Chapter 2: Helen

Three weeks earlier…

"What the hell did you do!?" Lana shrieked as Archer entered her apartment.

It was the middle of the night and she had just been returning home. She had to work security and it didn't exactly go the way that she had planned. All she had wanted to do was to return home and go to bed. Now, she finds out that her baby is actually gone, missing. The only thing she can do now is pretend that she's not ready to panic and lose complete control of the situation and turn to irrational answers to try and find her baby girl.

"What do you mean what did I do? You called me to come over here! You were the one in charge here!" Archer childishly argued, still unaware of what was happening.

Out of instinct, he headed over to the playpen to say hi to his daughter, but saw that it was empty. He then rushed over to the nursery and was stunned as soon as he saw that too was empty.

"Oh shit!" He yelled before running back out into the living room. "Where's AJ!?"

"That's why I called you!" Lana yelled in response. "Some whore of yours took her!"

"What do you mean?" Archer questioned, starting to panic.

"Some crazy bitch named Helen came in here while I was in the shower and took her!" Lana screamed.

"How the hell do you not hear someone enter your home, Lana?" Archer contended.

Lana was about to argue, but instead she sighed. She lowered her head, pinching the bridge of her nose with her fingers as she tried to calm herself and clear her mind. It was nearly impossible to form a coherent thought with all of the worst case scenarios running through her head

"Right now we need to focus on finding Helen!" Lana stated

Sterling followed her lead, his shoulders dropping as he looked around the room. He vaguely remembered the woman. That was, as long as he was thinking of the correct woman - the one that he had most recently had a small affair with in New Jersey. It had been a while since it had happened, back around the time he found out that Lana was pregnant.

"Well she does live kind of far from here, but I don't think she'll actually hurt AJ," he casually informed her. That thought itself was comforting to him, so he reasoned that it would help Lana as well.

"So then why did she steal her!?" Lana harshly asked, glaring up to him.

oooooo

"Because she's insane!" Louise yelled, her palms flat on the countertop as she stood up on the stool.

"Now come on, there must be a reason that she gave you detention. Teachers can't just send kids to detention without any reason, right?" Bob questioned, wiping the plate clean as he moved towards her end of the counter.

"Right! Now you'd better tell us what you did before I drag you down to that school and ask her myself!" Linda sternly stated, crossing her arms.

"I may have planted something in her desk that she didn't like," Louise said, standing up completely.

"And what was that?" Linda demanded.

"A book I found called Teaching for Dummies," Louise answered, defeated as she sat back down on the seat.

Saying it out loud, it really didn't sound as good anymore. Personally she thought that maybe she did deserve to be punished, but only for the fact that her prank wasn't good.

As soon as Linda heard what it was, she dropped her arms to her sides and frowned. It didn't sound right. After she had heard about her getting two week's worth of detention she was expecting to hear that maybe she threatened one of the teachers or set something on fire. But a book?

"That's it?" She questioned.

"What? You don't think it's any good?" Louise inquired.

"Two weeks seems a bit excessive for that," Bob explained, growing concerned.

"Are you sure there's nothing else you did?" Linda asked, unconvinced.

"Of course!" Louise answered, offended.

Linda sighed, turning to her husband. "Maybe we oughta go talk to her."

"I guess it couldn't hurt," Bob sighed. He knew that the punishment was too much, but he figured that there had to have been more to it. Perhaps her teacher had given her a lot of warnings or something like that. "Do I really have to go with you though?"

"Yes, Bobby! If this teacher really is treating her unfairly we should probably bring it up to her and tell her that we're not gonna put up with her crap!" Linda snapped.

"Fine. We'll go tomorrow night," Bob defeatedly replied.

oooooo

"Where are we going? Do you even know where she lives?" Lana asked.

Archer had been driving the two of them down the highway. She didn't mind being a passenger rather than driving, but she really did want to know where they were going. The suspense was beginning to kill her and at least knowing the vague location of their baby would offer her some comfort.

"Yeah, I think I remember," he casually answered, studying the upcoming exit to see if the city name rung a bell.

"You didn't look into her?" Lana questioned.

She knew that Sterling wasn't the best at looking into anyone's backgrounds. He always figured that he could just wing it and succeed. The fact that he thought he could do that while doing something this important though? That was infuriating and quite alarming. This wasn't some random person, this was their daughter they were looking for.

"I remember her, alright? She lives in New Jersey," he sharply answered.

In all honesty, ever since he had learned the most likely identity of the kidnapper, he wasn't so worried. If anything, he was relieved. This woman was harmless. All she wanted was to get his attention. She wasn't about to harm the baby. Of course he wanted AJ Back, and he wanted to make sure that she was okay, but this was the best case scenario when it came to a kidnapping.

"At least that's one of the smaller states," she mentioned more to herself.

"Or maybe it was Connecticut," he stated.

"Archer!" Lana angrily yelled, ready to punch him.

"I'm kidding! Jesus, Lana. Learn to take a joke," he lightly responded.

"Our daughter has been kidnapped! How do you not see the seriousness in this?" Lana implored, wishing that for once he could pull himself together.

"I do, alright? I just know that she's not being hurt right now. Besides, freaking out isn't going to change anything. It would make things worse and the last thing either of us needs is to get too worked up and act irrationally. You get angry and you make impulse decisions and that's when people get hurt, and it's usually the captive that gets hurt. Trust me, I know," he explained.

Really, he had most of this planned out in his mind. He knew where they had to go and how to approach the situation. This was one of the only times that he sat down and made an actual plan that he ran through a few times in his mind looking for where things could go wrong.

"It's a small town so we'll check into a motel there, act as casual as possible. Then I'll find a way to contact her, tell her that I made a mistake in leaving her for you and get her to meet me someplace. And that's when you get to sneak into her place and grab AJ," he informed her.

Lana was relieved to see that he had done some work on this, but she still couldn't believe that it could be that simple.

"What if she doesn't want to meet with you?" She inquired, checking to see if he had any back up plans.

"She lives alone, Lana. We could easily break in and take her. She hasn't been with anyone since I left," he assured her.

"How would you know that?"

"Come on. You think if she were with anyone that she would have the time to come all the way to New York and figure out where you live and take our kid? She'd be too busy banging the new guy to fill the void that I left," he stated.

Lana rolled her eyes, turning to look out the window. "You know, sometimes you really do come through."

"I think you meant to say that I always come through," he countered.

"Yeah sure, why not."