It wasn’t the scream that bothered him. It was the screamer.
The sound came at 6:41 through the open car window, ragged and high. John Rake knew because he was looking at the dashboard clock when he heard it. It sounded like something was being torn in half. Or someone. It stopped mid-breath. Then it started again. He tapped his thumbs against the steering wheel, a habit he had picked up sitting in sterile waiting rooms. It had been twenty-four years since John heard a scream like that. And even as a child, he knew what it meant.
I can’t be the only one who heard that. Someone must have already called 911.
He looked around at the houses on his left and right.
Nobody was calling anyone.
Wexford Lane was not the kind of street where people screamed. The secluded Atlanta suburb was the kind you’d see on the cover of Architectural Digest. The kind with Roman columns that stood in front of hand-carved oak doors, all tucked behind iron courtyard gates that separated the people who lived there from the people who lived out there. But John saw no kids. No morning joggers. No cars in the driveways. He had spent years learning to notice what didn’t fit, and this street sure didn’t.
The scream came again. This time John could tell which way. He eased his foot off the gas, letting the car roll forward thirty yards. His heart thumped hard in his chest. Ahead on his left, parked near the curb of the most sprawling estate on the street sat a gray BMW sedan. Trunk lid open. No rear license plate.
Standing at the trunk were two men dressed in black, like a film crew. The pale one was broad-shouldered with glasses, dark hair, and a thick mustache; the other was smaller, his olive skin glistening with morning sweat under a thin mustache. Between them, they were wrestling a woman into the trunk. One white sneaker kicked and flailed against the bumper as long brown hair spilled over the carpeted frame.
Then the olive-skinned man jerked back from the trunk with a deep, raspy howl, clutching his right wrist to his chest. Blood splashed down his forearm and dripped onto the asphalt. She bit him.
Got a lead? Log it. Don't act on it.
The motto from Freedom Way that was drilled into him every day since he started the desk job flashed through his mind. His phone sat in the center console. It would take eight seconds to dial 911, thirty seconds to explain, maybe ten minutes to dispatch a patrol car out here. By then, the BMW would have already hit I-285.
John rolled his shoulders, slammed on the brakes, threw the car in park, and jumped out.
"Hey!"
His shoes hit the asphalt. "Stop!" he yelled, sprinting directly toward them. "Stop it!"
Both men straightened, their heads snapping toward him. From twenty paces out, John’s eyes locked onto the flailing leg hanging from the trunk. The white Converse sneaker with the scuffed toe kicked and kicked. The same worn shoe he had watched tapping nervously under the desk two rows over for the past sixteen mornings.
The tan man spun back toward the trunk and drove his left fist down like a hammer into the trunk. Crack. The screaming stopped.
The pale man darted around to the driver's door, jumping into the idling car. The girl’s single sneaker dangled limp over the bumper as the injured man grabbed her leg and shoved it inside.
The lid hung open a second longer, just long enough for the morning sun to catch her face: pale, but for a bloody nose, a bruise on her cheekbone and a fresh welt rising on her chin, thick brown hair strung across her lips. It was the face he looked for every morning.
Dear God. Mia.
His mind rejected the face, but his legs were already closing the gap.