Abducted

Two children in our neighborhood had gone missing recently. In both instances, there had been a blue van parked in the vicinity. The same thing had happened six years ago, but the children were never found. It was unsettling; my husband and I were scared for our children.

We weren’t the only ones. No children were allowed to ride their bicycles or play in the yard unsupervised. Moreover, we had jobs to do, so we couldn’t watch our sons constantly. We dropped them off at school and my mom picked them up until we came to get them. She kept them at her palace until we got off. One morning, however, I woke up two hours late.

“Jacob, we overslept!”

“What? I didn’t even hear the alarm.”

I quickly rushed to the children’s room to wake them up. Their beds were empty, and the lampshades laid shattered on the floor. My heart began to pound as I frantically ran to the closet. It was empty. I checked under the beds; they weren’t there either. I called out to the boys as I felt my stomach wring at the thought of them going missing. I hoped that it was just a stupid prank. Jacob then walked in on me running aimlessly to the living room while yelling their names.

“Lizzie, what’s the matter?”

“Seth and Ryan are missing!”

We looked all over the house, but they were nowhere to be found. Moreover, we saw that one of our windows had been shattered. Our worst fears had come to pass. Jacob called the police immediately. They said the abductors probably changed their MO as parents were being more cautious about their children during the past two weeks.

I was distraught. None of the previous children had been found; I couldn’t bear the thought of my children suffering the same fate. Jacob and I decided that we needed all the help we could get, so we called a friend of ours named Carl who was a private detective. He was willing to cross certain lines the police wouldn’t in order to find our boys.

Days passed by, but there was no clue as to where my children were. I could barely eat or sleep. Each passing hour felt like an eternity as I waited impatiently for good tidings—and every time I did doze off, even for a brief moment, I was tormented by nightmares of never seeing them again. I kept calling the cops incessantly, but they never had anything good to say. The days turned into weeks, and before I knew it, an entire month had passed. I had lost almost all hope I had at the start.

Jacob started staying out till late more and more as time passed. Sometimes, he would come home reeking. I couldn’t stand it. We eventually got into a fight and I asked him to leave. I heard that he quit his job the next day and moved to a different town. In the end, I was left alone, surrounded by four walls of an empty house, spiralling deeper and deeper into depression. But I never gave up—every fibre of my being clung to the hope of my children being somewhere out there.

One day, I got a call from Carl saying that he had spotted Seth and Ryan with a woman at a supermarket, two towns over. He told me he’d tail them and let me know about the address. We alerted the police about it and, once we arrived at the scene, I found the boys out on the lawn. They were playing. Police raided the place and found Sydney, our last nanny, to be inside alone. Seth and Ryan rushed towards me the second they saw me.

“Mommy, you’re back!” they yelled, wrapping their arms around me.

“Back? What do you mean, hun?”

It was then that I learned just how deep the scheme ran. The answers were in plain sight, yet I never saw them. Carl and I laid in wait at the house with a few officers for our ‘guest’ to arrive. An hour later, a car pulled over in front of the house, and out stepped Jacob. He was smiling. My hands began to tremble. I felt my heart race with fury as he approached the door with not a care in the world.

Police cuffed him the moment he stepped inside using his key. He froze the second his eyes met mine. His face went pale, and one streak of sweat slid down his forehead to his face. He and Sydney had been having an affair, but he knew he wouldn’t get custody of the children if they were caught. Therefore, he had devised a plan with her to kidnap them and move away. He was taken to the station right after and put on trial the following week, along with his lover. My marriage was in ruins, but at least I was reunited with my children once again.