Brendan’s face tightened with anger but I had a feeling he wouldn’t contest her. Rosalie turned to me next.
“I can wake him up and you can try talking to him, but I don’t know how much help he’ll be. He’s only three,” she said.
“He’ll be more helpful than any of my other informants have been,” I replied.
She nodded, throwing Brendan a look before she went away to go fetch my nephew.
Davey took some time to fully wake up. His mother had to make him a large mug of hot cocoa and offer him a few cookies before he was awake and excited enough to talk to us.
If he was intimidated by seeing all these people around him, he didn’t show it. For a three year old, he was pretty gutsy, had to hand it to him. Even though we were all family, he didn’t actually know any of us because he hadn’t even known Brendan was his dad.
Now, Brendan pulled him into his lap and Davey sat in front of me, nibbling on a cookie in one hand and clutching a teddy bear with the other.
I wasn’t exactly an expert at talking to kids either, so neither of us knew what we were doing.
“Hi Davey, sorry for waking you up, but I hoped you’d be able to help me,” I began.
Davey looked at his mother who nodded at him, so he smiled at me.
“You remember Elsie? The nice lady who helped you get away from those bad men?”
Davey nodded.
“She needs your help now. Do you think you’d be able to help us?”
He nodded again. So far so good, but maybe Rosalie was right and Davey didn’t actually know anything that’d be useful to us. But I still had to try.
“Do you remember the night when you got away from that place? The place they kept you?”
“I remember,” he replied in a sweet voice.
Brendan brushed his hair lovingly, and I knew he was nervous. He so badly wanted to protect his son from those bad memories. I didn’t want to hurt Davey either, but right now I was desperate.
“Is there anything you remember about the building?” I asked.
I specifically asked him things we hadn’t questioned Elsie on already. We hadn’t focused on trying to extract information on their location so far. We didn’t think it’d actually lead to anything, or that Elsie and Davey remembered.
But what if Aldo hadn’t moved from that place? What if Davey remembered more than we thought he did?
Davey shrugged now, looking around the room.
“It was dark,” he replied.
“Okay, yeah, it was dark. I’m sure it was difficult for you to see anything clearly, but do you remember anything at all? The color of the walls? The color of the door? Were there fields around? Or a road?” I spoke too fast, feeling desperate to arrive at some answers. It had only been a few minutes and I was already losing hope with this.
What was I thinking?
Davey was just a kid.
“There were cows. I saw cows, Mommy,” Davey said excitedly, turning to his mother who smiled and nodded at him.
“That’s very good, honey,” she said.
“Cows? You saw cows? Like at a farm?”
“Yeah, like Old Mac Donald’s farm!” he exclaimed, giggling.
Honestly, I felt like giggling too. This was the biggest lead we’d received so far.
Aldo was hiding out on a farm.
“What else did you see when you and Elsie ran away?” I continued.
There was complete silence in the room because everyone was focused on Davey and me. Even Brendan had shut up by now and didn’t have any objections to the conversation.
Davey shrugged again, drank some of his cocoa and snuggled into his father’s chest.
“There was a river. Elsie told me it was a river. I thought it was a sea,” he said with a smile.
“Okay, that’s good, keep going, kid,” I said.
“Then we went into a jungle. I asked Elsie if there would be tigers in there but she said no. There weren’t any tigers. I didn’t see any.”
Rosalie and Brendan smiled at that.
“Did you see any signs?” I asked.
“He can’t read properly, he’s not quite there yet,” Rosalie interrupted.
I regretted not asking Elsie all these questions already. She would’ve had a much better idea than Davey did, but it was too late now.
“But Mommy, I saw a sign for a bird.”
“A bird?” I asked. My interest piqued.
“In the jungle. There was a sign for a bird. Elsie said it was because we might see the bird and that the birds had to be protected.”
“It’s the eagle sanctuary spot,” I mumbled.
“What?” Nolan asked because he hadn’t heard what I’d said.
“I think I know where Aldo’s hiding. At least the general area of it.”
Rosalie pulled Davey into her arms and hugged him tightly in celebration. Brendan looked at me and I nodded.
“Thanks. This is going to help me. Us. Hopefully, Aldo is still hiding out on some farm in that area. I’ll find them if they’re there,” I said.
Brendan came up to me and stuck his hand out.
“I wasn't trying to undermine the importance of finding this girl, Tristian,” he said.
“I get it. You want to protect Davey. Your family. They’re the most important things to you.”
“You get it now?” Brendan asked, studying me closely. “You like this girl?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. There wasn’t any point hiding it from him. “And right now, we need to have a family meeting so we can plan out how to get her back. Because I am getting her back. I’m not letting Aldo hurt her.”
Twenty-Five
Elsie
Once the men had decided I’d worked long enough for the day, they opened the door and came in to get me.
They pulled me off the chair by both my arms, and once again, they dragged me down the corridors of the building, back to the room I’d live in. Rot in.
I would have killed one of them for a shower. If I could. But there wasn’t any hope for that.
When we
