He woke with a start and tried automatically to cringe backward--but he was already jammed tightly into the corner, walls pressing against his shoulders. His feet skidded against the carpet, and his whole body ached, his head throbbing and his eyes gritty and stinging in the dazzlingly sunlit room. The space was crowded with furniture, almost claustrophobic despite the uncovered window; it was also entirely foreign. He looked around desperately for Don, and then it all crashed back on him.
His name was Charles Edward Eppes, and he was home. This was his bedroom, in his house. Don was his brother. Don was an FBI agent. Don was gone.
Charlie leaned his head back against the wall, shutting his eyes against the glare and trying to breathe deeply without collapsing into sobs. His head and his eyes hurt too much to do it again. He wouldn't think about... about anything, except getting along in this strange place, with these strange people. His home. His family.
Charlie's feet were going numb. He wiggled his toes and then pushed himself stiffly to his feet, bracing his hands against the walls on either side. He limped over to the window and looked out, blinking in the sunlight.
He was looking down on the roof of the garage, and off to the side was a yard where he (where he and Don) must have played. It was all brown grass and bare trees now, with an arc of rocks on the edge of his field of view. The glass of the window was cool against his forehead despite the sunshine pouring through, and Charlie focused on that, shifting from foot to foot as pins and needles stabbed up his legs.
When he could walk he turned away, the room a dim blur to his sun-blinded eyes. He limped around the bed without looking at it, to the door. Charlie hesitated for a moment before setting his hand on the knob (it would be locked, it was always locked, you could make yourself crazy trying) and then gritted his teeth and forced himself to try.
The knob turned. The door pulled open. Charlie stopped short, unable to step into the hallway.
There was a laundry basket on the floor in front of his door, and all Charlie could see was Don's coat and his own backpack on top. Distantly--sounding further away than just downstairs--he could hear the rumble of his father's voice, and Larry's voice answering. Charlie bent and grabbed the laundry basket, bringing it inside. He dropped the basket on the bed without hesitating, grabbing Don's coat and clutching it to himself. He took a deep breath and the familiar smell of Don washed over him, gun oil and the car and sweat and Don, Don, Don.
Charlie turned his face aside, gasping and squeezing his eyes shut against the threat of more tears. He couldn't.
He couldn't think about this (until he could think about it without wanting to puke, Don had told him, Don). He forced his arms to release, his fingers to uncurl, and dropped Don's coat on the bed, reaching for his backpack--his own things, his video game and clothes and souvenirs--and then stopped short.
His blanket had been beneath Don's coat. It was neatly folded now, suspiciously fluffy; the last time Charlie had seen it, sandy and more biologically soiled, it had been crumpled in the backseat of the car. Charlie reached for it with a shaking hand, but he didn't have to touch it to know it had been washed. Every trace of Don would be gone.
Williamson had washed it once, and Don had made a point of crumpling it up and giving it to him all over again, so that it was always something between them--but now it was clean and impersonal in a laundry basket. It would smell just like everything in this house, like the sheets on his bed and the clothes and everything. If Charlie wrapped his blanket around himself there would be no comfort there, just the same sick panicked falling sensation all over again.
Charlie was shaking already, gasping for breath; he pushed the laundry basket away, down the bed. He reached for Don's coat like a lifeline as he fell across the mattress. The bed was soft, at least, and as long as he kept his face pressed to Don's coat he couldn't smell anything else, and with his eyes closed he could almost, almost, almost pretend.
Charlie woke and slept and woke, tangled in Don's coat and the comforter with sleep holding him down like a smothering weight. The light shifted each time he struggled up to consciousness. He was occasionally lucid enough to wonder if he'd been drugged again--or still--and sometimes confused enough to wonder if Don was coming back to bed soon. Then he'd catch a glimpse of the laundry basket and the world would mercifully fuzz out.
Eventually he woke in dim gray light, sweaty but clear-headed, and had to piss too badly to consider rolling over and going back to sleep. The door to the hallway was standing slightly open, sparing him a moment of panic, and Charlie hesitated only for a deep breath before stepping through. He stood for a minute in the middle of the hallway, looking around helplessly, but the bathroom was right there through another open door.
It was bigger than other bathrooms; it even had a window. Charlie did what he had to and washed his hands, wiping them quickly on his jeans before he escaped back to the hall. He stood for a minute at the top of the stairs, listening for voices he'd heard before, but they'd fallen silent. He could hear the television, a quick stream of speech that he recognized somehow as a hockey game even though he couldn't make out the words.
He stepped closer to the stairs and had a sudden flash of memory, of following Don out of the room they'd been held in, down the stairs, the gun in Don's hand raised and a second gun tucked into Don's pants. Don was so close Charlie could reach out and touch, right where he belonged, right there.
Charlie's breath caught and his chest hurt and he couldn't, he couldn't do this. Don was gone, and Charlie was here, and he just had to get through it. He was safe now; he didn't need Don (his brother) to protect him anymore.
Charlie rubbed his eyes, and his hands came away wet. He wiped them on his pants and told himself it was just strange to be alone. Someone was downstairs, watching the hockey game. He would go downstairs, and then he wouldn't be alone.
He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked. His father and Larry were both there, sitting in front of the television in the warm yellow glow of lamplight. Larry had a book lying forgotten in his lap, and his father was staring intently at the game, clutching the arms of his chair.
Even as Charlie inhaled to speak, his father looked up. The look on his face when he saw Charlie there was the look that had been on Don's face, the very first moment they met, hungry and intent; Charlie knew what it meant, now, but it was too much to face, almost frightening in its bewildering intensity. He took an involuntary step back, and his father looked abruptly away.
Charlie's gaze fell on Larry, who was slumped comfortably in his chair, giving Charlie only a friendly smile.
"Charles," he said. "Kings versus Rangers. Would you care to join us?"
Charlie swallowed and focused on Larry and the sound of the hockey game. "Sure," he said, and walked into the living room, freezing again as his father stood.
Alan said only, "You missed lunch, I'll get you something to eat," and brushed quickly past Charlie on his way to the kitchen.
Charlie watched him go and then looked toward Larry, who waved him toward the seat his father had vacated. "I suggested to your father that you might need some space, but it's difficult for him. He's missed you."
Charlie sat, watching Larry, searching his gaze. Larry didn't live here, had just stopped by this morning coincidentally, but it was late afternoon now and he was sitting in the living room watching hockey. His father wasn't the only one who wanted to be near him. And maybe it did help, not being alone.
"Thanks," Charlie said, and Larry smiled a little wider and nodded in acknowledgment.
Charlie sat for a minute, watching the numbered players flash around on the screen--stats kept popping up in his head for half of them--and then looked from Larry to the stairs and back to Larry.
"Were you just sitting here, waiting for me to come down?"
Larry shrugged.
"It makes a nice change from sitting here not knowing where you are," he said, his voice almost light. "I'm sure the novelty will wear off eventually."
The phone rang while Alan was in the kitchen. He had set a plate on the counter and gotten out a loaf of bread, and he could hear Charlie's voice but not his words, talking to Larry in the living room. Charlie.
Alan grabbed the phone on the first ring, with a wild burst of hope that he realized, as he brought the receiver to his ear, was suddenly obsolete. He had to pause a few seconds to recover before he said, "Hello?"
"Hello," said a familiar voice on the other end. "Mr. Eppes, this is Agent Henne."
Alan glanced in the direction of the living room--there was no sound now but the hockey game--as he said slowly, "Agent Henne. It's been a while."
He'd wanted this phone call for months, and now it had come all backward; if Henne were calling to tell Alan he knew where Charlie was, he wouldn't be calling. It didn't take a math genius or an FBI agent to deduce that Henne didn't know where Charlie was.
"Yes, Mr. Eppes," Henne said, and Alan could hear a wince in his voice. "I'm sorry about that, but I'm afraid I have to ask you whether you've heard from your son recently."
I can't come home, Don had said. Tell everyone I'm sorry. Henne wasn't calling about Charlie.
"I have two sons, Agent Henne. Which one were you asking after?"
The silence was shorter this time, but Agent Henne sounded even more pained as he said, "I'm sorry, sir. Have you heard from Don?"
Don had brought his brother back, but he couldn't come home. He hadn't so much as come into the house, hadn't shown his face. The words were nearly true.
"No, I haven't. Should I?"
The pause was different this time, throat-clearing and paper-shuffling. "Terry Lake delivered Don's resignation to the AD this morning."
Alan let his eyes close. I can't come home. He didn't even realize until it failed that he had had some hope that Don only meant that he couldn't come home yet.
"Terry stated that she had no direct contact with him."
"I--I see," Alan said slowly. Either Terry was lying to protect Don, or Don had kept clear of her to protect her; either way, Terry was probably getting plenty of scrutiny from her bosses right now, for Don's sake. Alan wondered when it would be safe to get in touch and thank her for that. Probably not today, or any time soon. "Thank you for letting me know, that's very kind."
"You..." Henne said, and Alan could hear him trying to think of how to go on questioning the father of the man he'd never found.
"It's the least I could do," Henne finally said. "If we find anything out, I'll let you know."
"Thank you," Alan repeated, and realized that he would be dreading every phone call now, fearing that it would be the FBI calling to say they'd found Don. Saying they'd brought him in. If Don were willing to speak to the FBI, he'd be doing it now.
"Mr. Eppes," Henne said slowly. "About--about Charlie. I want to say... I am terribly sorry."
Alan moved to the kitchen doorway just in time to hear Charlie make some excited-sounding observation over the murmur of the hockey game. He could tell Henne the truth, let him off the hook. And then Henne would come here and ask Charlie questions, when Charlie couldn't stay awake for more than an hour at a stretch, when he was scared of everything and didn't recognize anyone, when Charlie's wild, wrenching sobs were still ringing in his father's ears.
"Yes," Alan said, stepping back inside the kitchen. "I know."
Charlie's only condition, when he agreed to his father's suggestion that he talk to a doctor, was that it happen somewhere with windows. The solarium was sunny and warm, and the doctor--a neighbor and old family friend, apparently--introduced himself over a handshake and then sat down in a chair at a right angle to Charlie's.
Charlie barely caught his name, occupied with sizing the man up: he was a couple of inches taller than Charlie, and older than Charlie's father. His grip was firm but he was slightly built, the hair remaining on his head nearly white.
You can't hurt me, Charlie thought, though even as he thought it his eye fell on the black leather bag Dr. Edwards had set down on the coffee table. You can't hurt me much, not easily.
His father was just in the kitchen and would hear Charlie if he shouted. Charlie tried not to think about how he wanted someone closer, someone pacing quietly behind him, steadier than his own nervous heartbeat.
"What did you want to know, Dr. Edwards?" Charlie asked, trying to keep his voice even, trying not to show fear.
"Call me Dale, Charlie, we're both adults."
Charlie nodded jerkily, waiting for the questions. He would confess to flashes of memory, he thought: disjointed images, incomprehensible. He wouldn't admit to the abuse, to anything he didn't want to get back to his father. He would say that Don had found him, and nothing more about Don, nothing at all. A physical examination wouldn't find anything telling; he'd showered twice now since Don had last touched him. Every trace was long gone.
"Mm," Dale said, holding out two fingers of each hand toward Charlie. "Can you squeeze my fingers, hard as you can?"
Charlie blinked but complied, clenching his fists around the doctor's bony fingers.
"Your dad mentioned you've been sleeping a lot. He's worried about that, but I told him in the short term that's likely just a response to stress. If it persists beyond a week or two we might need to be concerned."
"Oh," Charlie said, letting go of Dale's fingers and reminding himself not to be lulled into a false sense of security.
"The memory loss is probably something similar," Dale added, holding up one finger. "Follow this with your eyes without moving your head," he said, and Charlie obediently tracked Dale's fingertip side to side and up and down.
"Gross injuries or critical neurological damage would be manifesting more dramatically, so I don't think there's much value in rushing you into a lot of invasive tests before you've had time to rest and settle in."
Charlie nodded slowly, and Dale said, "Does your hand hurt?"
Charlie looked down and realized he was holding his left hand curled defensively in his lap, though his right was open.
"Not really," Charlie said, feeling off-balance, still waiting for the worst to start. "It aches sometimes."
Dale nodded, and held out his right hand, palm up. "May I see?"
Charlie extended his hand, and Dale said, "Thank you," as though Charlie could have refused.
His fingers moved briskly over Charlie's hand, quickly but gently probing each bone and joint, finding each healed break. Charlie remembered the first time Don had touched him, Don's hands on his hand, forcing warmth into the cramped muscle, waking more warmth in Charlie--Don was his brother--Charlie's heart was suddenly pounding, his throat tight, and he turned his face away, squeezing his eyes shut.
The doctor said softly, "I'm sorry, Charlie. Did that hurt?"
Charlie shook his head, unable to speak.
Dale said, still softly, "Ah."
Charlie forced himself to meet the doctor's gaze, kind and sad and seeming to know something though Charlie hadn't said a word. He was giving himself away, much too easily--the mere touch of the doctor's hand on his had ripped him open. He would have to be more careful, but his hand felt cold and alone when the doctor let go.
Dale said quietly, "How about your head, does that hurt?"
Charlie raised his left hand reflexively, rubbing one fingertip over the scar beside his eye as he ducked his head further. He could remember the throb of it when he first woke up, Don crouching over him, all warm bare skin. Don had bandaged the cut, washed the blood from Charlie's face, taken him to bed and kept him close and warm and safe, and now the cut was a scar and Don was gone.
"No," Charlie whispered. "Sometimes."
He slept on the couch in the daytime, and in his bed at night. He kept Don's coat folded between the pillows, and when he glimpsed himself in the bathroom mirror his cheek would be imprinted with lines of stitching. He took showers when it occurred to him to do so--three times one day, not at all the next. Nobody washed his hair for him, and nobody slept between him and the door, and nobody shaved him when his hands shook. No one else's body heat warmed him under the blankets, and there was no one to lean against, to push aside so he could lie down. He went to play his DS once, and the menu of saved games listed a and Don and c, and he shut his eyes and shoved the game under the bed without turning it off.
He wore all the clean clothes in his laundry basket, then woke up to find that they'd reappeared, clean and folded all over again. He ate when he was awake, whatever his father put in front of him. He roamed the house, looking at everything but the photos on the walls, until the place began to seem familiar through sheer repetition. He told himself soon it would stop feeling so big, so empty, but he was always conscious of how there weren't enough people to fill the space. There was always someone missing.
Once Charlie opened a door on stairs leading down into darkness, and he could feel the basement chill rising up, see the space down there, dark and confined. He shut that door hastily and didn't open it again.
He woke once in the middle of the night. The house was utterly still, the sky outside his window dark and blank, and he stood a long time in his bedroom doorway, wondering if he dared to venture further into the silent emptiness of the house. But it was his house, and he was hungry, and there was a light on somewhere downstairs, a sign of life despite the stillness.
The light was over the stove, as it turned out, and when he cautiously opened the refrigerator there was a sandwich there on a plate, draped in plastic wrap and labeled with his name on a yellow sticky note. Charlie picked it up and took a bite without even closing the refrigerator, and then, feeling daring, he took out the jug of milk. He had to open all the cupboards to find a glass. After he'd poured and put the milk away, he went back to the cupboard where he'd seen a package of cookies, and stared at them a long time.
It's my house, he thought. My house. His hand shook as he reached for the cookies, and his knees nearly gave way as he took them out; he sat down on the cool linoleum floor to eat them in the light from the stove, and he woke up there in the sunlight, next to the empty package and empty glass. His father was staring down at him, and he had a stomachache.
When Charlie looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, his cheek was pebbled from the texture of the floor.
On what he eventually learned was the fifth day since he'd returned, Charlie woke up in the morning, looked across his bedroom to his dresser, and tried to decide what to wear. There was his caffeine shirt, or the yellow one with the bear on it, or the striped--
Charlie sat bolt upright in bed, staring at the dresser, wracking his brain. There was nothing there, no memory, no experience of wearing those clothes or putting them into those drawers. But when he looked at the dresser he knew what was in it, just like he could look at an equation and know what to do with it, even though he couldn't remember being taught. He knew the caffeine t-shirt was soft and stretched and wearing thin, that the yellow t-shirt was thicker and scratchier and tight in the collar.
Charlie got up and went to the dresser, reaching one hand out cautiously to the handle of the top drawer. Underwear. Boxers, socks--his favorite boxers, plaid and almost obscenely soft, the hem on one leg unraveling. He yanked the drawer open and rummaged through the tangle of clothes, fearing for a moment that he was wrong, that they wouldn't be there, that the clothes he could almost feel on his skin were a memory of five years ago, or ten, or not a memory at all...
His hand closed on the familiar worn cotton and he pulled them out, quickly stripping out of his clothes to put them on. He followed them with his oldest jeans, faded to pale blue with ragged hems; they sagged on his hips, sliding down below the tops of his boxers, and that was wrong. They shouldn't fit like that; he shouldn't be so skinny. He frowned for a moment at the jut of his hipbones, then reached into another drawer for the baggy blue t-shirt with the faded red lettering, tugging it down to cover himself.
He grabbed his favorite socks, nearly worn through at the toes, and sat on the bed to pull them on; his glance fell on the closet door, and he knew what was in there, too, the array of shirts and the handful of suits--suits!--and shoes that fit. Charlie scrambled over the bed and pulled the door open, dropping to his knees to sort through the haphazard pile of shoes until he found the ones he wanted: sneakers, old and trashed, coming apart at the seams, but he knew they would fit his feet just right, every millimeter. He sat on the bed and laced them up, and then grabbed a gray flannel shirt and shrugged it on, smiling as he looked down at himself. He looked like a real person, like the Charlie his father and Larry wanted him to be. He was starting to remember, to know.
He stepped out of his room and looked around the hallway. There was a closed door directly across from his own, and he looked at it expectantly, but--no. There was nothing there, no memory, no knowledge. Charlie frowned, stepping toward it, but as he did he glanced down the hall, and his eye fell on another closed door, one he did know.
Charlie didn't decide to go there; he just went, automatically, to stand outside the door of his parents' bedroom. He raised his hand to knock and--
He knocked, softly, hesitantly, because he wasn't so scared, not really, he could go back to bed if Mommy and Daddy were sleeping--but he heard a low comforting murmur of voices from inside and then the door swung open, and he was looking up at his father looking down at him. His father didn't say anything, just shook his head, and Charlie looked down at his feet, embarrassed--but then his father said, "Well, come in," and Charlie looked up, tentatively raising his hands. His father picked him up, tucking Charlie against his body as Charlie looped his arms around his father's neck, holding on tight and held tight. He laid his head on his father's shoulder and breathed in, the familiar Dad-smell of soap and aftershave and Mommy and Daddy's bed, and he wasn't scared anymore, not at all.
The door swung open and his father was standing there, frowning, half-awake. "Charlie?"
Charlie tried to smile, though his eyes were stinging, his vision blurred.
"Dad," Charlie said, stepped in and put his arms around his father's neck, his face against his father's shoulder.
His father's arms closed around him, holding him tight--almost, almost close and warm and safe enough, almost--and his father said, "It's okay, Charlie. You're home now."
He had one last thing to do, before he got on with his life--or Jacob Field's life, at least, which was the only one he had left anymore. Don stood on the sidewalk outside the tattoo parlor for five straight minutes with the piece of paper folded in the palm of his hand. After he got run into for the third time, he sucked it up and went inside.
The tattoo artist glanced from the piece of paper to Don's face, and Don could see the moment when he made the prudent decision not to ask anything but, "Where?"
Don pointed to his right hip, where he'd be carrying the gun Jacob Field had a permit for, as soon as he got a new holster. The tattoo artist showed him where to lie down and how far he had to lower his jeans.
It hurt like fuck, like the kid with the ink-gun was sawing his leg off at the joint, but Don had pretty much expected that. He stared at the wall, covered with Polaroids of happy customers, and gritted his teeth. When he let his eyes close he remembered the bruise he'd left on Charlie's hip with a savage kick, remembered kissing that spot, and he forced his eyes open again and bit down hard on his lip.
The pain and the goddamned buzzing noise both let up and Don took a breath, letting himself relax a little--and then a hand landed casually on his ass, inches away from the burning throb of the new tattoo. Don's whole body jerked like he'd been electrocuted, one arm flying up and back before he could stop it. He didn't make contact--he forced himself down and still, hiding his face against the chair, clutching the edge with both hands, and he could feel himself shaking, could hear the absolute silence of the kid behind him.
"Sit tight a second," the kid finally said, and his footsteps were mercifully loud, walking away. Don hung on grimly to the chair and his self-control, and sat tight for a good long while.
Charlie's memories continued to pop up over the course of the day, like bubbles of carbonation in a glass of soda. He had a flash of some other breakfast as he ate his cereal, a plate of eggs, his mother's hand.
When he walked into the living room and saw the blanket tangled on the couch where he'd spent the last few days sleeping, he had a sudden vivid memory of lying on the couch, feverish and restless and too weak and tired to move. He'd been staring at the television and worrying in a scattered way about falling behind on schoolwork. Charlie folded up the blanket and went back up to his room just long enough to retrieve his laptop from the desk.
He sat at the dining room table with his computer, peering curiously at his email (the whole inbox was red, topped with flashing warnings about exceeding his storage limit) and then opening one file after another, glancing through what was obviously his own work. Some of the files made sense to him, and some--most of the most-recently edited ones--were complete blanks. Someone else might as well have made them. Maybe someone else had.
He put all the files whose contents he didn't recognize into their own folder, where he wouldn't have to look at them. Some looked uncomfortably similar to the work he'd done for Williamson, made him feel trapped even with open doors and windows all around him. Made him feel the lack of a steadying presence, pacing quietly behind him or lying asleep, waiting for Charlie to join him.
Charlie looked around after examining one particularly involved expression, and it was late afternoon. He shut down the computer and walked cautiously to the back door, and then out. He'd meant to go into the garage, to see if he could remember what exactly he'd been doing out there, but the sun was shining and he stopped dead on the driveway, looking around the yard. The ring of rocks he could see from his bedroom window marked a pond.
Charlie walked toward it warily. The water was clear, and he could see the pond wasn't deep, but it would be easy enough to fall in--easy enough to drown in, if he hit his head on a rock going down. He would slide under the water without a fight and that would be it.
Charlie shivered at the thought but stayed where he was, a few feet away, peering down not at the water but at the fish. They were soothing, hypnotic, swimming in their little fishy paths--random-seeming but not random at all. The patterns were nearly detectable even after the first few minutes. If he could just observe them long enough he'd know every move they were going to make.
He glanced back toward the house, considering going to get his laptop and see if he had anything he could use to model their movements, when a flash of color caught his eye. It was a bike, leaning up against the back of the house, old dead leaves drifted up against its tires.
Not a bike. His bike. The third and fourth gears would stick, and the brakes had to be maintained carefully--they'd be shot to hell now, after months left out in the open. He walked over to the bike to have a look at it, reached out to curl his hand around one grip.
They had guns.
Charlie was vaguely conscious of dropping to his knees, banging his elbow on the bike frame, scraping his knuckles on the chain--they had guns and they grabbed him off his bike, hit him in the mouth--they fired twice, he saw the bodies fall before they crammed him into the car with his mouth full of blood--his heart raced and his breath came short and the remembered taste of blood mingled with the acrid taste of adrenaline in his mouth. Their faces had all been masked, but his memory of those blanked faces was overlaid with kaleidoscopic images of later, angry, cruel, questioning faces lit by a single bare bulb, and his fingers--
He wasn't aware of crying out until a hand grabbed his shoulder, and then he let out a hoarse, choked sound, incoherent and helpless. He tried to scramble away, getting tangled up in the bike and falling, hitting his arm against the wall and bashing his knee on the gears. It wasn't until he got turned around and saw his father's bloodless face that he realized who had touched him.
Charlie covered his face with both shaking, filthy hands and tried to breathe. He needed Don right then, a sharp desperate spike that was different from the constant sense of his absence; Charlie needed Don now like he needed oxygen, he needed Don's arm around him and Don at his back with a gun in his other hand and he needed Don telling him he was all right, he was safe. He needed Don to be here, be with him, and he was all alone with this. He tried to hear Don's voice saying it and couldn't, and when he did catch his breath he exhaled something dangerously close to a sob.
His father said, "Charlie?"
Charlie pressed his fingers hard against his eyes and kept breathing. Don wasn't here, but Charlie was safe, and he wasn't alone, not completely. He had his father. And as bad as it was, he had another memory.
"They killed people," Charlie whispered. "The people who took me, they..."
"Yes," his father said slowly. "Two students at CalSci were killed when you disappeared."
Charlie shuddered. They'd had guns, they'd hit him, he'd seen them kill the witnesses. He couldn't stop shaking, he felt sick with the freshly-remembered terror, and even here in his own backyard he felt terribly exposed and undefended, but underneath it all was a sick sense of relief. Don had been right. Nothing that happened was your fault.
It had been them, those masked men, they had taken him. He hadn't been a killer before. They'd done this to him. Charlie lowered his hands, forced himself to look his father in the eye. "They weren't caught," he said. "They killed those kids and they took me and they were never caught."
His father said nothing, only shook his head.
Charlie closed his eyes and fought down his fear and whispered, "I think I need to talk to the FBI."
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