Little Drummer Boy

Chapter 14: Crashing Down

Chapter 14: Crashing Down

Sure, I probably shouldn’t have gone after them myself, I shouldn’t have done this so soon, when I only had half a clue where I’m going. But you see, when someone you love is taken, you don’t always think carefully, you just go by instinct and emotion, and hope that everything words out for the best. “Take a right turn up here,” Tristen said and I did, not even thinking as I turned the wheel.

“What next?” I asked, my sights set on the road as I pushed the gas pedal as far as it would go, a small voice in the back of my mind telling me that I should be careful, but it was far quieter than any other thought ranging through my mind.

“Are you okay?” Tristen asked, and if I had been paying attention, I would have seen how tense he was in the car, or how tightly my fingers were gripping the steering wheel.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be doing this. I mean, let the police handle this, it’s their job.”

Wise words, should I have been in a mental state to understand the logic of them. “What if they’re too late? What if he’s hurt, or scared, or thinks that we just abandoned him. No, I’m not putting him through that, he deserves to have some happy times with the family when the only thing he has to worry about is that Julia will ambush him with another hug or that Mom got the numbers mixed up on the microwave and that his dinner was still mostly frozen. I won’t let him go back to that life when he’s too scared to do anything, too panicked to trust anyone, I can’t let him go back.”

As I said this the speedometer showed that the car’s speed was nearing triple digits.

I never knew how fast this old car could go until I nearly pressed the gas pedal through the floor. It’s funny, you’d think during that time I’d be frantic, yelling, wanting to tear someone’s head off.

But no, at least for that brief time, my focus was unbreakable as the buildings flew by us like the clouds soar by while flying in a plane.

“Another right here,” Tristen said. I firmly gripped the wheel and turned it, bringing my car into what would be oncoming traffic during the day to maximize radius of the curve thereby making it so I didn’t need to slow down as much.

“What next?” I asked, the softness in my voice something that seemed to shake him. Tristen then went through some swipes on the tablet while trying to answer my question, so I just focused on the road in front of me.

“Um, looks like they’re taking the highway now, they’re speeding up too.”

“Three miles.”

“Huh?”

“That’s the range.” Even driving as fast as I could, the speed ups and slowdowns were too much for me to be able to keep in range if they ended up getting to the highway in time. We’d been lucky so far, the amount of time that it took to get out of the plat made them slow down. There weren’t going to attract attention to themselves by speeding now, no, they’d already won.

Or at least that’s what they probably thought.

I wondered what Jace was thinking.

Did he think that I’d forgotten about him?

Did he think that I’d just leave him?

Did he think that I was lying when I said we were his family?

I blew by a car that was going too slow, dodging the couple other cars that were out on the roads as we got to the busier streets. If I had been smart, I would have been worried about the police finding us, but I didn’t.