Carson tried to keep the bravado in his voice. “That’s too bad.”
“Well, thanks, but here’s the kicker. Can you imagine being a big enough loser to be one of the cowards who jumped me and ended up with a broken nose?”
Carson shrugged. “Anyone could get in a lucky shot.”
“That’s true. So maybe the limp-dick loser would like another chance. Man-to-man. Face-to-face.”
The goth leader looked around now, making sure that he had his supporters in place. The other goths nodded back, adjusted metal bracelets, flexed their fingers, and made too much of an effort to look ready.
Mo walked over to the tall goth and grabbed him by the throat before anyone could move. The goth tried to spit out a noise, but Mo’s grip kept any sound from coming out.
“If anyone steps forward,” Mo said to him, “I hurt you. Not the guy who steps forward. Not the guy who interferes. You. I hurt you very badly, do you understand?”
The tall goth tried to nod.
Mike looked back at Carson. “You ready to go?”
“Hey, I don’t got no beef with you.”
“I have one with you.”
Mike pushed him, school yard style. Taunting. The other goths looked confused, unsure of their next move. Mike pushed Carson again.
“Hey!”
“What did you guys do to my son?”
“Huh? Who?”
“My son, Adam Baye. Where is he?”
“You think I know?”
“You jumped me last night, didn’t you? Unless you want the beating of a lifetime, you better talk.”
And then another voice said, “Everybody freeze! FBI!”
Mike looked up. It was the two men with baseball caps, the ones following them before. They held guns in one hand, badges in the other.
One of the officers said, “Michael Baye?”
“Yes?”
“Darryl LeCrue, FBI. We’re going to need you to come with us.”
26
AFTER saying good-bye to Betsy Hill, Tia closed the front door and headed upstairs. She crept down the corridor, past Jill’s room and into her son’s. She opened Adam’s desk drawer and started ri- fling through it. Putting that spy software on his computer had felt so right-so why didn’t this? Self-loathing rose up in her. It all felt wrong now, this whole invasion of privacy.
But she didn’t stop looking.
Adam was a kid. Still. The drawer hadn’t been cleaned out in forever, and there were remnants from past “Adam eras,” like something unearthed in an archeological dig. Baseball cards, Pokémon cards, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yamaguchi with a long-dead battery, Crazy Bones-all the “in” items that kids collected and then dispensed with. Adam had been better than most about the must-have items. He didn’t beg for more or immediately toss them aside.
She shook her head. They were still in his drawer.
There were pens and pencils and his old orthodontia retainer case (Tia had constantly nagged him about not wearing it), collector pins from a trip to Disney World four years ago, old ticket stubs from a dozen Rangers games. She picked up the stubs and remembered the blend of joy and concentration on his face when he watched hockey. She remembered the way he and his father would celebrate when the Rangers scored, standing and high-fiving and singing the dumb goal-scoring song, which basically consisted of going “oh, oh, oh” and clapping.
She started to cry.
Pull it together, Tia.
She turned to the computer. That was Adam’s world now. A kid’s room was about his computer. On that screen, Adam played the latest version of Halo online. He talked to both strangers and friends in chat rooms. He conversed with real and cyber buddies via Facebook and MySpace. He played a little online poker but got bored with it, which pleased Mike and Tia. There were funny briefs on YouTube and movie trailers and music videos and, yes, racy material. There were other adventure games or reality simulators or whatever you’d call them where a person could vanish in the same way Tia could vanish into a book, and it was so hard to know if it was a good thing or a bad thing.
The whole sex thing nowadays too-it drove her mad. You want to make it right and control the flow of information for your kids, but that was impossible. Flip on any morning radio and the jocks riffed on boobs and infidelity and orgasms. You open up any magazine or turn on any television show, well, to complain about the nonstop eyeful is passé. So how do you handle it? Do you tell your child it’s wrong? And what’s wrong exactly?
No wonder people found comfort in black-and-white answers like abstinence but come on, that doesn’t work and you don’t want to send the message that sex is somehow wrong or evil or even ta- boo-and yet, you don’t want them doing it. You want to tell them it is something good and healthy-but shouldn’t be done. So how exactly is a parent supposed to work that balance? Weirdly enough, we all want our children to have our outlook too, as if somehow ours, despite our parents’ screwups, is best and healthiest. But why? Were we raised exactly right or did we somehow find this balance on our own? Will they?
“Hey, Mom.”
Jill had come to the door. She gave her mother a puzzled look, surprised, Tia guessed, to see her in Adam’s room. There was a hush now. It lasted a second, no more, but Tia felt a cold gust across her chest.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
Jill was holding Tia’s BlackBerry. “Can I play BrickBreaker?”
She loved to play the games on her mom’s BlackBerry. Normally this was the time when Tia would gently scold for not asking before taking her phone. Like most kids, Jill did it all the time. She would use the BlackBerry or borrow Tia’s iPod or use the bedroom computer because hers wasn’t as powerful or leave the portable phone in her room and then Tia couldn’t find it.
Now, however, did not seem the time for the standard responsibility lecture.
“Sure. But if anything buzzes, please give it to me right away.”
“Okay.” Jill took in the whole room. “What are you doing in here?”
“I’m looking around.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. A clue to where your brother is, maybe.”
“He’ll be okay, right?”
“Of course, please don’t worry.” Then remembering that life does not stop and craving some form of normalcy, Tia asked, “Do you have any homework?”
“It’s done.”
“Good. Everything else okay?”
Jill shrugged.
“Anything you want to talk about?”
“No, I’m fine. I’m just worried about Adam.”
“I know, sweetheart. How are things at school?”
Another shrug. Dumb question. Tia had asked both her children that question several thousand times over the years and never, not once, had she gotten an answer beyond a shrug or “fine” or “okay” or “school is school.”
Tia left her son’s room then. There was nothing to find here. The printout from the E-SpyRight report was waiting for her. She closed her door and checked the pages. Adam’s friends Clark and Olivia had e-mailed him this morning, though the messages were rather cryptic. Both wanted to know where he was and mentioned that his parents had been calling around looking for him.
There was no e-mail from DJ Huff.
Hmm. DJ and Adam conversed a lot. Suddenly no e-mail-as if maybe he knew that Adam wouldn’t be around to reply.
There was a gentle knock on her door. “Mom?”
“You can open it.”
Jill turned the knob. “I forgot to tell you. Dr. Forte’s office called. I have a dentist appointment for Tuesday.”
“Right, thanks.”
“Why do I have to go to Dr. Forte’s anyway? I just had a cleaning.”
The mundane. Again Tia welcomed it. “You may need braces soon.”
“Already?”
“Yes. Adam was your…” She stopped.
“My what?”