Dark Road - Free Nook Book

Dark Road 
by Edgar Bajana 


Excerpt
Lucy Pierce stared at the dark road, thinking of only John.
For a brief moment, it looked liked her eyes burned a bright red. John, her only boy, had been ripped from her arms. She was sure of it. Her boy had been abducted. She was frantic and her life was in turmoil. She was in the middle of losing everything that she had ever loved in this world.
Lucy's life was not the same without John. She couldn't go on living, without him.
"I swear. I'll end it all." She promised. She had a tiny gun concealed in her purse.
It was ten at night and Lucy was going door-to-door looking for her son throughout all of Elmhurst. Until today, she thought Elmhurst was the safest place to raise her son.
She was wrong.
She felt terrible about the whole situation.
She was distraught, constantly running her fingers through her messy brown hair.
Throughout the night, she asked her neighbors the same question, over and over.
“Have you seen my boy? He’s 15 years old, about this tall, thin with black hair. He wears a metal brace on his right leg.”
Many of her neighbors opened the front door, when Lucy came knocking. When they opened their screen doors, they told her, “Sorry. We haven’t seen him. Call the police.” As soon as Lucy confirmed that John wasn't inside their house, she moved on to the next one.
“Have you seen my son, John?” She asked, holding a picture of him in her right hand.
“Lucy? What’s going on?” Albert, one of her co-workers asked.
“It’s John. I have this terrible feeling that he’s been taken. I'm sure that he's been abducted. He should have made it home hours ago. I waited and waited. But, he never came home.”
“My God,” he responded. "Are you sure? What can I do? It's so hard to believe that something like this can happen here."
Elmhurst was a quiet suburb located an hour and a half northwest from downtown Chicago. The village had one main road lined with cheap strip malls, storefront churches and abandoned factories. The rest of the town was made up of small wooden framed homes scattered along the edge of the forest preserve.
Alberto continued on, as Lucy remained quiet, "Tell me, Lucy, what you want me to do and I will help you."
Lucy was surprised at Albert's offer. She didn't know how to respond. All her life, she had done everything herself.
Lucy stayed quiet and Albert didn't push it.
She tried to think how John might have been abducted. She imagined her son walking home with his Friend TM, who was a robot. His Friend TM most likely met him halfway between the high school and her house. That was their usual routine. The distance between the school and the house was about two miles apart. So much could have happened between there and here.
And somewhere along the way, it happened.
John Pierce was taken.