Not Alone

by Frederic Martin

  Shit, Blue thought. He didn’t ask her a direct question, but she knew he wanted an answer. The night vision camera—how could she explain it? She didn’t want to implicate Will or his family. Bronco was turning out to be very smart. Dangerously smart. She felt herself starting to sweat and at the same time, the throbbing in her head started re-asserting itself. Clearly, the knock on the head was more than just a bruise. She winced as the throbbing started to be punctuated with sharp stabs.

  The wince saved her for the moment. Bronco saw it and looked at her forehead.

  “You’ve got a nice little goose egg there. You took quite a knock on the head. Maybe you don’t remember it, but I heard it. Whack! And you were out cold. You know, you almost got away.” He spoke in almost an admiring tone.

  Blue wasn’t sure what to make of it. Maybe he was giving her some credit—some leeway. Maybe she could milk that for something, but maybe he was just trying to manipulate her. She knew manipulation. She had had plenty of that in her therapy sessions. She was going to have to be very careful with this guy, but she was having a hard time concentrating. Her head really did hurt. She did another convincing wince. It was convincing because it was real.

  “Okay, I’m going to give you some acetaminophen—Tylenol,” said Bronco. He was being nice to her. He was trying to soften her up, she thought. “That’s better for this than the other stuff. Trust me, I’ve been hit in the head a lot. But before I do, I want to know, where is that camera from?”

  He wasn’t going to let her off, but she had managed to think of a good answer.

  “I kinda borrowed it,” she said, knowing this was bending the truth, but she bent it back, “. . . kinda without telling anyone I was borrowing it. I was going to put it back.”

  She caught his chiss. “I buy that,” Bronco thought. “I’ve ‘borrowed’ plenty of stuff. Doesn’t everyone?” “Fair enough,” he said. “Does this person know why you ‘borrowed’ it?” Bronco may have bought it, but he wasn’t letting up on her.

  She reeled from a sudden excruciating stab of pain and croaked out “No, no, no, ow, oh!” and closed her eyes to the pain. She was saying no to the pain, not to answer the question.

  Bronco sat dispassionately, but apparently it was good enough for him. “All right, let’s take care of that pain.” He went out of the room and came back with a glass of water and two white pills. She took them gratefully and waited, hoping they would work soon. She kept her eyes closed partly because of the pain and partly because she just didn’t want to hear what Bronco was thinking right now. It didn’t stop his voice, though.

  “We’ll let this Tylenol do its stuff, and I’ll be back in a while. I’ve got some errands to do. We’ll chat again later. While you’re sitting here, though, I want you to consider that it will be a lot better for both of us if you come clean with your story. A little honesty, and we’ll work something out.” His words sounded sincere, but she knew bullshit when she heard it.

  “Sorry about this, but I have to tape your mouth up again.” He tore off a piece of duct tape and put it across her mouth with feigned care. “There, is that a little more comfortable than before?”

  Blue nodded cooperatively. It wasn’t comfortable at all.

  “Good.” He patted her hand and got up. He started toward the door and then paused and turned. “Oh, and just a little something to consider while I’m gone. If you are thinking about trying to escape, don’t forget about the camera,” and he held up his phone and pointed to the camera on the dresser. “And if I ever check this camera, and you are not sitting nicely in this chair, well . . .” He looked at her with a deadly expression, “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to Wu or Sam or Nate.”

  Those names hovered in the air between them for a ghastly moment and then shot through the fog of pain and exploded into shards that shot through her whole body. The room started to spin. She felt like she was falling. He had lied! He did know who she was! How did he get those names? She had made sure she didn’t have any ID on her, didn’t she? Through the spinning, Bronco’s face came into focus. It had a wicked smile on it. “Oh and I almost forgot, we can’t overlook those friends of yours—Will and Rose.”

  Everything came to a stop, the spinning, the falling, her breathing, her heart. There was a pause as if the universe itself had stopped turning, and in that silence, the only sounds were her shrill, panicked thoughts. This was not possible! How could he have learned all this? How much more did he know? What would he do to them?

  The questions were left unanswered because the pain and spinning returned with a suddenness and ferocity that would have knocked her off the chair if she hadn’t been bound to it. The throbbing pain hammered like a drum—doom, doom, doom—driving home with every beat the realization that somehow she had caused an unspeakable nightmare to be unleashed on the people around her who had done nothing but accept her and support her. It was exactly what she was trying to protect them from. Instead, she made it happen. She was the cause, the curse, the bane, the Jonah.

  Bronco’s self-satisfied voice went on, “Well, I’d love to keep chatting, but I’ve got some errands to run. Have a nice day, and I’ll see you later.” She caught a glimpse of his face as he turned, and she wished she hadn’t. It showed the smugness of someone who knew very well that they had complete control.

  Bronco stepped out. The door closed. He was gone. And behind him, in a dimly lit room, strapped to a chair in a house that was god-knows-where, a broken girl cried for real, for the first time in a long, long time.

  24

  Storm

  Will had a dream that he was on the deck of a ship that was lurching unpredictably as storm waves tossed it about. It was one of those half-awake dreams where you know you are dreaming but can’t quite wake up. A voice was hissing at him, “Will, wake up! WAKE UP!” Will opened his eyes groggily. It was light out—had he actually slept through to morning? Rose was shaking him back and forth and whispering as loud as she could and still call it a whisper, “Will, would you please WAKE UP! Blue is missing! Would you wake up?”

  Will sat up, not sure if he heard right, but shocked enough that he was wide awake. He couldn’t have heard right. He matched Rose’s loud whisper, “Did you just say Blue is missing?”

  “Yessss!” she said emphatically, “And you are impossible to wake up! Mom and Dad got a phone call just a few minutes ago from the O’Days. They were asking if Blue was here. Is she here Will?”

  Why would she be here? “No, of course not!”

  “If she isn’t here and she’s not at the O’Days . . .” she trailed off.

  Will’s heart sank. This was exactly what wasn’t supposed to happen! Things were always better in the morning, it was almost a rule. Instead, it seemed things had gone horribly wrong. There must be some explanation. Things had to be okay. Blue had to be somewhere safe, he reasoned. There was no other possibility he even wanted to consider.

  “Will,” said Rose, “Where could she be? She has to be somewhere, right?” It was a pleading kind of nonsense question, not wanting to ask the real question that was nagging at Will’s mind, too. She has to be somewhere safe and not . . . the other thing which was “not safe” and just not possible. There had to be an explanation.

  Will jumped up and started pulling on his clothes. “Rosie, I’ll be right back. There’s one place she might be, but don’t tell anyone yet, okay? I have to check first! I don’t want her to get in trouble!”

  “I wanna go with you!” voxed Rose.

  “Hey, little Meerkat, you can’t. I don’t want you to get in trouble.” Will knelt down and held Rose by the shoulders and looked her in the face. He knew she’d like being called meerkat, but she wasn’t grinning this time. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” she replied, “But where are you going?”

  “I’ll tell you when I get back, but promise not to say anything. Just tell Mom and Dad I was already up and gone, okay?” And with that, Will slipped out his window.

  Rose whispered
after him, “Okay, but I can’t lie if they ask me!”

  Will just gave her the thumbs up as he went around the back of the garage, slipped in the side door, grabbed his bike, and shot off down the hill to the park. He didn’t know what he was expecting to find, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. If she wasn’t at the O’Days and she wasn’t at his house, then she had to be there—asleep on a bench, or in a bush, or in that tree or something!

  He headed straight for the parking lot by the restrooms. It looked entirely different during the day. He studied the tree they had climbed. It looked like it couldn’t possibly hide anything. He wondered how they could have convinced themselves that it was a good hiding place. They had checked it carefully at night, but seeing it during the day, it just didn’t seem possible.

  He checked all around, in the bushes and in both restrooms, hoping that he would find her asleep somewhere. Nothing. He scanned the ground around the restrooms and tree but didn’t know what he was looking for. A discarded piece of clothing, a lock of hair, a shoe, blood? There was nothing but grass, dirt, a few bits of trash and a lot of cigarette butts.

  Will pedaled despondently back up the hill, thinking hard. This was not good, not good at all. There was nothing, absolutely nothing at the park to tell him whether she had been there or not. He was trying to think of alternative places. He looked left and right as he rode, checking the spots they had hidden in or spied from. He was desperate to see her sleeping in the bushes, or hiding somewhere, just to jump him when he passed by. He kept up a steady, “click, click, click. . .” ever hopeful that he would hear that reassuring “cht, cht, cht . . . got you!”

  He was almost to his house and his hope was draining out and being replaced with a slowly forming ominous possibility. Before he could ponder that possibility, though, Rose spotted him and came running out in the yard. “Mom’s been looking for you. I didn’t tell, and I didn’t lie! You should hurry inside, though.”

  “Thanks, Rosie. You’re the best sister,” voxed Will.

  “I’m your only sister,” she voxed but without the usual smile at the old joke.

  Will parked his bike and walked into the house. His mom was sitting at the table and had just hung up the phone. She had a list of names in front of her and about half of them were crossed off.

  Her lips were pressed tight and her face full of concern. “Will, I’m glad you’re home. We got a call this morning and . . .”

  “Blue’s missing. I know Rose told me. What’s going on Mom?” Will asked. He decided to play dumb, so he could get the full story from his mom.

  “Ma Beth said that they had breakfast around nine this morning and Blue didn’t come down, which wasn’t that unusual to them, I guess. But when it got to be ten, and Blue still hadn’t come down Ma Beth decided to check on her. When she went to her bedroom, Blue wasn’t there. Her bed was made as if she’d gotten up already. Ma Beth said they checked everywhere in the house and didn’t find her. None of the boys knew where she was or where she might be, so she started calling other places Blue could be.” Will’s Mom paused and then looked intently at Will. “Do you know where she could be? Did she visit here last night?”

  Will voxed back, “She wasn’t here last night! Why would she be here?” He wondered why she would have asked that. He looked sideways at Rose but Rose looked back at him and shrugged.

  His mom said, “Okay, but do you know where she could be?”

  Will hesitated. He could tell her that she might have gone to the park last night. She would’ve been back by now, unless something went wrong, but he still wanted to believe that it couldn’t have, that something else was going on. “I don’t know, really Mom,” and then he decided to add, “She does like to be out at night, but she never stays out!”

  “Okay,” she said. “Then maybe we can at least start looking for her outside. She might have fallen asleep somewhere. It is still early. They say 90% of runaways are usually found somewhere right around home.”

  Will realized that his mom did not want to consider the bad possibilities either. She was calling Blue a runaway, and Will was trying to believe that, too.

  “I’ll start looking around the neighborhood for places we hung out. I bet she’ll be asleep in a bush somewhere,” said Will.

  Rose said, “I’ll come, too!”

  But their Mom said, “No honey. You need to stay here.”

  Rose looked crushed, but Mom just said, “No pouty faces!”

  Rose voxed to Will, “I hope YOU find her, and soon!”

  “Yeah, me too, little Rose,” and he smiled. “No problem.” But inside, a hot pressure was starting to develop, an inkling of dread that he was not going to find Blue or that he would find something he did not want to find. He tried to brush it off, but just like last night, he was feeling like his body was being more truthful to him than his mind was. What his body was telling him was that something bad had happened and there wasn’t much time.

  25

  Moving Day

  Bronco had a lot to do, and he wanted to get it done quickly. He was confident that Blue wouldn’t cause trouble for the moment. She also wouldn’t be in the way. He reflected on his luck that the neighbors were out of town on vacation for another week and that they had left their keys with him so he could water their plants. Bronco had left the house with his little hostage secure in their back bedroom and returned to his apartment, but not before he had watered all the plants. Then he brewed a fresh pot of coffee and started going down the checklist he had carefully prepared in his mind. First thing was to collect all his local assets. Although he had transferred most of the assets from his dad’s estate to his bank in New York City, he still had close to $90,000 of his earnings in gold and cash in his safe deposit box here. It was just before 9 a.m. now, so by the time he finished his coffee, the bank would be open.

  There had been no alarming traffic on the police scanner all night, which was encouraging. It was a Saturday morning, and it could be a long time before someone in the O’Day household got around to saying, “Anyone seen Blue this morning?” After that, there would be a search, phone calls to neighbors, yadda yadda yadda. He’d seen it happen when his friends ran away—when he ran away. He was guessing it would be noon before the cops were called and then to them she would just be a runaway, unless someone came up with something very credible to convince them otherwise. He was guessing not. That was part of his gamble, and that was what he was going to pry out of the little lone ranger when he got back. Meanwhile, he had time to get the first part of his list done. He drained the last bit of coffee out of his cup, stepped out of the apartment with a quick glance at the shaded window in the house next door, and then got in his car and headed to the bank.

  As he drove, he reviewed his plan. He figured he had about a day before the police got involved and made some connection with him and this car and his apartment. A day if they were good. But when they did, they’d discover it belonged to his current persona, Bob Kelly. By then, Bob Kelly would have vanished from the face of the earth, because he had never really existed. Bob Kelly owned the car and he had a genuine Vermont drivers license and an authentic birth certificate. He even voted in the last election. But it was all a fraud. It was an insider built-up ID, very reliable. You couldn’t just buy an ID like that, unless you knew someone. It was expensive, but it had already paid for itself ten-fold. And now it was going to pay off even more. He was going to leave Bob Kelly behind in this little college town and if the police ever tied any drug deals or killings to Bronco and then tied that to Bob Kelly, well, Bob Kelly was fiction. No one in this town knew Bronco’s real identity; he’d been very careful of that. His customers didn’t even know about Bob Kelly, they only knew him as Bronco. Double protection.

  Now Bob Kelly was going to go to his bank and access his safe deposit box, and he would even exchange some pleasantries with the staff to make everything look normal and innocent. Of course, he was going to wipe his prints from the safe deposit box at the
same time. Then he was going back to his apartment to scrub it down and make sure there were no obvious tracks left behind. They would find something eventually, sure, but it wouldn’t be enough, and it wouldn’t be in time. And it would all be tied to the wrong person.

  The last item on his list was a final interview with the little detective. That would give him the information he needed to make his final exit plans. He was starting to get in a better mood now that he had a plan and was committed to it. He was going to have a busy day, and he was actually looking forward to maybe playing hide-and-seek with the cops later on. He was hoping they would make it interesting, though he doubted it. The police were loaded down with procedure and law, and he was not. They knew very little, and he knew everything. Situational knowledge was everything, and they were starting from scratch. He almost felt sorry for them. Well, not completely sorry. He still needed to win the game and until that was accomplished, he was going to make it as difficult as possible for them to follow him. And since this was his last time, he was going to give it his all. After this, it was retirement—a nice rich retirement somewhere else, somewhere warm, somewhere that was not New York and not New England. Maybe Costa Rica . . . .

  26

  Seed of Panic

  As soon as he started the search around the neighborhood, Will knew it was pointless. He felt sure he wasn’t going to find her here, but he had to at least eliminate the possibility, plus it gave him time to think. He was in such a panic when he got out of bed that he just went into automatic, going down to the park without thinking it through. He was starting to realize that the only thing that made sense was that Blue had somehow gotten caught by Gronk or Greazal, or maybe the couple who was buying the drugs.