Bad Glass

Then we moved forward and climbed the stairs.

Danny took it slow, trying to keep his steps light and quiet. “He might be up there,” he whispered, gesturing up toward the dark hallway.

We came to Charlie’s room first. He was asleep at his desk, hunched over his closed notebook computer. He raised his head as soon as Danny opened the door.

“What?” he managed, confused and bleary. He reached up and tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes. “What’s going on?”

He looked okay. It looked like he was just waking up from a sound natural sleep. Completely oblivious.

Danny raised a finger to his lips and urged Charlie to be quiet. Confused, the seventeen-year-old got up and joined us in the hallway. He fell into place at my heels, and we moved on to Taylor’s door.

The door was open, but Taylor wasn’t there.

There were candles burning on her nightstand, illuminating the room in a steady yellow glow. Her bed was made. She had a flowered bedspread—white and pink and blue—and the sheets were pulled tight, marred only by an indentation on the near edge, where someone had been sitting. I was surprised to see my camera in the middle of the bed, weighing down a crinkled piece of paper.

I pushed my way past Danny and retrieved the camera. It looked okay. It was smeared with dirt but still intact, still undamaged. Mac must have grabbed it from my room.

“Taylor?” Danny whispered, his voice taut and urgent. He spun and peered into the room’s corners, as if maybe we’d just missed her standing there. When she didn’t materialize, he stepped back into the hallway and called down toward the remaining bedrooms: “Taylor? Are you here?”

“What is it?” Charlie asked, perplexed, growing increasingly agitated. “What’s going on? And why are you bleeding?”

Danny reached up and absently smeared blood across his forehead. He ignored Charlie’s questions. Instead, he came into the room behind me and peered over my shoulder.

I turned on the camera and set it to display the most recent image. The screen lit, and my stomach dropped. My bruised head once again began to swim with vertigo.

“He’s got her,” Danny said, his voice hushed, terrified. “He took her away.”

The picture showed Taylor bound at the wrists and gagged with duct tape. There was pure terror in her eyes. I was surprised to see that look on her face. I didn’t know she was capable of such stark, unambiguous emotion; it was something she had never let me see. Would she have covered up her face, I wondered, if her hands had been free? Is this what she’s always trying to hide? Fear? Terror?

She looked vulnerable. She looked … human. Peering out at Mac, behind the camera, watching that crazed, mud-spattered lunatic. A hostage.

His hostage.

“What did he do with her?” Danny asked.

I looked up. Charlie was standing in the doorway, watching us with terrified eyes. He still didn’t know what was going on, but he understood, at least, the nature of our fear: our frantic search, Taylor’s absence. As I looked, Floyd appeared in the hallway behind him. The skater was mouthing a gaping yawn, still partially lost in drugged and carefree sleep.

I slung the camera around my neck and grabbed for the sheet of paper in the middle of the bed. “At least we know where they went,” I said, holding up the note.

It was a familiar note. The paper was worn and crinkled, crisscrossed with at least a half dozen folds. One of the corners had been ripped away, and it looked as if the bottom third had been dipped in water and then allowed to dry. The whole thing was spattered with teardrops of mud.

But the words were still legible: “There’s something I need to do, some place I need to be. I know you don’t understand. I’m sorry, Amanda.”

“Underground,” I said. My voice was weak. As I continued, the words got caught in my throat, coming out rough, devoid of emotion. “The tunnels …

“He took her to the tunnels.”

As soon as I told him about the tunnel in the park, Danny tore out of the bedroom like a sprinter at the sound of a starting gun. His face was set in anger, and he let out a growl as he paused briefly just outside the bedroom door. “I’ll meet you there,” he said, “with as many men as I can gather. And guns. Lots of guns.”

Then he clumped down the stairs and out the front door.

I could imagine him hitting the street and running like a man possessed toward the courthouse and his barracked soldiers, doing absolutely everything he could to keep Taylor safe.

That’s the type of person he was. Loyal. Dedicated.