by J. Bengtsson
Mom gripped the phone a little tighter. “Hello?” she asked again, only this time with a tiny morsel of empathy. “Who is this?”
A moment of what I assumed was silence on the other end of the line followed.
“Who is this?” she said in a shaky voice. “This isn’t funny.”
Suddenly her eyes rounded, her face turned white, and she swayed in place. For a second I though she might pass out. Something wasn’t right.
I rushed to her side. “Mom?”
She gripped my arm, her face twisted in shock. “Jake?”
Kyle immediately jumped from his chair. Clearly stunned by her question, we both exchanged identical gasps of astonishment.
“Jake? Please… if it’s you… please talk to me.” And then, as if some lever had been switched on in her brain, the mother I knew was suddenly back and ready to take action. She turned to me. “Go get your dad.”
Not wanting to leave her side, I said, “Quinn, you’re a fast runner. Go get Daddy.”
He took off as fast as his little legs would take him.
“Is it Jake?” Kyle asked, and his face shone with the first glimmer of hope in five weeks.
“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? Are you hurt?”
We all stood transfixed, waiting for something, some confirmation. Dad, his face flushed, rushed into the kitchen with Quinn at his heels.
“Please, if this is a joke, it’s not funny,” Mom said in a trembling voice.
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 to amaze me.
“Hang up! Don’t play this game. It’s just another sicko!” Dad blasted out the words as he slammed his fist on the counter.
“I don’t know, Scott. It sounds like him, but he’s talking like a child, calling me Mommy.”
“Then it’s not him.”
“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 where you are.”
“What did he say to you?” Dad asked.
“He asked if I remembered him. Why would he ask that?”
“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 to bewilderment.
“Who is this?” my father asked into the phone, but there was no response, just more coughing. “What nickname do you call Grandma’s dog?”
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 out a fake.
“I’m taking it off speaker mode,” Mom said frantically. “I can’t hear him.”
“Because he’s not answering, Michelle,” Dad replied, defeated. “It’s not him.”
“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 eyes grew wide.
“What did you say? I couldn’t hear you. Say it again.”
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 it possible.
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 be rescued.
“Jake, put the receiver down and go hide. The police are on the way.”
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 further at risk.
“Give me the phone,” Dad demanded.
“No.” Mom held the receiver tighter in her grip. “He needs me.”
“The guy stabbed him, Michelle. What do you think he’s going to do when he finds Jake on the phone? Give it to me.”
Mom reluctantly handed the phone over to him, and my father spoke forcefully into the mouthpiece, “Jake, this is Dad. The police are on the way. We are coming to get you. I want you to hang up the phone. Hang up and go hide. Do what I say! Right now!”
After a moment of silence, the line went dead… plunging us all, head first, into a whole new hell. Jake had all but come back from the dead, only to proclaim to our mother that he was dying. Why give him back just to take him again? Just to survive long enough to get to the hospital, Jake would have to overcome huge obstacles, not the least of which was a knife-wielding monster.
As soon as the connection was lost, Mom went ballistic, pounding on my dad’s chest, accusing him of abandoning Jake in his moment of need. For me, the room began to spin as nausea set in. No. Please. No more. I’d hit my limit and couldn’t stand another second of the strife and uncertainty.
I ran for my room, my sanctuary, the place where I could put distance between myself and the reality of the world in which I lived. Once inside my safe zone, I slid down the wall, covering my ears. I didn’t want to hear. I didn’t want to know. They could find me when it was all over… when there was an answer. When they knew for sure whether my brother was alive or dead.
Unraveling, my breaths came out in strangled gasps. Please. Please. Please. We couldn’t get Jake back for the briefest of moments only to have him ripped away again. Please let him live. I was certain my brother would do his part. He’d proven his strength. He’d survived this long and could make it another few minutes. Don’t take him away. If Jake were allowed to live, everything would be okay, and we’d have our family back and be normal and happy again. If I could be granted that one wish, Jake’s life, I’d never ask for another thing for as long as I lived.
The door opened and Kyle appeared, tears streaming down his face.
“They found him?” I asked, biting back the hysteria.
“Not yet. Can I…”
I reached out my arms and he dove into my body, burying his head into my shoulder. Together we remained, crying, waiting, hoping, and praying. And then they came with the answer.
It had been a good three hours since Jake’s fateful phone call. The busy energy of the hospital was a blur to me. My mind was focused solely on Jake and what his life must have been like for the past five weeks. Images of his suffering flashed before my eyes, and no matter how hard I tried to turn the pictures off, they’d grabbed hold of my imagination and wouldn’t let me go. The
terror… oh god… how could he have survived it alone? At least we had done our suffering as a dysfunctional unit, but Jake… he’d had no one. The fear alone would have done me in. My body shook in protest, and I covered my eyes with the palms of my hands, hoping the darkness would turn off the grisly slideshow.
Kyle’s incessant fidgeting caught my attention.
“You okay?” I asked.
He hadn’t left my side since the time we’d shared in my room. Kyle didn’t look up but nodded nonetheless. His leg was bobbing up and down. I laid my hand on it and the movement stopped.
“I’m so scared,” he said.
“I know. We should hear something soon.”
“I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I can’t help it. I feel like I’m in some dream, and I’m going to wake up and he’ll still be gone.”
I reached over and pinched him.
“Ow,” he complained, flinching away.
“You’re awake. This is happening.”
Kyle nodded, looking down at his feet. I heard the hesitation in his voice as he asked, “What if, after all this, he doesn’t make it through the surgery?”
“He’ll make it.”
“How do you know?”
I didn’t know; my thoughts were the same as his. There was a very real possibility Jake wouldn’t survive even after everything he’d been through, but I felt the need to be strong for Kyle. He deserved that much.
“Because this is our miracle, Kyle,” I said, shaking with emotion. “We earned it.”
My little brother didn’t respond to me in words, but he laid his head against my shoulder as if I’d brought great comfort to his weary soul. I hugged him to me and we sat like that for some time before Keith, flushed and sweaty, burst through the waiting room door. It was about goddamn time! I shot out of my seat and stomped over to him.
“Where have you been?”
Keith flinched away as I drew near, the murderous expression on my face clearly startling him. It had taken him a week to recover from the beating, and I had hoped, after Dad had paid his debt and recovered his car, that he’d learned his lesson. But like the addict he was now presenting himself to be, it didn’t take long for him to climb out his bedroom window and disappear from our lives once more.
“I’m sorry. I messed up.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Angry tears rolled down my cheeks in big, slobbery lines as I delivered a few punches to his arms and chest. Keith didn’t even try to fight me off because he knew damn well that he deserved the girly beating. The guilt on his face was not lost on me, but I was too angry to care. When I’d tired myself out, Keith wrapped his arms around me, hugging me, and I sobbed into his shoulder.
“I’m so sorry, Emma. There’s nothing I can say that will make this better. We can talk about this later, but right now I need to know about Jake. Is he okay?”
Our parents reentered the waiting area. They’d been called out an hour earlier to be briefed on the investigation by a pair of FBI agents. One look at their worn, tear-streaked faces made my heart clench in fear.
“What happened?” I asked.
They looked at each other, hesitant to speak.
“Nooo,” Kyle burst out. Mom went to him immediately.
“It’s not that,” she soothed him. “Jake’s still in surgery. It’s not that.”
“What aren’t you telling us?” Keith asked, as if he hadn’t just rejoined our family seconds ago.
Our parents exchanged another nauseous look before Dad spoke. “The guy who kidnapped Jake is dead.”
It wasn’t what any of us expected to hear. I looked to my siblings. Their confusion matched my own.
“Okay. That’s good, right?” I asked.
“It’s…uh… they think Jake did it.”
“Did what?” I couldn’t comprehend what my father was saying. It was just too unbelievable.
“They think Jake killed him.”
This time the words burned through my chest, nearly stopping my heart. I couldn’t come up with a coherent response.
Keith spoke for me. “That’s not… no way could he kill someone.”
Mom dissolved into tears, and I shook my head in disbelief. Was it really true? I looked to my father for explanation.
He sighed before continuing. “Here’s what they’re saying…”
“Who’s saying?” Keith interrupted.
“The FBI. They’re saying that there were only two people inside the house: Jake and his kidnapper. Both had been stabbed. When they found the man’s body, there was only one set of bloody footprints leading away from it: Jake’s.”
“So, you’re saying by the time he called us, the guy was already dead?” I asked.
“It appears that way,” Dad said, nodding.
A stunned silence followed as we all let the truth sink in. Well, I guess it made sense now why Jake didn’t seem concerned about getting caught on the phone. Keith finally broke the moment of reflection by sinking down into the closest chair and mumbling, “Jesus.”
None of us spoke after that. Shock filled the open spaces. Mom rubbed Kyle’s back as Dad shifted back and forth with that same sick expression he’d had on his face when he’d entered the room. There was a lot more he wasn’t saying. Obviously their briefing had been much more in-depth than what they were sharing with us. How bad could it have been for him to actually kill someone? I mean, Jake… the most mild-mannered kid alive! The reality of what he’d been through was sinking in, and at that moment I knew with certainty that the truth of what he’d endured in those five weeks would be more than any of us could bear.
14
Finn: Breakfast Of Champions
“Are you almost done in there?” Emma’s impatient voice drifted through the bathroom door.
“Easy there,” I answered back. “Are you that eager to see me naked?”
“No, I just want to see you without the baseball cap.”
My cap? I swiped my hand over the mirror to get a look at my unruly locks.
“Why? You got a thing for curly hair?”
“No. Quite the opposite, actually.”
I opened the bathroom door and cocked one brow in her direction.
“Yep, that’s what I thought.” She nodded and turned away.
“What’s wrong with my hair?”
“Nothing,” she said, grinning.
“Obviously there is if you had to specifically mention it. Is this one of your weird germ-phobia things?”
“No.” Emma laughed. “Unless, of course, you have little creatures growing in that crazy wilderness – then keep away from me.”
I exaggerated my ‘offended look’ for her benefit. “I’ll have you know that normal women find my curl-to-lash ratio a major selling point.”
“Only because you have a handsome face. It offsets the rest,” she replied, sounding bored; but when she caught my eye, hers twinkled in amusement.
“You have an interesting way of delivering compliments, Emma.”
“I’m only teasing you because you know you’re hot.”
“So you’re saying if I had a face like a gargoyle, you’d be nicer to me?”
“Of course.” Emma stood up, stretching. Her long angles and toned body were a visual I didn’t need if I was going to be coming out of the bathroom anytime soon. “Finn,” she said, whining. “I have to brush my teeth.”
I opened the door wide for her to join me. “Be my guest.”
“You are my guest. Now hurry up.”
“I’m almost done. You keep distracting me with all your nit-picky little insults.” I shut the door on her, but then remembered one more detail I thought she might appreciate and opened the door again. “And the only creatures that would be growing in my hair would be ones I’d specifically put there.”
“Do I even want to know?”
“There was this kitten once…”
“You’re so weird, I can’t even deal.”
Grinning, I shut the door. That should do it. I gra
bbed my backpack and took a quick look at my less-than-appealing reflection in the mirror. Did I actually have to prove to this woman that I was more attractive than she was giving me credit for? Jesus, she was finicky… I loved it.
All right. You know what? Game on! If she wanted pretty, I’d give her pretty.
After performing a quick shave and sprucing up the old curls, I was satisfied with my transformation and ready to vacate the premises until a throbbing ache in my ribs doubled me over. I heard Emma groan from outside the door when I turned the shower on again. I’m not positive, but I think she made some snarky comment about me jacking off. The thought had actually crossed my mind. This could be a rough night without one.
I stuck my head in the shower and inhaled a heavy dose of steam. The humid temperature filled the small room, opening up my lungs and making breathing slightly less uncomfortable. I thought back to the doctor’s advice. When he’d said to take it easy for the next few days, I was pretty sure he hadn’t been envisioning a weekend like mine.
Once I’d wrapped an elastic bandage around my ribs, an internal debate over clothing became my new focus. What exactly was she expecting tonight? Was this truly going to be a platonic situation, or did she expect me to make a move? And if I made a move that was unwanted, would she turn me over to the security guard in the hallway? And what the hell was all that about anyway? Emma was definitely a mystery. Her signals were all over the place. If she were a traffic light, cars would be colliding right and left. In the end, I opted for a t-shirt and boxers, deciding it was the most neutral of all the options.
Big mistake. The minute I stepped out of the bathroom, my eyes focused on Emma, who had changed into a form-fitting white tank top and flowy shorts that reached high up on her shapely thighs. The room was chilly, and her nipples had taken notice. I immediately stiffened, and I was forced to cover my bulge with the backpack. I shuffled to the couch and sat down, replacing my backpack with a pillow and willing my body to behave. Emma stared at me, but it was unclear what she thought of my makeover. Her lack of reaction gave me no encouragement.
