The Abduction by Mark Gimenez Read Free Book Online

West Texas that read Welcome, Y’all.
    After Ben’s ID checked out, the guard gave the cabby directions and activated the automatic gates. They passed through the gates and entered an oasis in the concrete desert: tall oak trees shading the wide road, expansive stretches of green grass, sparkling blue man-made ponds encircled by walking paths, and magnificent mansions set deep into large lots, homes that would cause most visitors’ jaws to drop; but Ben barely noticed. His thoughts were of Gracie.
    The cab driver turned up the radio: “At six-fifteen last night, Post Oak police issued an Amber Alert and provided descriptions of both the victim and the suspect. Gracie Ann Brice is white, ten years old, four feet six inches tall, weighs eighty pounds, and has short blonde hair and blue eyes. The suspect is white, twenty to thirty years old, six feet tall, two hundred pounds, has blond hair, and was last seen wearing a black cap and a plaid shirt. Police are asking anyone who videotaped any of the games at Briarwyck Farms Park yesterday to bring the tapes in.”
    The cabby made eye contact with Ben in the rearview. “Little girl, she was taken. In my country, we find the man”—he slapped the edge of his open right hand down on the dash—“we cut off his dick. Then we cut off his head.”
    The cabby’s eyes returned to the road—“ Aah! ”—and he slammed on the brakes; Ben was thrown forward. The cab had almost plowed into a police barricade across Magnolia Lane; two uniformed cops stood in front of the cab, their hands on their holsters and shaking their heads. The cabby turned in his seat, shrugged, and said, “Can go no more.”
    Ben paid the $45 fare with a fifty and un-assed the vehicle. The morning sun punished his eyes; he patted around his clothes for his sunglasses then remembered he had left them in the Jeep. He rubbed his temples, but it did not relieve the pounding in his head. He needed his morning run with Buddy to exorcise last night’s demons, but that would not happen this morning; he was in Texas and Buddy was in New Mexico. Ben's buyer in Taos promised to check on Buddy each day; the dog could tolerate city life even less than Ben. He slung the duffel bag over his shoulder and walked past the barricade, down the sidewalk, and into a media circus.
    Satellite uplinks mounted above TV vans lined both sides of the street and had lured the residents out of their homes before breakfast. Kids, parents, cameramen, reporters, and cops crowded the street and sidewalks; their voices competed with the incessant THUMP THUMP THUMP of a news chopper hovering low overhead.
    His head ached.
    Ben continued down the sidewalk, deep into the circus, and past a reporter talking to a camera: “Gracie was last seen at Briarwyck Farms Park wearing blue soccer shorts and a gold jersey, the team name, Tornadoes, across the front and a number nine on the back.”
    Kids rode bikes and rollerbladed in the street, media technicians set up their equipment, and photographers snapped shots of the mansions. Another reporter addressed another camera: “She was abducted at a soccer game last night in this upscale suburb forty miles north of downtown Dallas.”
    Parents huddled in small groups and held their children close, evident on their faces that fear peculiar to parents, the fear that their children might be taken in the night. Ben had seen that fear before.
    Making themselves at home on the sidewalks and lawns were grungy (a word Gracie had taught him) cameramen wearing sunglasses and baseball caps on backward. They lounged in lawn chairs, drank coffee, complained about the early morning assignment, and offered expert opinions: “It’ll be someone in the family. Always is.”
    This was their kidnapping now. Gracie Ann Brice was news.
    And the world waited for news outside her home where a dozen TV cameras sat fixed on tripods and aimed at Six Magnolia Lane, a three-story French chateau-style mansion that looked more like