Mikey didn’t move, snoring gently on his mother’s shoulder as he got some well-needed rest, but the gesture was what counted. Annabelle was welcoming Jackson into their family, in a way. It probably wouldn’t be smooth sailing, but at least it was a start.
Tentatively, Jackson meandered over to us and leaned against the side of the couch that Dr. Osborne and I were sitting on across from Curt, Annabelle, and Mikey. It seemed as if Jackson was afraid to get any closer to them.
“Is he okay?” he asked in a voice so soft I could barely hear it, unable to take his eyes off of Mikey.
“Yes, he’s going to be just fine,” Dr. Osborne said, reaching up and squeezing Jackson’s hand.
We quickly gave Jackson a rundown of everything that had happened and everything that Mikey had told Nina and me about his adventure with Charlie on the water.
“So he really is okay, then?” Jackson asked when we were finished, looking more than a little surprised. “Like, he was just cold and hungry? Nothing else happened to him?”
“No, nothing else,” I chuckled. “You’ve all got a good kid here. Don’t lose him again.”
“Oh, we won’t,” Curt assured me, squeezing Mikey’s shoulder gently from the boy’s other side.
“No,” Annabelle said softly, burying her face in her son’s wispy light brown hair. “No, we won’t.”
“It will take some time to get things back to normal,” Dr. Osborne told them, her characteristically stern expression returning to her after a brief reprieve. “In fact, I’d say you need to work toward a new normal, instead of looking back. Mikey got very lucky today, but he’s still going to be affected by what happened. He’ll probably regress a bit for a while, have some separation anxiety. That’s all to be expected. School in the fall might be an ease-in kind of process this year, instead of just going back right away. The good news is that you have a couple of months of summer to prepare.”
“We… we understand,” Curt stammered. “Or if we don’t yet, we will.”
“I’ll be with you every step of the way,” Dr. Osborne assured them. “I’ll have other cases, but I’m not far away from you in Virginia, and I’m not going to abandon Mikey. I’ll see your family through this.”
“Thank you so much,” Curt said, looking more than relieved to hear this. “We appreciate that. We know Mikey will need more help, and this is probably just the beginning. We’re just so glad to have him back.”
“And we’ll have other help, too,” Annabelle said, smiling up at Jackson.
“I wouldn’t dream of making his life more unstable right now,” Jackson said quickly.
“We know,” Annabelle said. “And thank you. But as they say, it takes a village.”
“I, um… thank you,” Jackson said, hanging his head as if he couldn’t believe that this was all happening.
I glanced over at Dr. Osborne and smiled. Her eyes sparkled.
“When does your fiancée get here?” Curt asked Jackson, looking up at the other man in what I had to assume was their most friendly interaction yet.
“I… uh, she lands early this morning,” he sputtered, clearly surprised by this one-eighty, though pleased.
“Well, we look forward to meeting her,” Annabelle said. “And to introducing the both of you to Mikey.”
Jackson looked like he might just cry for joy.
29
Ethan
I slept for a few hours after that, though my body ached for more after such a harrowing and physically demanding case.
When I awoke and returned to the hotel lobby, I saw Jackson and a woman I didn’t know talking to Mikey while Curt and Annabelle stood off to the side, watching them and drinking coffee. The boy was laughing, and so was the couple. I couldn’t help but smile and think that we’d done well on this one. This just might have turned out to be my most rewarding case yet.
The lobby was still crawling with law enforcement, and the clerks standing at the desk looked more than a little uncomfortable with the situation, though they didn’t say anything to that effect.
“Hey, thanks for letting us use your space,” I told them, leaning against the front desk. “We really appreciate having such a large area to meet after what happened yesterday.”
“Of course,” a young woman with a manager’s name tag said, forcing a smile. “We’re happy to help. And so glad that you found Mikey.”
I glanced up at a small television hanging above the breakfast area off to the side of the lobby. Predictably, there was a reporter on there excitedly talking about how the boy had been found the night before.
As I squinted at the screen, I realized that the woman was standing outside this very hotel, making her report.
I slowly made my way toward the front doors, only to be practically assaulted with camera flashes and microphones being jabbed in my face the second I stepped outdoors.
“Are you one of the agents who found Mikey?” a reporter asked.
“Which agency are you with?” another asked. “MBLIS or the FBI?”
“Will you be working on the case to take down the human trafficking ring in Durham?” another cried, practically throwing his microphone over the mass of bodies in front of him to get to me.
I blinked, overwhelmed by this sudden exposure to the media. I was used to working more behind the scenes.
Suddenly, someone was grabbing me from behind and pulling me back into the entryway between the front doors and the lobby.
“Whoa, Marston, sorry. Someone should’ve briefed you,” Nina said, and I turned around to see her standing there, grinning at me.
“It’s alright,” I said, blinking a few times and running a hand across my face in an attempt to recover from the onslaught.
“They must’ve seen your badge,” she said apologetically, glancing down where it hung at my belt.
“Oh, right,” I said, pulling it off and hiding it safely away in my jacket pocket, as I didn’t need any more of that today. “So I’m guessing you briefed the media?”
“Yeah, Osborne did a
