For a long time, all I saw was darkness.

My head hurt. I had no idea where I was, or where I was going. That’s not a metaphor for our brief earthly existence. I meant that I really had no idea where on Earth I could possibly be. All I knew is that whatever it was, it was moving.

I could feel it turning left or right, then up and down in a bumpy fashion. Was I in a car? A truck maybe? I didn’t know. Everything was dark.

Another bump. My head hurt.

I tried to bring my hands forward and realized they were tied behind my back. So were my feet, in fact. Shit. This is just like in the movies, isn’t it? I still had no idea what I was doing there, but I knew now that it couldn’t be anything good. Kidnapped? Was somebody going to harvest my organs? Or sell me as a sex slave to the highest bidder? People still did that nowadays, didn’t they?

Think, Janis.

What is the last thing you can remember?

The memories of that party with Catherine came back to me. Oh crap. I remembered kissing Ceres. How exciting it had been. And then her expression of pain. Why, god? Why that?

My head hurt again. Would whoever was driving this please take it easy on those bumps?

The party wasn’t my last memory. I remembered staying home the next day, feeling miserable for what I’d done. Then I got another message from my “secret agent” (who’s really just a middle school friend who happened to possess some top-notch hacking skills). I printed it all and added to my pile. Nothing made sense. These new bits of info he’d given me were as pointless as the rest. I got traces of him from all over the city, never focusing at anywhere in particular. Was this supposed to be this hard?

I shuddered. I had a gut feeling I knew who had kidnapped me now.

But why? I’m not the one he wanted.

He wanted my mother.

—

Jay’s cellphone was a goldmine.

I unlocked it with the usual password. 1943. Janis really should have known better than to keep her password unchanged for years.

Inside, there were all her call records, her notes, her contacts and messages. I could pry into her personal life if I wanted to. It took me some really strong willpower not to go through her gallery or check out her browser history. Not the time for that. It would be inappropriate to do so while Jay herself was in danger. I decide to focus, then opened her contacts.

I scrolled through the list looking for one that said “aunt” or something like that. Fortunately, it seems that at least this bit of advice made it through that thick had of hers: all of her contacts were identified by name only, no “mom” or “cousin”. Unfortunately, though, that would make my life a bit harder trying to figure out that information.

I wrote down the contacts in a sheet of paper, there weren’t too many of them. I began to strike out the unrelated ones. School friends I knew, for instance. Also her boss and coworkers. I figured I could probably take out any male names too, I’m fairly sure the aunt her mom was living with was single. Or… was she? Fudge.

I managed to bring the list down to about twenty names. Now I had to log into her social networks to find those names and narrow the list down further. This meant her messaging app and even her… dating app? I didn’t know she even used one. Oh god. I’m sorry Janis, I’m just doing this for you.

I got a few more names off the list from checking the messaging app. It appears Janis had a habit of corresponding with random people in the internet. She really should know better than that. I didn’t find anything too incriminating — not that I was looking for it, of course!

The dreaded moment… the dating app…

…

Her profile was mostly empty. There were no contacts. She appeared not to have been using it much, if at all.

Boring.

I mean, err… what a relief. I totally didn’t want to read that.

Anyway… I got a few more names off the list from checking her other social networks. There really wasn’t much more, unless I decided to thoroughly read through her messages. Even I thought that was too big an invasion of privacy.

“Found anything?” Ceres asked me, coming back to the living room with a cup of coffee.

“These,” I showed her the five remaining names on the list. “I don’t know who those are and they’re not on her apps, so it’s got to be one of them.”

“Should we call them?”

I considered that for a moment. Sure, that’d be the easiest way. On the other hand…

“Let’s not. I’m fairly sure the police will have Jay’s aunt’s numbers all tapped. It’d be bad if they traced the call back to us.” I stopped talking, thinking about what I’d just said. “Holy crap, it’s so weird to actually be working against the police. It kinda makes me feel like a criminal, even if that’s just to save Jay’s ass.”

“Well… it’s nothing new to me, really,” said Ceres.

“Are you a criminal, then?” I raised my eyebrows.

“Nope,” she said, very frankly, sitting down by my side. “Just… I’ve been poor and homeless. And I’m not white either. To a cop that’s essentially a criminal.”

I felt awful hearing her say that. I mean, I’d always admired my father. That’s not how I saw him.

“Not all cops are like that,” I told her, a bit hurt.

“Not all are, but enough are that none of us can trust the police.”

“Us?”

“Poor people. Also, non-white, non-straight people, too.”

“It sounds like you really hate the police, or something.”

“I think you got that backwards.”

I stopped talking and dropped Jay’s phone back on the table. I felt bothered. Why was I bothered? Was it because the way Ceres knew the police was so different from my own? Was it because she was forcing me to rethink a lot of my beliefs regarding my father and his job? And she mentioned non-straight people too, that hit a bit close to home. I glared at her, expecting her to make some sort of apology. She made none.

—

The car, or whatever I was inside of, stopped. I waited for a whole moment in complete silence. Then the trunk opened and light flooded my eyes for the first time in a while.

I saw him illuminated by the streetlight.

He didn’t talk to me.

He just put me over his shoulder, like a bag of rice, and carried me inside the building.

Now I could see the street. And I knew exactly where I was.

Damn.

I’ve been looking for him for so long. To think that he was right under my nose all along. No wonder he got to my mother so easily when I wasn’t home, that time.

I wished I could send a message to someone. Catherine maybe, or her father. Heck, even my boss would do. Anyone. Just as long as someone knew where I was. I wanted to scream, to break free and run away, but it was no use trying to beat the silver tape, not even trying.

He carried me inside and dropped me in an empty room. Then he closed the door and darkness fell all around me.

Now… what?

—

It was almost time. The streets were mostly deserted at night, as they usually are on weekdays in Botafogo. It would be a lie to say I wasn’t scared. But it was only a five minute walk from the subway station. Before I knew it, we were walking up the steps toward the hallway.

Ceres gave the receptionist a name, the same fake name she’d used when we walked in earlier that day. I had a fake name too, just in case, but that wasn’t asked for. The receptionist dialed a number on his phone, said Ceres’ fake name on the speaker, then cleared us to go.

Marco was standing in the hallway when we got there. We went into his apartment. He closed the door and locked it. Then he gestured toward our pockets. We gave him our phones. To my surprise — and terror —, he put them inside a microwave.

“Just a safety measure,” he said.

“Please don’t fry my phone,” I said, horrified.

He actually laughed. It helped us feel more at ease.

“Sit down,” he said, ushering us to the couch.

He handed a sheet of paper to us. It was filled with pencil scribbles.

“What’s this?” I asked, taking the paper sheet from him.

“That’s your best friend’s case.”

I glanced down at the sheet. It was a mess of notes, everywhere. At first glance, you would have mistaken it for those scraps of paper people keep near the phone in case you have to leave someone a message. But that was just my first impression. I spotted Janis’ birth name almost immediately after that, as well as her mother’s, and further down, that man’s. There were phone numbers and times.

“Why is it such a mess?” I asked him, confused.

“Well,” said Marco, “We couldn’t print out or take pictures of her case, obviously. This… friend of mine… he got access to her case. So he just wrote down as much information as he could and handed it to me when we were able to meet. Keep in mind that what we’re doing here is illegal, kid. People’s lives are at stake.”

“Right, sorry.” I took another, more careful, look at the sheet of paper.

A woman’s name I have read earlier that day proved to be Jay’s aunt’s. Next to it there was her address and phone number.

Most of the information didn’t make sense to me, or didn’t feel important, like times and dates. My eyes fell on a second address on the paper sheet.

“That’s Jay’s old address,” I told Ceres. “From before the man found them, that is. She used to live there with her mother.”

Both the man’s name and that address were circled. There was a line connecting the two circles. Probably indicating that time when he found and attacked Jay’s mother.

I almost failed to notice the date written next to it.

It should have said June. Early June. The day that episode happened.

Not late October.

Oh.

“I found her,” I told Ceres. §