Page 73 of Catching Fire

“I’m fine,” Kalan said, though he knew he was anything but.

He could only rate himself in comparison with Seline. Every time he thought about what she might be going through, his stomach churned and he nearly vomited.

Twenty four hours she’d been gone now.

There was every possibility she was already dead.

He was confident she'd been tortured by this point. Contrary to those horrible thoughts, Kalan was equally as confident that she was brilliant and would have figured out a way to get away.

If that was the case, then all they needed to do was go find her. But where?

He held to both his deepest fears and his greatest hopes simultaneously.

As for himself, he hadn't eaten. He'd barely slept, and he hadn't left the house, though Rossi had reminded him repeatedly that he needed to take care of himself.

“If you hope to be ready when we find Seline, you’ll need to have sleep and foodbeforewe get the word.”

The agents had all managed to catch naps and he resented every single one of them for their ability to sleep. He decided that his version of being ready included lying about everything.

So he lied now to Sebastian. “I’m fine.”

His friend had returned without Maggie. Maggie had not come back to the house once in the time since she’d left. Kalan pushed the subject away from himself and asked about her now.

“She's all right,” Sebastian said, but he said it with the kind of tone that let Kalan know that Maggie'sall right, was also relative. “She's holding together. She took one of the pills her doctor gave her and managed to get some sleep last night.”

Kalan nodded. He'd refused something similar, knowing that if he slept because he was medicated, he'd sleep hard. If something broke, he wouldn't have woken up to be there. Now, hours later, he wished he'd taken the medicine because nothing had broken.

The FBI passed information back and forth and said they would figure out where Seline was. Though he’d looked at the one picture Ivy had brought and thought he recognized it, nothing had happened. The FBI had diligently sent agents to the place to check it out, but they hadn’t found her.

Kalan had listened as they alerted station after station to be on the lookout. They sent BOLOs to police officers, to the sheriffs who roamed a lot of the open range not populated by cities. They notified fire stations and EMTs. Everyone was on the lookout for Seline’s car and for Seline herself. The police were watching the addresses that Ivy had brought in. Even the cousins outside of Des Moines had an agent on them despite the fact that they seemed the least likely source of trouble.

The FBI was being resourceful, but it hadn’t changed anything. Nothing had popped.

No one had seen the car or Seline. No one had found a body, face down, floating at the edge of the water. At least, that was a good thing, he thought. But with nothing happening, Ivy had eventually gone home. Jo had followed her, both claiming they needed their own beds. Ivy said she would return to the library in the morning and then come by with whatever she learned. Kalan hoped to see her at any moment with whatever new information she had dug up.

The agents had even called the park ranger they’d talked to before. Leo Evans had checked the cabins himself to see if Sanders had in fact gone right back there, as Seline had once suggested. But he reported that all the cabins in the area were not only empty but completely untouched for some time.

Given that there was nothing for him to do here but wait and pace, there was clearly nothing for Sebastian to do either.

“You should go back and be with Maggie.” Kalan pushed on Sebastian's shoulder, as if to shove his immovable friend out the door. “Nothing's happening here.”

He hated saying that out loud. His throat was tight. His muscles clenched to the point where his nervous energy was the only thing that kept him upright and not curled in a fetal ball on the floor. There were no hoses to run. No fires to fight back. No burning buildings to rush into, or children or kittens to pull from under a bed.

He was utterly useless.

“I'll go,” Sebastian said, “but only after you've eaten something.”

Kalan would have fought back. He didn't feel like eating. He didn't want to eat and eating when Seline might not be able to eat at all felt like the worst betrayal of all. But he had gone up against Sebastian in the past and had not fared well. At this point he conceded that his friend was right, and that he had to be fueled and ready to run when they did find her. So he simply said, “Okay.”

He followed Sebastian into the kitchen and watched as his friend pulled out the toaster and methodically handed over several slices of buttered toast. Though Kalan chewed and swallowed methodically, they tasted like nothing more than sawdust. When he was done, he looked to his friend, only to find that Sebastian had pulled pasta from the pantry along with a jar of sauce and had set water to boiling. Vegetables had been rejected from the fridge, but a bag had been pulled from the freezer.

Kalan didn't know how much time had passed before Sebastian put the heavily loaded plate in front of him. Sebastian was smart enough to fix himself a plate, too, understanding that if he sat and took his own meal, Kalan would only be forced to mimic him.

They ate in silence, until Kalan had cleared most of the food from in front of him, but not all of it. At Sebastian's raised eyebrow and soft nod, he realized his friend had overfilled the plate, knowing that Kalan would stop early. Kalan had been had.

Though he’d tasted none of the food, he found he was incredibly grateful to be taken care of. He could feel his body chemistry altering with the hit of carbs and vitamins.

“Hold on,” Sebastian motioned with the plates he was now carrying into the kitchen to clean up. He returned with a second, full glass of cold water. “Drink all of this and then I'll go.”

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