Jason Pinter - The Stolen

"Come on," I said, taking Amanda's hand again. I thought back to the last time this happened, the last time we were both running for our lives. Back then Amanda was fleeing with a man she didn't know. This time, for better or worse, she knew what she'd gotten into.

We jogged down the dark road, continually looking over our shoulders to see if we were being followed. I heard nothing, saw nothing. My body felt numb. I was still shirtless, and my side ached. Amanda suddenly stopped, put her hand on my chest.

"Is that a burn mark?" she said.

"We don't have time," I panted.

Then out of the darkness a pair of headlights appeared. My eyes widened, and I ran forward waving my hands like a crazy person. I was in the middle of the road, and I only prayed the driver could see well enough not to run me over.

It was a gray Cadillac. It pulled to a stop a yard in front of me. I ran to the driver's-side window, gasping for air.

The driver was a woman of about forty, a DVD from

Blockbuster on her front dashboard.

"Don't…don't hurt me," she said. Her eyes were frightened. I could only imagine the sight in front of her.

"Please," I said, "my friend and I were attacked. If you could just take us away from here and call the police…

Please, they're trying to kill us."

She reached for the shift, prepared to drive away, then saw Amanda huddled next to me, shivering in the lights of her car.

A minute later we were in the backseat of the Cadillac, heading away from one nightmare.

Then I felt the receipt in my pocket, and knew that another nightmare had just begun.

The police station was cold. Nobody had gone out of their way to offer Amanda or me a blanket or a drink or anything else to settle our nerves. I was wearing a blue workshirt with the name "Bill" stitched across the front. One of the detectives had given it to me. I didn't want to know where it came from, but didn't get the feeling Bill was looking too hard for it.

Ironically the only hospital within driving distance was

Yardley. After the kind Vanessa Milne picked us up on the side of the road in her Cadillac, she took us right to the emergency room. The docs smeared the burn with something called Silvadene, then dressed it, told me to change the dressing every two hours and reapply the cream. It was just a first-degree burn. Would go away in a week, and hopefully wouldn't leave a scar. Amanda didn't have a scratch on her. But she was pissed off beyond belief.

A pair of detectives met us at Yardley, but they made us wait a good two hours before arriving. And even when they did, they didn't seem too keen to help. I found this odd, that two people had escaped from men who wanted to either torture or kill them, and they seemed about as interested as they would be in macroeconomics.

They asked several questions. First, why had we decided to follow Dmitri Petrovsky in the first place, and what we planned to ask him. I told them the truth. That

Dmitri Petrovsky was linked to two children born in Hobbs

County who'd disappeared, only to reappear several years later. I told them that we had a feeling based on his behavior at the pediatric clinic that he'd been withholding something. They asked for proof of misconduct. I told them we didn't have proof. That was the point of following him.

After we were released, the cops took us back to the

Hobbs PD station. We were led through a cubicle farm of desks and eventually seated in a nondescript gray room with a metal table and chairs that were bolted to the floor.

A pitcher of water sat in front of us, along with two glasses.

The same two cops joined us and sat down. They poured themselves two cups of water, drank them loudly.

I had a strange feeling that we were being treated like the criminals here.

"Can we get some of that?" Amanda asked. The cops just stared at us. They had identical mustaches that rode straight across their upper lips, then down the sides of their mouths at a right angle. I got a gross mental image of them standing over a sink with a razor, shaving those

'staches in neat lines.

"You have any idea what this town is like now?" the fatter one asked. He had a crew cut and a neck full of angry jowls, like he'd recently graduated from the Mike Ditka finishing school. The one next to him was slightly trimmer, yet had the same scornful look in his eye. Between these two and the runaround I'd received from Lensicki earlier, it was tiresome and frustrating to see the lack of support from this department. "What's done is done, and now here you two come, harassing an upstanding member of our community. You should be ashamed of yourselves."

"Damn ashamed," the other cop agreed.

"You've got it all wrong," I said. "I just want to know why there's a doctor working at your hospital who knows two children that were kidnapped, and who ends up dead the same night we're held captive in some house in the middle of Hobbs County. The fact that all of this went down in your neck of the woods should, I don't know, make you just the least bit interested, I'd think."

"About this…captive thing," the fat one said. "I find it hard to believe that you followed this Russian doctor, as you claim, and then you end up being taken by some guy with a cigarette fetish? You're a reporter, right?"

"That's right," I said.

"Sure you're not looking to add a little spice to your story?"

"Go to that house and you'll see if I'm adding anything," I said angrily.

The thin one chimed in. "So you followed the doctor to his home, is that right? You waited in the hospital parking lot?"

"I don't know if it was his home," I said. "We just followed his car. In fact, I don't think he lived there at all.

I think he knew we were following him, and probably did for a while. Wherever he led us wasn't his home, but he set us up."

The fat one, whom I would guess was playing bad cop, only the lines weren't really that clear, said, "You followed him into, let me go over your statement again, a gated residence off Huntley Terrace?"

"That's right," I said.

"You followed him into a gated community."

"No, it wasn't a gated community, just a home with a gate out front."

"And a brick wall surrounding the property."

"That's right."

"And you want us to investigate him. " He paused, a scowl coming over his face. "Sounds to me like you two are the ones should be reprimanded."

"The gates were open," Amanda added. "And Petrovsky spoke to us when we got out of the car."

"That's when," the thin one said, "everything went, ahem, black. Right?"

"Right," I said. "They must have knocked us out or drugged us. I don't remember."

"And why did you follow Petrovsky to begin with?"

Fatty said.

"We think he has knowledge about the kidnappings that took place over the past few years. He was the attending physician for the births of both Daniel Linwood and Michelle

Oliveira. Both children disappeared and reappeared years later with no memory of their time gone missing."

"And why did you decide to follow the good doctor?" thin man said.

"When we first spoke to him at his office, he claimed to not know anything. It was a blatant lie." I paused, then added, "And I think there's been another kidnapping. In addition to Danny Linwood and Michelle."

"You fucking reporters," Ditka said. "Another kidnapping? You find two pieces of information got no connection, you put 'em together and make up some story 'bout how there's some big conspiracy. All just to sell a few newspapers, make a name for yourself. Do you have any proof of another kidnapping?"

"Proof? Not hard evidence, but…"

"Listen, fuckhead. Hobbs County is a nice town. I've lived here near twenty years. Now, ten years ago I might have said, yeah, we got some problems, not exactly the kind of place I'd want my kids growing up. But all that's different now. Things have changed. It's not right for you to go bringing up the bad times, because we're past that."