"Do you have any weapons?"

I'm still too dazed, my head is too foggy, I'm still so lost. It takes too long for his words to break through to me.

My hands are behind my back and I'm being pressed into the cold metal of my car's hood. The layer of the wet ice collecting there slices into my cheek, making me wince.

He pulls back ever so slightly before slamming me down again, shouting the same question.

Weapons? Why the hell would I have weapons?

Sirens are blaring while all around me more squad cars are pulling up to the scene.

Behind me I hear a woman shouting, screaming a boy's name.

"Benjamin!" She's screaming at the tops of her lungs, her voice the only thing breaking through the commotion all around.

His mother.

I hear her crying, not a sad cry, but one I know that means that the little boy in the puffy red jacket and those leather boots is back safe in his mother's arms.

I'm yanked away from the car, the wind burning my stinging cheek as the officer spins me to face him, pushing me back against the now closed driver's side door.

I don't realize I'm handcuffed until I try to move my arms. A wave of vertigo nearly makes my knees buckle beneath me as I pull against the restraints. This time they aren't invisible.

They're cuttingly real.

"Please." I beg. I try to grab my throat, I can't breathe, but my hands stay stuck, my arms smashed behind me at odd angles, making my shoulders scream in protest.

"Answer the question!" The officer yells again, I turn my head up to look at him and recognition dawns on me.

"F-frank?" I gasp. "Frank Gillians?"

"Officer Gill-." He starts to correct me but then he looks harder at my face too. "Fuck." He curses under his breath and steps back just a fraction. Just enough for the pain in my arms to be released. "I should have known a Jacobs would be involved." His words cut more cooly than the ice on my cheek.

Instead they grow hot and I turn as if he's slapped me.

"Please just let me go." I whisper. "Please I wasn't doing anything wrong."

"You say that while we just pulled you over with an abducted child in your vehicle." I hear the hatred in his deep voice. How could this be the same guy who used to come over to my house every Sunday morning to play video games with my brother?

It takes a second but then I do register what he'd said.

"Abducted?" I almost shout. "That is so not what happened."

"Are you drunk?"

"W-what?" I stammer. "No, I'm not drunk."

"You're on something, Jacobs." He spits. "You were swerving all over the road."

But I wasn't.

I want to argue. I want to explain how this is all one big misunderstanding. I want to tell him I know I couldn't have been swerving because when I put the little boy in my car I was being so so careful after what had almost happened.

But then I'd have to tell him what did almost happen.

And am I even that sure that he's wrong?

So many things from this day are a blurry sliver of things. Bits and pieces of spliced together memories. Maybe he's right.

Frank pulls me away from the car so that another officer can begin searching my vehicle. Looking for what, I have no idea.

"I swear I was bringing him home."

"Sure you were." He replies with menace.

I try to grab my throbbing head but again I'm reminded of the handcuffs. You never realize how much you use your hands until you can't.

"Please, I just want to go home." I beg again. "Please, Frank, I just want to go. I found him out here alone and I was taking him home when you stopped me."

All of a sudden he's on me, his hands patting me down, emptying one coat pocket...my dead phone. And then the other...

The orange bottle's colors contort with the flashing lights all around. The pills inside turning red, then blue, then white.

"And what the hell is this?"

"It's for...it's for my anxiety." I try to explain. "I get panic attacks."

"We will just see about that." He won't meet my eyes. Not since he realized who I am. Is it guilt? Guilt that he is doing this to the sister of the guy who used to be his best friend?

Or is it shame?

Shame that he ever crossed the threshold of a monster...

The way he jerks me by my elbow and pushes me into the backseat of his squad car and slams the door makes me think it is likely the latter.

He's not Frank anymore. The kid who would let me half his bag of chips in the living room. The one who would call me a dork and laugh while I read books on the couch while they played.

He's Officer Gillian now.

And there is nothing an officer of Faulkner loves more than sticking it to the Jacobs family.

And I'm the only one this town has left.

Less than twenty minutes later I'm being dragged behind four other cops into the downtown police station.

"Empty all of your pockets." I'm told as we stop at a window to the left of the front desk while people gather around to watch.

I pass over my few belongings, and the man puts them into a sterile grey tub. I watch as Officer Gillian throws my pill bottle on top of my coat that I was also directed to remove.

"Found those on her." He tells the man on the other side of the window and they share a look before there is a buzzing noise and then the door at the end of the room slams open and I'm being passed off to yet another officer.

"Are you seriously booking me right now!" I'm starting to panic. This cannot actually be happening right now. Maybe I took too much.

Maybe I didn't take enough and this is all a bad dream.

But the cutting cuffs don't feel like a dream. They feel real. And if they are...so is this.

"Shut up." I'm told by someone around me. It's too hard to tell with all of the voices going at once.

It's like being at the press conference all over again. Too many people. Too many voices. Too many questions.

It's

All

Too

Much.

I go passed a booking station where other people with hands cuffed behind their backs sit in cold looking metal chairs awaiting their turns to get finger printed and led to a holding cell.

I, apparently, get to skip the line.

So much is blurring around me I hardly notice my fingers going into the ink or someone saying something about my right to an attorney.

Before I know it I'm in a tiny room with a window to the side. A metal table and two chairs on one side, one on the other.

I'm sat down into the single chair and told to wait.

The door slams with finality. The thrum of it ringing in my ears, mingling with the pounding beneath my skull.

How could this night have gone so wrong?

How could these people actually think I stole some random kid? Why would I even....

But then again...

"Why did he do it?"

People do bad things all the time, every second of every day. Right now, hundreds of people are doing something bad or illegal. Hundreds of people are dying right now. As I sit here, someone somewhere is killing someone else.

And is there ever really a reason?

Bad things happen all the time for no reason at all.

I didn't do anything wrong.

How long have I just wanted someone to say that to me? Someone other than Dallas. I love him, but it isn't the same coming from him. He's the same as me. Cut from the same cloth. We hold each other's baggage. He has to say that, because if he didn't, he'd have to blame himself too.

I jump when the door opens again and two strangers walk in. Officer Gillian may hate me now, but at least it was a face I knew.

Now it's replaced by two men, both white, one balding but with a mustache, the other a head full of salt and pepper hair and clean shaven.

"Miss Jacobs." Balding says, pulling out the first chair to sit in front of me.

"Sir, please, there has been a huge mistake." I blurt quickly, stumbling over the words as my tongue feels too big for my mouth. "I didn't take that kid, I found him."

Salt and Pepper huffs. "You found him?"

"Yes, I swear!" Again I try to use my hands to show my innocence but they're tethered...making me look guilty. "Please, don't arrest me, I swear I-"

"No one is arresting anyone." Balding holds up a hand to stop me. "Not yet anyway."

"A little boy is reported missing the day after his sister and that same kid is found in the backseat of a junkies car." Salt and Pepper narrows his eyes at me. "You'll have to forgive us if we need to make sure your story is corroborated before we can just let you leave."

The insult is like a kick in the stomach.

They see me.

They see right through me.

Already I'm starting to sweat, my heart beating too fast. The muscle is going to give out soon if this keeps up.

"Ok." I say, trying to remain calm. "Ok, so ask him." I tell them, pleading with my eyes. "He can tell you what happened."

"And what exactly did happen, Miss Jacobs?"  Balding asks, leaning back in his seat to fold his arms over his beer gut. "In your version."

In my version.

As if they already know that whatever I've got to say is a lie. I feel sick just looking at them, seeing the way they look at me with disgust.

I stare at the table in front of me as I recount driving down the road, and I embellish a bit about seeing someone walking along the road. Someone small. Someone whose red jacket stood out against the back drop of the dark and the falling white snow.

I tell them that I stopped in a hurry when I realized I was seeing a kid walking alone. I tell them exactly what happened from there right down to how I got into this chair.

By the time I've gotten it all out I'm out of breath and I finally meet their eyes, sure they will have heard the sincerity in my voice, but instead I find them both staring at me. Both of their arms crossed now.

"I swear to you, that's what happened," I say again. "I found him there and I was just trying to make sure he got home. He kept saying he needed to find his sister."

"And do you know his sister?" Salt and Pepper asks, a small shrug of his shoulder. As if we are friends now.

"No."

"Are you sure?" He asks again.

"No, I don't know that kid or his sister." I shake my head furiously. "I swear I just found him like that."

"We know."

My eyes shoot to Balding's. "You know?" I'm too stunned to know if I'm relieved or just more confused now. "Then why am I still here?" I rattle my hands behind me for emphasis.

"We spoke to the parents while you waited in here." Balding says. "The boy says he left home willingly and that you found him and were taking him home."

"That is literally exactly what I've been saying this entire time!" I yell. "Please, I want to go now."

"Just a few more questions." Salt and Pepper leans forward on the table. "You say you don't know the sister?"

"No." I say again. "I've only been back in town for a couple of days. I hardly know anyone."

"So the name Linn Pierce doesn't mean anything to you?"

"No." I shake my head. "It doesn't. I don't know her."

"Let me ask you something," Balding chimes in, tilting his head to the side as he appraises me. "Why were you there?"

"Huh?"

"Why were you on that road?" He asks, clarifying. "You said you were going home, right?"

Had I said that?

"And your home is nowhere near that side of town." He continues. "In fact you were still driving the opposite direction. So you see, I wonder, why were you on that particular county road tonight?"

My mind slams to a halt.

The thing is, I don't know. I had just been so mad, in such a hurry to leave Kelsea's place, I hadn't paid any attention to where I was or where I was going.

I didn't even realize I was there until I saw that cross.

"I was just driving." I say finally. "I was upset and I was just driving."

"Under the influence." Salt and Pepper adds.

"Why that road?" Balding asks me again. "All of us know what happened there, right?" He says, a sick smile twisting his lips. "Did you need to see where it happened again?" He asks. "Or maybe...maybe there was another reason you wanted to go there. Some other reason why we picked you up less than a mile away from a certain spot?"

"Maybe something to do with Linn Pierce?"

"What?" I gasp. "No, I've already told you I don't even know who that is!"

"You don't?" Balding laughs. "That's quite the coincidence then, don't you think?"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" I shake my arms again. "I just want to leave, you already know what you need to know, the kid is safe and I didn't take him. Now, please, I'd like to leave."

"I'm sure you would." Salt and Pepper sighs, standing from the table.

"And we would love to let you." Balding says, sliding out of his seat as well. "But here is the thing." He says. "The boy's sister? The one you claim to not know?"

"I don't know her!"

"Well, that girl, Linn Pierce." He looks me cold in the eyes. "We found her tonight."

For a second I'm relived.

They found his sister.

One missing girl is no longer missing.

But then my blood runs cold.

"Her body was in the ditch." He tells me. "Right where you were leaving from." He says. "Your tire tracks are all over the place. Footsteps too."

They both turn and head for the door.

"No!" I scream. "This is a mistake! Please!"

I want to tell them I had nothing to do with that. I want to tell them that I would never hurt someone. That I'm not like him.

But they leave me alone in the room.

Alone to really understand.

That cross marked the spot where they found the very first girl's body. My fathers first victim.

And now...

It's happening all over again.

The first girl's body found in that exact same ditch.

Only this time, it's not my father.

He's dead.

And maybe even worse...

They think it was me.