Sarah johnson's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

Sunday night came, and Sarah walked back to Jake's little white farmhouse for dinner. She had left for only an hour to grab a book she wanted to lend his mother. Now she climbed the porch steps and pushed the door open. The warm kitchen smell was gone. Jake's mother stood frozen by the table. Jake's father paced the living room, hands in his hair. Jake was not there. Sarah stopped in the doorway. "Where's Jake?" Jake's mother turned. Her blue eyes were red. Her hands shook as she held out a torn scrap of paper. "Someone took him. They left this." Sarah read the note. Rough letters. A demand for money by midnight, or they would not see Jake again. The father kept pacing. He muttered that the police would take too long. Sarah's chest went tight. In her books, danger always came with a hero. Now the room just waited for someone to move. "When?" Sarah asked. "Five minutes before you came," the mother said. "A car. Two men. He was in the yard." Her voice cracked. "My husband wants to wait. I can't wait." Sarah looked out the window at the dark yard. She saw tire marks pressed in the soft dirt by the fence. Fresh. She remembered Jake's phone. He never put it down. She grabbed the mother's hands. "Does Jake share his location with you?" Sarah asked. "On his phone?" The mother blinked. "He set that up for me months ago. I never check it." She fumbled for her own phone. Her fingers missed the buttons twice. Sarah took it gently and found the app. A small blue dot blinked on a road two miles out, moving slow, then stopping. "That's him," Sarah said. "He stopped moving." The father came close. "You don't know that's safe." "I know we have an address now," Sarah said. She looked at the mother. "You told me you don't let runners near your son. I'm not a runner. Call the police and give them this dot. Right now." The mother stared at her. Then her jaw set hard, the way it had the night she tested Sarah at the table. She dialed. She read the location out loud, clear and fast, while Sarah held the glowing screen steady. The call ended. The mother gripped Sarah's arm. "They're going. They said stay here." They stood together at the window and watched the dot. It did not move again. Minutes crawled. Then red and blue light flashed far down the road, racing toward the blue dot. The mother broke. She pulled Sarah into a hard hug. "You found him. You found my boy." Sarah's heart pounded. She had given them the dot and sent the help. But the screen still showed Jake two miles away, surrounded now by lights she could not read. She did not know yet if he was alive.