Frank arrived upstairs. Standing in the doorway, he looked at Jack, with no answer but a face filled with equal panic.
The sound of a closing door broke the moment. Jack looked out the front window to see a dark blue car at the curb, and a man walking up to the front door.
“Where did you park?” Jack quickly asked.
“In the back,” Frank said as he peered out the window. The two raced down the stairs and into the kitchen, looking out the side window at the dark-haired man.
“Reporter?” Jack asked as the man arrived at the front door.
“No way. Looks like law. Just not sure which side he might be on.”
The knock at the door was loud.
Jack and Frank didn’t make a move. Waiting.
The knock was louder this time, pounding. And the doorbell rang.
There was no more knocking; the moment seemed to draw out. And then the door opened.
With unspoken understanding, Jack and Frank stepped from the window and quietly slipped into the powder room. Through a crack in the door, they could see the man enter the house. He stood in the hallway, listening, eyes shifting around… and he disappeared. Frank slowly drew his gun.
Jack could hear the man walking around, into the kitchen, opening the garage door. They saw him again, back in the hallway. He stepped into the den. Jack could hear him tearing open the drawers of his desk, opening the armoire and the file cabinet, papers rustling, things falling off the desk and the shelf. Then the room fell silent.
And the man burst out of the den, heading upstairs.
Jack and Frank stepped from the powder room and silently walked through the kitchen. Out of sight, they crouched on either side of the stairs. Waiting.
The intruder came down the stairs, carrying something in each hand.
Without waiting, Jack tackled the man hard into the wall, driving his fist into the man’s gut. The man dropped what he was carrying and drew back his fist, but Frank’s fist caught him first, square in the jaw, knocking him to the ground. Frank shoved his gun into the man’s face, ending any further struggle.
Jack glared at the intruder, but his eyes were quickly drawn to what he was carrying. The file was thick, notations in varying pen and pencil covered the outside, and the header was labeled Keeler.
Jack snatched it up.
“What is that?” Frank asked.
“Nothing.” Jack headed into the den and put the file away.
“Interesting file,” the intruder said. “Keeping secrets from people?”
“What’s in the file?” Frank asked again.
“Nothing,” Jack said. “Just personal stuff.”
But the file was quickly forgotten as Jack saw the other two things the man was carrying.
“Why the hell would you take these?” Jack yelled at the thief.
They lay there in all of their innocence on the floor. And Jack’s blood began to boil. He had bought them almost a year earlier, they were “just because” gifts, simple yet filled with meaning. Hope and Sara loved the two stuffed bears. One blue, one brown, they always brought smiles to their faces.
Jack grabbed the man, hoisting him up. He slammed his head into the wall. “Why?”
“They’re for your girls,” the intruder said. “To make them happy. To comfort them, give them something to play with.”
“Who the hell are you?”
The intruder stared at him.
“Where are my girls?” Jack pulled the man in close, doing everything he could to restrain himself from killing him.
“Why, did you lose them?” The man smiled, taunting him. “Misplace them?”
“Where are they?” Jack pulled him closer, face-to-face. “Did you take them? Who took them?”
Frank stepped toward him, his gun aimed at the man. He placed his hand on Jack’s arm, the action calming him, getting him to back off.
Jack frisked the man, searching under his suit jacket. He found a gun in a shoulder holster, took it, ejected the clip, tossed it aside. He checked his pockets, finding nothing but a cell phone.
He flipped it open, checked the call log, found nothing. He passed it to Frank.
“It’s new,” Frank said. “A onetime phone so it can’t be traced.”
Jack snatched the phone back out of Frank’s hand and violently threw it against the wall, smashing it to pieces. “Who do you work for? Where are my wife and children?”
The man looked at Jack, his dark eyes curious, questioning. “The whole world thinks you’re dead.”
“Answer my question.”
“How did you survive?” the man asked. “When he finds out you’re alive-”
“Who?” Jack screamed in his face.
“-your wife won’t even make it until dawn.”
“What do you mean?” Jack’s voice was unable to hide his fear.
“He’s leaving the country at dawn tomorrow. Why bother keeping her alive when he could have you?”
And Jack suddenly realized that no one could know he was alive, no one could know he didn’t lie at the bottom of the river, or Mia would surely die.
“Who is he?” Jack screamed as he grabbed the man, his rage trembling in his arms.
But the man fell silent and looked away in defiance.
Frank looked at Jack. “We need to turn him over to the cops-”
“We can’t,” Jack snapped as he let the man go. “What if he’s right? We can’t let this guy out in the open, or it will leak to the press that I’m alive. What if whoever has Mia finds out that the papers are wrong? Then what’s stopping him from killing her, even killing my children?”
He turned back on the man with new anger, grabbing him by the lapel of his jacket. “They’re children, how could you?”
“Jack…” Frank said, trying to calm his friend.
“What the hell are we going to do with him?” Jack turned on the man again and raged into his face. “Where are they?”
Frank thought a moment. “We drop him at a friend’s house.”
“What? Who?”
“Someone I trust even more than you. He’ll keep an eye on him until we can figure out how best to use him. And if need be, he’s the type of person who’s had practice at extracting information. If this guy knows where Mia and the kids are, he’ll find out.”
With the man’s hands bound together with duct tape, they tossed him into the rear seat of Frank’s Jeep. Before Frank closed the door, Jack flicked the switch of the child lock. He followed suit on the other door and climbed into the passenger seat, and Frank drove off.
The back roads of Byram Hills were vacant in the early-morning hours of the day before Fourth of July weekend, people having headed off either to work or on vacation.
“You truly have no idea what’s going on, do you?” the man asked, his eyes focused out the window.
Jack looked back over the seat. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
The man remained silent.
“Don’t bother,” Frank said to Jack. “We’ll get our answers.”
Two minutes on, they stopped at a red light on a vacant, tree-lined street. As they silently waited for the light to change, time seeming to drag out forever.
Without warning, the man rolled onto his back in the rear seat and kicked out the window; he dove from the vehicle, hit the ground hard, and was up and running. Jack and Frank leaped from the car and raced after him.
The man sprinted down the road, his feet pounding the pavement, his arms awkwardly swinging from his bound wrists. A noise grew as they ran on, soft, growing louder until they were running across the overpass of a major highway. He was fast, running for his life, but Jack was running for his wife, his children, and couldn’t let his only connection to them get away. His legs drove him faster and he was suddenly upon the man. He tackled him to the hot blacktop, road-rashing their skin. Frank caught up and violently lifted the man, throwing him against the
