“How long has he been missing for?” he asked, his face very serious.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Not that long. Less than a minute, really.”
And then Cole was pushing his way back inside, his eyes wide, frantic, even though I could tell he was trying to keep himself under control. The security officer was speaking into his walkie talkie.
“You’re his parents?” he said to us.
“Yes, well, I’m his father,” Cole said. “His name’s Declan. He’s 4. He’s about this tall, he’s got light brown hair, blue eyes...he was wearing... I think he was wearing a gray T-shirt with a fire truck on it and blue cargo shorts. Navy blue. I’m going back out there to look for him; I don’t think he came back in here.”
Before the security officer could say anything else, Cole dashed off, this time running the other direction down the block.
Another security officer had arrived, and the two were talking together, so I went back outside, too. There were so many people. So many cars. All going in different directions, and where would a little 4-year-old boy have gone off to by himself?
My mother hurried over to me, put her hand on my arm.
“Did you find him?” she asked hopefully, even though I could tell she knew that I hadn’t.
“No,” I said.
She set her mouth into a determined line. “He couldn’t have gotten far,” she said. “He’s got to be nearby. We’ll find him. Come on.”
We walked down the street, calling his name, but I was now overcome with the fear that something bad had happened and there was nothing I could do about it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Cole
He was gone.
Literally gone.
I’d pulled away from the kiss with Allie and looked down for him, and where he was supposed to be was just a blank space, empty air.
I didn’t know if the security guard was going to be able to help, so after I told him what Declan looked like, I took off. No way in hell was I just going to stand around there waiting for someone else to find him.
I went all the way around the block, calling his name. I ran into Allie and her mother, and they looked startled to see me.
“I don’t see him anywhere,” I said. “I don’t know if he managed to cross the street or something. I’ve got to keep looking...” I looked at Allie’s mom. “Would you stick around here, in case the security guards find him?”
“Of course,” she said. “And I just know he’ll turn up, I just know it—”
I didn’t stick around to hear the rest of what she had to say. Of course it was going to be something hopeful, something reassuring, but those words rang hollow to me right now. Most people go through life thinking this sort of thing would never happen to them, that the stories they see on the news or read about online happen to other people, but never them.
But what happens when one day you are that person?
I’d already been that person once, with everything that happened with my sister, and now here I was, potentially that person again. My feet thudded against the concrete. Sweat trickled down my brow. Where the fuck was he? How could someone his size have gotten so far?
There was an easy answer to that, of course, one that I was trying valiantly not to let enter my consciousness. It muscled its way in, though.
He got that far because someone took him.
And once that thought was forefront in my mind, the onslaught followed. A deranged murderer took him. A sociopath. A pedophile. A sick, twisted person who was going to torture him.
I tried to push that thought out of my mind, but when I did, I was suddenly imagining Declan, him being somewhere with people he didn’t know, wondering where I was, why I was letting this happen to him, why I wasn’t coming to save him.
I shook my head and yelled his name louder. I asked people if they had seen him. Some people looked concerned, others looked a little wary, but all of them shook their heads. No, they hadn’t seen him. He seemed to have disappeared into thin air.
There was no worse feeling than being completely helpless. And that was exactly how I felt as I power walked down the street, yelling Declan’s name. I could hear the note of desperation in my voice.