"Spades?" Ted asked, looking at the other man's confused expression. "Bridge?" He tried again, earning himself the safe look of confusion. "Hearts?"
"Are you just playing word association with yourself?" Emmett frowned. "Because if you are, you're not very good at it."
"They're all card games," Ted sighed, as he shuffled the cards in his hands like a Vegas pro.
"No, they're all objects," Emmett corrected.
"Don't you know any card games at all?"
Emmett seemed to think for a second and then announced, "I know snap."
"Brilliant," Ted scorned. "So why did you suggest we play cards?"
"Because I was bored," Emmett shrugged. "And it seemed better than moping around or letting you get all lost in your own head trying to work out how to help Brian."
"Hmm," Ted hummed, his mind quickly drifting back to that particular problem. He'd somehow managed to wrap himself up in all this completely. He managed to feel somehow responsible, like it was his job to sort everything out and save the day, just like Brian always did. Except, unlike Brian, Ted was yet to have any brilliant, innovative ideas.
"What about Strip Poker?" Emmett said suddenly. "I can play that. I always win."
"You do?" Ted was sceptical.
"Well, I'm always naked in two shakes of a lambs tail."
"So, you always lose then?"
"No," Emmett insisted. "I think that's a victory."
Ted smiled a little and then said, "you really don't know any card games except snap?"
Emmett shook his head and smiled sweetly, causing his friend to sigh heavily. "Snap it is then." And Emmett grinned.
"Do you think Justin would want to play?" Emmett asked as Ted had finished dealing. Ted glared at the other man, for waiting until he'd already split the pack into two even piles before suggesting a third player but Emmett didn't notice or didn't care that he was receiving daggers. "Well, do you?"
"I think we should leave him for now. Let him get some rest. I heard him thrashing about in his room again last night. I swear he's having nightmares but he won't let anyone help him."
"I guess he doesn't trust us," Emmett sighed sadly. "But after what Michael did … well, I'm not sure I'd trust us either."
Ted just nodded and placed a 'two of hearts' in the middle of the table. Emmett put down a 'six of diamonds' and the game began. It turned out, Emmett's ability to take things in and react was unbelievably sharp and he'd soon stolen all of Ted's cards and was insisting they play again.
"How did you get so good at this game?" Ted asked suspiciously, as though Emmett might have been hustling and fixing games of snap all over the world.
"Growing up in Hazlehurst Mississippi with nothing but a packet of cards to keep us entertained meant I played a lot of snap."
"But no other games," Ted pointed out "… at all?"
"You needed all the cards for the other games," Emmett shrugged. "I think we had thirty eight cards in our pack. Only one ace, which meant if we played War the person with the ace always won."
Ted laughed a little, shaking his head a little.
"But I always like the queens," Emmett smiled, picking up the queen of hearts to illustrate his point.
"Of course you did," Ted smiled, beginning to deal again. He'd dealt half the deck before he checked the clock on the wall. "You know," he said, thinking aloud as much as communicating with the other man, "it's reaching mid-day. Maybe we should get Justin."
"Let him rest. He could do with it. He's looked dead on his feet, ever since we got him home from the hospital," Emmett said, taking his freshly dealt pile of card and flipping the first one over to reveal an Ace of Spades. "Hey," he grinned, "ace of spades. That was the best card in the pack back home."
Ted rolled his eyes and placed a 'four of spades' and took a sip of his coffee. He was trying to get caught up in the game, and truth be told, he really did want to beat the nelly queen for his own sanity but despite really trying, he just couldn't take his mind off everything that had happened over the last few months. Stockwell's police force had left Justin for dead to cover up the murder of another boy Jason Kemp. They were pinning the murder on Brian, attempting to kill two birds with one stone … literally. But there were still so many things that he couldn't get straight in his head, like why were they covering up Kemp's murder? And how were they going to spring Brian? And what the fuck was Horvath doing? Because as far as Ted was concerned, all he had to do was show Justin's face to the press and the questions would start to be asked. But instead, he had Justin under house arrest, was allowing Brian to rot in prison and had done nothing to stop Stockwell and why? Because the whole case was so sheathed in legal bullshit that he needed a lot of hard evidence pointing directly at Stockwell to be able to really take this to court.
So far all they had was a boy that wasn't dead and a couple of conspiracy theories and that wasn't going to get them anywhere, not within the law. Sometimes, working within the law sucked, Ted thought, but that's probably why Horvath hadn't arrested them. Horvath was giving them a bit of a free pass because they could work outside the law; the only problem was working out what to do with that bit of freedom. And the worst bit was that all Ted could think was that Brian would know exactly what to do in this situation but, thanks to Michael, he was behind fucking bars.
"Snap!" Emmett yelled triumphantly for about the third time and Ted realized that in his time thinking, the other man had managed to get him down to only eight cards. Shit, he was going to lose again. Luckily for Ted, it was at that moment; Debbie decided to make her presence known. She threw open the bright red front door and the huge gust of wind that followed her into the house blew the large pile of cards Emmett had just won straight off the table. In the blink of an eye, Ted had dropped his cards and groaned heavily.
"Oh no," he feigned, "it appears that I've dropped all my cards. I'll just pick them up again. I think these were mine." He immediately picked up 23 cards and gave himself an internal pat on the back for his brilliance.
"Bullshit," Emmett accused.
"Oh," Debbie smiled, forcing the door closed behind her. "Are you playing 'bullshit'? I love that game." The two men looked at Debbie's expression, she looked like a woman trying very, very hard to act normal and was only managing to make herself seem even less so.
They glanced to each other and in unison asked, "what happened?"
"Nothing," she lied determinedly, putting her handbag on the table by the door. "So what are you playing?" She asked, changing the subject as abruptly as possible.
"Snap," Emmett smiled, "but Teddy's cheating because I'm winning."
"I don't know what you're talking about?" Ted said innocently and Emmett just rolled his eyes fondly and put down a card for the game to start again.
"Where's Sunshine?" Debbie asked suddenly.
"Upstairs," Emmett answered, riffling through his numerous cards tauntingly before placing the pile face down and flipping the top one over to continue playing … and winning.
"You mean he still hasn't come out of his room?"
"Nope," Emmett sighed. "He's been up their all morning."
"It's one in the afternoon," she exclaimed. "It's not healthy for him to be locked on his own all the time. I'm going to get him."
"Snap," Ted said triumphantly as Debbie disappeared up the stairs.
"No honey," Emmett replied sympathetically. "That's a seven of diamonds and a seven of hearts."
"I hate this damn game," Ted growled, dropping his cards onto the table and pushing himself on to his feet. He'd just flicked the TV on, when Debbie came racing down the stairs, waving something black around in her hand.
"He's gone," she cried as she reached the bottom step. "Sunshine's gone."
"What do you mean, he's gone?" Ted asked.
"Well which part didn't you understand?" Deb scorned, throwing the thing she was holding at him. As it hit him in the chest, he immediately recognized it as the house arrest bracelet that Horvath had forced Justin to wear.
"How the hell did he get out of this?"
"How should I know?" Debbie snapped back. "I wasn't here when he escaped," she reminded them angrily. "Didn't you hear him leave?"
"Yes Deb," Ted replied sarcastically. "We heard him leave and just let him go. In fact, I opened the door for him and Emmett threw confetti."
"No need for sarcasm," Debbie growled.
"Where do you think he's gone?" Emmett asked, going over to the bracelet and taking it from Ted. He twisted the thing slowly around in his hands.
"To see Brian," Ted suggested. "Now he knows where he is, he might be young, dumb and desperate enough to go there."
"He's not there," Deb said immediately.
"How do you know?" Emmett asked curiously, dropping the bracelet onto the sofa only for Ted to pick it straight back up and study it closely.
"It doesn't matter," she dismissed.
"Oh my god. That's where you've been!" He exclaimed. "What the hell did you do that for?"
"To apologize on behalf of Michael."
"Ha!" Emmett laughed bitterly. "And how did that go?"
"He basically told me to fuck off."
"I don't understand," Ted muttered from the sofa, more to himself than anything.
"It means he rudely told me to go away," Debbie explained, causing Ted to look up and give her the most puzzled look she'd ever seen.
"What are you talking about?" He asked.
"What are you talking about?"
"This," he held up the bracelet. "I don't understand how Justin could have got it off without the alarm going off and alerting Horvath."
"Maybe it did," Emmett suggested. "I mean we don't know how long ago Justin took it off and Horvath's got to come from Harrisburg."
"He'll be staying closer than that at the moment," Ted said. "He's not going to travel four hours every day to get to Pittsburgh to work on this case." He took another look at the bracelet spinning it carefully in his fingers. He couldn't work out how Justin had possibly managed to get the thing off his leg; it had always been so tight fitting.
"What's this?" Deb asked suddenly, picking up something covered in silver foil from near her bag. The two men shrugged and she began to unwrap it. As soon as she pealed the one side away, the bracelet in Ted's hand bleeped loudly and vibrated.
"It's the box," she exclaimed, pulling the rest of the foil away, to reveal the machine that connected to the bracelet. "Why the fuck was it covered in foil?"
"To scramble the signal," Ted said suddenly thinking out loud. "Smart little fucker. He covered the thing in foil to stop the bracelet being able to send a signal that it wasn't on his leg anymore."
"Doesn't explain how he got it off though?"
"Little baby oil, little lube," Emmett shrugged. "Perfect for fitting any object into any hole, no matter how tight the fit is." The other two looked at him half-impressed, half amused but he just shrugged. "I can think of a million and one ways to get large things into holes," he winked and Ted just laughed a little through his nose and put the bracelet in the centre of the coffee table. Then seriously he said,
"I'm not sure if we're being a little bit optimistic, assuming it was Justin's choice to leave."
"What are you saying?" Emmett asked immediately.
"I just don't know how a nineteen year old would be able to work all this out and I can't think of any reason he'd have for leaving."
"So what are you saying Teddy?" Emmett asked firmly. He didn't want vague suggestions or conspiracy theories; he wanted to know exactly what Ted was thinking. No bullshitting, no nothing.
"It's just that the police would find it very easy to remove a bracelet like this is they had to. They'd know how to prevent the signals, they'd know how to get away without alerting Horvath and they don't want Justin around to ruin anything. They've left him for dead once before."
"Please don't think like that," Emmett whispered.
"I'm just saying…"
"Well, don't," Emmett insisted. "He's just gone somewhere. He'll be back soon flashing that lovely smile of his, lighting up the room."
"Em," Ted tried to comfort.
"No! Teddy. I'm not going to think that he's anything but going for a breath of fresh air. A bit of a walk, maybe he went to see his mother. Now, I think I'll make some tea. Does anyone want one?"
Ted wondered if he should say something else but seeing the look on his friend's face he decided better of it and just shook his head and declined the offer of tea.
"Deb?" Emmett asked brightly.
"No, it's okay baby. You make one for yourself."
"Right," Emmett nodded. "I will. And we need cookies."
As Emmett tried to keep himself busy in the kitchen, Debbie tried to wrack her brains to come up with any places Justin might have gone had he actually escaped. Ted just picked up the bracelet again and turned it over looking and studying every inch of it.
He just didn't believe the kid could have got out of this bracelet. No matter how optimistic the others wanted to be, he couldn't shake the horrible sinking feeling that all that thrashing about last night hadn't been a nightmare and that Justin had been kidnapped for real this time.
Obviously, I have no idea how you'd get a house-arrest bracelet off. I'm not even sure it's possible but I'm hoping you'll give me a bit of an artistic licence on this one.