Chapter Twenty-five: The Next Step

The Vaughn family spent a restless two days with no word from Emily. Sydney and Michael were trying to keep up appearances that everything was normal; they kept the restaurant open, but left most of the day-to-day operations to their assistant manager, claiming that they wanted to spend more time with Jack before he went back to college. They spent most of their time on the phone with various contacts, pursuing any lead they could find. Sydney suggested at least once every few hours that they hop on a plane and start scoping out every conceivable location Emily might possibly be, but again and again, Michael vetoed that idea. "You know your mother, Sydney," he said once, his voice low. "There's no way in hell we'll find Emily if Irina doesn't want us to."

The words had sent shivers down Jack's spine. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so scared.

On the third day of her disappearance, Jack found himself basically alone. His mother was upstairs on the phone, and his father had decided to spend a couple of hours at the restaurant-- to clear his head, he claimed. He was sitting on the living room couch, staring blankly at the TV screen-- he was paying so little attention he wouldn't have been able to say whether he was watching golf or a porno flick-- when the doorbell rang, causing him to jump about ten feet in the air.

He peeked through the window beside the door, finding that he was gazing at a gray-haired man who looked to be in his early seventies. He didn't recognize him. He shouldn't have opened the door. But the man looked so familiar.

"Hello," the man said, his voice gruff. "You must be Jack Vaughn. I'm Jack Bristow."

Jack did a double take. His mother hadn't told him that they were expecting his grandfather. Even more surprising, though-- "Hey, I've met you before."

The man raised his eyebrows in a silent question.

"When I was eight," he said in a rush. "You came up to me after school. Then a couple of days later, I saw you by our house--" he blushed. "And I called my grandmother and told her a suspicious man was hanging around."

"I guess I couldn't have expected you to know better," the man said coolly. "But you should probably know that you almost cost your parents their freedom that day. If the two of them hadn't been able to convince me that they hadn't betrayed me, themselves, things might have ended quite differently."

"I--" There was something about this man that made Jack want to apologize and deem himself unworthy to be in his presence. He was that intimidating.

"Is your mother home?" Jack Bristow asked, pushing past his grandson into the house.

"Upstairs," Jack said. "How--" he couldn't resist asking the question. "How come I've never met you before? Officially, I mean."

"It's unsafe for me to visit your mother, and vice versa. Circumstances dictate that we see each other as little as possible," his grandfather explained. He was thin, Jack noted, thinner than he remembered him, but he carried himself with a certain air of authority that was far from hidden under the white shirt and dark slacks he wore. "Now, would you mind--"

"Dad." Jack watched his mother appear at the top of the stairs. Even though she clearly hadn't slept in days, she still managed to look beautiful. "Thank you for coming."

"Hello, Sydney," Jack Bristow said. Sydney made her way down the stairs, and the two of them embraced in a quick, awkward hug. Jack could only have imagined what had gone on between the two of them over the years.

"Michael had to run over to the restaurant for a bit, but I'd like to get started," Sydney said, her voice cool, businesslike. And tired. She sounded so very, very tired. "What do you propose our next course of action should be?"

"First of all," he said, pulling an envelope out of his jacket pocket. The names "Sydney and Michael" were typed on the front. "I found this on your front porch. I think our first course of action should be to deal with this."

Sydney snatched the envelope out of his hand and tore into it. Jack stood over her shoulder as she took the piece of paper from the envelope and began to read:

Dearest Sydney and Michael. As I'm sure you realize, I have your daughter…