Sara's Game (2 page)

Whoa, what?  What’s going on?
 

The up-tempo blast of the on-hold music didn’t help her building tension while she waited.  Thirty seconds passed, a minute, two minutes.  She tried to distract herself by going through her email.

Mrs. Bennett’s voice came on the line.  She sounded rushed, out of breath.  “Mrs. Winthrop?  Hello?  Are you there?”

“Yes, here,” Sara said, turning away from Jim’s request for an all-hands meeting at 10AM out in The Belly.  It was her favorite place in the building, the open-cube hub of LightPulse where she had spent so many years with the programmers and testers looking for glitches and offering suggestions on the fluidity of gameplay.  “What happened?  Everything okay with Jacob?  Your receptionist sounded worried.”

“We have a bit of a situation.”  The word ‘situation’ was loaded with unease.

“A situation?”

“Please stay calm, because we think everything is fine.”

Sara sat up straight and leaned into the coming news.  “You
think? 
He’s not hurt, is he?”

Mrs. Bennett said, “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.  It’s crazy around here on the last day of school.  The kindergarten classes were all outside playing hide and seek and when Mr. Blake rounded up his kids for a head count, Jacob wasn’t with the rest of the group.”

Sara sprang out of her chair, then tried to compose herself with a couple of deep breaths before she said, “Have you found him yet?”

The pause on the other end of the line was longer than Sara expected.  “No,” Mrs. Bennett said, “but we have every available adult looking.  Our assistants, our teachers—even the janitor, Mr. Burns.  We’re positive he didn’t realize that he wasn’t supposed to be hiding anymore.  We’ll find him, but I think it’s best that you come down anyway.”

“I’m walking out the door right now.”

Sara hung up the phone, grabbing her keys and her purse.  A delicate blanket of fear enveloped her, but she tried not to let it take control.  He had done this once before, months ago, when the four of them were playing hide and seek in the house.  He’d climbed under a dusty green tarp down in their basement and had managed to fall asleep while she and the girls hunted for over an hour.  She’d panicked and had come close to calling the police before Callie accidentally stepped on him. 

Without that particular instance as a buffer, she would’ve been throwing people out of her way.  Instead, she took a long swallow from her water bottle and then walked over to Shelley’s desk to let her know what had happened and where she was going.

She heard Shelley mumbling into her headset, saying, “Yes...Oh wow, you’re the second one today...Let me send you to her—wait, here she is.”

Sara raised her eyebrows.  “For me?  Who is it?”

Shelley covered the mouthpiece, saying, “Mr. Brown?  Says he’s the principal at Lacey and Callie’s school?”

“Him, too?” 
What’s up with my kids today?  Sheesh.
  “Okay if I take it here?”

Shelley nodded.

Sara picked up the receiver, pushed the button for Line 1, and said, “Mr. Brown?  This is Sara Winthrop, Lacey and Callie’s mother.”

The conversation that followed left the phone dangling from its cord, and at least one blindsided coworker lying flat on his back.  There may have been more.  It was all so blurry.

Sara flung open the glass entryway doors and sprinted down the sidewalk toward the parking lot.  The sun had broken through, evaporating the morning’s rain, creating a level of humidity that made the air syrupy and hard to breathe.  Added to that was the realization that without her husband, she had no one to help.

I need you, Brian.  Damn it, I need you.  Why aren’t you here when I
need
you?

Two years after Brian’s disappearance, she’d been able to release her grip on the anxiety and fear and panic that had plagued her for days, for weeks, for months.  Over time, sleepless nights dwindled to sleepless hours, and then lessened to troubled dreams and reluctant acceptance.  But now, as the soles of her flats slapped against the concrete, the idea that her children might be taken from her fueled those long-subdued emotions like a gust of wind through a forest fire.

Not again, not again, not again.  I can’t go through this again.

A flash of white under her minivan’s windshield wiper caught her attention.  She thought it was another flyer for the local pizza place and ripped it from the rubbery grasp, ready to crush it in her fist.

The neon-orange, bold lettering was just bright enough to stop her squeezing hand, saving the paper slip from turning into a crumbled mass.

Seven words, asking a question that created even more questions:

ARE YOU READY TO PLAY THE GAME?

CHAPTER 2

SARA

Sara opened the driver’s side door and climbed in, numb from the tips of her toes to the top of her head.  Lacey, Callie, and Jacob, all three missing and unaccounted for at their schools.  And now this message, whatever it was. 

Her heart strained against the wall of her chest, the rhythmic thumps
pounding in her ears.  She needed to be on the move.  Going, going, going.  But the note felt like it held a deeper, more threatening meaning than a few words asking a simple question.

She stared down at the slip of paper, reading it over and over. 

Are you ready to play the game?  Are you ready to play the game? 

Are you ready?  Are you ready?  Are you
...

She looked at the back side, expecting to find something else, a message saying,
Just kidding!  Good luck with the release!
  But no.  Nothing.  Only the glaring, blazing question.  It had to be coincidence, didn’t it?  Some ill-timed, cryptic joke being played on her by one of the LightPulse staff?  Surely this ominous note didn’t have anything to do with the kids disappearing, did it? 

Of course it does.  Don’t be an idiot.

But what did it mean?  The game?  What game?

Sara flung the note into the passenger seat. 
Jesus, not right now.  I have to go, I have to go, I have to go. 

She cranked the keys and the Sienna’s hybrid engine whispered to life.  Before she backed out, she took one last glance at the LightPulse office.  Shelley stood outside at the front doors, watching from a distance.  She waved, then gave Sara a thumbs-up as if to say,
Everything is going to be okay
.

Sara paused at the subtle motion.  Brian used to do the same thing every morning from the front porch as she left for work.  He’d blow a kiss, give her a wave, and then a thumbs-up. 

A wave, and then a thumbs-up.

But it meant nothing.  Shelley’s was a harmless platitude, wishing her well. 

Sara forced herself to wave back, then swung the minivan out of the parking spot, and out into the lighter mid-morning commute.

***

“Come on, come on,
come on!
” she said, willing the stalled traffic in front of her to get the hell out of the way.  The promise of a faster trip had been broken by road construction three blocks down, and she sat at a dead stop, wedged so tightly in between two cars that a pedestrian would have had trouble squeezing between the bumpers.  “Move!” 

She pounded the steering wheel with her palm.  Flashed a look at the note beside her, where it lay limp and lifeless, but foreboding and full of questions.  She shook her head. 
Motherf—

“Move!” she shouted again.

But her demands went unmet.  And she sat, trapped in a line of cars, imprisoned inside her minivan with no way out and no course of action other than to wait until the universe changed its mind.  She briefly thought of abandoning the van where it sat to take off running.  She was in good shape.  She could do it.  Three miles every evening on the treadmill while the kids did their homework wasn’t a guarantee of finishing a marathon, but it was enough to keep up her conditioning and ensure that her slowing metabolism wouldn’t allow too many fresh pounds around her hips.

The thought of doing it, of jumping out and sprinting away, gave her a second to realize that she didn’t know where she was going first.  She had stomped on the gas pedal and
went
, eager to be moving, anxious to be heading toward whatever horrendous event was waiting, like a Marine running toward the sound of concealed gunfire.

How does one decide where to go first when two equally horrible things are happening at once?

She tried to weigh the options.  Lacey and Callie’s school was closer, but Jacob was the youngest.  But was he really missing, or just hiding until someone found him? 

No, obviously not the latter, not with the girls missing, too.  And the note.  The stupid, menacing note mocking her from two feet away.

Are you ready to play the game?  Are you ready to play the game?

Mr. Brown, the principal of Whitetree Elementary where Lacey and Callie were finishing up their fifth-grade year, had said that a group of teachers had taken their classes to the small ice cream shop next to the school.  It was a last day treat, and Sara recalled Shelley’s reminder to sign the permission slip.

And, like the chaos of Jacob’s game of hide and seek, the teachers had had trouble keeping up with everyone, both inside and outside the tight confines of the three-tabled, four-stooled room.  Lacey and Callie were missing from the final headcount before they headed back to the school.

“Move!” Sara yelled once more as the car in front of her crept ahead.  She stayed put, hoping that with a few more blessed inches, she might be able to squeeze the minivan out and go hurtling down a side street, taking the long way through the surrounding neighborhood.  Distance-wise, it would be out of the way, but it was better than being stalled where she was.

From what she gathered, all three had gone missing around 9:00, while she was in her meeting with Teddy.  Two separate instances, two separate locations, at the exact same time.

It was coordinated
, she realized. 
It had to have been
.

Which meant something bigger was going on than she’d originally thought.  They had been targeted.  She had been targeted.  And it wasn’t just a coincidence.

They’ve been kidnapped.  Oh my God.

It was obvious, now that she had an involuntary moment to stop and think it through.  Earlier she had been in such a rushed panic that she hadn’t taken the time to consider the details.

Why her?  Why her kids?

And who?  Who would be doing this to her?  To them?  She tried to think of anyone who might have had any reason, and came up with nothing.  There hadn’t been any strange vehicles in the neighborhood lately, no ragged homeless people around their favorite park, no news reports of kidnappings that she remembered.  But really, as a single parent taking care of three rambunctious children, who has time to keep track of things like whether or not the green Volvo down the street is casing the block or is nothing more than a visiting relative?

The thought brought on a rush of guilt that left her feeling like she had been punched in the stomach.

It’s my fault.  I should’ve
made
the time.  I should’ve looked closer.  Should’ve paid more attention.  But how?  When?

With Brian gone, it was all up to her. 
She
was the one dealing with everything.  The late-night accidents in bed.  The homework.  Proper nutrition.  Cleaning the house, doing the laundry.  Rushing to t-ball games and ballet classes.  Everything, all of it, on her own, on top of a fifty-hour workweek.  She fumed at Brian for being gone and leaving her to deal with everything.

It didn’t matter where he was, where he had gone, what had happened.  He was gone, and now the kids were, too.  She was alone and, without a doubt, powerless.

She tried not to cry.  It didn’t work.

The car in front of her crept forward and Sara angled the minivan to the left, but it wasn’t enough. 

Come on, come one, come on.  Just a little bit more.

Sara felt like she was suffocating.  Rolled down the window for some fresh air, closed her eyes and inhaled.  The smell came tainted with the stench of city and fresh asphalt from the paving crew up ahead.  She coughed, but left the window open anyway.  However stained the air might be, the sense of open freedom was better than being confined in her inability to get moving.

She waited.  And waited.  Her panic grew to a pulsating tremor, and she wondered if she was being punished for torturing Teddy the same way earlier that morning.  Karma.  Bad, bad karma.

She tried to think of anything strange that had happened over the past few days, searching her memories for some looked-over clue, some inkling of an idea as to why she and the kids would be the target of a coordinated kidnapping.  At least it was some sort of action, some way of being productive while she sat immobile, taking short, fearful breaths.

Sara didn’t have any enemies.  Sure, she’d stepped on some toes while getting LightPulse into the national spotlight, but it was business, nothing more, and there had been no hard feelings.  She was well liked—more than well liked—around all of the motherhood groups and the PTA.  There was one minor instance where she’d exchanged cross words with the mother of a girl who had kept picking on Lacey, but enemies? 

Enemies?  It was such a strong word.  And it didn’t fit.  Anywhere.

She thought about the park again, their walks down to Miss Willow’s—the gray-haired, flowerchild babysitter.  Their once-a-month trip to McDonald’s for sundaes and an hour in the multi-colored indoor playground.  The girls loved the slides and interconnected series of tubes where they could pretend to be hamsters scurrying from one spot to the next.  Jacob spent most of his time in the ball pit, burying himself under the reds, blues, and greens, and then hurtling up and out, like a dolphin at SeaWorld, screaming with joy and his hands high in the air.

Those memories caused another series of tears, and she shifted her thoughts to the times when she was by herself.