Dismember

to lose Trevor today. Except she didn’t, and fate hadn’t stabbed Mike and cut up a little girl and stolen two boys.

“Once we’ve finished collecting our evidence and gone,” said Willis, “I’d suggest you two get some sleep. For the next couple of days, you’re going to need all the rest you can get.”

Yeah right. You think I can curl up and take a nap while my baby is missing?

Mike returned to his seat on the sofa and fingered his bruised face. After eight years of marriage, Libby had learned to read his body language and often knew his thoughts without him saying a word. Right now, she guessed he was wondering the same thing she was: while they waited, what might be happening to their son?

TWENTY-SIX

In the back of the bouncing truck, Trevor lay against the whining dog, facing the other boy, Zach.

“Where’s he taking us?” Trevor asked.

Zach shook his head. He didn’t know.

“How long has he had you?”

Zach said, “Just since today. I was at home this morning.”

Trevor held the shirtsleeve to his forehead, trying to keep the button on the cuff from pressing into his wound. The dog’s tail wagged against his bare legs, his fur warm but the breeze from the movement chilly.

“How did he catch me? Did you see?” The last thing Trevor remembered was hiding in Daddy’s workshop. He’d decided to run for the house, get to his daddy so they could fight off the bad guy together. But one second he’d started to run and the next he’d found himself in the back of the truck with a dog and a boy he’d never seen before.

Zach looked at him a long time, so long Trevor thought he either didn’t know or didn’t want to answer, and finally he said, “He ran after you. He caught you and spun you around and busted you on the head with some stick.”

Trevor said, “He musta busted me good.” He shifted the pad a little and pressed down hard again.

“Yeah,” said the other boy.

The truck slowed, and Trevor heard the blinker. He tried to sit up, to see what lay ahead, but the motion of the turn sent him tumbling back to the truck’s bed before he could get his head up more than just a little.

Zach had something small and plastic in his hand. Trevor had only just noticed. “What’s that?”

Zach had been staring intently at the thing. Now he looked up at Trevor. “My mom’s cell phone,” he said. “But there’s no service. I’ve been checking it every once in a while. No luck so far.” He pushed on one of the phone’s buttons until it beeped, then flipped the thing shut and shoved it in his pocket. “Dang it.”

“Maybe later,” Trevor said.

Zach only shook his head.

Trevor tried to think of something else to say. “What’s the doggy’s name?” he finally asked, shivering from the breeze blowing across the open top of the truck bed and down among the three of them.

“He calls him Manny,” said Zach, “but I don’t think that’s really his name.”

“Why not?”

Zach shrugged. “He calls me Georgie. He said I used to be Zach but now I’m Georgie. He’s crazy.”

Trevor nodded. He turned onto his other side and petted the dog’s head. Slow, friendly petting. The doggy accepted it with another wag of his tail and leaned over to lick Trevor on his ear.

“Good doggy,” Trevor said and smiled. Behind him, Zach said something he couldn’t hear. He flipped over again. “What?”

“—said maybe we should try and jump out,” Zach repeated, the words gobbled up by the sound of the truck only a little this time.

Trevor shook his head. “We’d get killed,” he said. “For sure. I saw this movie once where a guy tried to jump out of a car to save himself but he got killed instead.” He continued shaking his head. “Plus, what about the doggy?”

Zach frowned and looked over Trevor at the dog. “I guess,” he said. “You really saw a movie like that?”

“Yeah. But I wasn’t supposed to,” he admitted. “Daddy thought I was sleeping and flipped to the channel, but I was only pretending.”

Zach lay on his tummy with his arms under his head. Even in the dark, Trevor saw the blood on him and the ripped clothes and that one of his shoes was all messed up. Trevor’s head seemed to explode when they hit a big bump in the road. While he held the bloody rag to his sore spot, he thought of what his favorite comic book heroes might have said: Yeeoooowww or oouuchhhhhhhh or grrrnnnnn. Trevor said none of these things; it hurt too bad for him to do anything except squeeze his eyes together and wait.

“What was that?” Zach said.

“What?” Trevor looked at him, felt the dog shift against his back and heard the scrape of claws on metal.

“Look.” Zach sat up, pointing at a sign on the side of the road behind them. The sign was shadowy and disappearing fast, but they both read it in the glow of the truck’s taillights. It said:

Entering Arapaho Natl Forest

His daddy’s house was right by the Arapaho forest—Trevor knew because for a while he’d called it the A- wrap-around Forest—and he’d seen this sign before. There were lots of the Arapaho signs scattered all over the place, but he remembered this one in particular because of a bunch of teeny holes in one corner that Daddy had told him probably came from a shotgun blast. He couldn’t believe any hunter would ever think a sign was a deer or an elk and accidentally shoot it all up. Too silly.

“I was looking for signs before,” Zach said. “I thought maybe I could tell where we were going.”

Yes, Trevor thought. If he paid enough attention, he might remember how they’d gotten to wherever they were going. He blinked back another burst of pain in his head and watched the road. Studied it. Remembered.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Libby had expected a CSI team and a photographer and a whole slew of miscellaneous law enforcers, just like you saw on TV, but no one else arrived. The two deputies, who had apparently done most of the evidence-collecting themselves before she got there, also finished by themselves, bagging individual items, Willis taking a few last pictures with a small digital camera and his partner writing things down in his notebook. Mike remembered and told them about a knife under his bed, and they seemed to bag it a little more carefully than they had the rest of the evidence. Libby didn’t know enough details of tonight’s fiasco to guess why the knife might be of any particular importance, but she was glad they weren’t lackadaisical about everything. She guessed they were probably doing everything they could, but to her it still didn’t seem like enough.

After their little powwow disbanded, she’d gone out to turn off the Honda’s lights and then come back inside to make herself a cup of tea. Fully caffeinated with a little sugar and milk. While she boiled the water, Mike came in and took two mugs from the cabinet.

“Better make it two,” he said, and she took another teabag from the jar beside the microwave.

The deputies hadn’t told them whether or not they could clean up the mess in the kitchen yet, and so they left it, stepping around the shards and busying themselves with the tea.

They’d only just finished steeping their bags when the two lawmen called them into the living room to tell them they were done. Libby didn’t think they’d been at it nearly long enough, didn’t understand how they could possibly have collected all the evidence already, but she said nothing.