Page 66 of Fight or Flight
Jenny nods and bites her lip. “I have a feeling something bad happened.”
The calm way she said it pissed me off, and I snap at her, “Don’t say shit like that.” Then I click on Claire’s number, and when the automatic voice picks up immediately, I hang up and try again, but to the same effect.
“Where’s Brody?” I ask while I shoot Claire a text message asking her to call me back.
“He took the car to look for her. About an hour ago,” is her quiet response. Her hands massage her belly faster, and her breath speeds up as a sheen of sweat appears on her forehead.
“Hey, Jen, are you-?” Jenny’s ringtone interrupts me, and with surprising agility for her size, she springs from the couch to walk into the kitchen and answer it.
“Have you found her?” She says to the receiver, and a painful ball of fear grows in my stomach at the face she makes after hearing whatever was said on the other end.
She glances at me swiftly and, in a breathy voice, says, “Yeah, Aidan’s here. We’re going now. No, it’s okay. Give us five minutes.”
Jenny ends the call and goes to grab the keys, and motions to the door. “Come on, Brody found something. You need to drive us because I can’t reach the wheel with the stomach.”
“Wait, what did he find?” I go after her and wait for her to answer as I open the passenger door to the company truck that’s practically become mine now and help her get in.
“Claire’s bicycle. But there’s no sight of her. Come on, we gotta move,” she says, squeezing her belly again.
I try to stay calm and not crash the car as I follow Jenny’s mumbled directions, but it’s getting harder and harder to keep the rising panic at bay.
When we park outside a small building with a few stores and a small market to the side, I notice Claire’s bicycle leaning by Brody’s car as the man himself talks to a small Asian woman. He nods his head as she points to somewhere and then shakes her hand.
The woman walks away before we get to him, and my first words are, “Does she know what happened to Claire?”
“That woman owns the apartment above the store. She happened to see a small blonde girl getting inside an SUV with two men,” he informs me, clearly in his police mode. His eyes search my face before he looks at Jenny and frowns. “Sweetheart, are you okay?”
“The fuck is she talking about,” I growl before Jenny can answer him. “What SUV?”
“I’m fine,” Jenny waves a hand when Brody opens his mouth, probably to tell me to watch my tone. “But, exactly what Aidan said. What fucking SUV?”
“I only know that it was black,” he replies. “Oh, and that one of the guys had a metal brace.”
“A brace? Something like a cast?” Jenny inquires, her shoulders hunching slightly.
“Yeah, on his leg. It was quite big, and the woman thought it looked odd because the man was wearing a fucking suit underneath it.”
“Oh, fuck. It’s them. They fucking found her.” She covers her mouth, and her eyes fill with tears.
“Who is them? And what do you mean by ‘found her’?” I ask her and Brody, but the man seems just as confused as I am.
Jenny glances around in fright and then says quietly, “There’s more to the Nora story... But here is not a good place to discuss this.”
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IT’S BEEN THREE DAYS since we came to Chicago, and Brody set up an impromptu office in the motel room adjoining mine. He easily slipped back into the FBI agent mode and switched between making phone calls to clicking away on his laptop to scribbling something on a pad before putting it on the pile of documents and print-outs.
All I could do, however, is prove how useless and powerless I am in a situation like that. I’ve been pacing around the room, waiting for Brody to find where they are holding Claire. The only thing I could do was run errands like arranging food and taking phone calls when Brody was too busy.
When we arrived in the city, I was set on going to the police straight up, but Brody was quick to shoot down that idea. He’s certain that men, like the ones who took Claire, are surely having someone on their payroll within the police department. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to climb as high.
Reluctantly, I agreed to his plan to start from a legal angle, which basically means that Brody tries to find out what he can by simple research—calling people who might know something and asking around the place where Claire used to live before we resolve to the use of extra methods. I have no idea what he meant by extra methods, but I guess somebody like Brody has to know more about that stuff than me.
I woke up at five in the morning after another night of tossing, turning, and imagining the worst possible scenarios, and decided to just give up on getting rest. Now, I’m standing in front of the door to Brody’s room with two steaming coffees in my hands, contemplating how I’m going to knock, but it opens before I can.
The man stands in the doorway, looking sharp, and eyes me disapprovingly.
“You look like shit,” he comments, grabbing the offered coffee.