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“So where is she, man?”

“Alina?”

“Well sh*t, who else? I think, I mean, did you tell dad that she was gone?”

“I did, and she is. She’s just gone.”

“Because of me.”

“Sh*t, I didn’t say that, Andrew.”

“Nope. You didn’t have to. I was there. I know the things I did. Fu*k, the things I said to her. I know that’s why she took off.”

“She left because she didn’t want to get between us. She felt like she was causing too much trouble.”

“But she isn’t coming between us. She has to know that.”

“Well it’s a little late for that, I guess.”

“Are you kidding me? Fu*k that. We’ve got to go find her. That’s all. How far could she have gotten, anyway? It’s not like she was in a car or anything. Let’s just go.”

“It’s getting dark. I don’t know how we’ll find her.”

“Because we will. That’s why. Because we will.”

Joshua didn’t have to answer. Andrew could see by the look on his face that he was in and the two of them got up and headed for the door. The rain was finally coming to an end but the sun was also going down and that meant that it would be harder to find what they were looking for. Not that it mattered. They would find her. They had to. There was nothing else for him to do. It was his entire life.

Joshua had wanted to take his truck, to find her faster. He felt like he needed to have her right away or he would just implode. He was having actual anxiety from not having seen her face and he knew that the faster they moved the better the chance that he would get her back. But Andrew reminded him that it wasn’t an option. The truck wasn’t an option.

“Josh, we can’t, man. She left on foot. She’s going to leave some tracks and we won’t be able to find them if we’re in the truck. We’ve got to do it this way, ok? We’ve got to.”

Josh ran his fist into the side of his truck, left a pocket shaped dent that would forever after cause him to remember exactly how he was feeling at that exact moment. He shut his eyes tight, willing the anger vibrating through his body to subside. He wasn’t used to all of this anger. He was a man who was much more comfortable with a sort of emotional plateau than with the extremes of things. He liked to live in the flat line and there had been so many ups and downs lately that he was feeling dizzy.

But Andrew was right and when he clamped his hand reassuringly on his shoulder, only slightly hesitant with the idea that he might get decked for his efforts, Joshua stood and nodded at him. They would walk. They would track her, just like they had tracked so many times before. They had practiced this since they were born. They were absolutely made for this task.

And so they walked. They walked and watched the sky fade faster and faster, watched the dusky lavender transition to the deep purple of the Charlotte night sky. There was such an awesome stillness that they couldn’t help but consider how small they were in relation to the great wide world. Joshua walked and saw Alina swimming in his head with beautiful doe eyes and a slightly crooked smile. He wondered what it was that Andrew thought about. What image in his head made him put one foot in front of the other? Was there anything he would walk to the ends of the earth for?

These were the things Joshua considered as he walked and he would very likely have gone on thinking them indefinitely if it weren’t for Andrew reaching out his arm to stop their forward progress. Startled, Joshua looked up into the blackness and at his brother’s face. He had no idea how long they had been moving but he could see that Andrew had found something. Thank god one of them was able to keep out of his own thoughts. If it had been Joshua on his own he might have just walked on into the night.

“Josh. Look.”

His voice was somber and Joshua felt something inside of him squirm. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to look; nobody could make him. The child inside of him kept shouting that like a mantra over and over again. But the man in him knew there was no choice and so he knelt down beside the place Andrew was pointing to. Blood. One whiff and he knew it belonged to Alina. Her blood was her on the ground, and that was not all. His eyes shot back up and met Andrew’s level, worried gaze.

“I smelled it, too. The McCallisters. They were here. I think they took her, man. And if that’s the case we’ve got to get to her. We’ve got to get to her fast, before it’s too late.”