3
The Bear
“Get the fuck off me,”the cunt growls under my weight, and I slap his cheek hard to remind him who’s in charge here.
“Where’s ya manners, bro?” I tease and taunt the lame fucker. He tenses up when the sirens sound out in the distance, and I chuckle under my breath in entertainment. A damn livewire, this one. “What were you doing with that girl in your van?” I avoid saying her name in case he doesn’t know it.
“None of your fucking business,” he snarls, which cracks me up.
I glance at Austin, who’s calling someone on Xave’s phone, as he paces back and forth, looking anxious. Emergency services have already been called, and they’re on their way, so who is he calling on Xave’s phone?
“Bro, who are you calling?” I yell at him, wondering if something has turned for the worse.
“Emaline,” he states dryly as he swipes off.
“What? Who’s in there?” I nod toward the van and glance down at the fucker who’s pinned under me to search for a reaction on his smarmy face.
“Her sister,” he answers. “And it looks like she’s been messed up.”
“Huh? The blond?” I ask to clarify because I never had much to do with her and barely remember her. She was one of those chicks that stayed on the edge of the circle for popularity status, and I’m pretty sure Kieran has fucked her more than once.
“Yeah, the blond,” Austin answers, sounding depressed because he can’t get through to Em. “She’s not answering.”
“It’s late, bro. She’s probably asleep,” I try to find a reason. “She’s a nerd. Nerds need lots of sleep.”
“What the fuck?” Austin spits and roughs his hair up. “Where the hell did you get that logic from? Your arse.”
“It’s true,” I affirm, looking down at the cunt beneath me, “Ain’t that right, Fred?”
“Ask Fred where Em is?” Austin insists.
“My name’s not Fred,” the guy says, and I tip my head back and laugh at him.
“I don’t fucking care what your name is. I’m calling you Fred,” I chuckle as I spot flicking red lights several yards down the road rapidly approaching us. “The cops are coming, Fred, so it’s time for your confession.”
Fred wriggles under my weight and gasps, pretending he can’t breathe even though I’ve been sitting on him for a few minutes now. “Fucking get off me.”
“Not until the cops get here. How about you tell us why you had that girl in your van?” I ask nicely. “And what have you done with her sister?”
Fred squirms like an eel in a pond trap. “Dunno what you’re talking about.”
“Ah. Come on, Fred. Give us a clue. Why were you speeding away from us? Got something to hide? How much were you paid to kidnap that girl?”
“What girl?” Fred states, struggling under my weight.
“Now is not the time to play dumb, Fred. The girl in your van that you kidnapped from…” I look to Austin. “Where from?”
“They had her down in the crypt,” he informs me.
I slap Fred lightly on the cheek. “The crypt is our territory, dude. You don’t trespass on the Leroux grounds. So, how about you tell me why you were down there with the girl?”
He groans and hisses, and I give him another slap to pull his shit together. Next time, I’ll use my fist.
“Speak, Fred. Give me the fucking truth, or you’ll be drinking steak and gravy through a straw when I’m done with you. Got it?” I threaten as the cop cars descend on us, and Fred starts wriggling, eager to escape my clutches.
“Let me go,” he begs. “Please. I have a family, a daughter.”
“You should’ve thought about that before,” I argue, not believing a single word. If you’re going to try and raise sympathy with your captive, using the ‘I have a family’ bullshit works with some people. “I’m gonna ask you again, Fred. The cops are only a minute away. Tell me straight. Why did you kidnap that girl?”
He mumbles something, and I lean forward to try to hear him under the screeching sirens.
“Huh?” I grunt. “What did you say?”
“We were hired to shut her up,” he finally confesses.
“See, that wasn’t so bad,” I say before moving on to my next question. “Why? What did this girl do?”
He groans again, fighting against his loyalties to whoever hired him. It’s evident to me that these guys aren’t the ringleaders, and I suspect the dude who took in the car is the one behind it all. Emaline’s grandparents don’t appear to have money and are struggling to keep their hardware store afloat, thanks to our father’s investment in the franchise across the road. So, they can’t have kidnapped Brielle Applegate to hold her for ransom unless they were misinformed about her grandparents’ finances. None of this makes sense.
“I don’t know,” Fred whines and screws his face up, pretending again to be in pain. “We received a tip-off as to where they were hiding her.”
“By who? Who hired you?” I ask as the paramedics pull up with the cops a couple of seconds behind them. I watch Austin direct the paramedics as they pile out of the ambulance, and police approach Fred and me.
I explain, “This guy and the dead one in the van kidnapped the girl inside.”
“We’ll take over from here,” the officer says, urging me to get off Fred.
“Watch it,” I warn. “He’ll run for it.”
“I didn’t kidnap her,” Fred blurts heatedly as I get off him, and the arresting officers are on him like a shot. “He’s lying. They were trying to run us off the road.”
An officer approaches me to ask for my details and give a statement as Xave climbs back into the van with the flashlight in hand. Worry lines indent his face, and I know his concerns are not over the girl in the van but Emaline Applegate. He takes his phone back from Austin and swipes it, then places it against his ear, trying again to get hold of her.
I storm over to him, grab the phone from his hand, and wait for the voicemail to click over. “Emaline, it’s Aaron Leroux here. Can you contact my little bro ASAP because he’s worried about you? We’ve found your sister. She’s in a bad way, and the paramedics are currently tending to her and will be taking her to the hospital.”
Xave snatches his phone back off me and grits his teeth. “Bro, I’m more than capable of talking on the phone.”
“I thought she might answer if she heard my voice,” I argue.
“Why would she care that you called her?” he argues back, and weirdly, I’m stung by that comment. A part of me hates that I’m attracted to her. There’s also another part of me that hopes she’s okay because if she isn’t, if she is caught up in this mess with her sister, then someone needs to pay.
“Look, this is what we’re gonna do,” I start. We’ll drive to her grandparents’ place to tell them about Bri, and hopefully, Em will be there, too.”
I watch the officer bundle up Fred into their cop car as he’s yelling obscenities at whoever cares to listen.
“Alright, let’s go,” Xave says, eager to hunt Em down so he can relax a little.
“Are you in, Austin?” I ask as we walk towards Xave’s car.
“Do I have a choice?” he grumbles because there’s only one way out: in Xave’s car. And since we’re not going back to the lame party, he has to come with us or walk home.
My hand pats Austin on the shoulder in my brotherly way. “Keep pretending you don’t care, bro,” I mock. Usually, Xave would shoot me one of his mischievous looks, but his mind is elsewhere now, and he barely acknowledges what I said. Xave and I have an unspoken language of mockery toward Austin’s unsmiling seriousness of fake heartlessness when he has an excellent cardiac vessel somewhere deep. Yet, he’s the most reliable of the twins and has never let me down. Xave, on the other hand, can have flights of fancy and forget where he lives, let alone who his family is.
The officers permitted us to leave after the paramedics attended to Brielle and took her away in the ambulance. Xave has already called Emaline’s number another ten times, and I’m wondering when he’ll realize she won’t answer when her phone is switched off.
We climb back inside Xave’s car, me in the front passenger seat while Austin is simmering in the back. The journey back into the city is eerily quiet, and I keep trying to make conversation to break the intensity, but these two boys aren’t interested in talking.
“Her van’s here,” Xave points out, sounding relieved, as we turn down Emaline’s street. “She must be asleep and has her phone switched off.”
“Bro, that’s what I’ve been saying to you the entire fucking evening,” I raise my voice in frustration, but I’m just as relieved as him and exhale my pent tension of how I’ve treated sweet Emaline.
“Who’s going to tell them?” Xave asks. Austin and I exchange glances. She peer-tutored him and knows her much more than we do, so he should be the one to speak to her grandparents.
“We’ll all go,” I decide, sensing my bro struggling a little with everything, “The three of us, including you, Austin.”
“I didn’t say anything,” he mumbles, swearing under his breath.
Xave parks the car on the side of the road, stalls, and starts nervously tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “What do we tell them?”
“Well, first, we tell them their daughter has been found…” I groan, opening the passenger door, “Just come on, let’s go. We’ll tell them the truth because that’s what they deserve. They’re good, hard-working salt of the earth people.”
“Yeah, but we’re not exactly their favorite people. After all our father’s investment company is putting them out of business,” Xave explains as he follows behind me up their drive.
The security light flicks on, showing the way to their front door, and without hesitation, I ring the doorbell. A dog starts barking upstairs. Lights are switched on, followed by footsteps. I’ve met the Goodman’s once under strained circumstances, and I’m unsure of their opinion of me, personally, even though my surname is Leroux.
The door opens on the chain, and grumpy, concerned face peers back at me. “What?” he snaps.
“Sir, Mr. Goodman, we found Brielle, your daughter,” I tell him as he examines my brothers through the crack in the door.
“Wait, you’re the Leroux boys, aren’t you?” he barks, and I think about how suspicious this may look.
“Yeah, we are. The police are on their way to speak to you about the details, but Brielle is injured and taken to hospital,” I explain. “She’s okay.”
His expression is vague, as if he doesn’t believe me, or maybe he’s taking a while to register what I just said.
“Sir? Your daughter, Brielle, has been found,” I repeat as Em’s grandmother says, “What’s going on?” in the background.
Mr. Goodman looks back to address his wife and states sharply, “The Leroux boys reckon they’ve found Brielle.”
“Are you kidding me?” Mrs. Goodman shrills, and I glance at Xave, gazing up at the upstairs window that I assume is Emaline’s bedroom. She hasn’t emerged yet, even with the dog barking and the lights on, so either she’s a deep sleeper or doesn’t want to talk to us.
An argument takes place between the Goodmans, Mrs. Goodman wanting to open the door to speak to us properly, while Mr. Goodman, in his cautiousness, refuses to do so for fear that we’re fucking them around.
“Mr. Goodman,” I interrupt their spat. “Can we speak to Emaline?”
“I don’t want you near my granddaughter,” Mr. Goodman barks protectively and can’t help but respect the man. I wouldn’t want my daughter near men like us, either.
“I’ll get her,” Mrs. Goodman defies her husband. “A jackhammer could be jackhammering outside her door, and she wouldn’t wake.”
I shoot Xave a smile to let him know that everything is okay, but he doesn’t look happy. Austin looks uncomfortable, with his arms folded across his chest. He is standing halfway down the driveway, eager to escape.
“Em!” Xave whisper-shouts up at her window, and only an eerie silence replies, not even a flicker of the drapes.
“Sir, you’ve got to believe us about Brielle,” I reiterate. “She’s at the hospital pretty beaten up from a car accident. The guy I spoke to who was driving the van-”
“Look,” Mr. Goodman interrupts, holding his palm up to hush me. “No offense, but you Leroux boys are hardly the most honest, upstanding citizens to walk this earth, so you’ll have to excuse me if I ask for a second opinion from the police.”
“I understand, sir, and as I said, the police are on their way to speak to you about Brielle,” I tell him, shoving my frustration aside. “But if we could just have a quick chat with Emaline, if you don’t mind, that would make his…” nodding toward Xave and realizing that it’s not just about Xave, but all of us, “our night to see her and make sure she’s okay.”
Mr. Goodman rolls his eyes and exhales, and I suspect he’s coming around to believe us. “Emaline is a grown woman who can do whatever she likes.”
“I know, sir, but it makes us feel better if you’re okay with it,” I say with conviction, glancing again at Xave, who is dead quiet. I didn’t expect to be the one doing all the talking, but then I am the older and more mature brother here.
Mr. Goodman opens his mouth to reply when his wife shrills behind him, “She’s not here! Where the heck has she gone? It’s not like her to go somewhere without telling us. She knows we worry, especially with what happened to our daughter in South Africa and now Brielle.”
He swings around to look at her. “Huh? What are you talking about? She wouldn’t sneak out like that.”
“Emaline,” Mrs. Goodman clarifies, “her bed has not been slept in and-”
Mr. Goodman barks back at her, “I know you’re talking about Emaline. Jeez, I’m not stupid. I can’t get my head around all of this.”
“Mrs. Goodman,” Xave steps forward. There was a car here earlier tonight. Do you know who it belonged to?”
“Er, I didn’t see a vehicle,” his voice trembles as a police car pulls up. Reality had just dawned on him, and everything I had said to him was true.
“It was a hatchback,” Xave adds urgently, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand in anguish.
“Oh,” he says as his eyes focus on the officers climbing out of the police car. Emaline”s friend Rosie is the only person I know who drives a hatchback.”
“Mr. Goodman, we’ve been trying to reach Emaline for the last hour, but her phone is switched off. That is understandable if she’s hanging out with her friend and wants privacy. Still, considering the circumstances that occurred this evening, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could tell us Rosie’s address so we can check up on her,” Xave states honestly.
“You’re not going to cause trouble for her and her family, are you?” Mr. Goodman stresses.
“All we’ll do is check up on her,” Xave says convincingly. “Nothing more. Nothing less.”
There are several beats of silence as the police walk up the drive toward us before Mrs. Goodman blurts out Rosie”s address. “Please update us once you find them so we can breathe easy.”
“I will. I promise,” Xave says, turning and running down the drive with Austin and me following.