Snatched

Part 71

'Daniel honey, time to dry off! It's lunch time!' Cynthia looked over to the little boy who was playing in the swimming pool with the other children. It was hard to believe that he'd only been living with her a couple of weeks. Daniel had settled in so well and had been really well behaved. Well, apart from when it came to getting out of the swimming pool.

After a few seconds of Daniel ignoring her and continuing to splash around in his blue rubber ring, Cynthia called back to him again.
'Daniel, honey, it's time for lunch!' When the little boy didn't respond, Cynthia turned to her eldest foster child, Maya, who was sat at the edge of the pool, with her feet dipped in.
'Maya, honey, could you go in and grab him please?'
'Yeah sure', Maya said. She was a good girl.

Maya slid into the swimming pool and pulled the rubber ring over to the steps. She lifted the little boy out of the ring and stood him up at the edge of the pool, where Cynthia was waiting with a towel. Cynthia couldn't help but take in Daniels scent, as she wrapped the towel around the wet, squirming child.

Cynthia turned around and begun to walk back towards the sunlounger she had just been sat on. After just a few steps, she realised that Daniel wasn't following. Cynthia sighed loudly, as she scooped the little boy up into her arms. Was he getting heavier already, or was she just getting older?

As Cynthia placed Daniel on the sun lounger, she glanced over at the book she had just been reading. She was just a few pages away from the end now. It had taken Cynthia a while to read the book, but since Wendy had called her the other day, she'd been perusing it carefully, rereading some of the chapters, in an attempt to truly understand this Rory Gilmore woman.

Cynthia had not yet decided whether this woman, who wrote so eloquently about her childhood and life growing up with a single mom, could really be Daniels mother. There was a picture of Rory on the front of the book and Cynthia could notice some similarities between her and Daniel, but that wasn't quite enough to convince her.

And then there was the supposed father, Logan Huntzberger. Cynthia had asked Maya to look up this man on the internet and print off a few pages for her. These were pages that Cynthia had also been perusing for days. And yes, there was again some resemblance between Logan and Daniel, but there was definitely something not quite right going on there as well.

When Wendy had called her just a few days ago, Cynthia had prepared herself emotionally for this Logan guy to turn up in minutes. She'd been surprised by how nervous the thought of this had made her, actually. But then an hour had passed and then two and then four and Cynthia had managed to convince herself that maybe this man was an imposter, who had chickened out at the last minute. What motive someone would have for pretending to be Daniels father, she didn't know. But then, nothing these super rich people did ever made any sense to her.

Cynthia leaned forward to dry off Daniel, who was sat arms folded and bottom lip out on the sun lounger. He hadn't said a word since he'd been taken out of the pool. Cynthia tried to pull a funny face that she'd learned would often make Daniel smile, but still he said nothing.

'Don't worry honey', she said, lifting up the little boys right arm and rubbing it with the towel, 'you'll be able to go back in the pool after lunch.'
'No!' Daniel said, shaking his head. 'I want pool now!'
'But sweetie.' As Cynthia knelt down to Daniels level she felt her knees crack, 'we have to eat lunch!'
'But I don't want lunch, I want...'

And then the reciever on the gate made its ear piercing buzzing noise. Cynthia stood up and started to walk over to the gate.

The pitter patter of little footsteps behind her alerted Cynthia to the fact that Daniel had used the split second she'd had her back turned, to make a break for it. She turned back around as fast as she could and ran after the little boy, managing to scoop him up into her arms, just as his toes reached the edge of the pool.

Phew! That was a relief.

Beeep! The reciever sounded again.

'I'm coming!' Cynthia shouted, shuffling as fast as she could over towards the gate, with Daniel still on her hip.

Once she reached the gate, Cynthia peered through to see a young couple in their 30s, whose faces she knew she recognised from somewhere.