Chapter 6
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Naomi woke in the wee hours of the morning, hearing sobs close by.
She immediately rolled over, pulled back the covers, and let Ricky tuck in beside her.
He snuggled up close, and she felt the wet tears on his cheeks.
She held him, warm and secure, and whispered, “That dream, that bad nightmare, … it’s over now. ”
He nodded and didn’t say anything, just pressed tightly against her.
She held him close, knowing how hard it was for him to constantly be in need of comfort, yet no family member cared enough to be there for him. She couldn’t understand how anybody could be so callous, yet they probably didn’t even see it that way. They probably just saw it as too busy.
It came down to nothing more than that to them. It broke her heart, but she was limited in terms of resources to help him when it got to this. When he fell back asleep, she closed her eyes and fell back to sleep beside him.
When she woke the next time, Ricky was snoring lightly at her side, but her bedroom door now opened, and Trent poked his head around, checking on her.
He took one look at Ricky and frowned, then at her with commiseration, and she nodded, slipped out from under the covers, and got up, snagging the robe off the back of her door. She followed Trent into the kitchen.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you, but I did want to confirm Ricky was with you,” he offered, his tone apologetic.
“It’s fine,” she muttered. “It’s nearly time for me to be up anyway. We have a lot to do today.”
“We do, but it’s also important that everybody gets some sleep.”
“Yeah, well, Ricky didn’t have a great night, as you can tell,” she muttered.
“Nightmares?”
Naomi nodded. “It’ll be a while before any of us get a chance to completely de-stress from that.”
“These things are always about the what-ifs. What if you hadn’t been rescued? What if they had treated you worse? What if more bad people found you?” He added, “No shame in having those kinds of thoughts and reacting to them.”
“It’s not about shame,” she clarified. “It’s just a matter of wanting it all to go away so he can recover.”
“His progress will definitely take a hit and be damaged from all this.”
“And when you say progress …?” She studied him expectantly.
“His ability to see the world as an easier place, his ability to process, his ability to love, care, share, all of the above. Take your pick.”
“Right now, an awful lot of fear still courses through his system because he’s so worried now that this can happen again,” she suggested.
“He hasn’t spoken to me directly about it, and it would be easier if he did.
I mean, he’s a little boy. How could he not be tormented by everything that happened? ”
“Has he asked for his parents at all?”
She shook her head. Trent swore softly under his breath, and she nodded.
“The trouble is, as long as I’m here, he can do without his parents.
The question is, what happens when all of this event is circulated around and when they realize that other people are looking at them with disdain—if that’s the right word. ”
“Oh, that’s a good word for it.” He snorted. “Disgust is another one.”
“And maybe this is just how rich people live,” she muttered. “I don’t know. I’ve never been in a position where other people’s opinions mattered more than looking after a child.”
“It’s not easy, and it’s not right, but we don’t really have any way to change it right now.”
“But I am terrified,” she snapped, her frustration bubbling over, “that, through all this, I’ll end up losing my job, and Ricky will end up in the care of somebody else.”
Trent grimaced. “I really hope that doesn’t happen.”
“But,” she added, staring at him, “you also know that it’s quite possible that it will.
Ricky has such a huge heart, and I know that he suffers a lot because they aren’t here with him.
But I don’t know how to change that and still be in his life.
They seem to think that, because he’s well cared for, it’s a done deal. ”
She sighed. “To even bring this up or to mention it in any way endangers my position here,” she clarified. “So, tracking down his family or getting them to actually toe any line will have a detrimental effect on me.” She gave him a sad smile.
“And yet maybe it’s still for the best,” he pointed out.
“Maybe, but the process will be very painful. And that in itself won’t be easy either.”
“No, nothing about this is easy,” he admitted. His phone buzzed, and he checked it.
She winced and muttered, “And I guess the day has started.” She got up and put on coffee. When it was ready, she turned back, listening in to the only part of the conversation she could hear. Trent wasn’t too upset about the call.
When he ended the call, he told her, “That was my boss.”
“Any news?”
“They have tried talking to our prisoners again, but they aren’t budging. So, they will just leave the men to stew about it some more.”
“And the dead men?”
“I don’t know what they’ve done with them,” he admitted, with a wave of his hand. “Presumably they are trying to contact next of kin.”
“If they have any,” she pointed out. “I mean, they weren’t exactly living the kind of life where people are easy to deal with or necessarily even have family who want them back.”
“Maybe, but they still need to know that their child, brother, or father has died,” he noted.
“So, the department, a different department, will be working on tracking them down. We’re looking for any kind of connections between them and you guys.
That’s the biggest thing for us right now, trying to sort out whether it was an accident that you were taken or something was much more calculated about it. ”
“And if there was,” she added, “they really didn’t know what to do when they had us there.”
He smiled and nodded. “And that turned out to be a good thing.” When she frowned, he gave her the honest truth. “They could have just killed you both on the spot.”
“I won’t argue that,” she muttered, with a shudder. “Surviving that event absolutely was a good thing. Yet it’s also a little dubious and unsettling to think that we could have been targeted.”
“Because the family is not forthcoming, we’re wondering if their phone was hacked or stolen, and somebody else used their number.
You would have just assumed it was from them.
Yet we don’t have your phones anymore to easily see if the number was very close but maybe not their number.
Regardless, you naturally assumed it was a message for you. ”
She stared at him for a long moment. “You’re thinking that text message wasn’t even for us?”
He nodded. “It’s just one of several possibilities.”
“So we showed up to the dock, thinking we were going on a sailing trip with Ricky’s family, yet the text was really intended for somebody else?”
He nodded slowly. “It’s a potential scenario we have to pursue.”
She sat back, stunned. “That never occurred to me.”
“Did you actually see it? It was on your phone?”
“I did see it, twice. I was checking on … I was confirming the date and time.”
“And did you scroll up?”
“No, I didn’t. Why would I? Good God,” she muttered, then swore, as she stared at him in shock. “So, it might not have had anything to do with Ricky’s family at all.”
“Again, we are definitely considering that now.” He gave her a one-arm shrug. “We are considering lots of options here.”
She snorted. “Who would have thought it?”
“When you were down there on the dock, I don’t know why the kidnappers would have grabbed you, unless you responded to the text, and you were the ones who showed up.
Even if they were expecting somebody else, they may have grabbed you and then didn’t know what to do with you.
Their boss man may have let them know they had screwed up and then told them to get rid of you. ”
“And instead of killing us—” She left it at that.
He nodded. “Instead of killing you two, you ended up as prisoners, while they got brave enough to do what they needed to do.”
She closed her eyes at that. “Or they were waiting for somebody else to come and help them out.”
“Meanwhile I think they were getting slowly drunk, hoping that, at some point in time, they could do what they needed to do. And probably the easiest way,” he began, turning to her, “would have been to grab another boat and just abandon you out there.”
“But, if they were ordered to take care of us, they may not have killed us because another boat could have come by.”
He hesitated, then added, “Unless they sank the boat with you chained up front.”
“Oh, good God,” she muttered, her heart slamming against her chest as she realized how very possible and expedient that would have been. “And it would have been mostly hands-free.” She wasn’t able to control the venom in her tone.
Trent grimaced and nodded. “A lot of people can kill from a distance, but they can’t kill if it means actually stabbing, slicing a throat. They could have just shot you.”
“But, because of the cables, we still couldn’t have been freed from the boat,” she noted, with understanding. “Okay, so now we have a whole new set of nightmares to deal with.”
“Sorry.”
She scrubbed her face before popping her head back up as she added, “Make sure you don’t tell Ricky that.”
“Never,” he replied. “He’s just a child.”
“You’re right.” She raised both hands. “Sorry, it’s just … instinct.”
“He has more-than-enough things to deal with, so I would never want to cause him any other undue stress.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” she admitted, “because, right about now, I’m starting to feel a whole lot of undue stress myself.
” She sat here, mulling over what he had shared.
“Wow,” she muttered, still trying to wrap her head around the whole idea, “to think that it could all have been a horrible misunderstanding.”
“It would also explain why the family was not there because they had no intention of being there, especially if it wasn’t even them who texted that you were going sailing.”
“Jesus, what a mess.”