TW for minor swearing
Melinda May was up most mornings at five. She used a quiet alarm, so she wouldn't wake Phil, and dressed noiselessly, usually in something comfortable that she could practice tai chi in. She appreciated her morning routine, appreciated the hour she had solely to herself, to work in silence and serenity as she grounded herself, found her balance. It helped to start her day off on the right foot.
This particular morning was no different. She woke and dressed like a shadow, and was about to take her opening stance, when she stopped herself. Her mind was buzzing with distractions, swirling thoughts about work and school and whatever strange thing had put Skye in such a bad mood yesterday. With a sigh of resignation, she slipped out of her and Phil's bedroom and made her way down the hall. She wanted to check in on the girls before she began. She would never be able to focus until she did.
She reached Bobbi's door first, eased it open slightly and peered around the doorframe. Bobbi was sound asleep. She was twisted up in her sheets a little, and her arms were wrapped around her pillow, tucking it under her head at an odd angle, but she seemed comfortable. May smiled at her sleeping form. She looked peaceful. May liked it when her girls could be at peace.
Closing Bobbi's door without a sound, May turned to the other side of the hall and opened Skye and Jemma's door. What she saw made the smile evaporate and her blood run cold.
Two beds, empty, covers kicked back. Two empty beds. No Skye. No Jemma.
In a flash, she zipped down the stairs, hoping, praying, that maybe the girls were in the kitchen, or the den. The downstairs was dark and empty. Empty. Like their beds. Empty. Like her heart, her thoughts. They were gone.
"Phil!" She shook his arm, maybe a little more roughly than she should have, but the panic that was building in her chest didn't leave much room for subtlety or gentleness. "Phil, wake up. They're gone."
"What?" he mumbled blearily, blinking a few times as he reentered the world of the conscious. "Who's gone?"
"Skye and Jemma. They're gone, Phil."
Phil sat up like a shot, all traces of drowsiness vanished. He raced down the hall and flew into Skye and Jemma's room, took in the scene the way May had just moments ago.
"Damn it, Skye," he muttered.
"They ran away," May said, a numb dismay washing over her. "I talked to her about it. I asked her, outright, if she felt like running. She said no. I should have trusted my gut, should have kept a closer watch…"
"We don't know that they ran away," offered Phil uncertainly. It was clear that even he didn't believe what he was saying.
"Their beds are empty, Skye's backpack is gone. Their coats and shoes are gone from the front door, too, I checked. They left, Phil." She sank weakly onto the foot of Skye's bed. "Why would they just leave? I thought they liked it here. I thought they… I thought they wanted to stay."
"Maybe something changed," suggested Phil. "Skye was upset yesterday. Maybe something happened."
"She's been pushing us away for weeks. We saw that, but we didn't do anything about it. She wanted space. Maybe we shouldn't have given her so much."
"Mel—"
"No, I'm serious, Phil," she said, frustration bubbling over. "We know she has a history of taking off. And we knew something was going on with her. Now we've lost her, again, and we've lost Jemma this time, too."
"No, Mel," Phil interrupted, pointing to the wall over Jemma's bed. "Look. Her star map. It's still here."
"Jemma would never leave it behind," May realized.
"I don't think they're running," nodded Phil. He crossed quickly to the dresser and pulled open a few drawers. "Their clothes are all still here."
"And Jemma's backpack," she added, moving to the desk and taking stock of all the things still there. Things that a person would pack if they were planning on leaving for good.
"So, then, if they're not running away, where did they go?" Phil asked. "And why?"
"Maybe we should wake Bobbi, see if she knows anything. She talked with the girls yesterday, and you know Skye trusts her. Skye went to her when she was planning on leaving for Sheboygan."
"I'll go get her," Phil said. While he was gone, May scanned the room, looking for anything that might serve as a clue. An address scribbled on the corner of a notebook, a bus route, or even a note from the girls, promising their safe return. There was nothing, and she felt her jaw tighten at the fruitlessness of this endeavor. How was she supposed to track down two children who had vanished without a trace, or worse, how was she supposed to sit around and wait, hoping that they would just reappear at some point? Melinda was a patient person, but sitting around and doing nothing when she felt like there was something that could be done, even if she didn't know what it was, was just shy of torture. She needed to be doing something, fixing the problem, finding her children.
Phil returned a moment later, a confused and worried Bobbi shuffling behind him.
"Jemma and Skye are gone?" she asked softly. May nodded.
"Did Skye say anything to you? Yesterday, did she seem like she was planning something? Ask you for money again?"
"No," Bobbi shook her head. "She was upset, but she wasn't acting like she did when she went to Sheboygan. And Jemma didn't seem different at all."
"Do you remember what she was upset about?"
"She talked about Ward and Fitz a little, but mostly she just kept talking about being safe. I don't know, it was confusing," Bobbi admitted. She looked embarrassed, like she should have done more. "I didn't know I should have been convincing her to stay here."
"Of course not," Phil assured her. "No one expects that from you. You're not responsible for the choices Skye or Jemma make. We just wanted to see if you had any idea where they might be."
"Why was she so focused on being safe?" May wondered, more to herself than to the room at large. She felt her heart tighten with consternation. "Did she not feel safe here?"
"Maybe if she didn't feel safe here, she and Jemma went somewhere else. Somewhere that did feel safe," Phil mused. He looked antsy, like he needed something to do. May understood the feeling. "I'll go call Mrs. Fitz and Mrs. Jones," he decided. "See if Skye and Jemma met up with Fitz or Trip for some reason." He wandered back out of the room in search of a phone.
You don't think this has anything to do with… with her parents?" Bobbi asked hesitantly. "The last time Skye ran away, it was about them."
"I don't know," May confessed. "I honestly hope not. If she went looking for her parents, she may be in more trouble than we thought." Her mind started rifling through countless scenarios, all involving a dangerous man, a missing mother, and a mysterious doctor. She had so hoped that her searches would reveal that Skye had nothing to do with that turbulent and troublesome situation, but so far nothing she had uncovered had given her any reason to believe that the two weren't connected.
"What do you mean?"
"If Skye's father is who I'm starting to think he might be," May explained, "then he's not exactly a good option if Skye is looking for safety."
Bobbi's face creased with worry, and May felt a pang of guilt ricochet through her. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. I don't mean to worry you."
"Skye and Jemma are gone; how could I not be worried?" Bobbi said with a tight expression. They sat quietly in helpless silence for a few minutes, and May could tell that both their brains were working overtime, trying to find answers she was starting to doubt existed.
"You should check the computer," Bobbi said suddenly, her eyes lighting up with an idea. "The last time Skye ran away, she printed out directions of where she was going. Maybe she looked something up here."
"Good thinking. It's certainly worth a try."
They hurried downstairs to the office, passing Phil, who was pacing in the kitchen with the phone to his ear. Quickly, May popped open her laptop and opened an internet browser. Bobbi leaned over her shoulder as she clicked over to the history and saw, to her amazement, a search for directions to the park on Halifax, done a little after 11:00 the previous night.
"Skye's clever enough to clear her browser history, or use a private window," May murmured, staring hard at the address and sifting through possible reasons why Skye and Jemma would have traipsed off to a park in the middle of the night.
"Maybe she's trying to tell us something," suggested Bobbi. "Maybe we're supposed to know where she and Jemma are going. Maybe where they're going isn't safe, and she wants us to help keep her safe, which is why she kept talking like that last night. Maybe… maybe we're supposed to find them."
Phil had struck out with Fitz and Trip's families, so he and May agreed to drive over to the park and see if Skye and Jemma were there. Maybe they were overreacting, and maybe there was a perfectly good reason why the girls had snuck out in the middle of the night to walk to a park, but May had a sinking feeling that wouldn't be the case. Either way, she was determined to bring them home.
They left Bobbi at home to man the phone and watch the door, in case Skye and Jemma tried to call home or, miracle of miracles, arrived home on their own. Bobbi had tried to protest, but she gave in without too much trouble when she saw the grim looks on Melinda and Phil's faces.
The drive to the park was short and tense, and neither she nor Phil spoke much as he guided the car into the parking lot at the back of the park. Much to their dismay, there wasn't a single soul as far as the eye could see. May couldn't say she was all that surprised. Her spider-senses were clanging alarm bells as loud as she had ever heard, and the sticky, cold dread that had been writhing in her stomach ever since she'd found the empty beds was only getting worse the longer it took for them to find the girls.
"Should we walk around?" Phil asked. His breath billowed around him as he spoke. The air was freezing, the world stony, grey, and bare. Never before had a landscape so accurately reflected how Melinda was feeling inside. "There might be a clue or something."
"Couldn't hurt." It didn't take long to sweep the majority of the park. Phil took the basketball courts and playground, which were empty, and she combed the open field that took up most of the middle of the park. That too, yielded nothing. They met up under the picnic shelter near the back of the park, not that far from the lot where they'd parked the car.
"I don't understand," Phil said with a shake of his head. He sank onto the bench of a picnic table, looking forlorn. "I feel like there's some big piece that we're missing. Nothing about this makes sense."
"I know," Melinda agreed. She joined him on the bench and stared at the empty expanse of park in front of them. Empty, like their beds, like their leads, like her insides. "All I have is this feeling that something is really wrong, but nothing to go off of. I don't know where they are, or if they're okay, or why they left…" Something sharp caught in her throat, and she had to pause to clear it. Phil's gentle hand, so much warmer than the air around them, found its way to her knee.
"We'll find them," he said softly. "We have to. We will."
May blinked hard a few times to clear her damp eyes, shook off the emotion that had tripped her up momentarily. Now wasn't the time for feelings. Now was the time for action, for searching and sleuthing and finding their daughters. She swept her gaze across the park again, scanning from one end to the other, looking for places where two children might have tread. As her eyes returned to the space around them, the path from the picnic shelter to the parking lot, something caught her attention.
"Phil, look. What is that?"
They rose in unison and walked to where she was pointing. There, half-hidden in the shaggy, frost-bitten grass, was a keychain, made of four computer keys strung together, spelling out—
"Skye," Phil breathed, bending over to pick up the keychain. "This is Skye's. She was here, Mel."
May thought back to what Bobbi had said earlier. "She wanted us to know they were here. It's… breadcrumbs. She's trying to tell us something, Phil."
"So what do we do now?"
May scanned around the path for further clues, but found nothing. She turned her attention to the parking lot. The location of the keychain suggested that Skye and Jemma could have been heading this way, and if they were going somewhere else from the park, it wasn't totally farfetched to assume they had left it via the parking lot, especially if someone else (like Skye's father, she realized with a shiver) had met them here. There were a few lampposts around the edge of the parking lot, and instinctively, she checked the tops of them.
"There," she said, pointing. "Camera. I'm guessing the Parks department had it installed to keep an eye on vandalism and car break-ins in the parking lot. I haven't noticed any others around the park, but if they left in a car—"
"You'd be able to see it?" Phil asked. "Can you access the footage? Who do you have to ask for that?"
"I'll have to make some calls."
Phil drove them over to the police station while May worked the phone, calling in to her colleagues, requesting an expedited warrant for the park footage and updating the chief about the situation.
"I know it hasn't been 24 hours, Chief," she told Fury, "but I don't think this is a regular missing persons case. I have reason to believe that we need to act quickly to find these girls, and… they're my kids, sir. I can't just wait and do nothing."
"I trust you, May," came Fury's gravelly voice. "Push the paperwork as fast you can. I'll speed things up where I can. God knows I'd be a damn fool to ignore one of your hunches."
True to his word, Fury accelerated things at lightning pace, and by the time she had arrived at her desk, she already had an email from the Parks department with the footage from the previous evening attached. The film was grainy, and the angle wasn't spectacular, but she could see enough of the parking lot that she would be able to pick out any cars that arrived on screen. Most of the footage was of a dark night sky and an empty, unchanging lot, with only the wind shaking the trees to indicate that any time was passing. Suddenly, however, around the timestamp for midnight, a claptrap white van appeared.
"There," Phil said. She probably should have made him wait in the lobby, or at least off to the side, since this was now technically an active investigation, but she knew better than to try and keep him away from their search. He leaned over her shoulder to squint at the screen. "There's something."
"Let's see what happens." She let the film roll and watched as a nondescript white man with shaggy brown hair stepped out of the van and disappeared into the darkness of the park. A few minutes later, he returned, and May caught the flash of metal in his hand, the lamplight catching on it and flaring on the tape. "He's got a gun."
"What about the girls? Where are they?"
His question was answered moments later, when two smaller figures, hunched and tentative looking, even on the low-res image, followed behind him. Melinda inhaled sharply. "They're going with him." She watched in horror as the pixelated Skye and Jemma were guided into the back of the van, as the man swung the door shut behind them, shuttering them away from view of the camera or possibility of escape.
"Who is that man?"
"I have a hunch," she said grimly, clicking out of the footage and into their database. It was time to run a license plate and put her theory to the test once and for all.