Page 12 of Be Courageous

Look for a weapon.

His father’s voice sounded again in his head. Grayson gasped and quickly zipped up his pants. There were no sharp implements anywhere.

A pounding on the door startled him. “Time’s up.”

He flushed the toilet. “I have to wash my hands.” Twisting on the faucet, he eyed the brackets holding the mirror to the wall. If he got the mirror off he could break it into shards to be used as weapons.

The door opened abruptly. Brian stepped inside, twisted off the faucet, and dragged Grayson back onto the landing. “Germs are your least concern, boy.” He drew him toward the door that put them directly over the living room.

As it swung open, Grayson balked to see the only window straight ahead of him was boarded up. The sunlight framing it gave just enough light for him to tell the room was wide with a low, sloped ceiling and a wooden floor. The twin bed and dresser were the only furnishings.

Grayson sensed what was coming. “I don’t want to be in here.”

“Nobody asked you, kid. Sometimes we get what we don’t want in life.”

Brian shoved him hard toward the bed. Taking a seat on the lumpy mattress, Grayson discovered it was covered by a faded quilt that smelled no better than the blanket downstairs.

Brian had backed hastily out of the room, then shut the door behind him. It gave a click, locked from the outside.

As soon as his steps sounded on the stairs, Grayson crossed to the door to check the lock. His hands closed around a doorknob that was sturdy and felt brand new. It didn’t so much as jiggle. His knees started to jitter as a fresh wave of fear rose inside him. Brian had clearly planned this ahead of time. Backing to the bed, Grayson sat back down, shivering and thinking.

His mother would tell him to pray. He’d grown up believing God really loved him. But why would a loving God do this to him or to his mother?

“Father, please help me.” He spoke as much to his heavenly father as to his earthly one.

An answer to his prayer seemed to come about an hour later when the front door slammed and the whole house shuddered.

Brian had stepped outside. When the old Buick started up with a roar, conflicting emotions filled Grayson. On one hand, his cell phone was still under Brian’s car seat, meaning nobody was cominghereto free Grayson. On the other, now was the perfect time to attempt his escape.

* * *

“You’re sure he’s not hanging out with a friend?”

Faith drew a steadying breath. The Suffolk County police detective on the other end of the phone wasn’t taking the situation seriously.

“I’m positive.” She implemented the voice her twin sister used in a classroom full of first graders. “We are new to the area, and my son’s only friend called me from school asking where he was. You can track him down using his cell phone. He had that with him.”

A skeptical pause followed her request. “Are you divorced, ma’am? Sometimes the father gets tired of only seein’ his kid every other weekend and decides to pick him up.”

Faith heard a distinct popping sound, almost like someone had clapped their hands right next to her ear. “His father is dead, sir. What’s more, I think I’m talking to the wrong people.”

Without further explanation, she hung up on the detective and dialed Jerry’s old work number still programmed into her phone. Jerry still had dozens of friends in the state police force.Theywould take her seriously.

* * *

Brian needed a drink, something stronger than the beer in his fridge. Nor could he just sit around the house all afternoon, thinking,What now?

He’d been planning to nab Saunders’ kid for so long, he could scarcely wrap his head around the fact that he’d gone and done it. Reality was terrifying. He had to take the edge off his fear.

Where was the rage, the grief, and the bitterness that had motivated him in the first place? Brian wrung the steering wheel beneath his hands as he flew down Route 168 toward the North Carolina border. According to the terms of his parole, he was never supposed to leave the state. But the liquor store in Moyock was closer to his house than the one in Virginia. And no one would ever know, especially since the surveillance camera in the store was all for show, according to its owner.

Besides, crossing the border was nothing compared to kidnapping. If Brian was caught for that, he’d get thirty years for violating his probation, just like he’d gotten ten years for violating his previous probation. It never paid to get in trouble again.

The cycle had started when he was a teen. Selling his ADHD medication to college students had gotten him two misdemeanors and six months in jail. Once your name was in the system, the punishments got longer—hence the ten years he’d served for simply selling a semiautomatic weapon to the wrong person. Heck, Brian would probably get thirty years or more for kidnapping a cop’s kid—even if he didn’t kill him. Thirty more years in the pen would probably do him in.

Regret tightened a noose around Brian’s throat. Every day for ten years he had dreamed about teaching Saunders what it felt like to be betrayed by a friend. To lose everything. He had planned, when he got out of prison, to do to Jerry what that man had done to him.

His plan had started unraveling when he found out Saunders was dead. What was the point of punishing the man if he wasn’t alive to fret and suffer? Still, Brian had been nurturing his vengeance for so long, he’d decided to go through with it.

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