Never Look Away (2 page)

I took a tiny bite out of it, cracking the chocolate, and instantly regretted it. I should have let Jan have the first bite. But I'd make up for it through the week. On Monday, come home with flowers. Later in the week, book a sitter, take Jan out to dinner. This thing Jan was going through--maybe it was my fault. I hadn't been attentive enough. Hadn't made the extra effort. If that was what it was going to take to bring Jan around, I was up to it. I could put this marriage back on the rails.

I didn't expect to see Jan coming straight for me when I turned. Even with the sunglasses over her eyes, I could still tell she was upset. There was a tear running down one cheek, and her mouth was set in a terrible grimace.

Why the hell wasn't she pushing the stroller? I looked beyond her, to where I thought she'd been sitting.

She came up to me quickly, clapped her hands on the sides of my shoulders.

"I only looked away for a second," she said.

"What?"

"My shoe," she said, her voice shaking, uneven. "I was getting--the stone--I was getting the stone out of my shoe, and then I looked--I looked around and--"

"Jan, what are you talking about?"

"Someone's taken him," she said, almost in a whisper, her voice nearly gone. "I turned and he--"

I was already moving past her, running over to where I'd last seen them together.

The stroller was gone.

I stepped up onto the ledge Jan had been sitting on, scanned the crowds.

It's just a mix-up. This isn't what it looks like. He'll be back in a second. Someone grabbed the wrong stroller
.

"Ethan!" I shouted. People walking past glanced at me, kept on going. "Ethan!" I shouted again.

Jan was standing below me, looking up. "Do you see him?"

"What happened?" I asked quickly. "What the hell happened?"

"I told you. I looked away for a second and--"

"How could you do that? How could you take your eyes off him?" Jan tried to speak but no words came out. I was about to ask a third time how she could have allowed this to happen, but realized I was wasting time.

I thought, instantly, of that urban legend, the one that got called into the newsroom once or twice a year.

"I heard from a friend of a friend," the calls usually began, "that this family from Promise Falls, they went down to Florida, and they were at one of the big theme parks in Orlando, and their little boy, or maybe it was a little girl, got snatched away from his parents, and these people took him into the bathroom and cut his hair and made him look different and smuggled him out of the park but it never got in the papers because the park owners don't want any bad publicity."

There was never, ever anything to it.

But now ...

"Go back to the main gate," I told Jan, trying to keep my voice even. "If someone tries to take him out, they'll have to go through there. There should be somebody from park security there. Tell them." The ice-cream cone was still in my hand. I tossed it.

"What about you?" she asked.

"I'll scout out that way," I said, pointing beyond the ice-cream stand. There were some restrooms up there. Maybe someone had taken Ethan into the men's room.

Jan was already running. She looked back over her shoulder, did the cell phone gesture to her ear, telling me to call her if I found out anything. I nodded and started running the other way.

I kept scanning the crowds as I ran to the men's room entrance. As I entered, breathless, the voices of children and adults and hot-air hand dryers echoed off the tiles. There was a man holding up a boy, smaller than Ethan, at one of the urinals. An elderly man was washing his hands at the long bank of sinks. A boy about sixteen was waving his hands under the dryer.

I ran past all of them to the stalls. There were six of them, all doors open except for the fourth. I slapped on the door, thinking it might open.

"What?" a man shouted from inside. "I'll be another minute!"

"Who's in there?" I shouted.

"What the hell?"

I looked through the crack between the door and the frame, saw a heavyset man sitting on the toilet. It only took a second to see that he was in there alone.

"Fuck off!" the man barked.

I ran back out of the restroom, nearly slipping on some wet tiles. Once I was back out in the sunlight, saw all the people streaming past, I felt overwhelmed.

Ethan could be anywhere.

I didn't know which way to head off, but going in any direction seemed a better plan than just standing there. So I ran toward the base of the closest roller coaster, the Humdinger, where I guessed about a hundred people were waiting to board. I scanned the lineup, looked for our stroller, or a small boy without one.

I kept running. Up ahead was KidLand Adventure, the part of Five Mountains devoted to rides for children too young for the big coasters. Did it make sense for someone to have grabbed Ethan and brought him here for the rides? Not really. Unless, again, it was some kind of mix-up, someone getting behind a stroller and heading off with it, never bothering to take a look at the kid sitting inside. I'd nearly done it myself once at the mall, the strollers all looking the same, my mind elsewhere.

Up ahead, a short, wide woman, her back to me, was pushing a stroller that looked an awful lot like ours. I poured on the speed, pulled up alongside her, then jumped in front to get a look at the child.

It was a small girl in a pink dress, maybe three years old, her face painted with red and green spots.

"You got a problem, mister?" the woman asked.

"Sorry," I said, not even getting the whole word out before I'd turned, still scanning, scanning, scanning--

I caught sight of another stroller. A blue one, a small canvas bag tucked into the back basket.

The stroller was unattended. It was just standing there. From my position, I couldn't tell whether it was occupied.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a man. Bearded. Running away.

But I wasn't interested in him. I sprinted in the direction of the abandoned stroller.

Please, please, please ...

I ran around to the front of it, looked down.

He hadn't even woken up. His head was still to one side, his eyes shut.

"Ethan!" I said. I reached down, scooped him out of the stroller, and held him close to me. "Ethan, oh God, Ethan!"

I held him out where I could see his face, and he was frowning, like he was about to cry. "It's okay," I said. "It's okay. Daddy's here."

I realized he wasn't upset because he'd been snatched away from us. He was annoyed at having his nap interrupted.

But that didn't stop me from telling him, again, that everything was okay. I hugged him close to me, patted his head.

When I held him out again, his lip stopped trembling long enough for him to point at the corner of my mouth and ask, "Did you have chocolate?"

I laughed and cried at the same time.

I took a moment to pull myself together, then said, "We have to find your mother, let her know everything's okay."

"What's going on?" Ethan asked.

I got out my phone, hit the speed dial for Jan's cell. It rang five times and went to message. "I've got him," I said. "I'm coming to the gate."

Ethan had never had such a speedy stroller ride. He stuck out his hands and giggled as I pushed him through the crowds. The front wheels were starting to wobble so much I had to tip the stroller back, prompting him to laugh even more.

When we got to the main gate, I stopped, looked around.

Ethan said, "I think maybe I want to try the big coaster roller. I'm big enough."

"Hold on, partner," I said, looking. I got out my phone again. I left a second message: "Hey, we're right here. We're at the gate. Where are you?"

I moved us to the center of the walkway, just inside the gate, where the crowds funneled in to get to the rides.

Jan wouldn't be able to miss us here.

I stood in front of the stroller so Ethan could watch me. "I'm hungry," he said. "Didn't Mom come? Did she go home? Did she leave the backpack with the sandwiches in it?"

"Hold on," I said.

"Can I have
just
peanut butter? I don't want the peanut-butter-with-jam ones."

"Just cool your jets a second, okay?" I said. I was holding my cell, ready to flip it open the instant it rang.

Maybe Jan was with park security. That'd be fine, even though Ethan had been found. Because there was somebody running around this park, taking off with other people's kids. Not a good thing.

I waited ten minutes before placing another call to Jan's cell. Still no pickup. I didn't leave a message this time.

Ethan said, "I don't want to stay here. I want to go on a ride."

"Just hang on, sport," I said. "We can't go off without your mom. She won't know where to find us."

"She can phone," Ethan said, kicking his legs.

A park employee, identifiable by his khaki pants and shirt with the Five Mountains logo stitched to it, walked past. I grabbed his arm.

"You security?" I asked.

He held up a small walkie-talkie device. "I can get them," he said.

At my request, he called in to see whether anyone from security was helping Jan. "Someone needs to tell her I've found our son," I said.

The voice coming out of the walkie-talkie was scratchy.
"Who? We got nothing on that."

"Sorry," the park employee said and moved on.

I was trying to tamp down the panic.

Something was very wrong. Someone tries to take your kid. A bearded man runs away.

Your wife doesn't come back to the rendezvous point.

"Don't worry," I said to Ethan, scanning the crowds. "I'm sure she'll be here any minute now. Then we'll have some fun."