. She couldn’t give up, couldn’t lose hope. If she did, he would, too. As if he hadn’t already lost his edge here, wasn’t far too involved in the case to be of any help in solving it. All his training told him he also shouldn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. Still, when she said nothing, he doubled down.
“We have to find him.” He cleared his throat. “We...will.”
As if mouthing the words could make it true. If it would, he would repeat it all night.
When he patted her shoulder, she flinched and shifted closer to the door. She stared out into a darkness more relentless than the night.
When he’d first arrived at her apartment, she’d still been crying, her body visibly shaking with the panic of the unknown. Then for a while, she’d been too furious with him to remember how scared she was. But she seemed different now. She had this unsettling dry-eyed resignation, as if she already knew the outcome and only awaited the inevitable.
“Why did I even try? I built this whole world to protect him, and I couldn’t even do that.”
“This isn’t your fault, Sarah.”
It was his. They both knew that. And if Aiden was hit by a car or became the victim of a child predator in a crime of opportunity, he would have no one to blame but himself. Just as he had with Mark, he’d failed Aiden and Sarah. He was poison to everyone and everything he touched.
“You’ve done everything you could to make him feel safe and loved,” he told her.
She kept shaking her head. “But it wasn’t enough. And then tonight, because I was so worried about getting caught, I’ve helped to ensure that we won’t bring him home safely.”
Now that he couldn’t argue with. “But we could still call it in now.”
Even if it might be too late to help. And even if he’d be in trouble taking policing into his own hands. Would he be fired for this? It didn’t matter. If it gave Aiden a better chance, he didn’t care.
“Do you want to do that now?” He perched his hand above the button on his steering wheel to activate his phone’s Bluetooth connection.
She stared down at her folded hands for a few seconds. “Yes. Do it now.”
The light had changed, so after he turned back onto Main Street, he pressed the button. A mechanical voice asked him what he wanted to do.
“Call—”
But a flash of light off one of the store windows caught his eye and cut off his words. Was that just a car light from a strange angle? His heart raced, and his mouth was suddenly dry. He hit the button again to turn off the car’s electronic connection and rounded the corner onto First to pull into a parking space.
“What is it? Did you see something?” She twisted her neck to look in the same direction he had.
“I’m not sure.”
It wasn’t right to get her hopes up. This wasn’t the first time he’d thought he’d spotted something tonight. Still, he threw open the door, climbed out and strode back to the intersection. The other door slammed, and her footsteps approached behind him.
He scanned the area where he’d noticed the light before. Nothing. Had desperation willed another image into existence? He turned his head, taking in the whole scene again, his hope sinking.
“It was probably nothing.”
“Nothing,” she repeated in a shaky voice.
Then he saw it again, not a pair of headlights, but a single light, swaying back and forth as if a walker carried it.
“It’s a flashlight.”
That didn’t necessarily mean anything, either. This was a dog-loving community. Pet owners often walked their dogs at night, carrying flashlights to make them visible to motorists. But Jamie couldn’t stop himself from rushing toward what he hoped was the source of the light.
Just past a g
roup of storefronts, he caught up to both the light and the small hooded figure attached to it.
“Aiden, is that you?”
He barreled into the child and gathered him in a bear hug.
“Boy, have we been looking for you.”
“I got lost. I couldn’t find your house.”
Again, guilt stabbed Jamie. What had he been thinking, sharing details about his home with a child who was smart enough to attempt to find him, even if he was too young to try?
“Well, buddy, I wish you hadn’t looked for it. You worried everybody.”
Worried didn’t begin to cover it, but how could a first-grader, who didn’t know that evil was often the next-door neighbor to good, even imagine that kind of darkness?
“I want my mom.”
Jamie whisked him up and turned just as Sarah reached them.
“Aiden?”
Jamie lowered the boy to the ground in front of her.
“It’s me!”
Aiden aimed the flashlight on his mother’s face, illuminating what had been hidden in the shadows from the streetlamps. Tears streamed freely down her cheeks, and her shoulders trembled with the intensity of her sobs.
“Don’t cry, Mommy. It’ll be okay.”
As the child reached up to brush her cheek, likely repeating words she’d used to comfort him many times before, she only shook harder, her fear for the worst not yet reconciled with the answer to prayers.
It was all Jamie could do not to gather Sarah in his arms and let her cry out her fears and her regrets until she’d emptied herself of all of them. But she needed more from him now. She needed him to be close and yet keep his distance, to be the friend and let her be the parent.
Seeming uncertain how to deal with his mother being any less than the rock he’d come to expect her to be, Aiden wrapped his arms around Sarah’s waist. For several seconds, none of them moved, but finally, Sarah bent and lifted her son into her arms.
“Don’t ever, ever do that again,” she said in a stern voice, and then kissed his cheeks until he squirmed. “You scared me. Scared us.”
Sarah didn’t look at Jamie as she rephrased her words, but she had to feel his gaze on her. There had been an “us” in those hours of uncertainty. In the hopelessness. And now in the rebirth of hope. He didn’t know what it meant or even how he felt about it, especially given the questions that lingered between them, but he was ridiculously grateful that she’d acknowledged it.
