Chapter 97

Aria’s POV

“I’ll call the police,” the woman on the other end of the phone said. “We’ll check the tapes.”

“Okay,” I said, my voice trembling. My whole body was shaking. “Okay…”

She’d hung up, but I still kept the phone to my ear, unwilling for this phone conversation to be over. If it was over, that meant that it was real. That Joe was truly missing. That no one was going to come on the line and tell me it was all a bad joke.

While I remained frozen, Logan physically pried the phone from my hand and held it up to his ear.

“Is anyone there?” he asked. When no one answered, presumably, he lowered the phone down to the table. “Aria…”

“How could this happen? I don’t understand. He’s supposed to be safe at school. Why wasn’t he safe?”

With tears in my eyes, I looked up at Logan. He stared back at me, his eyes heavy with sympathy.

“I don’t know, Aria. I’m sorry…”

Shaking my head, I pushed myself up onto my feet. “No, I don’t want to hear that. Not from you, not from anyone. Not ‘I’m sorry.’ What I need to hear is a plan… Some kind of idea on what we are going to do now… Because my little boy is out there and...” My voice cracked, a sob breaking through. “Oh, Logan.”

Logan hurried to hold me, and I fell apart in his arms. Burying my face in his shoulder, I let all of my fear and grief from the past few days overflow.

Joe couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t.

“Maybe he’s just playing hooky in the bathroom. Kids do that sometimes,” Logan said. “They’ll check the tapes and they’ll find him. It’s going to be okay.”

“But what if it isn’t,” I said miserably. “What if something happened…?”

“Don’t think like that until we know for sure,” Logan said.

Covering my face with both hands, I stepped back, away from his arms. It was colder outside of them, but I needed to think clearly. Now wasn’t the time to fall apart. I could do that later, once Joe and William were safe.

“William was missing too…” I said.

“Wherever they are, they are likely together.”

Suddenly, my phone started to ring once more, rattling against the table. I leapt for it. Scooping it up, I checked the caller ID.

Sophia?

Had they called her too?

Wasn’t she supposed to be in jail?

Logan also stared at the phone, a grim expression on his face. He must have been thinking the same things as me.

The phone continued to ring. I couldn’t risk losing the call. I had to make a decision, one way or another.

Rushing, I answered it.

“Hello?” I turned on speakerphone.

“Aria?” Sophia asked through the speaker.

“Yes,” I said. Logan kept quiet.

“I imagine by now, you’ve received word from the school about your perfect son being missing,” Sophia taunted. “I can tell from your voice how frightened you are.”

Her voice sounded cold and detached, as if she was a woman with nothing to lose. Maybe she was.

“William’s missing too,” I said.

“William is not missing. He’s with his mother, where he belongs. Where he’s always belonged, despite what you have poisoned Liam into believing. My son is mine.”

For someone to take Joe off of school property, after he walked through the doors, that person would have needed their own access into the school. Who had better access than a fellow parent?

“Please don’t hurt him,” I said.

“I won’t hurt anyone,” she said, laughing at my pain. “If you do something for me.”

“Whatever you want,” I agreed at once, ignoring the warning look Logan shot my way. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

Where my son was concerned, I was taking no chances. If Sophia ordered me to walk straight into a burning building, I would do it, so long as my son’s safety was promised.

“Meet me.”

“At your house?”

“No,” she said. “That place isn’t safe. There’s a park in uptown. The one with the slides and the turtle shaped playground. Do you know the one?”

“Yes.”

“Meet me there in twenty minutes. Come alone or you won’t see Joe again. At least… not all of him at once.”

The knife in my heart twisted. “I don’t have my car. Someone will have to drive me.”

“Then you better call a cab. The clock is ticking.”

With that, she hung up.

Before I could even lower the phone, Logan started, “Absolutely, in no way, are you to meet her.”

“You heard what she said. I don’t have a choice.”

“There is always a choice.”

“Not if it endangers Joe’s life!” I snapped.

Logan pressed his lips hard together.

I dared him to try to argue with me on this. He would find no path for understanding or agreement here. Joe was my son. The number one most important person in my life. His safety was far more valuable than mine.

“We aren’t even sure she’s the one who took him,” Logan said, softer.

“I don’t care. I’m going.”

“Aria, please.”

Lifting my phone, I start searching for the number for a taxi. It can pick me up along the way, I’m already walking.

“At least let me drive you,” Logan said.

“She said ‘alone.’ That means alone, Logan.”

I walked straight out the door, not looking back.

He could lock up my house if he wanted on his way out. I didn’t care. The house didn’t mean anything to me if Joe wasn’t there in it.

Twenty minutes later, I stepped out of a taxi and rushed into the park. As school was still in session, there was no one in the turtle-shaped playground.

“Joe?” I called out. Then listened. No answer.

“William?” Same result.

Then, without warning, someone grabbed me around the back and pressed a rag to my face. I tried not to breathe it in, but in my panic, I couldn’t stop myself.

At once, my vision started to blur while simultaneously going dark around the edges.

A few more breaths, and everything went black.

Liam’s POV

I had slept in his lawyer’s office. Everything in law seemed to move impossibly slowly. What’s more, the police went to Sophia’s mansion last night and found no trace of her.

After Logan, Aria, and the kids had left, she left too, vanishing as if into thin air.

It was beyond frustrating. After searching all night, they were no closer to finding her. I was tired, and my back was sore.

I really needed some good news.

Then my phone rang. The screen read Logan.

What did he want? Some update with Aria?

Ignoring the roar of jealousy within me – why should Aria want to talk to him and not me – I answered the phone. “This is Liam.”

“Listen to everything I’m about to tell you,” Logan said.

“Okay?” My nerves, tired as they were, suddenly went on high alert.

“Sophia kidnapped Joe and William from school. We don’t know where they are. She called Aria and lured her to a park with a turtle-shaped playground.”

“Aria… went to meet Sophia?”

“That was forty-five minutes ago,” Logan said. “She’s not returning my calls.”