Page 54 of Kane

Cassie had many great qualities. She was fun loving, creative, and was loyal to her friends. But Cassie wasn’t streetwise.

As a matter of urgency, Kane needed to figure out what to do to ensure that Cassie was safe.

I said get a God damned grip of yourself, man.

Kane stopped pacing and instead made a beeline toward his computer set-up. He turned his main computer on and waited for it to boot up. It was a fast computer, but each and every second felt like an eternity.

Everything was more intense.

The computer’s whirring sounded like a hurricane.

The tick-tock of the old clock on the wall sounded ominous, almost like a warning.

Kane wanted to do something.

Anything at all.

Therehadto be a way of locating Cassie.

Sitting at the computer, Kane began to think back to a story that Cassie had told him one night. It hadn’t been an easy story for Cassie to tell. It dated all the way back to her early teenage years and a time when she was feeling bullied by one of the ever-revolving cast of stepfathers in her life.

Things had gotten bad.

Like,seriouslybad.

Cassie had decided to run away.

But it wasn’t one of those empty threats that young kids make. The kind where they pack a toy suitcase and march a hundredyards down the road before turning around and running back to their mom.

No, this had been different.

Cassie had planned everything.

She’d even gone as far as emptying her savings account of the meagre funds in there and bought a cross country train ticket.

Cassie had indeed taken the train and was away from home for a week before she was picked up by a kind police officer three states over. She had returned home, but things had never been the same with her family since.

Could history be repeating itself now?

In his worried state of mind, Kane was beginning to wonder whether Cassie had done the same thing again. That she hadn’t in fact gone to meet someone. Could Cassie have decided that life with Kane wasn’t for her?

Had she run away?

Was it possible that Cassie had made up the story in her note as a way of putting Kane off the scent?

It was possible in theory.

Stranger things had happened.

‘Jesus fucking Christ, that’s enough,’ Kane bellowed, his frustration at his own paranoid mind spilling over. ‘Just focus on what you know. That’s the only way this gets solved.’

Kane’s stern words with himself did the trick.

His mind calmed.

A clear-headed energy came over him.

Suddenly, a moment of inspiration.