In which a car gives more questions then answers and dogs turn into hurricanes.

In the early morning, the day after Kevin didn't come home, Sandy Lucas found her middle child sleeping next to said older brother's bed. Joe's torso leaning against his brother's pillow, his feet folded beneath him on the floor. He was snoring slightly, but his face was far from its normal peaceful expression.

Sandy knew her son. She knew all of her children very well, but Joe had simply always been an open book to her. They shared that special bond between them. That special bond only some parents have with their children.
Joe had always been the kid that had made the less trouble. He had his fair share of mistakes, but he generally was always genuinely trying not to get in trouble.
Frankie didn't really bother and Kevin was just unable to not get in trouble… She loved that, that verity within her little family, but Joe did more then that. He was the type of kid that didn't just get support from his parents, he supported them too. Always helpful and focussed. Joe, his daily routines, the things he never neglected to do and just his presence was a very stable factor in the woman's life. With him, she had been able to stimulate Kevin in being 'Kevin' just the way he was and he had always been the one that did the dishes and cleaned the rooms when the middle school principal would call for a meeting with her about Frankie, her little trouble-maker, but good to the core, and she had to leave on a short notice.
Joe was simply a happy do-gooder. A shining sun in all the lives he touched. Or so her motherly affection told her.

Seeing him like this hurt her, almost as much as the empty bed did.

"Joe, honey. Wake up." She whispered, softly rocking his body, just the way she had done in the past. Only now using a bit more force, since he had grown to be taller then herself over the years.
His brown eyes, inherited from Sandy and her own mother, fluttered open and she could see the worry and the remains of his troubled sleep behind his irises.

"Kevin?" He muttered, half awake and sleep-charged.

"He hasn't come home yet, honey." She told him, stroking his cheek and she wasn't surprised to find them stained with a thin layer of dried tears. She was equally worried and had only just washed off her own stains in the bathroom barely minutes ago.

"I have to go find him." Joe stated and Sandy thanked the lord for it being Saturday. Not that she could've –or would've— stopped him on a weekday with a motherly 'but you have school!' but she was glad she didn't have to call Ms. Snark – the biology/drama teacher at Horace Mantis, who was equally in charge of the absents list— and explain Joe couldn't go to school because he had to look for his lost and absent-minded brother. That, she thought, would've been an interesting conversation.

"Your dad is already driving around town. We can't call the police until after the 48 hours and…" She couldn't hide the fear in her voice. Just the idea of Kevin missing, for over 48 hours was extremely frightening.
"Shh, mom, deep breaths." Joe whispered, putting his hand on her shoulder and softly nudging her back to control. "I'll – We'll find him."

It was almost ironic that Joe displayed the exact character-traits she had been thinking of earlier. Comforting her, while trying to make it all right.
She caught his dark hair, courtesy of Tom, flying wildly around his head as he hastily slid down his fire-pole on the far left.

Somehow –call it motherly instinct— she knew that if someone was able to find Kevin, it would be her angel Joe.

The sun had almost settled and Joe was almost desperate, and frankly, out of his mind with worry, as he walked through the stone gates of the park. He had scanned and searched through the entire green area, after he'd checked all Kevin's other favourite places, and there was still no sign of his brother.
It wasn't as if he'd expected Kevin to be at the park, he'd found that plan really unlikely, actually. But he had to check.
And it had crushed his hopes for what seemed the thousandth time that day.
Apart from a little girl who he'd helped to find her mom –because she was someone's Kevin, after all— and the ducks that had almost attacked him, there had been absolutely nothing that interested Joe at the slightest. He hadn't even paid attention to Mr. Costello, who'd tried to talk to Joe about his last history report when he'd spotted him wandering through the park. Normally, Joe liked talking to his favourite teacher, but today, he really couldn't care less.

He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He'd been searching all day, with no result, not even when the damn cops finally saw that Kevin missing was actually different from the times they'd delivered him home after he'd wandered off somewhere. No, not even the police had managed to find Kevin.
It was starting to get dark, the city covered in the last golden sunlight and the first shadows of the night.
Joe knew he had to return home soon, empty handed, without Kevin. He hated that almost as much ahs the fact that he would look into his mother and little brother's eyes and tell them the eldest boy was still gone.
Joe sighed again, trying to get more oxygen to his brain, hoping he would come up with one last brilliant plan.
All the while, he knew he'd run out of ideas a long time ago.
He kicked a paddle out of the way, just because it was white and reminded him of Kevin, who would've surely picked it up; seeing its beauty.
He watched the paddle bounce down the pavement and hit a tire.

A very familiar tire.

His eyes slowly followed the almost memorized curve of the red car. Kevin's car.
The joy he felt when he saw the beloved, environment-friendly purrer –despite anything he might've said about it in the past— was quickly stamped back into the ground when he noticed that yes, it was Kevin's car, but the person he was looking for wasn't laughingly or completely zoned-out sitting in the driver's seat.
Instead, there was a pretty young woman (21, tops) looking in the rear-view mirror Joe had used to fix his hair so many times.
She had long chestnut brown hair, a fair skin, a bit rounded face and Joe suspected her to be athletic, were it not for her reading-glasses and the pile of advanced looking papers in the passengers-seat.

She was very pretty, even though she hadn't applied the little amount of mascara on her left eye yet, and normally Joe would've tried to hit on her. If it were not for the little detail that she was driving Kevin's freaking car!

Deciding to just go for it, he walked up to the car.
"Excuse me?" He said, smiling sourly (pleasurably just wasn't working for him at the moment) "But how'd you get your hands on this car?"

The woman looked up, a little confused, but eying him with a friendly, open smile. She didn't look like a Kevin-napper, nor generally like someone with bad intensions.
"It was a present; my employer gave it to me, just today." She answered, very straightforward; she hadn't even asked why he'd asked. She just smiled and Joe awkwardly returned the gesture.

"Yeah— err… you see, it looks exactly like my brother's car and I thought…" It wasn't true, of course, he was one-hundred percent sure it was his brother's car; he'd even checked the licence-plate.
"Oh, that's funny! And here I was, thinking it was one-of-a-kind!" The woman laughed and Joe couldn't help but notice her teeth were almost as white as Stella's.
And she was right; the car was one of a kind. Kevin had saved the car from demolition, of course being the only one tat saw the beauty beneath the wreck.

"Oh, shoot!" The woman's voice interrupted his thoughts. "I should've been at the lab already! There's an important income of documents for the N.I.C.H.O.L.A.S. project and yeah, you're not interested." She laughed again and this time, Joe laughed with her. Sounding rather hysterical.
"I'll be sure to tell my employers about this flaw in what they told me…" She said, grabbing a pair of sunglasses from the passengers-seat, somewhere beneath the sheets and fastened her scarf around her neck.
Joe suddenly got struck by an irrational fear and quickly spoke up; "No, please don't. I think I'm mistaken anyway. I don't think… It's not really, my brother's just…"

"Calm down, don't get your panties in a twist." She laughed again. "It's okay… uh…?"

"Joe!" Joe quickly said, flushing at his reply.

"Joe." She repeated. "I'm Macy, Macy Misa. Nice to have met you."
With that. She drove off, taking the car and Joe's only hint with her.

"Nice name." Joe muttered, before he began on his long journey home.

Animals hated him.

Scratch that.

Life itself hated Joe.

And fate was a bitch that liked to snap at his ankles.

"ELVIS! No—oh god, no!" He moaned. "Not my Beatles record! That thing cost a fortune! I swear you have a serious problem with flat-haired people!"

It was late at night, possibly around 10 or so and Joe had just walked up the stairs after his microwave-heated dinner.
His search for Kevin had turned out to take longer, when he, in a snap decision, decided to double check the library once more.
Right now, exhausted, both physically and emotionally, Joe was trying to pry the sharp teeth of his little brother's retriever from his beloved 600 dollar record of the early Beatle-songs.

He smiled in relief when he finally held the black disk, somewhat unharmed in his hands. Then, he realised where exactly the fight had taken place.

"NOT MY BED!"

The dog just looked up at him with oh-so innocent eyes. Puppy-dog-eyes, so adorable that Joe was almost tempted to forgive the young dog when he realised Elvis's little problem…

"FRANKIE!"

And that was just the beginning of his trouble with the golden-furred semi-angel that had wet his bed. If only Joe had known.

After he'd changed his sheets –and after he'd securely tied the dog to Frankie's bed downstairs— Joe finally fell down on his bed, but of course, wasn't graced with the pleasurable unknowing state of sleep.

Nope. Joe just lay there, staring at the ceiling, wondering where in the world his brother was now.
Wondering where he could possibly search tomorrow, what he could do to find Kevin. Because his brotherly instincts were quite accurate when it came to stuff like this.
It had been that way when Kevin had fallen off the kindergarten-rooftop when Joe was barely 2 years old. It had been that way when Frankie had broken his leg at a soccer game and it had been that way when Kevin had gotten himself and his smallest brother lost at the zoo when he was fifteen.
Kevin was in trouble. Joe had no doubt in his mind.

Also, he wondered about the woman in Kevin's car. Did she know anything? Was she involved in whoever had gotten his filthy hands on Kevin?

She seemed smart, a hard worker and nice.
But Joe had always been a little superstitious and someone driving his brother's car with dozens of weird looking papers, mumbling about a weird-named project wasn't that innocent in his mind.

Joe didn't know exactly when he'd dozed off into a sleep. (Though it had been a little after four am in the morning) but somewhere along the lines, his thoughts had succumbed into a very odd dream.

Lying on a hard, uncomfortable and cold table, Joe had been looking up into harsh lights. His eyes unfocussed by the sharp sting, even with his eyes closed.

The most frightening part was that he couldn't move, not an inch. His arms and legs strapped to the poor attempt of a bed. While what seemed to be bees attacked his bare skin.
Oh, right. He was naked too, joy.

When his eyes were finally able to focus beyond the annoying light, he noted that the things he previously thought to be bees, were in fact needles, which kept on pricking him, drawing blood. Laughter was heard every time he winced from the stinging.
Dark shadows were standing around the table, holding the needles. Looming over him and Joe could only see their smiles. They looked greedy and Joe wanted to run and get as far away from them as possible.
When he looked up, searching for a way out of the bright spotlight, he saw a figure with honey-blonde hair holding a little tube of what seemed to be his own blood, laughing at him with the same wicked smile, her teeth bared in wicked joy.
Looking the other way, towards the foot of the table, he saw a pair of wide, scared brown eyes staring at the blonde.
Macy Misa watched as little wet drops hit the Lucas's face and saw how long, pale fingers smeared Joe's own blood all over his face, while all the needles, held by the shadows, dug into his skin all at once.

"AAAAaaaahhhhhh!" Joe screamed bloody murder when he woke up, tangled in the sheets, disoriented and scared beyond belief. This dream, as he quickly noted it to be, had been so vivid and so damn more scary then any dream he'd ever had.

He was almost grateful that Elvis had escaped from his lockdown and had licked his face until Joe woke up, were it not that he now was covered in dog-spit and the dog was pulling his hair feverishly with his teeth.

"Hey! Watch the hair!" Joe warned, trying to get his limbs out of the tangled sheets. "Cut it out."
But Elvis now had gotten a steady hold of Joe's upper arm and without mercy, dragged him out of bed.
Joe made a mental note to next time properly tie Elvis to the bed, preferably with three-double knots, nightmares ore not.

Elvis however, wasn't satisfied with Joe's laying on the ground, bumping his head against the floor-boards and started to drag on his arm once again.

"What is it, dog? Haven't you pestered me enough already!" Joe exclaimed, trying to get away from the obviously insane hurricane that called himself a dog.
Attempting that, he knocked his alarm off the nightstand and noted the time.

"Holy mike!" Came the next shout. "It's 2 in the afternoon!"

Panic struck like lightning, for he had wasted several hours of precious time, where he could've been looking for Kevin.
Kevin's life was in possible danger and he'd overslept!

He scrapped the mental note of three-double knots and instead promised everything that was good to a dog to the retriever…. Who was now trying to rip up Joe's jeans?

"What is with you today?" Joe questioned, eventually, after another wrestling match for the pants. He knew for sure Stella was going to kill him.
For safety fastening the belt around his hips –one never knew and could never be to careful when it came to dogs-gone-crazy—he walked towards the stairs. (The poles reminded him too much of Kevin, who never ceased to use them)
Elvis ran in front of him, towards the red front-door immediately.

"That's Frankie's job." Joe told the dog one more time, before its teeth laced itself in Joe's pants and basically pulled him towards the door. Back to the three-double knots.

Then it (finally) occurred to Joe that this was seriously strange behaviour, even for this dog, it was so unlike Elvis to cause even this much trouble and to generally give Joe this much attention. R
emembering his own brotherly-instincts from the night prior, he looked at the dog once more. He had heard of completely untrained dogs saving their masters and Joe knew Elvis was very fond of Kevin, as was basically every other animal Joe could think of. And he was kind of smart with that.

"You are on to something, aren't you?" He asked the dog and for once, the retriever stared at Joe completely serious.

It was a bit odd, the staring contest with his little brother's freaking dog. But Joe was willing to go for it if that meant another clue on Kevin.

"C'mon boy." He said, opening the door. "Lead the way."

He wished for a leash, when Elvis sped through the door and through the streets like lightning and Joe thanked his time at the gym as he ran along, but it was all worth it when the dog led him to a fancy building in the very centre of town.

A red, environment-friendly, one of a kind car parked in the front.

I'm tired, have multiple other fics to finish and I have school tomorrow, but I couldn't resist, I had to update something. And this story just keeps screaming at me, rather loudly. It's obnoxious, really.
I'd say a review is in place. Or Elvis will come to lick your face into oblivion. Be warned.