“I guess word travels fast. Everybody wants to be where the action is.”
Michaels planted his fists on his hips and shook his head in disbelief. “So that means the kid has a two-hour head start on us, right?”
Hackner shrugged. “Not really. We’ve had people out looking for him for about fifteen minutes now.”
Michaels glared again.
“Okay, okay,” Hackner conceded. “He’s got two hours on us. But we’ve got a call in to Old Man Peters for him to get his dogs up here, and we’re in the process of setting up roadblocks at strategic points. You know, the whole drill.”
Michaels sighed deeply. “Well, I guess it’ll have to do,. won’t it? Hell, if we can’t track down a kid, I guess we’ve got a problem. How old is he, anyway?”
Chapter 3
Twelve-year-old Nathan Bailey tried to press his thin frame below the surface of the damp mulch and wedge in closer to the brick wall. Try as he might, he couldn’t disappear entirely.
Despite the night’s oppressive heat and stifling humidity, he couldn’t stop shaking. Like the time two years ago—a whole lifetime ago—when he had an ear infection and a high fever; except this time, he didn’t think he was sick. Just scared.
His efforts to blend in with the surroundings only made him more aware of how much he stood out. Everyone from the outside world wore shorts and T-shirts in the summer night, while he swam inside his ill-fitting orange coveralls, emblazoned across the back with the letters “JDC.” The letters were supposed to arc across his shoulder blades, but in his case, they drooped above the small of his back. Ricky had told him on his first day that Medium was the smallest size available. It was a lie, of course. Ricky was such a jerk.
Nathan had no idea where he was. Once he was free of the JDC building, he’d just started running as fast as his bare feet would allow. At first the sticks and rocks had hurt as he ran over them, but once the fireworks started with all the explosions and lights, Nathan stopped feeling anything but his fear. He just kept running, with no idea where he was going. The only thing he knew for sure was that he was not going back there again.