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.A little bit longer, Brandon promised himself and he couldtake a deep breath and move on. Brandon! Nicky s muffled yell came from outside.Enoughterror carried through to flick up the hairs on Brandon s arms.He bolted out of his chair and out the back door.As hecareened around the corner of the house he caught sight ofNicky standing near the driver s door of the hearse.Brandonslowed to a jog and panted out. What happened? Shaken, pale, Nicky turned to stare at Brandon. This! Heheld out a crumpled manila envelope.Nicky ran his free handdown his face. It was on the windshield. The top had beenripped open.The ragged flap gaped and Brandon caught aglimpse of glossy cardstock inside. Hold on. If Nicky found something on the windshield andhe freaked& that meant it might be tied to Shayna s disappearance.Brandon sucked in a deep breath.Slowly, he asked, You openedit? No. Nicky denied it with a shake of his head. I just grabbedit and it opened up. Almost afraid to speak the words, Brandon managed to stutter 214 James Buchananout the question, What s in it? Nicky scuffed his Vans against the concrete.He bit his bottomlip and then hissed out, Pictures, like the word might bite him.What pictures? Brandon needed to know.He stepped up andcaught himself short before grabbing the envelope.Nine yearsof police training stopped him from adding another layer offingerprints.He pulled back and waved toward the hood of thehearse. Well, dump them across the No. That one syllable cracked out of Nicky s mouth andstopped Brandon cold. Why not? Suddenly, the horror of what might be in thatenvelope hit Brandon.He swallowed and licked his lips. Arethey, you know? Nicky blinked.Something in Brandon s tone must haveconveyed the direction of his thoughts. No! Thank God, no. He massaged the envelope in his grip. Dude, they re me. When Nicky didn t seem ready to add more, Brandonprompted, And? And, Nicky shrugged, I mean I just saw the closest oneand, you know, it s off one of the sites. Nicky rolled his eyes.Helooked like he wanted to run and hide. Whips chains, the wholenine yards.I think it s one Jake took like almost two years ago.Long before you and I. Is it bad? Well, in the scheme of things, any picture withoutblood and guts wasn t horrid.Still, Nicky s hesitation wouldn thave been evident if the photos were of the garden-variety familysnapshots.Brandon figured something was up.Gritting his teeth, Nicky muttered, I m not wearing a wholehell of a lot except a collar and some boots. He sucked in alungful of air. Puppy-tails and ballgags& I don t know wherethe fuck this shit got dug up. Brandon reminded himself to breathe.Nicky s priorsexcapades on display vs.the other images Brandon s mind haddredged up& they d deal.Embarrassing, but not fatal.Like the ALL OR NOTHING 215envelope sent to his office, this equaled an attempt to intimidateNicky and, by extension, Brandon.Of course none of themessages was a lock of hair or voice recording or bit of clothingfrom Shayna.Nothing said look she s still in play. Every messageso far was just a sledgehammer blow.Stilling his hands they d started to shake Brandon reachedfor his phone.By the second swipe at his hip, he realized he d leftthe cell inside.Brandon looked at Nicky.It felt like his face wasripping apart from the strain of not screaming. Call Metro, seeif Orozco s on shift, he managed to spit out the directive. Theyneed to process the scene. 216 James Buchananclickjacked.blogroads.net Private Post, Jan 1, 7:15amA sign.He needed a sign to remember what this all was about.It d beenhard to find the pictures& hidden things, so cleverly hidden.A test.Butthey were out there.Only those smart enough, cagy enough could findthem.A trail of breadcrumbs dropped through the forest of the net.Ofcourse that s what he intended by hiding them, things not meant for publicconsumption.If you looked hard enough, deep enough, you could discoverthe tiny clues that lead you to what you needed. CHAPTER 20How could he cope? The best Brandon could do was sit inNicky s kitchen licking designer ice cream, in a flavor he hardlytasted, off the back of a spoon as he dug it out of the tiny carton.He didn t even have the energy to put the shit in a bowl.Hollow.He was hollow.No other word could describe it.There wasthis big empty mess inside and every so often it heaved andthreatened to swallow his sanity.All the times he d delivered horrid news and told people it wasall right.They d get through it.The police were on the job.Onehundred and fifty percent committed.Every resource availablebrought to bear.Everything will be okay.But it wasn t okay.Brandon knew.He knew better than all those civilianswatching on TV, wondering where Shayna was.He d seen it in thedetective s eyes, when they d offered the we re doing everything wecan line.There wasn t anything they could do.Nothing.Becausethey knew, too.Kids didn t come home from things like this.Notafter this long.You pulled them out of drainpipes or chiseledtheir bones from concrete blocks, or they just vanished and younever knew.Brandon sank back down into the hell of being a cop.Thehell of knowing the real odds.What a stranger kidnapping reallymeant.The past few days he d manage to function, push thethoughts down and then night would fall, the world would goquiet and they d overwhelm him again.Did Shayna beg? Did she cry? Had she called out for Mommy?For Frank? For him? There was no use fighting the thoughts.Ifhe tried to shove them to a small corner of his brain, they justcoiled and sprang back up with more venom.Cycling into horrorshow scenarios.All of it more real because he d seen things as 218 James Buchananbad or worse than most people could ever imagine.What was the point, really? Of fighting? Why go on? Howcould he ever again deliver that rote patter: I m so sorry for yourfamily.We re doing everything we can.You need to trust us.He d know,know exactly the chances, remember what he felt right now, andthey d see it in his eyes, his face.No one would ever trust in himagain.Worse yet, he d never trust himself, believe in himself.Shellshocked and going through the motions& eventually, a copwithout focus, who second guessed everything, would go down.Everyone joked about suicide-by-cop.What no one everlaughed at were the officers slowly killing themselves throughbooze or drugs.Worse yet, the crazy fucks.The ones no one intheir right mind wanted to partner with.Guys who went lookingfor the hairy situations and then ramped them up to insanebecause they wanted to go out with their boots on.Nobody onthe force would acknowledge those nut jobs existed& not outsideof innuendo and hushed conversations about cowboys and head-cases.And when a guy like that imploded, the collateral damageof civilians and other officers spread like a nuclear wind.Brandon knew he couldn t go down into burning his braincells out with a chemical blowtorch. Cause Nicky, his dad, helleven Edith, they d stick by him trying to pull him out.If he fellapart they d be scrambling for the pieces.Jeff, his partner, manhe d be torn up watching, messing and trying to pull Brandonout of the pit.And the other way, shit.Even bangers who rolled hard, theyhad somebody who loved them.Take a guy like that out, whilehe took you out and the chain of misery just kept rolling on.Brandon didn t want to do that to someone else s family.Might aswell just finish it now.Everything was done and over already
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