Terrified by Kevin O'Brien Page A

in the gray, gloomy stairwell.
    “C’mon, move it,” he hissed. “Do you want your mother to die before we even get to the hospital?”
    This only made the little boy cry harder.
    “Shut up!” he growled. He stopped at the landing to the third level, where he’d parked his car. Hearing footsteps above them, he put his hand over the kid’s mouth. He’d taken the stairs, figuring most people would use the elevator. Despite pulling off the abduction without a hitch, he couldn’t shake the feeling someone had seen it and was following him. It wasn’t the first time he’d spooked himself out that way. The footsteps above them seemed to be getting closer.
    With his hand still over the little boy’s mouth, he managed to push open the door to the parking area. He stopped dead at the sound of tires screeching. Then he heard rap music, and then a car’s motor idling for a moment before it died. He cautiously moved ahead, dragging the kid with him. “You gonna shut up?” he whispered.
    The little boy nodded timidly. His tears were wetting the man’s hand.
    The footsteps in the stairwell behind them had stopped.
    Glancing over his shoulder, the man saw no one. He slowly took his hand away from the boy’s mouth. The kid sniffled, but didn’t make another sound. He was trembling. They stayed in a shadowy alcove while two women got out of a beat-up Monte Carlo, parked only a few spaces away from his green Buick LeSabre. The women were laughing about something. Their cackling competed with the not-too-distant sound of tires turning on concrete and car doors slamming on other parking levels.
    He waited behind a thick post. He didn’t want anyone to see him putting the kid in his car. He watched the women step inside the elevator, and then the door shut.
    Pulling the little boy by the arm, he finally started toward his car, where he kept a small vial of chloroform, a washcloth, and a roll of duct tape in the glove compartment. A blanket was in the backseat. In the trunk was a big trash bag stuffed with children’s clothes of various sizes. Some were bought at secondhand shops, and some were recycled from children who had taken their last rides in that same car. He’d forgotten where he’d originally gotten the jeans, checkered shirt, and baseball cap the boy now wore.
    The kid started to resist as they got closer to the LeSabre. He began to whimper again.
    Behind them, a door squeaked. “Josh?”
    The man halted in his tracks, and swiveled around. He suddenly felt the boy tugging to get away from him. He couldn’t quite see the other man, standing in the dark alcove by the stairwell door. His face was cloaked in the shadows. The guy didn’t look like a cop. He didn’t look like anybody.
    “Hey, Josh,” the faceless stranger said. “Your mother’s looking for you… .”
     
     
    Megan didn’t remember fainting, and yet strangely, she recalled a clattering sound as she toppled into a plastic chair and collapsed on the floor of the employee cafeteria. She wasn’t sure how much time had gone by when she’d come to. It seemed like she’d been out for only a moment.
    As she stared at Josh’s discarded clothes, she couldn’t stop crying. The cops had probably laid them out on the unused plastic garbage bag to keep the evidence clean. But all Megan could think about were those murders in which the victims’ severed body parts were found in bags just like that.
    At one point, she heard the silver-haired cop say they should call a doctor for her. She barely heard him. And she barely noticed Officer Williams, standing in the doorway of the employee break room. But then all at once, Megan noticed him smiling at her. It was the smile she’d hoped to see on his face earlier, the one anticipating a mother-son reunion. He stepped into the lunchroom.
    Josh shuffled in just behind him, holding the cop’s hand.
    “Mommy!” he cried. Breaking away from the policeman, he ran into her open arms. The baseball hat flew off