Chapter 25

Six Years Later

"Mom?" Her son's voice came from behind her as she was digging crossly in the pantry, certain that they had at least half a can of Folgers left and somebody was getting fucking hurt if her coffee did not produce itself this instant. "I've got a question."

"Just a second, kid." Emma rubbed a hand across her face, growled something under her breath that she normally would have said out loud, and resumed her search. Yes, thank you Jesus, it had gotten shoved back behind the ramen. She pulled it out, measured a few scoopfuls like an addict cutting the crack with a credit card, and punched the switch of the percolator, which began to grumble and growl. Once she was certain that it required no further assistance from her, she turned back, carried her toast to the breakfast table, and sat down across from him. "Yeah?"

David gazed at her seriously. "Do I have a brother?"

Emma almost choked on her toast, and hastily swallowed it before she could, feeling her heart start to race. "I – no. No, you don't. What on earth would make you think that?"

"I dreamed about it." David looked pensively at his Cheerios, turning soggy in their Batman bowl. He was a ridiculously precocious six-year-old, lively and mischievous and a total mini-heartbreaker with his mop of black hair and wide blue eyes, a light scattering of freckles; strangers stopped Emma on the street all the time to tell her that she should sign him up for child modeling or an ad agency or something. She always flatly refused. Money might be tight, but she wasn't going to make her son shill for clothing chain stores or insurance company commercials, grow up in front of cameras and be the family breadwinner before his age hit double digits. She had too much pride for that.

"Dreamed about it?" Oh, hell.

"Yeah." David glanced up earnestly. "Last night. He came to me and said his name was Henry, and that we had a job to do together. He said I needed to tell you."

Emma realized that her hands were shaking. To disguise it, she got up smartly, pivoted across the cramped kitchen to the coffeemaker, and decanted it into her mug, straight and black as tar. When she'd put down a good few scalding sips, she topped it up, came back, and said, "You probably just had too much sugar, hon. I know that you – "

David got a stubborn look. "He said it was important that he was here. On your birthday."

My birthday. Emma blew out a breath. Fuck her if it wasn't. Her twenty-eighth, yesterday, which she hadn't even been here for since she was out late trapping a mark. David must have helped himself to the cupcakes, continuing the pattern established for his young life: he'd started first grade this fall and was already a latchkey kid, letting himself in and knowing to wait for the neighbor to come over and make him dinner and help him with his homework, sit him quietly in a corner with a book, then put him to bed if (as was usually the case) Emma wasn't home yet. But I'm lucky to have this job. Lucky to have this place. Lucky to have anything.

It hadn't taken a rocket scientist to work out what had happened, when she returned from London six years ago. Especially the fact that her incoherent story about Killian disappearing without a trace sounded an awful lot like some half-assed excuse cooked up to cover his escape, and the fact that at her end-of-year performance review, she was almost four months pregnant and the dates matched a little too nicely. James had told her that he personally wanted to make it work, but going forward, his bosses thought that the agency would be best served by deploying their interests in different directions. In other words, she was fired.

After that, Emma went into freefall. She'd left the Back Bay apartment, due to it being a) prohibitively expensive, b) completely child-unfriendly, and c) still too close to Greg and Tamara (who had never returned) and had to take a placement in the public housing projects instead. She managed to find minimum-wage work as the night janitor at the general hospital, and on a warm May afternoon, gave birth to David Eric Swan in that same hospital. Yet going back to a job that required her to spend hours on her feet so soon after having a baby was a no-go, and she managed to catch on as an insurance claims adjustor. But then her boss had let her know in no uncertain terms that she couldn't keep bringing a three-month-old to work – she had nobody to look after him – and that, likewise, was curtains.

Completely alone in the world, with a baby and no job, no money, and no home, Emma was up shit creek so far that she was about to hit shit ocean. She'd gotten in touch with her old roommate, Wendy, who stepped in just in time to save them from sleeping under a bridge, and paid for a new apartment – the top floor of a weathered clapboard row house in South Boston – until Emma could take care of it herself. Now that David was a little older, she could expand her work options somewhat, and finally landed a job with a quite different branch of the local criminal justice system: AFA Securities Limited, a bail-bonds firm. In other words, a bounty hunter.

Hence, this was the world where she was going to raise her son. South Boston was a heavily Irish Catholic working-class neighborhood, and it was a place for him to understand his heritage. Emma had considered moving, but by now she'd lived in Boston for almost half her life, and didn't want to uproot David, who of course had never known any other place. If she was going to go, she should have done it before he started school and Little League, but that would entail finding a new job, a new apartment, throwing their fate into limbo again. And no matter how many late nights and seedy dives her bounty hunting took her to, it was the first time that she was making even halfway decent money. His college education wasn't going to pay for itself.

All in all, it was no better and no worse a life than a single mother could expect. Emma was determined to burst the sexist stereotype, and she'd always insisted that David follow the rules, go to bed on time, shut up and take his medicine, and otherwise do her best to raise him right despite often not having a clue how. He was a good kid, albeit headstrong and obstinate and able to get into all kinds of trouble if left for five minutes unsupervised, and she loved him so much that it terrified her. On nights she wasn't working, they'd curl up on the couch with ice cream and a movie. They'd watch it together, him commenting all the way through, and she'd cuddle him, holding his warm, solid little body on her lap, stroking his hair. He'd pretend he wasn't falling asleep, and she'd sing lullabies to him, carry him off to bed. In return, he would wake her early on weekends when she just wanted to sleep, crawling under the covers while she groaned and swatted at him. He was a dynamo of relentless energy, boundlessly optimistic, determined to take on the world headlong.

He was so much like Killian it was haunting.

Even if she had wanted to forget about him, she couldn't. His face gazed back at her in miniature every day. It wasn't just the physical resemblance. It was the way David immediately picked up skills (and vocabulary) from the older neighbor boys that had her spanking him and putting him in timeout. It was the way he liked to swagger, to swash and buckle, to use his charm to wheedle his way out of trouble, to beg her for a pirate costume, to immediately fall in love with the plastic sword and fake hook and sleep with them for weeks. That was something else Emma had learned from Wendy Darling. About Killian's real identity, about why he referred to Gold as the "crocodile," and why he was over three hundred years old. Why the shadow wanted him, and just where it must have taken him.

It made Emma's head hurt to think about it, so she rarely did. In fact, for the last six years, she had furiously shut out anything not strictly devoted to her job, David, and their life. The thought of Storybrooke had lurked in her head often, but had to be shut down. There was no way she was taking her kid into that loony bin when she didn't even know what the hell she was supposed to do there in the first place. She'd given up enough. More than enough.

And yet, David didn't seem content to leave it alone. "He knew things," he insisted. "Henry. About us. It wasn't a dream. It was a real dream."

"No, it was just a dream." Emma sipped her coffee. "A dream dream. You don't have a brother. Trust me. Hey, what do you want to be for Halloween? It's next week, you know."

David shot her a look, clearly catching onto her clumsy dodge. "I'll be a pirate again. I don't want to make you buy a new costume."

Emma was jolted by that, hard. It made her feel like a failure that her kid knew they were usually short on money, that this was how he had been raised. And now this. Henry. Storybrooke. Things she had shut deep in the recesses of her mind and had not ever intended to let back out. She put down her coffee cup and stared at the tabletop, suddenly on the brink of tears.

"Mom?" David squirmed out of his chair and pattered over to put a worried little hand on her shoulder. "Mama? Are you okay?"

"I'm. . . fine." Emma knuckled her eyes, hard. "Hurry up. Bus comes in fifteen minutes."

David shot her a dubious look, but obediently scampered off to brush his teeth and admire his minty smile in the mirror, then be dragged out by her as she shoved his superhero backpack on, made sure he had his lunch, and carted him down the stairs like a mother lioness in the savannah carrying her cub in her jaws. They pushed through the screen door and out into the brisk October morning, and he looked at her hopefully. "Are you working tonight?"

"I don't know. Depends if Bryan calls me." Emma glanced over to see the Boston Public Schools bus rolling up the street, and crouched to her son's level. "Kiss?"

He pecked her on the lips, still at that young, innocent age where it was not at all déclassé to display affection to one's mother in public. "I love you!"

"I love you too, squirt. Have a good day." This was often the most time she got with him; if a call did come in that one of her marks had tried to skip town, she could be out past midnight, in who-knew-which sections of the city. This was a fairly safe neighborhood, looked out for by the aforementioned tight-knit Irish vigilantes, but she still didn't let David play outside after dark.

The bus pulled up, its doors wheezing back like arthritic buzzard's wings, and Emma waved to David as he bounded on board. She watched it down the street, kept smiling just in case, then turned into the house, bolted upstairs, and shut the door behind her, gasping.

She had to sit down and finish her coffee, then take a few swigs from the bottle of Jack Daniels she kept hidden atop the cupboards, before she could even attempt to think straight. Part of her was childishly convinced that if she put her fingers in her ears and hummed loudly, it would go away. But the rest of her knew, coldly and irrevocably, that it wouldn't.

Ever since learning it was the shadow that had taken Killian – that it was Henry – Emma had driven herself in increasingly manic circles trying to work out how it was possible. She remembered their conversation in Oxford, when he'd told her that he didn't exist in this world, that he was only alive in Neverland. Where do you think all the lost boys go? She had woken from her coma completely convinced that she'd had a baby, and when she was giving birth to David, it definitely felt the same. Henry was that baby, but he was only conjured in some liminal space, the place between waking and sleeping, essentially a dream himself. Which made sense, if any sense could be made; she'd lost him, she'd dreamed of him, and hence he had some kind of existence in the ultimate place of dreams and lost children. But a real dream. Her mouth tightened, remembering David's insistence. Henry had visited him. Might be trying to take him too.

"No!" Emma said out loud, clenching her fists. David was her world, her life, her joy, and the thought of losing him too made her feel like she was about to throw up. The girl in her had been allured by Henry's promises of stealing her away to Neverland, to never grow up, but the woman in her was long past that. Such a simple question, such a can of worms. Do I have a brother?

The strangest thing was, she caught herself, from time to time, thinking that she had two sons, not one. Maybe the older one was some weird cross between a figment of her imagination and a ghost, but he was still hers, and she often wished – too many times to count, in fact – that he was a real boy. He and David would look out for each other, play together, keep each other company, be best friends like brothers should. My boys. In the months after David's birth, as she clumsily learned to love him and care for him, she'd come to realize that she loved Henry too. That whatever he was, he was part of her. Many nights she lay awake in her empty bed, wondering if she would ever find him again. Both Henry and Killian. It seemed ridiculous that one had taken the other. Impossible. There was pretty much nothing she wouldn't do, if it meant seeing them one more time.

But not like this.

Not like this.

She wasn't sure why she'd lied to David so reflexively about Henry, but it wasn't a truth that a six-year-old, no matter how bright, really needed to know. She wanted to protect him – and she wanted to protect herself. Telling him would lead to hours of explaining (read: lying) why Henry wasn't here, and that this was directly related to the fact that his father wasn't here. David had never asked her straight-up about Killian, but she'd heard him at night doing his bedtime prayers, cheerfully telling God in the uncomplicated theology of a child that he hoped the big man was looking out for him. So far as David knew, he had her, his mom, and their home here in Boston, and that was just how things worked. When he got a little older, though. . .

Emma sighed. Maybe I should go back to school. She was an alumnus; she could definitely get into a graduate program at Boston University, something in business or tech. Something practical, where she could go on in expectation of a good job, a nine-to-five outfit that would enable her to actually financially provide for David, without the shady characters and late hours and dubious legality of her bounty-hunting escapades. She was tough and street-smart and knew how to handle herself, but there had been several scrapes when perps trying to flee town were not inclined to be taken down peaceably by a blonde woman half their size. She kept a gun in the house in case they ever found her address, and lived in fear of David accidentally working out the safe combination. He knew never to touch it or even go near it, but. . .

But returning to school took more money and time that she didn't have. She was past the age where living on student loans was appealing or feasible, and couldn't currently see a way to juggle classwork, childcare, and a job, especially this one. She already had the neighbor look after David often enough, and couldn't pay more for the doubled hours she'd have to do so if she was in school full-time. Emma knew all the motivational-speaker crap about how the only limits were the ones you set for yourself, rags-to-riches, inspirational stories about making millions from nothing, but she was a single mom scraping by just above the poverty level, who had to work hard enough to keep her son fed, clothed, and loved. If it came down to whose future they could afford to sacrifice, it was hers, not his.

She took another swig from the Jack Daniels, then jumped as her phone rang. It was her boss, Bryan. Shit.

She picked up. "Yeah?"

"Hey, Ems. What you up to?"

"Sitting around waiting for you to bother me, why?"

"Oh. Feeling feisty this morning." Bryan whistled. She could hear something playing in the background on his computer, doubtless ESPN or NFL or some sort of sports highlight video. Bryan was as much a friend as a boss could be, a three-hundred-pound saxophonist and big teddy bear of a black guy, but he was impossible to talk to normally whenever the Patriots, Celtics, Red Sox, or Bruins were playing, which meant he was impossible to talk to normally all the time. "So anyway, in news that will come as the most shocking of the twenty-first century, we have another AWOL. You open for tracking him down tonight?"

Emma hesitated. They needed the money, they always needed the money, but. . . "You really can't get someone else to do it? I've had like four in the last two weeks alone."

"But you're my best," Bryan wheedled. "Please?"

"I. . . actually, no. I missed my own damn birthday to do that job last night, and that guy was fucking crazy, flipped a table on me and bolted out of the restaurant. I had to introduce his head to his own steering wheel. He wasn't too happy that I'd booted his car. And I've barely seen my son for days. I pretty much have no life anymore."

Bryan sighed. "I keep trying to set you up with nice guys, you keep blowing them off."

"Bryan. You are a bail bondsman. Your definition of nice guy is anyone you haven't sent me to judo-kick in the balls."

"That is unfair. True, perhaps, but unfair. Have you even had a boyfriend since Junior was born? It shouldn't be an impediment. David's a great kid, it's not like he's flapping his hands in the corner somewhere."

"Try to be a little less politically correct, Bry. Just try. You are decreasing the odds of me taking this assignment with every moment your mouth is open, and they weren't good to start with. I need a night off. I'll be in tomorrow to deal with the paperwork from the last one and pick up my check. If the fucking courts are going to get it through before the next Ice Age. What's this one even about?"

Bryan, miraculously, paused the sports video and ruffled papers. "Couple of outstanding old warrants. Five-plus years. Looks like this guy is a pro at the running game. Let's see. . . wanted on drug charges, petty theft, identity fraud, shit like that. Busted during a routine traffic stop in Manhattan, but they discovered all his warrants were in this jurisdiction and brought him back here, where I, in my conscientious public role, paid his bail. Only now he's disappeared."

"He was driving in Manhattan? He's clearly an idiot. Yeah, I'm going to take a miss on this one. Try not to burn the place down without me."

Without giving Bryan a word edgewise, Emma hung up, tossed her phone on the table, and sat back. She was briefly at a loss as to what to do – she wasn't used to turning down work – and then reminded herself that the world would not spin off its axis and go up in flames if she had one lousy day off. She could surprise David and cook a real dinner, actually be there when he got home, redo her birthday properly, watch his favorite movie. It would be Peter Pan, naturally. He adored the crap out of that movie. Emma, for her part, found it more than a little triggering, but she could grit her teeth and sit through it for her son's sake. He'd be so happy.

A slow smile spread over her face. Maybe she did need to think about getting a new job after all, or school, or something. There had to be a way, right? If nothing else, she could do it to give a giant middle finger to the world that expected her to fail. She hadn't this far. She didn't intend to.

Emma spent the rest of the morning camped out at the corner Starbucks, bumming off their wi-fi. When bills and such were paid, she had her monthly debate about getting a Facebook account – there was nobody she had to "connect with," and it might give crooks a way to stalk her – and as usual, decided against it. Then as she was about to close the browser, she hesitated, opened a link buried deep in her bookmarks, and surfed to the "Have You Seen This Man?" page maintained by Oxford University.

It had been a while since she checked it; she didn't let herself do so very often. There was no new information. The "last seen" date was the one he'd gone missing in a hotel room, inches away from her. The text asked that anyone with information on the whereabouts of Killian Jones get in contact with the British or American authorities. The university itself still held out hope that one of its most popular and dynamic professors would be found, six years after his disappearance.

I don't think so. Emma looked at the grainy black-and-white photo of him, felt as always that sensation as if she'd been kicked, and hurriedly closed it. Bryan was right. She hadn't had a boyfriend, or barely even a sex life, since Killian vanished. Could count on one hand the number of times she'd slept with a guy, and there were no repeats. She refused to have third parties coming and going in her house around her son, and quite frankly, she had no interest. That might change if she finally got tired of living like a nun, but she couldn't imagine that it would be soon.

Emma closed out and headed back to the apartment, cleaning up, doing a few loads of laundry, and starting dinner. It was a chilly fall afternoon, so she turned on the radiator, which clanked like a sinking battleship, and put some music on the stereo. She even baked cookies, and felt like a sitcom mom as she let the mouthwatering smell waft through the apartment and waited for David to get home.

Only he didn't.

Emma wasn't worried about him being a few minutes late, or even fifteen; he had a lot of friends on his Little League team, and would often randomly decide to go home after school with some of his playmates. But after half an hour, she had a right to expect a call from the other mom, and when it didn't come, she began to get nervous. She yanked the last batch out of the oven, turned off the heat, grabbed her keys, and jumped into the Bug.

She followed the bus route to David's elementary school, sternly issuing cease-and-desist orders to her overactive imagination, picturing him being snatched by some pedo in a creepy van – or worse, some spooky shadow. No. Will you stop that. He probably just lost track of time. She'd get there and find him playing with his little friends on the baseball fields, arguing about who got to be Dustin Pedroia. Definitely not anything like what had happened in that hotel room in London. Definitely not.

Nonetheless, Emma's heart was going double by the time she pulled into the school parking lot, ran a once-over, and verified that he wasn't to be found on any of the courts or playgrounds. She headed inside, harried, and tracked down the receptionist. "Excuse me, I'm really sorry, but my son, David Swan, is a student here, and he's not home yet. He was here today, wasn't he?"

The receptionist frowned, clicking through her computer. "We don't have a truant notice for him, no. He appears to have attended his classes, and left on time with the rest. I'm sorry, Mrs. Swan. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"Ms.," Emma corrected. She always felt weird when she did it, but weirder if she didn't. "Is there any way you can find if he might have left with someone?"

The receptionist went to enquire. It took a while, doing nothing for Emma's agitation, and especially not when the receptionist returned with an odd look on her face. "Ma'am, the story I'm hearing is that someone saw your son get into a car with an unknown adult male. By the reactions of both David and the man, they assumed it was his father."

That hit Emma hard. Now she knew just why they'd called her Mrs. Swan, but. . . "Actually, no. David's father is dead." Close enough. Oh God, what the hell? She'd drilled the whole "don't take rides from strangers" thing into that kid's head enough, and the possibility that it was the dad of one of his friends turned awfully iffy considering there'd been no phone call or anything. "You have surveillance video of the school parking lot, I'm sure? I need to see that right now."

The receptionist hesitated. "Ma'am, I'm not sure that's – "

"I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I work in the bail bonds industry with a side of computer hacking. I'm going to get into that footage one way or another, but it would be a lot easier if you just showed me."

That did the trick. Five minutes later, Emma was in the security guard's office combing madly through the CCTV footage, narrowing it down by timestamp to when school was letting out, until she caught sight of David's dark head bouncing down the front walk. There was a car just pulling up, and he veered over, conducting a short conversation with the unseen driver through the open passenger window. Whatever he heard was apparently compelling, because he unlatched the door and crawled in. He shut it, and they drove out.

Emma's breath caught in her throat. She rewound the few seconds of film at least ten times, panning and zooming, until she finally got a bead on the make, model, and registration of the car. Out-of-state plates – looked like New York. What the hell? She double-checked the number, already getting to her feet and fumbling for her phone, and broke into a gallop as she pelted out of the office and down the squeaking linoleum hall. The receptionist called after her, probably afraid that she was going to bring a lawsuit against the school district, but Emma didn't hear. She was already out in the parking lot, throwing herself behind the wheel, and putting in a call to her certain friend at the Massachusetts State Patrol.

It took him a minute, but he was able to tell her that the car had been spotted getting onto northbound I-93 about forty minutes ago, by a photo-radar camera at a red light. That was the last trace they had, however, and he asked if they needed to send out an Amber Alert. Emma informed him grimly that it couldn't hurt, already burning rubber as she accelerated onto 93. But due to the onset of rush hour, it was swiftly turning into a parking lot, and she had to make the agonizing decision whether to get off in search of a side road, or hope that the abductor was stuck in the same traffic. Jesus, why her kid, why? He was the only thing in life she truly cherished. If she got her hands on the asshole who'd taken him – if he laid a finger on David –

Her phone buzzed again. It was the cops. Target had been pinged on northbound 95 near the New Hampshire border. He was hauling ass. They were going to call their colleagues in Concord and try to get this transferred.

"Thanks," Emma muttered, then hung up, downshifted, and floored it, veering out of a standstill and onto the nearest exit. Back roads it was. David would love it if he ended up in the middle of a car chase and/or police helicopter hunt, but her, not so much. Her breath was short and frantic, punching her in the sternum, as she drove for at least forty minutes, trying not to panic.

No callbacks from the police in too long. She dialed with one hand, steering with the other, and was tersely informed, when the dispatcher picked up, that it appeared as if the guy was onto them; it didn't look like he was still on the freeway. They were trying to triangulate his location on radar, and were confident they'd soon pick him up again, but for the moment, they were flying blind. The alert had been issued, so perhaps a conscientious member of the public would clue them in. In the meantime, they did hope that Emma was going to let the force handle this, instead of busting in there guns blazing and making it worse.

"Like hell I will." The Bug was starting to vibrate from how long she'd had the gas pedal flat to the floor. "That's my son this creep has kidnapped. I'll hunt him down in hell if I have to."

The dispatcher didn't seem to be terribly fond of this idea, so she hung up on him. The further she sped north, however, the stronger her hunch got. She couldn't say for sure, as the last time she'd come this way she'd been tied up and gagged in the back of Tamara's Lexus, but the faint sensation on the back of her neck was steadily intensifying. If she consciously tried to think about where she was going, she lost it, but if she just kept on driving like a maniac (which wasn't difficult) she found it again, following it like a glowing thread, a primal migration instinct.

She lost track of how long she drove. A few hours at least; it was full night by now, and she was well off the interstate, somewhere on the back roads among the bare dark trees, her headlights carving swaths through desolate forests and thick scrub. Once or twice she thought she saw an animal's eyes glowing in the underbrush, but as long as they didn't jump onto the hood of the Bug, she didn't care. Time was unimportant. Nothing mattered but finding him.

At last, she saw a road sign blow by, but hadn't had a chance to read it properly, and couldn't go back to check. She just kept on driving, slowing slightly; she didn't need to get pulled over herself by some bored small-town cop with nothing to do aside from interrupting teenagers having sex in cars. In a few more minutes she was turning onto the main drag, and –

Oh.

Of-fucking-course.

Emma braked so hard that the Bug squealed in protest, as she rolled alongside the boarded-up windows of the library and stared at the clock tower. It still wasn't fixed, apparently, unless it really was 8:15. A look at the digital watch she kept on the dash disproved that. Weird. Like time hadn't moved at all, which Christ knew might be the case or something in this drunk-ass town. Oh God. Seriously. Seriously? Had someone come all the way to Boston just to hunt for –

But there had been that strange thing (one of many) that had happened when she'd escaped Graham, after his flat refusal to consider leaving the town under any circumstances. Like they were stuck here, or like –

Fuck this. Everything besides finding David was white noise, and Emma trawled the main drag until she caught sight of the car she'd been after, parked placidly in front of a restaurant. Granny's Diner, to judge from the flickering neon sign. She squealed into the open space next to it, flagrantly ignoring the "Loading Zone Only" placard, and jumped out, sprinting up the steps and shoving the door open with a tinkle of bells. "David? Oh my God! David!"

There were a few patrons inside: some old lady in a sweater who was probably Granny, a younger waitress with red streaks in her hair and extremely tight leather pants, and – stopping her heart – her son, sitting on a barstool with short legs swinging. Another woman, this one with short black hair, was hovering close alongside, clearly doting on him, and David, the little cretin, was lapping it up. Both of them, however, glanced up as Emma came hurtling in.

"Mom?" David immediately assumed an oh-shit look.

"Young man." Emma sucked in a ragged breath. Relief was swiftly being replaced by all-out rage. "You are in so much – "

"Mom?" The black-haired woman glanced between them, clearly surprised and displeased. To David she said, "Honey, this is your mother?"

"Um." David gulped. "Yeah."

"Interesting parenting." The woman shot Emma a cool look. "I'm Regina Mills, by the way. I've been looking after him. He's fine." No thanks to you, her tone clearly implied.

"Thanks." Emma was pretty sure she recognized the symptoms of mommy lust in the way Regina's hand had tightened possessively on David's shoulder, as if loathe to give him back. "This was not by my choice, I assure you. I'm going to find out which lowlife took him."

"Don't worry. We have police for that sort of thing around here." Regina cut her eyes at the door; Emma could hear the scrape of gravel outside as another car pulled up. "We've taken the culprit away for a few questions, and don't anticipate him bothering us, or you, again. Now that that's settled, I'm sure you'll be leaving. It's a long drive back to Boston, and – "

Emma shot the other woman a narrow look. "Excuse me. Seriously. My son was just kidnapped. Forgive me if I'm not running away at the drop of a hat. I'm getting to the bottom of this."

Regina opened her mouth as if to say something, but the bell on the diner door jangled again. And, certainly not for the first time that day, Emma got another unpleasant shock.

It was him. Graham. He looked exactly the same as he had six years ago; not even another smile line or thread of grey in his sandy curls. He was muttering and rubbing a hand across his unshaven scruff, but his attention was directed to Regina as he said, "I've got him in the lockup. Hopefully he'll start talking by the time I – can I help you?"

He had spotted Emma, and took a step toward her. But there was no hint of recognition or alarm in the polite, neutral look he gave her. In fact, as they stared at each other, it became abundantly clear to Emma that he had absolutely no memory of who she was, much less that he had once violently attempted to prevent her from leaving this very town.

"Hey." She tried to sound nonchalant, but her hackles were going up. "I'm Emma. David's mom. You're the cop around here, so I'm going to assume you can tell me who you just locked up?"

"He's not a bad guy," David broke in, tugging at her hand. "Both of us are doing what Henry said. Really."

"Henry?" Regina's gaze turned sharp. "Who's Henry?"

"David's – imaginary friend. He's kind of a. . . troubled kid." Emma hated lying like that, especially seeing the hurt that crossed her son's face, but no way was she getting into that particularly thorny thicket with these crazy people. "Therapy. You know."

"I'm not in therapy!" David protested. "I don't know what you're – "

He was cut off with a squeal as Emma stepped on his foot, turning her brightest smile on Graham and Regina. "You said you apprehended the guy who took my kid? I'd like to know who. Now."

"He didn't want to give his name. Didn't want to talk in general. But I found this." Graham held out a small white square. A business card.

Emma took it, bracing herself for – hell, she had no idea. Anything was possible. But she recognized the name printed in neat black copperplate at once. Recognized, and felt it like a blow.

August W. Booth.