Three Days Missing

by Kimberly Belle

  Sam concedes the point with a shrug. “Okay, then. What would you like do?”

  “What’s wrong with what we’re doing now?”

  “Not a thing.” He pauses, feigning confusion. “What exactly are we doing?”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  Sam’s brow folds in a frown. My husband lives life by the two-birds, one-stone concept. Doing nothing is something he has a hard time wrapping his head around—which is exactly why he needs it so badly.

  “What about the cupcakes?” he says.

  “That’s what DoorDash is for.”

  “So you’re suggesting we just...do what exactly?”

  “Lie around the house in our pajamas all day. Read the paper and eat crackers in bed. Do nothing and not get dressed, except to maybe float around the pool on a blow-up. Ignore everyone and everything except each other. Come on, tell the truth. Doesn’t that sound delicious?”

  “I’m intrigued.” He swipes the coffee cup from my hand and settles it onto the nightstand next to his, then plants both hands on either side of my knees. “Tell me more about this not getting dressed business.”

  It’s times like these that remind me how much I love my husband, why I gave up everything to move here and live this life. Samuel Joseph Huntington IV is smart and funny and handsome and charmed and charming. If he didn’t have this bone-deep need to serve, if he didn’t work day and night to prove to millions of Atlantans he’s never met that he’s worthy of their vote, he’d be damn near perfect.

  Sam leans in for a kiss, right as his phone buzzes from the pocket of his pajama pants. I know before I see the screen who it is. Sam’s chief of staff is like a jealous mistress, intruding into our lives at the worst possible time and tempting my husband with the longings of needy constituents.

  However, it’s not Josh on the phone but Brittany, his communications director. Sam hits Ignore, then tosses the phone on the bed. Almost immediately, it buzzes from between the sheets. This time when he reaches for it, he powers it down and drops it in the nightstand drawer.

  “See?” he says with a proud grin. “I can tell people to take a hike when I want to.”

  “Pushing an employee to voice mail is not exactly telling her to take a hike, but you do get points for trying.”

  He crawls over me, moving up the soft, messy sheets. “How many points?” he whispers, his breath hot on my neck. “What do I win?”

  “Me.” My arms wind around his waist, my body pressing into his, long and lean, my mouth craning up for his. “You win me.”

  I wrap my legs around him and we are instantly coiled, our bodies fitting together like two pieces of the same puzzle.

  He kisses me, and the house line rings.

  Sam’s lips freeze on mine.

  “If you answer it, I will kill you.”

  Sam looks at the phone, then back to me. I shake my head.

  The phone rings again, shrill and insistent.

  All around us, the love spell settles like faded confetti.

  Sam rolls off me with a groan. He swipes the handset from the holder, stalks to the sliding glass doors, heaves one of them open and hurls the handset into the backyard. A few seconds later, I hear it hit the water with a plunk—the brand-new Bang & Olufsen sinking to the bottom of the pool.

  He turns back, victorious. This is the Sam I fell in love with—unpredictable, surprising, just the right side of naughty. Slayer of my dragons, even if only for a day.

  “Now. Where were we?” He puts a knee on the bed.

  I hold out my hand for his.

  And that, dammit all to hell, is when the doorbell rings.

  KAT

  4 hours, 56 minutes missing

  When Detective Macintosh told me to start thinking about who would want some more time with Ethan, is it conditioning or dread that my mind goes straight to Andrew? I think about what the repeated stimulus might have been, all those times he brought our son back late on his given weekends. First five minutes, then ten, then a half hour or more, though he never said a word. Never asked for an extra day, or if next time he could keep Ethan for one more night. Just handed Ethan over with a wave and a casual “See you in two weeks, buddy,” even though we all knew it was more than an hour past Ethan’s bedtime.

  And honestly, Andrew is not that subtle. If he had wanted more time with Ethan, he would have bitched about the schedule ages ago. He would have had his lawyer bury mine under an avalanche of letters and memos, all of which demanded a hasty—and expensive—response. Death by a million cuts seems to be his divorce strategy, and my bank account is proof that it’s working. Why change course now?

  And of course Andrew wants more time with his child. Any father would. If I were faced with visitation rights of every other weekend, holidays and school breaks at his discretion, it wouldn’t be enough for me, either.

  But none of that means he’d steal Ethan from his cabin.

  Does it?

  * * *

  The last six miles take an eternity.

  The road becomes a twisting, turning thing lined on both sides with thick walls of trees and steep ditches. Detective Macintosh steers us up the wet asphalt as fast as he dares, but the rain is still unrelenting, falling from the sky in steady, blinding sheets, and the speedometer rarely tops forty. By the time he slows at the turnoff and a steady beeping from the GPS signals we’ve arrived at our destination, I’m wound tight and my knee won’t stop bouncing.

  He pulls into a narrow dirt road next to a small hand-painted sign. The letters are faded, most of them hidden behind a two-foot stump and thick tufts of weeds. Were it not for the incessant beeping and the Lumpkin County police car parked on the grass, I would have missed it entirely.

  Camp Crosby.

  The car door swings open, and a police officer steps out, pulls his collar up against the weather and hustles across the grass. The detective waits until he’s close, then hits the button for the window. Rain and cooler air blow in, along with the scent of pine needles and wet dirt.

  He flashes his badge. “Detective Macintosh, Atlanta PD. I’ve got the boy’s mother.”

  The cop leans down, peering at us through the window. His glasses are dotted with water, which does little to conceal his squinty eyes, or the pillows of fatty skin sagging underneath. He dips his wattled chin in a show of respect. “Ma’am. Very sorry about your son.” His accent is thick and syrupy, the words sticky with a mountain twang.

  “Any news?” the detective says, beating me to the question.

  “Alpha Team’s out there with their dogs, but the kids have been in the forest all afternoon. The trainers are dealing with some contamination, but right now we’re more concerned about the rain.”

  “Any changes to the forecast?” Detective Macintosh asks. After our conversation earlier, I’d pulled it up on my iPhone. The downpour is supposed to ease to a light drizzle around ten, then blow off before noon. But this is mountain country, where weather can change on a dime.

  “Not as far as I know. But if this rain doesn’t stop soon, we’re gonna have a problem. I reckon we’ve had a good couple of inches at least, and most of it’s fallen in the past couple hours. Haven’t heard yet if the scent’s holding.”

  My gaze flips to Detective Macintosh’s profile, his ominous warning of a three-inch limit filling my mind, but his face gives nothing away. He just thanks the man, puts the car back in gear and points the nose up the drive.

  Four feet in and the woods swallow us up, the forest narrowing into a leafy tunnel. The overhanging branches form a solid arch, pressing around us on all sides. I grip the vinyl seat and lean into the dash, my gaze sweeping the tree line for Ethan, which I know is far from logical. He’s not going to just wander out and reveal himself now that I’m here, as if everything up to now was an elaborate game of hide-and-seek. But I’m seduced by hope, by despair,
and I peer into the swaying brush as we pass, praying for movement, a flash of skin, anything. But all I see are wet, slick trees.

  The detective steers us across a rickety bridge, then skids around the bank of a small pond, the surface a dark spot of shivering glass. The wheels slip and spin in the mud before catching on a patch of gravel, and we hurtle up the hill. We swerve around potholes and switchbacks until finally we emerge in a clearing, a wide expanse of sloping lawn with wooden cabins clinging to the hillside. More than a dozen police cars line the bottom perimeter, their noses pointed up the hill at the cabins and beyond, to the tree line that rises up like a thick, dark wall.

  “Which cabin?” I say, meaning Ethan’s, the one where he disappeared.

  Detective Macintosh shakes his head. “Definitely not one of these. Wherever it is, they’ll have it cordoned off. Look for the one with the yellow police tape.”

  He squeezes us into a spot at the edge of the grass, and I scramble out. Rain and cool air slap my cheeks, pushing a million tiny chill bumps through my skin. I stand there for a long moment, watching people race back and forth across the rain-soaked ground, uniformed police officers and plain-clothed folks, people dressed like aliens in head-to-toe rain gear. They call to each other from cabin porches, huddle in clumps under trees, hurry across the churned-up grass. So these are the people in charge of finding my son.

  A noise pushes through their moving bodies and chatter—the sound of dogs barking in the distance, followed by far-off shouts of my son’s name. Ethan! Where are you, Ethan?

  My head whips in that direction, my gaze bumping up against the woods. I picture the rain-soaked people trudging through them, searching in places I’m scared that they search, looking for something I’m terrified they’ll find, and my chest screws tight. I want to help them as much as I want to run and hide.

  The detective steps up beside me. He hands me my phone, positions an umbrella over both our heads and tugs me up the hill. “Let’s go.”

  I follow him without question.

  A man calls down the hill. “Ms. Jenkins?”

  “Yes. That’s me.”

  “Thomas Childers, Lumpkin County Sheriff. I sure am glad you’re here. We’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”

  He’s not exactly what you’d expect from a small, mountain-town sheriff. No potbelly. No handlebar mustache. A round, boyish face, tan and unlined despite his fifty or so years. A generous mop of dirty blond hair is plastered to his head by the rain and a broad-brimmed hat over a parka hanging open from his shoulders. Judging from the drenched uniform underneath, it’s more for form than function.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I fell asleep with my phone downstairs.”

  The detective introduces himself, followed by a long string of qualifications that sound like he’s reading from his APD website bio. Three little words pop like firecrackers: missing persons investigations. The sheriff looks more than a little relieved.

  “Seeing as I’m spectacularly shorthanded, I’m not going to say no to an extra pair. Come on.” He hitches his head to the long, squat cabin behind him, the largest of the buildings surrounding the clearing. “I’ll fill you in on everything as soon as we get inside. And watch your step. The rain’s turned this lawn into one hell of a slippery slope, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. Wet Georgia clay is like black ice, and the patches tend to sneak up on you.”

  The climb is slow and treacherous, the ground saturated and slick. The hill is littered with rocks and roots, bulging up like those Halloween decorations Ethan loves to scatter all over our front lawn. My sneaker catches in one of them, pitching me forward, and Detective Macintosh yanks me upright before I can brace for the fall. By the time we reach the top, I’m panting and soaked, the wetness creeping up my pants legs like a rising flood, turning the denim heavy as ankle weights.

  The sheriff waves us across a stretch of churned-up lawn to a set of stone steps. “Let’s keep walking, shall we? I don’t know about you, but I’d sure like to get out of this weather.”

  My sneakers sink into the soggy ground. Rain beats against the umbrella with a loud patter, but it can’t drown out the sound of my teeth chattering. I’m shaking from the cold, my whole body rattling, bone against bone. “Please. Just t-tell me.” Until he does, I refuse to take another step.

  Sheriff Childers stands there, the rain running down his skin and uniform like a river. “I’ve got thirty-seven men out there in the woods, and there’s more on the way. Choppers should be here shortly, too. Between all that and the dogs, air scenters and ground trailers plus all their handlers, somebody’s bound to find something soon.”

  Something could mean anything. A footprint. A broken branch. A body. I press a palm to my stomach, nauseous. “How soon?”

  “As soon as humanly possible. We’re getting held up by the weather, and that’s putting it mildly. It’s almost impossible to see out there. The dogs are only doing marginally better.”

  Logically, I know I am in no way prepared to join the search. This camp is pressed up against the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I have no rain gear, no dry clothes, no clue where I’m going or the ground they’ve already covered. Only a flimsy umbrella and the map on my iPhone, which last time I looked was operating on 38 percent battery.

  But maybe Ethan is still within hearing distance. Maybe he’d come crashing out of his hiding place if he heard it was me, calling his name.

  “Ms. Jenkins.”

  The sheriff’s expression says he knows I’m about to take off running, and his stance, the way he’s bouncing on his toes says he’s ready to stop me. He shakes his head. “You’ll only get in the way.”

  I picture Ethan, scared and freezing in the woods somewhere. His pajamas will be soaked to the skin. His feet will be bare and muddy. “He’s eight.” My voice cracks, my throat burning like acid. “And he’s out there all alone.”

  “The sheriff’s right,” the detective says. “Search and rescue works much faster if they don’t have to worry about you getting in their way.”

  Sheriff Childers dips his head, and pooled rainwater spills over the brim of his hat. “The best way you can help right now is by coming inside and answering some questions.”

  The detective steers me to the staircase, and I let him. A helicopter swoops over the camp, the thudding of its blades vibrating all the way into my bones, and it’s too much. The rain and the noise and the people running everywhere. The world tilts and it feels like a nightmare—a sick, feverish nightmare.

  Somebody drapes a blanket, warm and dry, over my shoulders.

  “There are heat sensors on the choppers,” the detective says as soon as the chopper has moved on. “If Ethan’s out there, he’ll be glowing.”

  “The infrared will pick up his body heat,” the sheriff explains. “The bodies glow on the screen.”

  Much like the way I find Ethan most nights, reading a book under his covers, the gleam of his flashlight lighting up the room through the fabric. Glowing.

  “What about everybody else? All the other bodies.” I don’t remember exactly how many the sheriff said were out there, but it was somewhere in the high thirties.

  His lips curl down on one side. “That’s an issue, I’m not gonna lie. The pilot will be looking for a body set apart from the rest. It could be moving, or if Ethan’s hurt, if he’s fallen and unable to get himself some help, he’ll be stationary. If the pilot’s not sure of what he’s seeing, he’ll make contact with the head of S&R.”

  “Search and rescue,” the detective explains before I can ask.

  I watch the rain splatter the leaves for a moment, trying to take some calming breaths, but the panic won’t settle. Ethan will be so cold. So scared.

  The sheriff steps to the door. “There’s coffee and a long list of questions inside. Now, if you don’t mind—”

  “You have to find him. You have to. My life doe
sn’t work without him.” My son’s life is in the hands of complete strangers, and I need these two to hear me. To understand the importance of what is at stake.

  But they don’t respond, and their silence ignites my panic, a stockpile of flammable fuel.

  “Please. I’m begging you. Ethan is my everything.” For a moment I can’t speak, but my next words are too big, too important to leave out. “Please find him.”

  “Then come on.” The sheriff pulls open the door with a creak. “Let’s get to work.”

  KAT

  5 hours, 7 minutes missing

  I stare across the cavernous dining hall at a whiteboard someone has set up in a corner, my son’s name in big red caps across the top. Underneath, a list of descriptors is scrawled in blue and green marker. Words like brown curls and slight build and red and black pajamas and my skin goes cold. Rain beats against the corrugated metal roof above our heads, echoing through the space with a deafening, tinny ring, but all I can hear is the sound of my own terror churning in my ears.

  I should have never let him come. Yesterday at school, I should have hauled Ethan off that bus, called in sick to work and spent the day with him at home. I remember watching him scramble up the bus steps and disappear behind the smoky glass, the sudden catch in my chest, that tiny tug of panic I tried to ignore. By the time I swallowed it down, the bus was pulling away. Ethan was already gone.

  “Ms. Jenkins?”

  My gaze lingers on Ethan’s latest school picture, which someone has scrounged up from God knows where and taped to the dark window. I remember not loving it when he brought it home—too stiff and posed and expensive, the studio prices far beyond my budget. But now I pick up every detail: the corkscrew curls a confused whirlwind around his face; the kink in the collar of his shirt because I didn’t have time to iron it; the dark smudge of a dent, an almost dimple on his smiling left cheek. I want to rip the picture off the wall and press it to my chest. I want to call up the studio and order every single copy.

  “Ms. Jenkins, we’re in a time cr—”