"This is the van your dad owns?!" Henry says in shock.
It's an old van, big, the kind of van that parents tell their kids to stay away from on the street. It's big and bulky with at least three rows of seats. It looks like something from the sixties or an old TV show.
"My dad got it on some trade show road trip, it's not much but it'll get us there," Crystal says, not really in the mood to argue. She opens the garage door where the van is kept, pulling her hair up. She's dressed in dark clothing and carries her backpack. She also puts a gun on her hip.
"Where'd you get those?" Henry asks nervously.
"My dad has a gun cabinet, your mom and David went in armed, so will we," Crystal explains. "Can you shoot?"
"N-no not really… I've never fired a gun" Henry says quickly, looking at his feet.
"Henry…" Crystal says sternly.
"Okay, my dad sometimes takes me to a shooting range!" he says, looking guilty. "And sometimes we go hunting, just don't tell my mom."
Crystal hands Henry a gun and he puts it in his belt.
"The safety's on, so we'll be okay," she says confidently. Of course, she doesn't feel confident, not at all. This is extremely dangerous what they're doing, but they knew that they couldn't just wait for the police to show up, by then Killian and the others could be dead.
Crystal holds up the keys to the van. She climbs into the driver's seat and starts it up. The thing sputters to life after a few hard turns of the key. The age of the thing makes her even more nervous, she doesn't want to wake her dad up, whom she found in the living room, clutching a bottle of booze like a teddy bear. She was quiet enough to slip into the gun cabinet, swipe what she needed, including her laptop and backpack without waking him. The cab of the van smells of old food and cigarettes, the seats are really worn that there are holes in places and some of the seatbelts are broken.
Henry hops into the cab with her and puts on his working seatbelt.
Crystal pulls down the driveway as quietly as she can and then pulls out onto the road. She turns onto Main Street, the old van creaking and sputtering every so often.
They head towards Emma and Henry's house, sitting in nervous silence.
"What's going on here?!" a voice from the back seat shouts.
"Oh, my Gawd!" Crystal shrieks. Lacey's tired face and messy brown hair pop up from the back seat. Crystal stops the van so suddenly that they all go forward, Lacey whacking her head on the front seat.
"What the hell are you doing here?!" Crystal shrieks, turning towards the back.
"Me? What are you doing swiping your dad's car?!" Lacey snaps back. She looks like hell, dark circles under her eyes, her makeup smeared and her clothes rumpled beyond belief.
"My mom needs our help," Henry explains, not exactly happy because of the delay. "Some guy is negotiating for Killian's life and she and a few others are going to confront him, learn his motives."
"Has she asked you to help?" Lacey asks.
"No,"
"Then why the hell are you putting yourselves in jeopardy?" Lacey squeaks.
"Because there's more to this than we know," Crystal says. "This guy is smart and I think he may be behind the break-ins in town. They're going to need our help."
"Why waste your time?" Lacey protests, but Crystal puts the van back into gear and drives down the street.
"Well, we're stuck with you, how the hell did you end up in the back anyways? I'd thought you'd be with my dad," Crystal asks, her voice clearly annoyed by the unwanted hitchhiker. Her patience has run very dry with the drunken females in her father's life. She's had to deal with many intoxicated women before, kicking them out of the house in the morning and cleaning up their messes, but if her father insistence of keeping Lacey around, who was quite loud and very annoying when drunk.
"Your dad was trying a new recipe of whiskey, we each had a glass, then he had to go to his shop for some reason and the next thing I remember is waking up in this loud rust bucket."
"I'm just surprised he's invited you over more than once," Crystal mutters under her breath.
"Hey! Your father respects me and he cares about me, he told me I'm one of a kind"
"He said the exact same thing to my mom and look where that got us," Crystal mutters.
"He may not be much, but he's an improvement from the other dirtbags I've dated. I needed a change and your dad is part of that, it's why I came here in the first place..."
"You'd think a librarian would be smart enough to avoid my dad," Crystal says.
"Hey, no one is perfect!" Lacey protests.
They pull up in front of the house, which is still dark and covered in crime scene tape, cutting the fighting short.
"What happened here?" Lacey asks.
"Have you been living under a rock the past few weeks?" Crystal snap.
"I'm intoxicated, cut me a break!" Lacey snaps back.
"My house was broken into, the same guy who's been hitting houses all over town," Henry says, not wanting the fighting to continue.
"So why are we here if he's already left?" Lacey mutters.
"The guy was searching for something and when he couldn't find it, he decided to kidnap Killian to get it from my Mom."
"That seems rather extreme," Lacey says, the mention of kidnapping sobering her up a bit.
Crystal frowns and pulls her hair up into a ponytail to help herself think. "I feel like there's more than that… That newspaper article you found, had Emma's name circled. This guy knows her and wants something else from her… I just can't put my finger on it."
"Well, while you do that, I'm going to see if there's anything my mom missed."
"But where?" Crystal asks. "The guy clearly didn't find it, what makes you think you can find it?"
" I know where they are…" Henry says.
…
Henry runs up to his mom's bedroom and was surprised to see the hiding spot had already been opened.
"What is that?" Lacey asks.
"My mom's hiding place," Henry explains. "She keeps all the stuff she wants to forget under the floorboards, mostly to save herself the pain, but also for security reasons. She was a bail-bonds person in Boston and gathered a lot of important information about her clients."
"So how do you know where it is?" Crystal asks quizzically.
"I found it one day when I was playing hide-and-seek with my dad. I hid under here and noticed the uneven board. I opened it to find a treasure trove of stuff from her past."
Henry reached down and shows them a photo album, half full of pictures of his mom and Neal. The two girls can also see a vast amount of keepsakes. A hand-knitted blanket with her name stitched onto one side. A pink teddy bear, stacks of adoption papers and a necklace with a swan pendant on it. Crystal snaps out of it, realizing that it was wrong to go through people's private things, plus, they're under the gun for time.
Lacey steps forward and something crunches under her foot.
"What is that?" Henry says, he takes the paper from under the woman's shoe.
He holds it up, but it's too dark to see, so Crystal whips out her phone and shines the light on the paper.
"Walsh Osmond..." Lacey reads aloud.
"That's the file he wants," Henry says. "This must've fallen out."
"He looks really familiar, I mean look at those eyes... and what's a name like Walsh Osmond?" Lacey states, mostly to herself.
"Why does that sound so familiar?" Crystal ponders. Her mind suddenly makes a link.
"Because of my mom..." Henry begins.
"Lacey, can you get my laptop out of my bag?" Crystal interrupts, not listening to him.
Lacey unzips her bag and Crystal logs into her computer. She types Walsh Osmond into the search engine. A news article and recent photo pops up.
The first headline makes all of them gasp simultaneously.
"Oh, my gawd!" Crystal says, staring at the picture on the paper and the new article she pulled up on her computer.
"Is that…?" Lacey gasps, squinting to make sure she's seeing this right and it's not the whiskey.
Henry too is wide-eyed in shock.
"We have to get there now!" he says.