Redemption (The Bet) (33 page)

"Hey, I'm going to go see if I can talk to Jake before Mom calls us in, I'll be right back." Jake lived three houses down from them, he was a good friend and Dylan needed to borrow a game.

"Dylan you know you're not allowed to go anywhere by yourself. Mom said…”

"Then just come with me and shut up!" He picked up Grayson's leash and walked away, leaving his sister to run after him.

"Hurry back. No crossing the street." Sophie advised her two siblings, keeping a close eye on them as they disappeared down the sidewalk.

"Dylan, stop walking so fast!"

Dylan didn't say anything, but he did slow down for Bella to catch up with him and Grayson. "Why do you always have to follow me?" he asked minutes later into their walk.

"Because I'm your big sister and it's my job to look after you." She said with her matter-of-fact voice and Dylan frowned.

"You're only older by a little bit." Grayson's leash slipped from his hands as the little dog raced down the sidewalk in hot pursuit of something. "Grayson! Grayson, stop!" Dylan ran after him, Bella not too far behind him.

"Grayson!"

"Grayson!" the dog took a sharp left at the end of the street and Bella and Dylan automatically followed.

"Grayson….
" Dylan stopped short and Bella slammed into his back. She stepped back, ready to yell at him, but shut her mouth when she saw the man staring down at them.

"Hey there kids.
" Bella instinctively grabbed Dylan's arm and pulled him towards her.

He was tall, but then to anyone their height, he would look tall. He wore dark clothes, as dark as his hair. His eyes
zeroed in on them and Bella found that she didn't like him at all. She pulled on Dylan's arm again. "Dylan, let's go." She whispered.

"Don't be scared kids."

"We're not allowed to talk to strangers." Bella, always friendly and ready to share her smiles with the world, did not smile for this man. In fact she glared as hard as she could.

"That's a very smart rule, bet your Mommy taught you that. I know your, Mommy, she and I were very good friends in high school. I was just coming to pay her a visit actually," he scrunched up his pants before falling t
o his haunches in front of them. "Hi, my name is Anthony, but you're Mommy calls me Tony, and you are, let me guess, Dylan and Isabella?"

Bella skeptically appraised
him and her unease spiked, she really didn't like this man. "Just because you know our names doesn't make you any less of a stranger. Dylan lets go."

Tony's gaze ran over the scowling child and he was sorely tempted to wrap his hands around her golden throat. "You are a very s
mart little girl. Tell you what. If I tell you where your dog ran off to will you believe me then?"

"Where?"
Dylan finally opened his mouth to speak.

"He almost got hit by a car, so I had my friend hold him for you. See that
van over there?" he turned slightly and pointed to the Gray van up a few feet away. "My friend's in there with your dog, come on, I'll take you to him."

"Dylan no lets go home."

Dylan turned to his sister and grabbed her shoulders. "You stay here and watch me. I'll just run over and grab Grayson."

Bella shook her head. H
er watery eyes were huge with fright. "No Dylan, please, I'm scared, let's go home."

Dylan sighe
d. "Bella I have to get the dog. It's my fault he ran away, if I don't get him, Sophie and Mom will be mad."

"Dylan…
"

Dylan hugged his sister to him. "I'll be fine, if something happens to me, scream really loud and run, Ok?" he whispered against her ear.

Bella reluctantly nodded.

"Ok, let's go."

"We'll be right back sweetheart, don't cry." He made to touch her cheek, but Bella recoiled away and scowled. Tony's smile did not reach his eyes when he looked at her. "Nice eyes." He brought his arm around Dylan's shoulder and led him away.

It wasn't that far,
Bella tried to convince herself. She could see them now, nothing was going to happen. Dylan was a fast runner. Nothing was going to happen, Dylan was a fast runner. Bella played the mantra in her head as she worried her bottom lip, anxiously staring at her brother's retreating back. But the mantra came to an abrupt stop and her heart slammed against her chest when the stranger forcefully grabbed Dylan around his waist and threw him in the backseat of the van.

"BELLA RUN!" Dylan yelled seconds before he was thrown in the truck.

She opened her mouth to scream, but a big bear-like hand halted her attempt. She struggled, flailed her arms and legs, scratching and biting in the efforts to escape her capturer. But her efforts proved futile as the van pulled up next to them and she too was thrown into the back seat.

Sophie ran faster than she ever had in her life, adrenaline and fear pumping through her veins
, he lengthened strides propelled her down the sidewalk. She saw the van and in the rear window she watched in horrified shock as her sister and brother looked back at her, their faces painted with terror.

Sophie didn't think, only reacted and her reaction brought her in front of the
van. The impact wasn't as bad as she'd expected, but her skull thudding against the pavement was. Seconds before losing consciousness she heard, "What should we do?"

"Hurry th'fuck up! Just grab her and let's go!"

Sophie wanted nothing more in that moment than her Mom and Nicholas.

The hours passed by. The seconds zipped through. Each lapse of time was another painful reminder that her children were
still missing. Amber alerts had been put out. Squad cars were parked outside her home, while others combed the quiet streets of the small suburban town, in search of the kidnappers. Ellie was beyond frantic.

There were people around her, their faces reflecting their concerns and woes, but Ellie was blind to them all. The words they spoke
were white noise in her ears. She felt like someone had buried her deep beneath the cold earth, with cotton in her ears and burlap between her teeth. Unable to speak. Incapable of hearing. Her mind was in turmoil, thoughts mercilessly bombarded her skull until the veins at her temples began to throb.

It hurt to think, but it couldn't be helped. What was a parent's main objective if not to think of the welfare of her children? Children she'd carelessly allowed to be kidnapped! They were gone. Bella, Dylan, and Sophie...they were all gone. The
guilt was a physical ache, a lump lodged deep within Ellie’s throat. It was a reminder of her failure every time she swallowed. Gripping the edge of the sink until her knuckles blanched Ellie tried to keep her tears of frustrations at bay. She opened her mouth and took long even breaths.

N
ow wasn't the time to breakdown. She had children out there who were counting on her; they needed her to find them. Nothing would happen to them, thinking otherwise was not an option at this point. She had to believe that they would find her children and it had to be soon, otherwise there wasn't telling what she might do. She'd harangued the town police hours ago until she'd rendered herself sick. The results hadn't changed, her children were still missing and even with the one witness they had, it seemed that the search was going nowhere. They were in the same position they've been in for the last two hours and it was becoming clear to Ellie that the local PD were all grossly incompetent.

"Ms. Holbrook, Shay is ready." Ellie spun around from her position at the kitchen sink and faced the uniformed man. Like all officials of the law,
Officer Black seemed far too sure of himself. With an austere mien that made him look as though he'd bitten into a lemon he stared at Ellie across the expanse of his aquiline nose. "He's finally willing to speak, but he won't say anything unless you're there to hear him."

The Morris' were neighbors, who lived
only two houses away from them. Their daughter, the youngest of four children, was a school friend of Sophie, who often came over to play or do homework and was a frequent guest at Ellie's dinner table.

Shay had been the one to bang on her door a forty-five minutes later, terrified and babbling incoherently of the events that had transpired. After sitting her down and calming her enough to call both her parents and the police, Ellie had tried not to panic. Shay hadn't said much, the information she'd provided so far hadn't helped any and after seeing the sort of stress their daughter was under, the Morris' had asked to take her home. But the kid had refused, saying that she wanted to help find Sophie. And now it seemed she'd remembered
something that could help them, Ellie prayed it wasn't a dead end.

Ellie walked past the pinched faced police officer and hurried to the dining room, where she'd left everyone. Gabe and Ronnie had arrived about an hour ago with their brood in tow. They'd settled the children in the next room and popped in a children's movie to distract them from the events unfolding around them, while the adults congregated in dining room. Martha and Herbert Morris, Gabe, and
Maddie, all sat or stood around, occupied with their own thoughts, unable to do much. Upon entering the room, Ellie saw that their positions hadn't changed from when she'd left the room, except for Martha who'd taken a seat next to Shay and was coddling her to the point of annoyance.

"Baby, you don't have to do this, let's go home," she was saying as Ellie stepped further into the roo
m. "You've been through a lot…"

"Mom," Shay shrugged her int
ruding hand off her shoulder. "I want to help. I…I-Sophie would want me to help."

"Any information you give us is important and we appreciate that you're doing this, Shay. I know how hard it is for you, so I want to thank you."

"My daughter has told you all she has, Ellie. She doesn't have anything else to say to you. We're sorry about your children, but…"

Ellie turned her gaze to her and stepped forward. "My kids are missing,
 missing, Martha. Kidnapped. Gone. Do you have any idea what the means? Can you, for one second put yourself in my shoes and understand what I'm going through right now? We are all parents here, and so I can relate to your wanting to keep your daughter safe, but if she's my only chance to find my children, I need her to tell me what she knows. Please don't take this away from me."

She was on the border of tears, the telling pricks behind her eyelids dared her to blink and
release them, but Ellie refused. She clenched her hands at her sides and kept her gaze on the face of that woman until she relented, face softening. "We'll do anything we can to help you."

Ellie nodded.
"Thank you." then promptly turned her attention to the eleven-year-old standing inches away. "What can you tell us?"

"Like I said before, Sophie and I were playing catch right outside, when we heard Dylan scream for Bella run. We dropped the ball and ran to where we heard his voice. Sophie's a lot faster than me, so
she got there first. But everything happened so fast and the next thing I know I see the van hit her." The evidence of her words painted red the unforgiving asphalted road, Ellie had seen it herself and each time she recalled it to memory, her stomach turned.

"And then
what happened?" She'd heard it several times already, but Ellie pushed to hear it again, futilely hoping that they'd missed something...anything.

"They
took her and dragged her into the van."

"Who are
 they? Did you see what they looked like?" Ellie anxiously asked.

Shay shook her head and worried her bottom lip, her inability to provide anything helpful made her feel useless and stupid. "I didn't get a chance to see their faces. All I remember is that the one who grabbed Sophie had dirty blond hair, kinda wavy."

"That's fine, you're doing fine. Do you remember anything else?"

As though that question caught a fuse and sparked something in her brain, Shay's light blue eyes widened and she nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah! Yeah I remember the first part of the lic
ense plate! Its 57V." she turned her excited gaze first to officer black and then to Ellie. "That helps right? Can't you track down the car that way?"

It was more hope than they'd had in the two hours. "That's a very big help, sweetie, thank you."

"We'll get right on it." On his way out, officer Black cocked his head to his shoulder and radioed the dispatcher on the other line.

"We'll be leaving now, Ellie. It's getting la
te and tomorrow is a school day." Ellie knew Martha wasn't being purposely callous, she was just tactless.

"I understand and I appreciate your support. Thank you for allowing Shay to stay awhile."

"We'll keep you and your children in our prayers."

"You're much too kind, thank you. Shay, you've been so helpful tonight, I don't know how I can ever repay you, but I promise to bake you the best oatmeal cookies when this is all done."

Shay flushed. "You're welcome, Ms. Holbrook. And…and I hope you find Sophie, Bella and Dylan."