Chapter 37 #2
The boy was speaking in the background, almost like the phone wasn’t against his ear.
I couldn’t make out the words. Yes, he sounded younger, weaker, more fractured than Jake, but he wasn’t crying.
Not really. There was no hitch, no break.
It sounded rehearsed. I couldn’t tell if he was scared or pretending to be.
“Please—if this is a joke, it’s not funny.”
Any hope Scott had evaporated with my words. “Hang up! Don’t play this game. It’s just another sicko!”
“I don’t know, Scott. It sounds like him, but he’s talking like a child, calling me Mommy.”
“It’s not him, Michelle,” Scott said, already calling our contact at the FBI on his phone. We had a script to follow for this exact scenario.
Then the voice came back, closer now.
“I’m bleeding?”
It came out like a question, as if he’d just realized it himself. A shiver ran through me. If this was a prank, it was convincingly done. The coughing started again, wet and labored. No one was that good.
This could be Jake, and until I knew otherwise, I would treat him as my son.
“Where are you bleeding?”
“Everywhere,” the boy said, still coughing. “He stabbed me.”
My breath caught. “He stabbed you?”
Scott reacted instantly, repeating the information to the FBI. I held the phone to his ear so he could hear the coughing for himself. His expression shifted. Suddenly, he wasn’t so sure either.
I took the receiver back. “Stay on the line with me. The police are coming.”
There was a pause. Then came words that stole the air from my lungs.
“Do you remember me?”
Tears filled my eyes. How could he think we’d forgotten? “Of course I do, baby. I could never forget you.”
“Don’t engage him,” Scott warned. “Not until you ask the question. Remember what they taught us.”
Scott was talking about the question the FBI had drilled into us. The one only Jake could answer. But if I asked and he couldn’t—
I’d lose my only connection to him.
Scott took the phone from my hand, put it on speaker, and said, “Jake—what nickname did you give JimSuey’s dog?”
No answer. Just shallow, uneven breathing.
Scott turned back to his phone, addressing the FBI. “He’s not answering.”
“Give him a second,” I said.
“Michelle.” He rested a hand on my shoulder. “Jake would know.”
“Not if he’s injured and confused,” I said. “They said kids can regress. And you know, they usually hang up by now.”
I leaned closer to the speaker, my control slipping despite my effort to hold it together. “Honey, just tell me what you named JimSuey’s dog, and then we can come get you. Just try to remember for me. Please.”
There was movement on the line. His breathing grew louder, closer, like his mouth was pressed to the phone. He said something, but it came out garbled, swallowed by another violent cough.
“What did you say?” I asked, barely holding myself together. “I couldn’t hear you. Say it again.”
The pause stretched. No one moved. We stood there listening to him breathe, to the wet rattle in his chest, to the sound of a child fighting for air.
Then the word came through, clear and certain.
“Roadkill.”
The room went silent.
We had Jake on the line.
And he was dying.
That single word set everything in motion.
The call was traced, and the scramble to save him was immediate—police rushing to the scene, helicopters lifting into the air, the FBI relaying information in real time.
Scott and I did the only thing left to us: we clung to Jake’s voice, keeping him talking.
This was our one chance to save our son, and the clock was already running.
“A helicopter is over the house now. There’s a car in the driveway,” Scott whispered in my ear. The FBI was feeding him information as it came in. “They think he’s still inside with Jake.”
The kidnapper? I mouthed.
Scott gave a single nod, listened to instructions over the phone, then raised his voice so Jake could hear. “Jake, is anyone in there with you?”
My hands were shaking so badly I had to brace my elbow against the counter to keep the phone from slipping. “Jake,” I said, forcing my voice steady, “did you hear Dad? Are you alone?”
“No.”
“No?” Cold rushed through me. “You’re not alone? Who’s with you?”
There was a pause. A wet breath. Something shifting faintly in the background.
“Him.”
I grabbed Scott’s arm, my heart beating way too fast.
“Where is he?” I whispered, fighting panic.
“Downstairs.”
Scott stepped back in front of me, his eyes fixed on mine, the other phone still pressed to his ear. He listened for half a second, then spoke fast and low. “They’re asking if he can see him. If he can hear him.”
I swallowed, my mouth bone-dry. I’d taken to repeating the questions because Jake seemed to respond better to my voice.
“Can you see him right now?” I asked, forcing a calm I didn’t feel.
Another pause. Longer this time.
“Not anymore.”
Scott turned away immediately and relayed it to the FBI, his voice clipped and controlled.
“They want him to hide,” Scott said, his fear ratcheting up. “Bathroom, closet, anywhere he can lock.”
I leaned into the mouthpiece, desperation slipping through despite my effort to keep my voice steady. “Listen to me, Jake. You need to hide. Right now. Can you crawl somewhere? A closet? A bathroom? Anywhere you can lock the door.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“He knows where to find me.”
Scott’s eyes widened. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Get him off the phone now! Hang up!”
“No.” I covered the receiver, refusing to let go while my son was still on the line. Still breathing. Still here. “He needs us.”
“The man stabbed him, Michelle,” Scott said, his voice high and scared. “What do you think he’s going to do when he finds him on the phone?”
He overrode me then, his voice firm, unyielding. “Jake, this is Dad. I need you to do exactly what I say. Hang up the phone and go hide. Now. You hear me? Put the phone down and hide.”
Silence.
My pulse roared in my ears.
Then movement. A dull thump. Breathing, farther away now, like the phone had slipped from his hand.
“Jake!” I cried. “Jake—”
The line went dead.
Something inside me snapped. I slammed my fists into Scott’s chest, sobbing that he’d made him hang up, that he’d abandoned our son when he needed us most. Scott caught my wrists, pulled me into him, and held on until the fight drained out of me.
We stood there like that, my hands clutching his shirt, staring at the phone.
Every second stretched into agony. Was Jake hiding? Was he bleeding out on the floor? Had the man come back?
We didn’t know. There was nothing left to do but wait. Scott tightened his hold on me, both of us breathing through the same terror, the same unbearable hope.
And then the phone rang.
They brought us good news first. Then they brought us the truth.
Our son was alive. He’d been found inside the kidnapper’s house, barely conscious and covered in blood that wasn’t all his.
The FBI called the conditions inside the house grim and left it at that.
Jake’s injuries required no such restraint.
They used words like defensive wounds, shattered kneecap, signs of asphyxiation.
They said there were things done to him that no child should have to suffer.
They said he hadn’t run when we told him to.
Hadn’t hidden or locked himself away. He hadn’t needed to—because the man he’d been running from was already dead.
Killed by our son.
I sat there in a molded plastic chair, Scott’s hand crushing mine, trying to reconcile the boy who used to fall asleep in my arms with the son who’d survived long enough to do what he’d done. What he’d had to do.
His name was Ray Davis, and he got what was coming to him.
We only knew what could be reconstructed after the fact. There had been a violent struggle in the basement. Somehow, Jake gained the advantage, wrenched the knife from Ray, and used it against him. Then dragged himself up the stairs to call us.
When I closed my eyes, I heard Jake’s voice on the phone—smaller than it should’ve been, younger somehow—asking if I remembered him.
Like time had erased him while he was gone.
That was the quiet horror. Not the blood.
Not the wounds. A child wondering if he still existed in the minds of the people who loved him.
Yes, my son had come back to us.
But the cost of surviving might have already rewritten him.