Stolen Son: A gripping psychological thriller that will have you hooked

by Cole Baxter

  “Doesn’t your notebook tell you all that? I lost everything from amnesia.”

  “That’s rough. How is your memory doing now?”

  I shrugged. “Some days are better than others. It took me years to remember everything that happened before the attack.”

  “But you do remember it all now?”

  Shaking my head, I tried again to recall what had happened on that fateful night. My body shook, my head starting to hurt instantly. I was used to the pain. “Mostly, everything right up to the attack. The rest is still in bits and pieces. I don’t know who attacked me, if that’s what you’re asking. All I know is that it was the same man.”

  “How can you be sure?” Reyes asked.

  I glared at him. “Because you remember the person who had his way with you repeatedly. You remember their smell, the shape of their body, everything but what the police need to catch him. When someone spends a month shoving their dick, fist, and anything else they find lying around inside your body, you can’t forget.” My voice cracked. “No matter how hard you try.”

  His eyes grew wide, a red blush gracing his cheeks as he quickly looked away from me and back down to the notebook. “Um.”

  Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes. “Listen, if you aren’t going to help me find my baby, then go away. I can do it without you.”

  “Annabeth,” he said softly. “I really want to help you, but we just don’t have a lot to go on. Is there anything else at all that you can tell me? Eye color, hair?”

  “No!” I yelled, my temper finally breaking through. “I’ve told you everything! Why don’t you send the nurse in here so she can get me out of this place on your way out, okay?”

  Reyes raised his hands in a show of surrender, taking a step back while I calmed down. His eyes shifted briefly to the door, but instead of leaving, he waited. All I wanted was for him to go away. I wanted time to collect my thoughts and try to get a plan together. If I couldn’t count on the police, I would take care of it myself. Reyes didn’t seem to understand just how dire the situation really was.

  “I’m sorry I upset you,” he said after a while. “I can’t imagine how I would feel if one of my girls went missing. You are handling all of this much better than I would.”

  My eyes lifted in surprise. “You have kids?”

  He nodded. “Two girls. Their mother passed away three years ago.”

  “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “It’s okay. There was no way for you to know. I don’t really share details of my life on cases, but it seemed like you needed to know.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “How old are they?”

  A sly grin passed his lips. “Twin girls, seven. They certainly give me a run for my money. Your son has Asperger’s, correct?”

  I nodded. “He’s high-functioning though. Only certain things set him off, like loud noises. He’s so smart though. I had to hire a tutor for myself just to keep up with him. He loves puzzles.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing then. Perhaps he’ll be able to find a way to escape the kidnapper.”

  “I wish I could have the same faith as you, but I’ve been there before, wherever the man held me. It’s a maze. I don’t even know if we were in a building.”

  “You told the nurse the last time you were here that it smelled damp? Perhaps a basement?”

  I shuddered. “I just don’t know. All I can think about is finding him. I feel so useless sitting here, doing nothing.”

  “But you aren’t doing nothing,” Reyes said as he carefully took a step closer to me. “The more details that I have about the man who took him and what you went through last time, the better my chances are of being able to catch him.”

  “You want to know about the last time?” I asked.

  My heart started to race. The idea of reliving the past wasn’t something I took lightly. I’d spent years trying to keep things bottled up inside. I knew it wasn’t healthy to keep things in. My doctor had said as much several times. But opening up to a complete stranger? That was almost more than I could take altogether. Why would I tell him the sordid details of my capture? I shuddered and closed my eyes, softly shaking my head.

  “Annabeth, how am I going to find your son unless you can help me?” he pressed. “Do it for your boy, not for me or anyone else. Help me find him, please.”

  I took a deep breath, shuddering at the memory as I cleared my throat. “Some of it, I remember like it was yesterday. Some details still come and go. I can’t count on them. Most of the time, I wonder if I can even count on myself.”

  I looked up at him and chuckled. “You might want to pull up a chair. This is going to take a little bit of time.”

  He grinned, quickly grabbing a chair from the corner of the room and pulling it close to the bed. “I have all the time in the world.”

  “But Gregory might not,” I whispered.

  When he reached across the bed and gently took my hand, I winced and pulled away. The shocking realization that his touch didn’t send me running for the door wasn’t something I could think about. I had to be strong for my son. I’d already faced down the monster, but now he had my boy. I had to stay focused, no matter how painful it was.

  “It’s strange,” I whispered. “Even the simplest things like the color of my attacker’s eyes elude me at times, but not Greg. Everything about him is crystal clear.”

  “Did you lose any memories of him when you woke up last time?”

  I nodded my head. “It’s very disconcerting to wake up and not be sure of who you are. My mother would sit at my side for hours and show me pictures, hoping to jog some recollection. Listening to her and hearing the heartbreak in her voice were almost unbearable. Slowly, pieces of it started to come back, but I still didn’t recognize the carefree, young, and happy woman I saw in the pictures. It was only when she showed me Gregory’s photo that I started to remember him.”

  “Then,” I stammered, “Then, she told me what happened. How they had found his body in the cabin that we were renting for our honeymoon.”

  “You were married young,” Reyes pressed.

  “Very. Nineteen. But my mother loved Gregory like her own son. He was just a few years older than me, but our love was the kind you find in a fairytale. We met in school as children and grew up together. When we announced our engagement, my mother wasn’t even surprised. She loved him almost as much as I did.”

  “What about his family?”

  “He never really had one. His older brother took care of him, but he was just a kid himself, to be honest. By the time Gregory was eighteen, he was living with my mother and me. He went right to college and still worked to help her pay bills. We were just kids, of course, and broke up a time or two. But our love was stronger than the outside world, and we always seemed to find each other again.”

  “That’s beautiful,” he whispered.

  I chucked. “It’s tragic. I never wanted a story like Romeo and Juliet. We had a simple wedding, neither of us having much family. Just my mom, my brother, and Jacob.”

  Reyes’s eyebrows lifted. “You’ve known Mr. Morse that long?”

  I nodded. “He did some work for my mother when I was a teen. I guess we sort of adopted him into the family after that.”

  “That’s very admirable of her.”

  I shrugged. “I never really thought much of it. He needed a family and we had the room. I think people see him and think the worst. He’s harmless, really. He’s just got a short fuse sometimes.”

  “Very little respect for authority too, it would seem.”

  I cocked my head. “I’ve never seen that side of him.”

  Reyes shook his head, a somewhat fake smile appearing. “Please, continue with your story. I don’t want to get off track.”

  I frowned but dropped the subject. If he was going to help me find Gregory, I had to stay focused. Getting sidetracked talking about Jacob wasn’t going to help anyone.

  “Um,” I muttered. “Righ
t. So, we were married. My mother paid for us to get a cabin in the Catskills for a weekend. He was working, and I was finishing up college, so it was just for a few nights.” I sighed as I recalled the memory. “That was all we needed though. Just a little time for us to really be a married couple.”

  “You were still living with your mother at that point?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but she didn’t mind us even then. It wasn’t supposed to be our forever home. We’d been saving for months to rent our own place. The proudest moment of our lives was the day we signed the lease. I was going to tell my mother when we got back from our honeymoon.”

  I swallowed as I continued. “The first night there was wonderful. The next day, I left just for a few minutes to go down to the store. We’d drunk our way through a bottle of wine and had every intention of doing the same that evening. It was raining, and the roads were slick.”

  The memories were overpowering. I blinked back the tears. The closer we got to the kidnapping and later, the torture, the more I felt myself becoming unhinged. I knew from my sessions with Dr. Andrews that I had to breathe. If I didn’t, then I would have a panic attack for certain, and I’d be no closer to the answers Reyes and I both needed. I glanced at him beneath my eyelashes. He sat, waiting so patiently for me to tell him more. Where was he ten years ago when my husband’s murder had gone unsolved?

  “Are you okay?” he asked softly.

  “Yeah,” I croaked. “I haven’t shared this with anyone besides my doctor. It’s just going to take me a little time.”

  “I understand,” Reyes said as he sat back.

  “So, the road getting to the cabin was a mess. The mud was one of the first memories that came back to me. Everything was washed out. When I got back to the cabin, I saw tracks in the mud. It was one of those things that I just didn’t think about until it was too late. I thought maybe the cabin was up high enough that my tracks hadn’t been washed out. There was no car waiting for me, nothing. I think back to that moment and wonder if I had been more cautious, more vigilant, maybe things would be different.”

  “Hey,” he whispered. “You can’t be doing that to yourself. You couldn’t know what would be waiting for you.”

  “Or who,” I gasped.

  All at once, it came flooding back to me. I started to shake.

  “Annabeth?” His voice sounded far away.

  “I can’t!” My chest hurt. I closed down, giving up my life up to the darkness.

  Chapter Three

  “Annabeth?” Reyes whispered. “Hey, do I need to get the nurse?”

  I swallowed as everything came back into focus. I hadn’t had a blackout in so long that it caught me off guard. Whenever they came, new memories followed close behind. I wasn’t sure if I wanted them, even though they slowly filled in the blanks that were missing.

  “No,” I croaked. “I don’t want that woman back in here. Just give me a second.”

  He nodded his head in understanding as he sat back against the chair. I was grateful for the space. The room always felt like it was closing in around me for some time after an attack. The air felt thick, heavier than it should. I sucked in a sharp breath as the first memory came back to me. It wasn’t much but it was enough to knock me off kilter.

  “It was muddy,” I whispered.

  “Outside?” Reyes pressed gently.

  I shook my head vigorously. He wasn’t understanding me and that made sense. My words were barely comprehensible as the memory flooded back. I looked down at my fingers. Though they were clean, I knew that they had once been covered in mud. Gritty mud that had been sitting in the room for some time. It made my skin feel thick, crackling underneath the pressure as I rubbed them together. Plus, it had a strong, pungent smell to it. Like rotting oil.

  “There was mud wherever I was being held. Moisture on a dirt floor,” I told him, still looking down at my fingers.

  “So, like a basement?” Reyes asked.

  “I don’t know. It would make sense with the smell. But the mud, they should have tested it when I was free. I know that it was still there when I left.”

  “I can find out if they kept the evidence at the precinct,” he said quickly as he pulled out his phone.

  “Not right now,” I whispered to him. “If I don’t get this out of me now, I can’t be sure that I will ever have the courage to share it with you again.”

  Instantly, he slipped his phone back into his pocket and gave me his undivided attention. It was nice to have someone there who really cared. But it reminded me of my other commitments.

  “How bad off is my brother?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “The knife nicked his spine. You are the only reason he is alive. Calling 911 was crucial.”

  “He isn’t awake?”

  “No, they have him in a medically induced coma. Any movement on his part could sever the nerves and leave him paralyzed for life. They are hoping to get him into surgery before they wake him up, but they can’t even do that until his condition has stabilized a little bit. Do you want me to go get your mother? I know the doctors told her you were awake.”

  I winced. “I think that she wants to be with my brother. I can’t believe this is happening. If anything happens to Tom, my mother will never forgive me.”

  “You saved his life,” Reyes reminded me.

  “It wouldn’t have been in danger if that maniac wasn’t obsessed with me to begin with.”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” he whispered before flipping through his notebook. “Do you feel like you are ready to continue?”

  I ground my teeth. The only way I was going to get through things was by pressing forward. I nodded, ready to face my demons once again.

  “The first sign that something was off was the door. It was open. The mountains were brisk, and Greg had been stocking the fireplace when I left, so at first, I thought maybe it was just too much heat and he’d cracked it open. I called for him when I went in but there was that damn mud again. The tracks were too big for Greg. My heart was beating so loudly I couldn’t even hear my own thoughts. I went around the corner to the kitchen, wondering if we had a guest.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because the owner mentioned he was going to stop by at some point to add chemicals to the hot tub. He was an older man, super friendly.”

  “But it wasn’t him, was it?” Reyes whispered.

  I sobbed, my body trembling as I shook my head. “No, it was my Greg. He—” I choked. “He was just lying there on the ground. He wasn’t moving and there was blood everywhere. The bag fell from my hands and glass shattered. The wine, it splashed into . . . into his blood.”

  “Hey,” Reyes said, quickly cutting me off. “We don’t need to get into all that, okay? Just skip to what happened next. You don’t need to be going through it all again. I can find out the details some other way.”

  I nodded my head vigorously, thankful for his sensitivity on the subject. “After I got back to my feet, I heard someone approaching me from behind. I spun around, but by that time, the man was already right behind me. I didn’t even have time to scream before he pressed a rag to my mouth. The doctors said they thought it was chloroform from how I felt. Everything went dark after that until I woke up in that place.”

  “You called it a maze?” he asked. “Is that right?”

  “Yes and no. That’s the closest I could think of it, but in reality, it was probably just a few locked doors. Either way, I couldn’t find my way out, at least not for a while.”

  “You were missing for over a month?”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “It sounds like your son surviving in your womb was a miracle.”

  I smiled, thinking of my boy. “He always was a fighter.”

  “Then he will keep fighting now. Everything you’ve told me is incredibly helpful. I’d like to get out there and start looking for this monster. Every second counts when a child is missing.”

  “Thank you,” I whispere
d.

  As Reyes stood and held out his hand, I shook it firmly. I’d never claimed to be a good judge of character, but something told me that I could count on him to do what it would take to find Gregory. A weight had been lifted from my own table.

  “Do you know if my mother has been by?” I asked him as he handed me a business card. I grabbed my phone and quickly took a picture of it.

  Thanks to my background in phone apps, I knew that the safest place for it was going to be stored in one of the many programs I had personally developed years ago. It had sold for a small fortune. It, along with a few others, had sufficiently set Gregory and myself up with enough money to live on modestly, though I still worked a little to give us some spending money.

  He looked sheepishly at the door and I knew the answer. “No, sorry. She was pretty wrapped up with your brother when I questioned her.”

  “Right,” I muttered. “I guess that makes sense. She will probably be up before too long. Have you heard anything about when they’re letting me get out of here? I want to be of some help to you.”

  “I heard them talking about tomorrow, but you have to do what they say, okay? I promise I will keep you updated with whatever we find out.”

  Before I could thank him once again, a familiar but increasingly loud voice came from the hallway. I cringed, knowing it was Jacob at once. Glancing at the clock, I saw that the detective and I had spent almost an hour together behind closed doors. The last time I’d been alone with a man that long was when my attacker visited me before my escape. It solidified my growing feelings for the understanding detective even more.

  “You think you have a right to leave a frail woman alone with a man for that long?” Jacob yelled from the hallway.

  Reyes looked back at me as he opened the door. “Mr. Morse? I was just finishing up with Annabeth. Perhaps we can go somewhere quiet. I have a few follow-up questions for you as well.”

  Jacob’s gaze shot to me. “I am comfortable talking about anything in front of Annabeth. What are friends for if they can’t stick by you?”

  My jaw tightened. I knew that he was upset with me for making him leave the room, but I didn’t want to focus on it. I was short on friends and family anymore. What good would it do to upset one of the few still sticking by my side?