Chapter 48: It's not warm when he's away

Arizona's POV

At that moment, I did not really understand what Sofia meant when she told us that Will was missing, or my brain refused to process this piece of information that scared me so much. Nevertheless, upon hearing this, the three of us stood up so that we could hear our daughter's explanation as well as possible.

"What do you mean?" I asked as I knelt to get as close to her as possible. "What happened?"

"We were both in our room playing with the toy Grandma gave him last week." Sofia said with tears in her eyes. "At one point, Will told me he had to pee and so I took his hand to take him to the bathroom. We walked out of the room and through the hallway to the bathroom. Isla was in the hallway, she asked me about where we were going, and I told her we were going to the bathroom. At that point, she told me that I had to go back to the room because she was going to take care of it herself. I did not say anything because she is an adult and I trusted her but after a while I heard her car drive away. I thought she left after dropping Will off at the bathroom, but I looked for him, he is nowhere in the house. I think she took him with her."

"How long ago was that?" I asked, trying to understand what had just happened.

"I don't know," Sofia answered, starting to cry because she felt guilty for not having succeeded in protecting her little brother, "that was half an hour ago."

I looked Callie in the eye. We could see in each other's eyes that neither of us knew what to say or what to do to make our little boy come home. To be honest, I think both of our brains could understand that our son had just been kidnapped, but our hearts were unable to come up with a rational response.

"There is something I absolutely must tell you." Erica announced to us with a frightened look. "I haven't told you the whole truth about Isla. When she was younger, she had serious psychiatric problems. She had major violent outbursts against herself and other people. She was in a mental hospital for several years but over the years, taking her medication and working with a very good therapist, she was fine and had a normal life. However, I think she was really off her pills, so I don't know what she is capable of. When I met her, she was fine."

Once Erica had finished her explanation, I did not have time to react before I saw Callie walk up to her ex and slap her. I did not really know what to do about this act of violence.

"Arizona," Callie asked me, "we each need to get into our cars and see if she's still around. I'll call the police before we leave."

"Callie, do you want me to come with you?" Erica offered. "I can't take my own car, since Isla took it."

"I'd rather Erica goes with you," I agreed, "it's not safe to call the police while driving. Besides, Erica probably knows where his wife might go, and she knows what the car looks like."

"Arizona, I'll send you a picture of the car," Erica added, "so you'll know too what it looks like."

"Now that we agree, we have to go." Callie concluded. "Let's not waste any more time."

The four of us ran to our cars; we had to find William as quickly as possible. To be honest, at the time, I didn't really realize that my son had been taken by this woman we didn't know what she was capable of.

Callie's POV

The four of us rushed to the car and Erica began driving my car while I dialed 911. I quickly explained the situation to the police officer who told me that they would start tracing Isla's car immediately. However, it was going to take some time so I had to try to find out where she might have taken Will before they could start the real investigation.

"Erica," I asked as I hung up my phone, "do you know where she took him?"

"How would I know where she took your son after she kidnapped him? This woman is not the Isla I met, I don't know this woman."

"Didn't she say something to you that might give us a clue? Didn't she say something weird or unusual?"

"You think if she had implied that she was going to do what she did, I wouldn't have told you. Besides, the last few days, Isla was half crazy so she spent her days saying unusual and weird things."

"Maybe if she was as crazy as you say she was, it would have been a good idea to warn us that your wife is a fucking psychopath who kidnaps little boys and had already been in a mental hospital."

"I promise you I have no idea where she is, but we could go to our house. Maybe she wants to put your son in the room she had prepared for the child she wanted to adopt."

"Indeed, it's a good idea."

Once we went inside, we saw immediately that the apartment was empty. Erica went straight to the bedroom but came back a few seconds later with a panicked look on her face. As soon as she got closer to me, she ran into another room and then came closer to me.

"Callie, I'm sorry. She is not here! She took all her stuff, all her clothes. I also checked the room where our baby was supposed to sleep, she took all the clothes we bought and all the stuffed animals."

I really did not understand what was going on. It all seemed so unreal and I still couldn't really understand that my son had been taken away from us, away from the place where we could take care of him. Nevertheless, I needed to do something, I needed to act.

"What do you want to do now?"

"I have to...talk to my wife and then I have to call the police again and ask them if they have made any progress."