So he had to keep control, otherwise he’d keep a trail of bodies in his wake.
Keltan knew to an extent about this, Lance was sure. He wasn’t an idiot, he knew what he was hiring.
But Keltan was also perceptive as fuck. The man obviously saw that this case was different for Lance. Fuck, he couldn’t hide it.
That was something to rectify after.
“Okay,” Keltan said after a beat. His hand left his shoulder. “Let’s go and get this kid.”
Elena
I wasn’t pacing.
Or crying.
Screaming.
Pulling the wallpaper off the walls with my bare hands.
Upending the coffee table and smashing every single glass in this place.
I felt like doing all of those things.
My body and soul were crying out for some kind of outlet, some kind of destruction, pain to distract me from just sitting here, waiting.
The second I realized Robert had taken Nathan, after I threw up in the school’s parking lot, I knew a lot of horror lay ahead of me. Because it is every parent’s worst fear realized. And parents spend too much time thinking about situations like this. Because after giving birth, tired, in pain and feeling like the lower half of your body now resembles the Grand Canyon, you are given the whole world to balance on your chest. To take care of.
You are given the most beautiful thing in the world and entrusted to keep it safe. You are introduced to a love that you didn’t know was possible for a body to contain. And fear. Fear goes along with that, because it is impossible to love without fear. Loving someone is giving away a part of your sanity to something vulnerable. Something fragile. My child had all of me.
I thought of every possible scenario, nightly, I tortured myself with it at the start. SIDS, choking, meningitis, dropping him, him being allergic to something. And someone taking him from me.
I thought I’d explored those scenarios in my brain.
But I hadn’t.
The most horrible part of it all was something I hadn’t even considered. It was the waiting. The torturous spread of seconds against the hour, dragging over my skin like sandpaper. I felt older. Empty. Sucked dry of all that made me human.
It had almost been twenty-four hours. One day.
One day didn’t used to mean much.
One day was a blink of an eye in my world, Nathan waking me up at five in the morning for a dance party. It was getting him ready for school, and telling him, no he couldn’t just wear his underwear even though “all the important things were covered,” it was dropping him at school, hurrying to the diner for the breakfast rush. It was the blur of full plates, empty plates, the smell of grease, sore feet. It was picking Nathan up from Karen’s, a friend’s or taking him back to the diner with me, and then making dinner. Playing with him, arguing over bath time, putting him to bed, cleaning the house and passing out forgetting about dinner or changing out of my uniform.
Every second of my day was filled, busy.
Now, the lack of anything was bursting from my skin, it felt stretched, bloated, ready to explode.
The power of the utter helplessness in this situation was intoxicating, drugging me with feelings of inferiority and self-hatred. I was relying on strangers for the safety of my son. Strangers with pretty, kind and kick-ass wives to be sure. Strangers with kind eyes and calm voices. Strangers with a glint in their eyes that told me they were more dangerous than anyone I’d come across in my life.
But strangers nonetheless.
Somewhere, right now, they were getting Nathan back. That’s what Keltan told me, at least when he’d come here a couple of hours ago. Was it two? Or three? You think that for someone who was focusing on nothing but the time dragging on, I’d have a grasp on the specifics. But it was all melting into one, just a collection of seconds where I hadn’t seen my son.
Keltan said they found him. That they were going to get him. That everything was going to be okay. He reached out and squeezed my shoulder. The touch was kind, human, something else telling me that this was not just another job to the owner of Greenstone Security.
I had somewhat of an inkling that of all the people I could have stumbled onto, I’d hit gold. So somewhere in the midst of my son’s kidnapping, I’d been given some kind of luck or fortune to walk in here.
It wasn’t comforting.
Polly was sitting next to me, silently.
Where most other people would be trying to speak, reassure me, keep my mind busy. Lucy and Rosie had definitely done that. But Polly seemed to understand at this point, there was nothing left.
“I should’ve left,” I whispered, still staring at the beautiful painting on the wall, wanting to dive into it. “After Robert came, I shouldn’t have had all those stupid thoughts about trying to fight, trying to beat him. I shouldn’t have been so naïve. I should’ve taken Nathan, gotten out of there. If I did, none of this—”