White Space Season 2

away from Hamilton. Nothing made sense, and every discounted idea only added fuel to his anxious fire.
    As Jon stood, waiting and hoping his phone would buzz with some new answer or thread so he wouldn’t have to talk to Cassidy again without knowing something more, Wan Yikuro, head of hotel security, opened their door, knocking only after he’d already opened it.
    “Mr. Conway? Can you come with me?”
    Jon’s heart beat faster.
    They found her? Please, God, tell me you found her!
    Jon followed Yikuro from the room, with Cassidy a step behind him. For a moment, Yikuro looked like he was going to ask Cassidy to wait, but the fiery look burning hot in her eyes, with the same don’t you fucking dare that she’d naturally worn since high school, managed to murder any such intentions.
    Yikuro led them down the hallway toward the elevators. He walked without looking back, apologizing for the delay and explaining that he had finally managed to find the security footage they had been looking for, but only after waiting through a temporary shutdown in the computer, which took a small forever to bring back online. Yikuro led them into the hotel basement, then into a large, dark room marked “SECURITY.”
    The room was lined on three walls with giant, closed-circuit monitors, which showed at least 40 different feeds per screen. In front of the monitors sat several wheeled chairs, enough for a staff of eight to keep watch on the hotel. A young, black man in a security uniform with the name “Anthony” on his badge nodded and pointed to a section of six squares on the screen he’d isolated inside a white box onscreen. “I found them, here.”
    He pressed play on the table’s touch screen, and spoke as he pointed. “Watch here. This is from the hallway outside Mr. Houser’s room, just after midnight.”
    Jon watched, Cassidy beside him, her fingers digging hard into his arm, dreading what they were about to see. The hotel door opened and Houser walked out, carrying a large, rolled-up bedspread slung over his shoulders.
    Emma had to be inside it.
    “Oh, God!” Cassidy cried out, digging deep enough into Jon’s arm to draw blood, though he was too transfixed by the monitor to look down and check.
    Houser walked the hall, stepped inside the elevator, and disappeared. Anthony turned to Jon, then pointed at another square in the box. “Here’s the parking garage feed, three minutes later.”
    Houser was still carrying the bedspread. He went to the back of his rental car, popped open the trunk, and laid the bulky comforter inside, closed the trunk, then climbed into his seat. Seconds later, he pulled out from the parking garage and was gone.
    “Here’s one more shot, him leaving the garage, south on 12 th Street,” Anthony said, playing the final bit of footage, and maybe the last they might ever see of Houser.
    Just like that, Houser was gone, and Emma with him.
    Cassidy lost a cry as she finally let go of Jon’s arm and collapsed into one of the chairs.
    Yikuro’s solemn eyes met Jon’s. “Sorry,” he said, “that’s all we have. After that, you’d have to see if the city has some red light camera or CCTV footage. Maybe trace the car from there. Or perhaps you can get the rental agency to track the car?”
    “Yeah, we’re trying that,” Jon said. He was about to say more but was interrupted by Cassidy’s shrill and sudden scream.
    “He took her! He fucking took her, Jon!” she stood and yelled into his face. “I thought you trusted him! What the fuck did he do with my baby?”
    My baby? She’s Sarah’s child. And mine, not yours.
    Jon wasn’t about to argue semantics with Cassidy. He wasn’t going to argue anything, because, really, what the hell could he say? The evidence, as bizarre as it seemed, pointed to Jon’s most trusted friend in the world leaving The Hillside with Emma, wrapped like a pig in a blanket.
    “I don’t know,” he said, not even sure he was answering Cassidy’s question. He no longer remembered. The last five minutes, if not the entire morning, was a soupy stew in his mind. Jon’s head was flooded with every awful story he had ever heard of abducted children, the sort that rarely, if ever, ended in anything less than the worst sort of horror.
    Jon grabbed Cassidy and pulled her to him, hugging her tight. “We’re going to find her,” he whispered, over and over, as if repetition would somehow turn his words true.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 3 — Chief Kevin Brady

    Brady