“This isn’t like Kaden. He would have called me by now,” as soon as he said this, Ethan regretted it. Amelia was already anxious enough.
“Try not to worry too much, Amelia. You know how he likes to be alone when he needs to clear his head. Let’s leave it till this afternoon. I’ll call you then, unless I have some news before that, okay?”
As Ethan put his phone in his pocket he thought of one last place he could try.
Pulling up outside the high street store where Kaden bought most of his clothes and shoes, Ethan felt he was clutching at straws as he went in.
“My friend was supposed to buy some shoes today, Kaden Seager, do you know him? He comes in here a lot.”
The guy behind the counter recognized Ethan.
“Sure I know him, he was in yesterday, late afternoon. Bought a nice pair of boots and gave me his old ones to bin. I still have them, do you want me to get them for you?”
Ethan nodded and sat down on a wooden bench just inside the door.
“I was going to give them to a homeless guy I know. There’s still a lot of wear left in them, Kaden said it would be okay. I did ask him,” the young man handed the boots over to Ethan.
“Thanks. That’s fine. He would want someone to get good use out of these, but I need to take them for now.” Ethan quickly left the store.
Driving through the back streets and down by the docks, Ethan was trying to find a place where Kaden may have parked his pick-up before heading for the high street the day before. As he turned into a vacant lot, there it was, parked up against the wall of an old abandoned factory. Lots of people used the area as a free car park while shopping in town. It was safe enough in the daytime.
Ethan got out and looked inside the pick-up but it was empty and locked. He couldn’t decide whether this was good or bad. There were no hostels or hotels around where Kaden could have stayed the night and neither of them knew anyone living in the area. Ethan decided that the best thing to do was get in contact with Amelia straight away. He wrote a note for Kaden and put it on the windscreen of the pick-up, then got back into his car. His friend’s old boots sat beside him on the passenger seat. Ethan had a knot in his stomach as he drove home.
“I’m coming straight over,” was Amelia’s response when Ethan gave her his news.
“Mom is expecting to meet up with me for lunch, she knows I’ve been in touch with you. I’ll be at your place in twenty minutes.”
“Traffic’s getting heavy, it’ll take me about half an hour to get back,” said Ethan.
“Should have bought yourself a motorbike,” she mocked and hung up.
Amelia explained to Megan why she had to rush off, promising to call her later.
Listening to the sound of her friend’s bike roaring into the distance, Megan thought about the tense atmosphere that always seemed to linger in the house across the street. It was why they almost always had sleep-overs at her place. Amelia and Kaden were the complete opposite of each other, and their parents were too.
“My mom and dad are so alike in everything, they hardly ever disagree. Maybe that’s why Amelia likes to spend so much time here,” thought Megan, “Even Estelle has been coming over quite a lot lately.”
Lydia, Megan’s mother, had become a good friend of Estelle’s when they moved in across the street ten years before. They hit it off straight away and so did their two daughters. Both women were involved in a charity that fed and housed homeless boys. Megan’s father, Grant Brubaker, and a group of business associates had set up Soup n Sleep some years back. When the women’s hostel, Haven, moved to a bigger premises it was a good opportunity for the city to open up a place for boys. Grant set up the charity and even sourced a high protein soup that would help unfortunate boys to cope with their hard life on the streets.
It was Estelle who suggested that her husband, being a local politician, might be a good addition to the board that ran the charity. As that would mean him spending even more time at meetings, Lloyd turned down the position but offered to promote Soup n Sleep and help raise funds instead. That was how Lloyd Seager became the face of the only boys’ shelter in the city. His image was on all of their posters, including magazine and TV ads. Because of his involvement with the charity their donations had tripled. Lloyd was a popular and well liked man. Unfortunately, that was about to make life very difficult for him and endanger his family.
CHAPTER FIVE
Kaden had a throbbing headache when he came round. He tried to sit up but could only move his head. The air was filled with a stench of urine. Forcing his eyes to stay open he looked around the dimly lit van. There seemed to be other people strapped onto stretchers. A few of them were groaning and one was struggling to get free. After the first surge of panic, Kaden took a deep breath and tried to piece together the weird images flashing through his mind.
He remembered a young teenager bringing him to a place that served up some tasty soup - where he also had a shower and slept in a large dorm. Besides the headache, there seemed to be more pain in other parts of his body. His ribs were killing him and he wondered if he had he been in an accident?
Suddenly the van stopped. Kaden lifted his head and squinted at the light coming from the door that had just opened. A man wearing overhauls climbed in and went from one stretcher to another with something in his hand. Kaden looked at the person on his left, who had been struggling but went very limp as the man in the dark clothes put something over his mouth.
Knowing he was next, Kaden closed his eyes and tried to stay perfectly still, pretending to be asleep. When he felt a damp cloth cover his mouth and nose it made him gag. He opened his eyes wide while trying to hold his breath. As he struggled to remain conscious, the last thing Kaden saw was a pair of dark eyes. They were set in a face with a deep scar running down its left side - a mask covering the mouth and nose of whoever it was.
The driver was fuming as he sat back into the van. The drug administered at the shelter was supposed to keep the boys sedated for two days - giving him enough time to transport them to the clinic. He had taken two short breaks to catch up on some sleep, but that had been included in the length of time the journey would take.
“That’s the second time this has happened on a trip,” the driver muttered to himself. “They had better be more careful in future at that shelter and make sure they give the proper dose. Those kids are going to feel bad enough when they come round, without having to knock them out twice in forty eight hours.”
The rain was so heavy it was slowing down the traffic, adding another couple of hours to the journey. The driver was getting hungry and decided to pull into a service station to eat, taking the next exit off the motorway. It was a good thing his cargo had come round while he was still on the road. Having the clinic logo on the van helped in case he was stopped - but six kids yelling inside while it was parked in a public place would definitely attract attention.
When the van stopped moving, Tuck lifted his head and looked towards the door. He felt a bit dazed, he must have inhaled a little bit of whatever was on that cloth, but it wasn’t enough to put him out cold. He could hold his breath for quite a long time if he needed to. Having a father who got his kicks trying to drown his own son taught him that little trick.
Wondering if he should risk shouting for help, Tuck tried to figure out where the van was parked. He was aware of the drone of traffic in the distance. The rain was so heavy it was difficult to hear anything else. Tuck looked at the young man on his right. He knew him from somewhere. He could see in the dim light that his face was bruised and scratched and he looked as if he had been in a fight.
With a shock, Tuck realized he was lying next to the guy he had attacked and robbed the day before. Thinking he must have been picked up off the street, Tuck wondered how it was possible for both of them to have ended up in the same van. As he was trying to make sense of the situation, Tuck became aware of a female voice arguing with someone outside. Hoping to get their attention, he shouted at the top o
f his voice.
The couple, who were standing under a large umbrella, stopped talking and looked at the side of the van. The signage on it told them it belonged to the Brubaker Clinic. The woman tried the door but it was locked. She could hear Tuck inside crying out for help.
Turning to the man she had just been rowing with, she said, “That poor guy in there sounds like he’s in a lot of pain, maybe the driver is in the diner. We should go tell him.”
They listened again. Her companion put his head closer to the van so he could hear better, letting the rain pour down his face.
“I’m sure he just said that he’s been kidnapped, did you hear that too?” the man said.
“You’re too drunk to make out what I’m saying to you - never mind what’s coming from inside there,” she said, turning to enter the diner.
The door swung open as she put her hand on it and a tall man with a deep scar on his face came out carrying a pizza box and a coffee in one hand, his keys in the other. The logo on his overhauls matched the one on the side of the vehicle.
“Are you the driver of this van?” she asked holding the umbrella over both of them, while her companion got drenched.
“I am, is there a problem?”
“Yes, there certainly is. Can’t you hear someone shouting for help? They sound like they are in agony. I was just coming back in to look for you.”
As she said this there was another roar from Tuck who was getting desperate. He knew he was taking a risk but what did he have to lose? He figured that if anyone had wanted to kill him, he would be dead already.
“That poor guy is on his way to a doctor. He’s not in any pain, but he is psychotic and could be dangerous. For his own safety, he’s strapped to a stretcher in there,” explained the driver. “He must have come round and panicked while I was getting some food. I needed a break from driving and thought his medication would last till I got him to the clinic. I’ll give him something to calm him down.”
To reassure her, the man pulled out his ID and held it up to the light coming through the glass door of the diner. That seemed to work. The woman smiled and called to her companion, who followed her to their car. The man, who was soaking, got into the passenger seat and glared at her.
“Aren’t you lucky that van door was locked? I can’t believe you tried to open it. What if that psycho had gotten out? He might have killed us,” he growled.
As she switched on the ignition and turned up the heater the woman thought about what they had heard.
“Well he might be a psycho but he was definitely in pain, you could hear it in his voice. Anyway we didn’t get killed - unfortunately, you are still here nagging me to death,” she sighed.
******
When he had put his coffee and food on the dashboard, the van driver took out a syringe and an ampoule. “This should be enough to knock out a horse,” he thought as he went to the back of the van and opened the door.
Tuck was still shouting at the top of his voice. By the time he saw the large, dark figure coming towards him it was too late to close his eyes and pretend to be unconscious.
“Who are you? Why am I here? What are you going to do with us?”
As the young man asked these questions, his captor was silently filling the syringe with the drug from the ampoule. The needle was plunged into Tuck’s arm and in spite of being strapped down so securely he managed to grab hold of his attacker’s clothes. As the man leaned in close to him a piece of paper landed on Tuck’s hand.
Standing back watching his prisoner’s face the man began to count quietly to himself. He waited until Tuck’s eyes closed before grabbing a handful of hair and shaking his head, letting it drop back onto the stretcher.
“There’s no way he can fight that much serum,” thought the driver as he locked the back doors of the van.
The last thing Tuck remembered was grabbing hold of a piece of paper. Even though he was drifting into a drugged sleep he felt it was important to hold onto it. He clenched his fist as tight as he could, before passing out.
As he ate his supper and drove through the night, the driver thought about what lay ahead for his cargo of young men. Some of them looked about fourteen. But they were all healthy, considering the life they were living.
“At least now they will be of use to society. This is a far better solution than jail and the cost of keeping them there. There will be dangers ahead of them, but prison isn’t any safer - I can vouch for that.”
Thinking about his past caused the driver to run a hand over the scar on his face. There was no sound coming from inside the van and the rest of the journey, although difficult in such heavy rain, was without incident.
After a couple of hours, the exit he was looking out for appeared and the driver left the motorway. A half hour later he pulled up in front of large thick wooden gates with the name of the clinic written in an arc across them. Using the remote he’d been given with the van, the driver waited for them to fully open before proceeding along a dark, tree lined road.
There was no moon that night. It wasn’t until the van got nearer to the clinic that he saw a beam of light cutting through the heavy rain. It came from the porch at the front of the building. He knew not to stop there and made his way around to the back entrance. As he parked up two figures came out to meet him.
“You took your time, the drugs will be wearing off soon and we need to get them secured inside before they come round,” one of the men said as they got into the van to start unloading the stretchers.
The van driver waited until they were inside and out of the rain, before telling them about the second dose he was forced to administer to the young men.
“They didn’t use a strong enough mixture when they knocked them out at the shelter,” he told the two medics, who were now running a body scan machine over each sleeping form.
“They seem okay. The second dose didn’t do them any harm, their readings are all normal,” said the man who was starting to scan Tuck.
An alarm went off as the machine moved over the young man’s head, which took them all by surprise.
“That one had a third dose, by injection” said the driver.
“I had no choice, he was ranting and raving. I don’t know why he wasn’t knocked out with the others, they all had the same dose.”
“It’s okay, it won’t kill him. He’ll just be out for longer, that’s all, and he’s going to wake up with a major migraine. When you get back, make sure you tell them to check the dosage next time. Are you staying here tonight?” the older of the two medics asked as he ran the machine once more over Tuck.
“If that’s okay with you. I don’t fancy driving through the night in this weather.”
The younger medic placed the machine back on its stand and turned to the older man.
“I can bring him down to the office and sort out a room for the night. Will you be able to finish up here without me?”
“Yes, you go on ahead, I won’t be long. Make some fresh coffee while you’re there” said the older medic as he got some covers to place over the sleeping boys. They would start to wake up in a couple of hours, and would have to get cleaned, fed and ready for another trip. Before he left the room the man looked around at the six stretchers and felt sorry for the poor street kids unconscious before him. He had grandchildren their age and it would kill him to think of any of them ending up where those young men were going.
CHAPTER SIX
Ethan heard the roar of a bike and knew who it was.
“Come on up. I’ve a coffee ready for you,” he said to the intercom when it buzzed.
As Amelia came through the door she took one look at his face and knew she wasn’t the only one worried about her brother. He showed her the boots Kaden had left at the store. Then he explained where the pick-up was parked and that he felt it was not a place his friend would have chosen to stay the night.
“Even if he did sleep there, where is he now and why hasn’t he been in touch with either of us?”
>
“I know, Ethan, I’ve been asking myself the same questions. Kaden would never have left it this long before getting in contact with one of us.” Amelia took a deep breath, “I’m going ask Mom to meet me here, is that okay with you?”
Ethan nodded and went into the kitchen while she made the call.
When he returned he was carrying a tray with two cups of coffee and some crackers and cheese.
“Thought you might be hungry,” he said as he placed the food on the table in front of Amelia.
“Sorry, but I couldn’t eat a thing, my stomach is churning. I just know something is very wrong,” she said.
Ethan turned to look out of the window before answering.
“There’s got to be a reasonable explanation for this. Kaden is well able to take care of himself. Can you think of anyone else he may have stayed with, Amelia?”
“On my way over I checked out a couple of places I thought he might have been to, but nobody has seen him. I didn’t want to worry Mom so I haven’t said anything to her. When she gets here and finds out he’s missing she might think of somewhere else we can look.”
Amelia covered her face with her hands suddenly realizing how tired she was. Ethan sat down beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders. He tried to think of something reassuring to say, but he felt the same way as she did and knew she would see through it. So they sat there, both getting some small comfort from their closeness until the intercom buzzed, making them jump. Amelia was first to stand up. She let her mother into the building.
When they told Estelle Seager about Kaden being missing and finding his empty pick-up down town, a wave of panic passed over her face, just for an instant. Taking out her phone, she made four or five calls in quick succession. Finally, with no word of her son, she turned to Amelia.
“Okay. Between the three of us, we have checked out every place that Kaden might gone. Nobody has any news of him. The last person to speak to him, that we know of, was the guy in the shop down town where he bought the shoes - and that was yesterday afternoon. I’m calling your father.”
Finding 01 Finding Kaden Page 3
