Jason Pinter - The Stolen

I couldn't chase Benjamin's car. The fight was over. I had to see how my friends were.

Just as I ran back into the lobby, the elevator door opened and out came Curt Sheffield, hobbling, leaning on

Amanda for support. The fleece was soaked through with blood. I heard sirens approaching from outside. I ran to

Curt.

"Christ, man, how is it?"

"I'll live," he said through gritted teeth. Then he took one hand from Amanda's shoulder and grabbed my shirt.

"The Reeds," he said. "They're gone."

"But we found this," Amanda said. She pulled a man's leather wallet from her pocket. "It was down at the other end of the hall, through a set of double doors. I thought I heard another noise, like several people running down the stairs. It's Robert Reed's. They must have been approach-274

Jason Pinter ing the room. He was going for his room key, then dropped it when he heard the gunshots. The key is still inside."

"I saw them," Curt said, the pain evident on his face.

"Damn it, if only I could run…"

Amanda helped him sit, kept pressure on his wound.

I took the wallet, opened it. The key card was nestled inside one of the slits inside. I went through the rest of it.

Credit cards. Driver's license. And a small slot for photos.

I opened it up. There was a picture inside that looked awfully familiar.

The shot was of a young boy. It was taken from behind, from a close distance. There was nothing special about the shot. The boy's face was turned away and he was in midstride.

I slipped the photo from the wallet and turned it over.

On the back of the photo was written one word.

Remember.

Curt had seen the Reeds approaching from the other end of the hallway. The family looked happy. Curt recognized

Robert from his driver's license photo. And when he saw that Robert was with a woman and two children, he knew for sure that this was the family we'd been searching for.

I confirmed with the hotel restaurant that the Reeds had finished a late supper just a few minutes earlier. Then they'd gone upstairs. They must have seen Curt lying outside their room, blood everywhere. That's when they'd run.

On the way to the hospital, Curt said they'd likely seen the body at the other end of the hall, as well. If so, they probably recognized the dead man. If they knew Raymond

Benjamin, chances were they'd met his flunky. And with all that death and blood, they must have known Ray

Benjamin had come for them.

We followed Curt to the Harrisburg hospital, the primary hub for all the medical centers in the Harrisburg area. They'd taken Curt right into surgery. Amanda and I sat in the waiting room as a doctor explained that the bullet had nicked his femoral artery. Luckily the bullet had missed severing the vessel by half a centimeter, other-276

Jason Pinter wise, he said, we'd be having an entirely different conversation.

I'd given the license plate number to the Harrisburg chief of police, a burly man named Hawley who had a look on his face that said as soon as they found Benjamin, the three of us would have hell to pay. An APB was put out on a dark BMW with New York plates, but an hour later the license plate was found abandoned in a gas station in

Bethlehem. Raymond Benjamin was gone.

Curt would be laid up for several days. Amanda and I slept in the hospital that night, occasionally shifted positions in the waiting room. Amanda waking up on top of me, then moving; me waking up leaning on her shoulder, not wanting to move.

When morning came and the doctors confirmed that

Curt was out of danger, we went in to see him.

Our friend was heavily sedated. His leg was swathed in bandages. We approached his bed, cautious, unsure if he could hear us or understand what happened.

As I got closer, I heard Curt whisper, "Henry."

"I'm here, buddy." I took Curt's hand in mine. Amanda stood beside me. I noticed her absently rubbing her hands on her jeans.

"The Reeds," he said. Curt swallowed, with some difficulty. Then he licked his lips. "The Reeds, man. They recognized Benjamin. They were scared."

I nodded, squeezed his hand.

"Find them," he said. "Now, get out of here before somebody else shoots me instead of you."

Amanda and I walked out of the hospital like two zombies who hadn't slept in weeks. Her eyes were bloodshot, her tank top caked with sweat and dirt. Her blouse was in some medical waste bin. Now she wore a gray sweatshirt, two sizes too large. The only thing that had survived the night physically and emotionally intact was our car.

We began the drive back to New York in silence.

Amanda turned on the radio. Found some talk station that neither of us listened to, but it at least punctured the quiet. When we saw a rest stop, we pulled in and got a few fast-food burgers for the road. We ate without talking, arrived in New York three hours later barely having said a word.

When we pulled onto the Harlem River Drive in Manhattan, I turned to Amanda.

"Where does Darcy live again?" I asked.

Amanda shook her head. "Just take me home."

"Where do you mean…" I began to say, but when

Amanda looked at me I realized what she meant.

I parked the car on the street, then walked back to my apartment, finding Amanda's arm intertwined with mine.

I found an old pair of shorts that were too small for me, and a Cornell T-shirt. Amanda put both on. The T-shirt fit like a nightgown, drooping down to her knees. I turned off all the lights and climbed into bed.

Amanda lay down next to me. I could hear her breathing, could feel my heart beating next to hers.

She turned onto her side, nuzzling her head into the nook between my head and shoulder. Her arm wrapped around my waist. And there she lay, soon drifting into sleep. I watched Amanda for as long as I could, staring at that face, knowing how hard it would be to spend one more minute without it next to mine at night. I thought about Curt and prayed he'd recover completely, thanked whoever it was that watched over us that we'd escaped with his life.

I prayed that Caroline Twomey was still alive and healthy, and that we would find her soon. I thought about all of that, and then my muscles quit on me and I drifted to sleep.

I woke at seven-fifteen, like I did most mornings. My alarm was set every day to go off at seven-thirty on the dot, but my internal alarm had a wicked sense of humor, always screwing me out of fifteen minutes of shut-eye a day.

Blinking the sleep from my eyes, I leaned over to see

Amanda rolled up in my comforter like a pig in a blanket, only if the pig were a beautiful woman and… I decided to just stop that train of thought before I accidentally said it to Amanda and wound up with my head shoved up my ass.

She was still wrapped in my clothes, her eyes shut, snoring lightly. I leaned over and shut off the alarm clock, then rolled out of bed, picked some clean clothes out of my dresser, went into the living room and got dressed there so as not to wake her.

I left the apartment, picked up two Egg McMuffins and two large cups of coffee, and was setting up breakfast on my meager dining room table when Amanda appeared in the doorway.

"Morning," she said, rubbing her eyes. She looked at her finger-likely identifying a smudge of eye gunk-then flicked it away. She offered a goofy smile and noticed the setup. "You got breakfast?"

"Straight from the kitchen at Mickey D's."

"Yum. Just like Mom used to make."

"Your mom worked the fry-o-lator."

"All right, enough out of you, smart guy. What do you have?"

I unwrapped the sandwiches, opened the coffees. I had ketchup waiting for her, knowing she liked to slather her eggs with the stuff. She took a seat, her eyes still red, and began to pick at the food.