by Maegan Abel
The detective spoke, trying to coax me away from Conner long enough to tell me about what they knew and as much as I wanted to know, I couldn’t leave his side. Not until he woke up. Not until I knew for sure he was okay.
Movement had my head snapping up from where it rested on the edge of the mattress. The crick in my neck was immediately forgotten when I saw Conner’s eyes open.
“Conner? Oh, thank God,” I said, shoving up from the chair to lean closer to him. He stared at me, blank-faced, as I brushed the hair off his forehead again.
“He’s awake?” Paige’s voice was groggy as it came from the corner of the room. I’d pressed until the doctor had agreed to let us both stay with Conner. Luckily, unlike back home, this hospital was tiny.
“Go get the doctor,” I whispered in her direction, not taking my eyes from Conner. It was one thing to know he was alive, it was another to see him awake.
“Daddy?” he croaked, his voice sounding raw. His eyes blinked as he started to focus on the scene around him. As the confusion melted away, anxiety took its place. He scanned the room, his head turning in every direction. His fear became apparent not only on his face, but on the accelerated beeping of the heart monitor.
“Conner, it’s me. Calm down. You’re safe—”
“Where is she?” he asked, his voice cracking.
“Who?” I attempted to keep my tone calm. He pulled away from my touch, still wildly searching the room.
“Where is she?” he asked again, nearly screaming as Paige and the doctor returned. “LeeLee!”
“Conner,” I said, reaching for him again, but he scrambled away, getting tangled in the wires around him.
“LeeLee! They’re going to hurt her!” he cried as the doctor called out an order to a nurse for a mild sedative.
“No, Conn—”
“LeeLee!” His voice cracked and the asthma attack I feared began. I was shoved aside as the staff immediately moved in to tend to Conner while I watched, utterly helpless.
My attention turned to Paige as her hand linked with mine. Her eyes were glassy and I felt the tears falling from my own. I couldn’t decide whether I was crying for the panic in Conner’s words or the even more realistic fear for Lili. I tried desperately not to analyze what he’d said, but I could hear the certainty in his voice. He was convinced they, whoever they were, would hurt Lili.
The sedative finally kicked in and while it didn’t knock him out this time, it did its job by calming him. The doctor watched his vital signs for several minutes as I tentatively approached the bed again. Conner stared, the wild fear and anxiety gone from his eyes. I carefully reached for his hand and he flinched, but didn’t fight, as I covered his fingers with mine.
It was morning, but it felt like I’d had about five minutes of sleep in the last week. My head was cloudy, my thoughts jumbling. I sat beside Conner’s bed while Paige paced until I quietly told her to sit or leave the room. She sighed and slipped into the hall, taking her phone to call and update everyone at home. It felt like a joke. Update them on what? That Conner was suffering from PTSD and Lili was still missing?
As I sat beside Conner, he started to doze, only to startle awake again. Detective Sanders arrived, looking no more rested than I felt, and Conner gave no response to her entrance. She tried to talk to him, to coax answers from him, to find out any information, but he didn’t speak. The only acknowledgement he gave was turning his head briefly in her direction. His expression stayed completely blank.
She sighed, turning toward me as he finally dozed off again. “I still have some questions for you, but I need you to come to the station.” I was shaking my head before she even finished. “Zane, it’s five minutes away. Paige can wait here with him or she can come with you, but we need you to look over what we’ve found and see if you can put any of the pieces together for us. The longer we wait, the less likely it is we’ll find her.” The last sentence was barely a whisper, but it rang loudly in my ears.
I scrubbed a hand over my jaw, noticing, for the first time, the thick hair growing in. I hadn’t shaved since the morning before my world fell apart. I probably looked just as disheveled as I felt.
“Fine,” I whispered, leaning down and pressing my lips softly to Conner’s temple. His eyes opened again with a start and I wondered for a second if I could leave while he was awake. “Hey, buddy. I’m gonna to go talk to the police for a few minutes. They’re still trying to find Lili and I’m gonna see if I can help, okay?” After his strange detachment earlier, a part of me hoped he would throw a fit again. Show something, anything, other than the empty-eyed stare. But he didn’t. Still watching him, I took a step back, and then another. No reaction.
Turning toward the detective at the door, I started to shake my head. The realization that I was about to walk out and leave Conner hit me, and it was my turn to panic. “I can’t do it. I’m sorry. I can’t…” I trailed off, knowing I sounded as terrified as I felt.
“We need you to do this. Lili needs you to do this. I will leave two officers with Conner and we will be there and back in less than half an hour.”
I glanced back toward my son. I didn’t want to let him out of my sight, but his eyes had fallen closed again as he slept. In order to find Lili and the people responsible for this, I had to leave him.
I nodded and followed her into the hall. I breathed a little easier seeing two officers, though not the same two from yesterday, posted just outside Conner’s door. When we got to the waiting area, I saw Paige staring out the window. I filled her in, giving her the option to sit with Conner or come with me. I was thankful when she chose to stay. As much as I worried I might need her strength, leaving Conner without any family would have been nearly impossible.
The drive to the police station was brief, as the detective promised. Once inside, she led me to a small conference room. I waited while she went to get her paperwork, my heel tapping a staccato rhythm into the industrial gray carpet.
“Okay, Zane, here’s what we have,” she said as she reentered the room. A short, balding man, probably in his early fifties, followed her, closing the door behind them. He looked exactly like every cliché small town police chief I’d ever imagined. Sanders placed a file folder in front of me and I opened it, finding a small stack of black and white photos, obviously from a surveillance camera.
“These were taken at the gas station on Interstate Forty right before you leave Tucumcari. It’s where Conner was found,” Sanders said. She pointed to the top picture, a white, nondescript van parked at the gas pumps had several people climbing out. It only took a moment for me to realize one of them was Lili, her hand tightly gripping Conner’s. I flipped through the other three photos, finding two closer shots of Lili and Conner. One of Lili staring directly into a camera on the side of the building and two blurry side views of who, presumably, were the kidnappers—both wearing dark hoodies and jeans.
“So, do you know what happened?” I asked, staring at the picture of Lili’s face.
“From what we can tell in the video, Lil—”
“I want to see the video,” I said immediately. Based on the photos, I could tell something was going on and this had been the moment Conner had gotten away. I wanted to know whatever I could.
“That’s not really why we brought you here. We just wanted to see if you could recognize—” The police chief started.
“I can’t,” I cut him off. “Not from these grainy still shots. If you want me to try to identify someone, let me watch the video. I know how Adam moves. I’ve known him most of my life. If he’s one of them, I’ll be able to tell.” It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the reason behind my request at all.
Detective Sanders sighed and excused herself long enough to grab her laptop. She returned a few minutes later, keying in a passcode before turning the screen partway toward me. I could see the first still shot, Conner and Lili climbing out of the van, paused on the screen. As I reached for it, she held out a hand to stop me.
“Zane,
this is graphic. I need to be sure you understand that. They brutally attacked Lili when they realized Conner disappeared.”
Her words made bile rise in my throat. Lili, my Lili, was attacked. “Is she alive?” I asked, not sure how I forced the question out without vomiting. I knew what brutally attacked meant when police used it. I’d patched up victims enough times to know it wasn’t pretty.
Detective Sanders’ hesitation stole the air from my lungs. “We can’t be sure, but we believe she was alive, yes.”
“I want to watch,” I ground out, looking away from Sanders and to the picture on the screen. Maybe it was masochistic, but I had to see what happened. Everything up to this point was a complete mystery. Not watching, not knowing when I had the option, felt cowardly.
She sighed and hit a button.
The figures on the screen buzzed to life. There was no sound, only video of Lili leading Conner by the hand away from the van toward the corner of the building, followed by one of the two unknown figures. They disappeared and the screen flipped to a different view. From this angle, I could see the side of the building and two doors, presumably the restrooms. After a few seconds, they came into view again. Lili and Conner entered the first door together while the man stood outside. I watched his gait as he paced, pausing briefly to light a cigarette. There was nothing familiar in the way he moved. I glanced at the time on the bottom of the screen. It was just before four in the morning. I watched as one minute passed. Then two.
The door flew open, almost as if it were kicked, and a figure blocked from the camera by the angle of the door swung a large white object at his head. The door closed and the man fell hard on the ground. Lili dropped the makeshift weapon, which I could barely see was the lid from a toilet tank, and spun to Conner. She shoved him and he ran, disappearing around the back of the building. Lili ran forward, looking directly up into the camera as she grabbed the phone. I had no idea who she dialed, but less than ten seconds later, she dropped the phone, leaving it off the hook as she backed away. She raised her hands in the air as two other men came into the picture. One jogged over to the man on the ground, who lay unmoving, and the other had a handgun trained on Lili. She spoke and the one with the gun glanced behind him at the phone. He put a hand on his head, clearly frustrated as he looked over at the other man. He was shaking his head, saying something, causing the one with the gun to snap. He pistol-whipped Lili, the force of the blow knocking her to her knees. I felt the wind expel from my lungs in a rush as he raised his leg, clearly meaning to kick her. She spun and dropped as he swung, taking the full force of the kick with her back in what was clearly an attempt to protect her stomach. The baby.
She writhed, but I felt little relief that her legs were moving. She wasn’t paralyzed, but the strength behind that kick left no doubt that something was most likely broken. She was halfway on her back when he kicked again, this time his foot connecting with her skull. I heard a choked sound that, distantly, I realized probably came from me. She wasn’t moving now. He lifted her, tossing her like a rag doll over his shoulder as he jogged out of the frame. The camera switched again and he shoved her into the back of the van. He disappeared briefly, returning with the other guy, both of them struggling with the third male. They tossed him in beside Lili and slammed the doors. The van pulled out of sight seconds later and the video ended.
“Do you have a tag number?” I asked, not sure how long I sat staring at the blank screen of the laptop.
“We have a partial, but it most likely has stolen plates,” Sanders said softly. I nodded. That made sense. Somewhere in my mind, that made sense. “Did you recognize any of the men?” She pressed and I shook my head. None. None of them had looked even remotely familiar.
“Who did she call?” I asked, my mind fixating on figuring out exactly what happened.
“She dialed nine-one-one. She told the operator she had been kidnapped. She said she was leaving with them, but her son was hiding behind the Dumpsters. She told them to tell the police to say ‘LeeLee sent them to help him’ and he would come out.”
I nodded slowly, both proud of her quick thinking and furious she used herself as a distraction. “We have one other thing.” Sanders pulled an evidence bag from the larger folder she had in front of her. In it was a piece of paper I recognized well. “Conner had it and he threw a fit when we took it from him. He said he was supposed to give it to you.”
I tentatively reached out and pulled the bag closer, my eyes scanning over the paper. The note was badly worn, ripped in a few places and smudged with soot and dirt, but the words were still legible. It was the note I’d written to Lili before she left for Texas. She must’ve had it on her when they were taken. I flipped it over and the tears I’d been too detached to release before came in full force. There, just below where I had written My Heart on what would’ve been the outside of the note, was writing that, while obviously scrawled quickly, was still clearly Lili’s.
Mine, too.
And I would’ve said yes.
Chapter Four
Home
I returned to the hospital in time to see Conner sitting up in the bed with a tray of barely touched food in front of him. He scowled at the plate and the look was so much Conner, so normal, I couldn’t help but smile.
“Aren’t you hungry?” I asked, settling into the chair beside him. He looked over, but didn’t return my smile. After a moment, he shook his head. “I bet if you ask Aunt Paige, she’ll run down the street and get you a burger.”
He smiled slightly then, turning his attention to Paige.
She laughed. “Are you sure you want a burger?” He nodded, getting a little more animated as she moved toward the bed. “What about some chicken?” He shook his head, still smiling. “Or some broccoli?” She nudged his tray where I saw the broccoli sitting uneaten. He wrinkled his nose and shook his head again. “What do you want, Conner?” I saw what she was doing and I couldn’t believe how easily it worked. Her playful attitude was drawing him out.
“McDonald’s,” he said, his voice still scratchy and raw. It was one of the places he loved to eat and one I saved as a treat. Today was definitely the kind of day where he got to choose.
“Oh, all right,” she conceded. I pulled out my wallet, taking care this time, and handed her some cash. She smiled and waved at Conner before heading out.
Conner looked over at me as I plugged my phone back into the charger I’d left beside his bed. “Are you done going away now?” he asked, catching me off guard.
I moved my chair closer, scooting it right up to the bed as I reached for his hand. “I’m not going anywhere else, buddy.” I paused, surprised when he grabbed ahold of my hand without any hesitancy. “I’ll stay right here with you if that’s what you want.”
“Did you find LeeLee?” he asked, the hope in his eyes heavy enough to weigh down my shoulders.
“Not yet, but the police are still looking for her. They’ll find her,” I promised, hoping I was right.
I’d thought it before and I’d been right then. Surely, I would know. I would feel it if she were…
I stopped myself, unable to even think it without the images from the tape making a reappearance.
It took two days before the doctors finally released Conner and allowed me to take him home. I’d kept my promise to stay with him, even sitting by his side when they did what I found to be a second CT scan to make sure there wasn’t any lingering damage from the knock to the head. I’d panicked at first, thinking I would have to rush around to get us plane tickets, but Paige was already on top of it. She really was a lifesaver in all this.
Detective Sanders contacted the judge to have a custody form notarized for me to get Conner back home. Paige stopped at a store on one of her trips out and bought a booster seat for Conner to use in the car and on the plane along with a few sets of clothes for him and I. Honestly, my mind wasn’t focused on anything so I was thankful everyone else seemed more than willing to help keep life running smoothly.
<
br /> “Zane,” Paige’s voice was hesitant as I packed the last of the clothes in the bag. When I glanced over at her, she was looking at Conner. He was sitting on the edge of the bed in an outfit she’d bought for him, the new Transformers blanket she’d just given him spread over his lap. “There are reporters outside.”
It took a moment for her words to register and once they did, my brow furrowed. “Reporters? Why?”
“I don’t know, but according to the detective, they’ve been asking questions about you and Conner,” she answered. I blew out a breath. Perfect. The last thing Conner needed was to be hounded with questions from reporters. “Look, they don’t know he’s being released. There’s a back exit, so once you’re ready, I’ll just head out to the car like nothing’s different and come around the back for you guys.”
I walked over, wrapping an arm around Paige as I pulled her in for a hug. “Thank you.”
“Stop being mushy,” she groaned, shoving at me until I let her go. I finished gathering our things and we made our way to the back exit, escorted by the two officers posted in the hall.
Paige left her bag with me, trying to make it look like it was just an ordinary trip out for her. I held Conner’s hand, my eyes scanning the parking lot carefully. It took less than a minute for the first of the reporters to come into view. They were looking for another exit.
“Hey, buddy, why don’t you let me carry you?” I asked, hoping I could get through them easier if I was holding him. Conner raised his arms, letting me lift him just as the reporters reached the door and spotted us. I grabbed his blanket and immediately pulled it up to cover his head, thankful he was cooperating.
