The car moved across the empty field, rocking up and down. Joshua was frozen in the passenger seat. Shane still had the gun resting on the center console, pointed at him. Every time the car rocked, Joshua flinched, bracing himself, certain the bumping would cause Shane to inadvertently pull the trigger.
He glanced over at the passenger door. Right there. The door handle inches away.
“Don’t open that door, kid,” Shane said. “Don’t even think about it. You move an inch and I’ll blow you away.”
Shane sped across the open grassy lot. In the rearview mirror, Joshua saw a few police cruisers pulling away from the dealership and trailing them. But they were so far back there, not even close.
Ahead of them, a residential neighborhood bordered the park. Shane sped toward it. The car rocked forward as they drove over another curb, onto a residential street. Most of the houses in the neighborhood still had lights on. They sped down a street. Down another. Ran a stop sign. Houses flew past. It felt like they were going a million miles an hour.
They turned and the tires squealed. The group of police cars was still behind them but barely even visible.
They took another turn. Sped down a few blocks. Another turn. A few more blocks.
Right in front of them was an on-ramp for a highway. Shane pulled up to it and slammed on the brakes.
“Hey, kid, look at me.”
Joshua looked over at Shane. He saw Shane’s face for a split second, then the blur of his fist. Before he could brace himself, a punch smashed against his nose.
There was an intense, shooting pain.
And then Joshua was unconscious.
The officer led Karen over to one of the police cruisers and helped her onto the front bumper. She sat there, head buried in her hands, crying. She was close to completely breaking down and turning into a slobbering, blubbering, inconsolable mess.
Helpless. She felt so helpless.
Someone draped a blanket over her shoulders. Asked her if she wanted anything to drink. She didn’t even respond, just kept her head lowered, staring at the ground as she cried.
Time passed. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. She looked at the dealership entrance. She hoped, prayed, that the doors would open and Joshua would walk out, unharmed, safely guarded by police officers.
Another officer appeared at her side. As before, she had no idea whether he was someone she’d already spoken to. She couldn’t remember anything from earlier.
“We’re still searching,” he said. “We haven’t found your son inside yet.”
“They’ve been searching for twenty minutes now,” she said, her voice barely there.
“There’s a lot of ground to cover. We’ll find him.”
“That car that disappeared. The one that drove away.”
“He might’ve been in there. We don’t know. We’re looking for it now.”
She kept her eyes on the dealership entrance.
“He was in the car, wasn’t he? He’s not in the dealership. He’s gone.”
“We’ll find him.”
The chaos began to slow down. Police cars stopped arriving. All the ambulances were gone. The bottlenecked traffic on the shoulder of the nearby highway had disappeared.
A few officers stood, talking, in front of Shane’s black pickup. Yellow crime scene tape had been strung up on the periphery of the parking lot. A few news vans were parked on the other side of the tape.
At one point, Detective Franny arrived. He came over to Karen, asked if she was all right. She shook her head. Of course she wasn’t all right. She had a million questions but no strength to ask any of them. Maybe the answers to her questions were what she was truly afraid of. Getting the news that they’d found Joshua and he was hurt or shot or even worse. It was all she could think about. Teddy had been shot. What would stop Shane from doing the same to Joshua?
Time passed. It felt like an hour, but when she glanced at her watch she saw it had been only ten minutes since that white car had disappeared across the nearby lot. She felt her hope slowly fading, fading away.
And then it happened. An officer walked out of the dealership and approached Franny. He said something. Franny said something back. They both looked over at her. Her heart skipped a beat. The officer said something else to Franny, who nodded and walked over to her, his face completely blank.
He shook his head. Every muscle in her body froze.
“What is it?” she asked.
“They’re gone,” he said. “The general manager of the dealership arrived a few minutes ago and gave us access to the security footage. Shane forced Joshua into the car and left with him.”
Franny placed his hand on her shoulder.
“We’ll do all we can,” he said. “The pursuing officers lost the trail, but we have the car’s license plate. Every officer in the city is looking for it. They can’t be far. We’ll find them.”
“He’s gone?” Karen said. Watching the car disappear, she’d been positive that Joshua was in there, but she’d held on to a faint bit of hope that she’d been wrong. No longer. Joshua was gone. Ten minutes didn’t seem like much time, but it was. If they got to the interstate, they could be outside the city already, headed anywhere.
“Right now, we need to take you in to the station,” Franny said. “Get your story. Learn everything we can from you to help us find them. And we will find them. Trust me on that. Is there anything we need to know before we leave?”
Even with her mind jumbled and barely able to function, she thought of something. A bit of information that might come in handy.
“There’s someone at my house right now,” she said. “Two people. They’ve been holding us hostage.”
Franny kept his eyes on her. “Hostage?”
“Yes. This whole thing . . . It’s complicated. But the people at my house, they’re involved in this, too.”
“We’ll send a team over right away,” Franny said.