//~///~

Chapter 17 - When Everything Fell Apart.

“Hurry up, Justin,” Jennifer admonished as she continued clearing away the breakfast dishes. 

Justin had to keep a protective hand on his orange juice glass or she would have taken that too.

“I’m ready, Mom,” Molly boasted and then, just to annoy her big brother, she got up and took her own cereal bowl to the dishwasher.

“Kiss ass,” Justin mumbled, shooting the little brat with a sour glare. 

Molly just smiled smugly at him, oozing fake innocence. 

“Thank you, Honey. I appreciate how helpful you always are,” Jennifer praised her obedient daughter. “Why don’t you go grab your backpack and jacket while I get your brother moving.” Molly skipped out of the kitchen and Jennifer looked back at Justin with yet another disapproving shake of her head. “Please, Justin. We’re already running late this morning and if you don’t hurry we won’t make it to St. James before your first period.”

Justin relented and stuffed the remaining quarter of his cream cheese bagel into his mouth in one shove. “Where’s Dad this morning,” he asked, mouth full, crumbs flying everywhere as he spoke. Craig usually drove Molly in the mornings because her school was on the way to the store - as opposed to Justin’s school, which was in the exact opposite direction. 

“Your father slept at the store last night,” Jennifer explained as she grabbed his plate and turned back to the sink. “He called late last night and explained that, what with the icy roads and the drinks he’d had over dinner with the vendors he was meeting with, he didn’t think he should drive home.” Justin could hear the doubt in his mother’s voice as she relayed the feeble excuse her wayward husband had offered, but then she quickly hurried on to less troubling subjects. “Which means I have to get both of you to school this morning.”

Justin felt bad enough for his mother that he let go of a little bit more of his lingering resentment. Craig really was an ass. Not only was he a homophobic bigot but he was also a cheating bastard. If only his mother didn’t constantly let him get away with his lies and defer to his crappy judgment all the time. Jennifer Taylor was still a beautiful woman. She could do so much better than the husband she currently had. But it was in her nature to be loyal and supportive to a fault. Justin supposed he couldn't complain too much about those characteristics. Not that his mother’s sense of loyalty helped him in his current predicament, though, as it was being directed to support his father, not himself. 

However, Justin really didn’t know what he was supposed to do next anyway. He’d tried repeatedly to reconnect to Brian the night before, but the man had his emotional barriers up at full force again. After the latest, horrifying, glimpse into the kidnapper’s mind, he couldn’t say he blamed Brian. It had to be terrible to listen to someone threatening to suffocate your precious infant son and not be able to do anything about it. It wasn’t surprising that Brian had reacted the way he had. Justin only wished he’d been with Brian, in person, to comfort him after that experience. 

Still, Justin suspected there had to be something they could do with all the new clues he’d uncovered in that last vision. After looking into Brian’s mind the way he had, he was even more convinced than ever that Brian knew the person who had taken Gus. That link Justin had followed from his lover to the kidnapper was too concrete, too significant, to be some random acquaintance. There was some history there - a painful history, perhaps - but definitely some shared experiences that tied the two of them together. Justin knew it. Brian probably knew it too, and if he could only find a way to overcome his emotional antipathy, Justin felt sure they’d be able to figure out who it was. 

But without being able to talk to Brian - to convey these impressions and convince Brian of his support - Justin feared it was futile. Something in Brian’s past had obviously scared him so completely that he had virtually shut himself off from all emotion. Justin understood the nature of that fear. It could be painful to open yourself up if you were being bombarded by negativity. Judging by those angry, painful strands Justin had seen in the depths of Brian’s psyche, he suspected that might have been the case in Brian’s past. And if that’s ALL you had - anger and pain and fear being broadcast at you over and over again for years - you could very easily come to the conclusion that you were safer feeling nothing. If so, it was little wonder that Brian was a blank emotional wall most of the time.

But staying behind his safe, protective barriers wasn’t going to help Gus. 

As Justin gathered together his heavy winter jacket and his messenger bag full of school books, his determination reasserted itself. There was a little baby out there that needed help. He knew he was the only one who could figure it out in time. But he needed Brian’s cooperation to do it. So Justin would have to find a way to get to Brian and then convince his closed-off lover to work together to solve this puzzle.

Somehow.

///~///~

The roads were icy and traffic was a bitch that morning. Maybe his father hadn’t been lying about his reasons for not driving home the night before? By the time they’d dropped Molly off at school, it was clear that Justin wasn’t going to make it to St. James’ Academy in time for his first class of the day. Not that Justin really minded, since his first class on Tuesdays was History with Dickhead Dickson; a class he would be happy to miss. 

Jennifer was too busy concentrating on her driving to chat much during the drive, which left Justin free to plan and scheme. He knew that the ransom drop was supposed to happen that morning, and he desperately wanted to be there to support Brian. He also worried that a lot could go wrong with the operation the police were planning, meaning that Brian was likely to need Justin, and his particular skills, more than ever today. Brian - and by extension, Gus - meant a lot more to him than another day of meaningless school blather so, grounded or not, there was no way he was going to waste the day sitting around safely in school. The only question was how and when he’d be able to make his escape. 

He was more than a half hour late getting to school, so Jennifer had to park the car and walk him in, stopping at the office to excuse his tardy appearance. Justin got a hall pass and made his way to class, ignoring his mother’s goodbye as well as the warning about Craig being there to pick him up after school again. Craig Taylor could pound sand for all Justin cared. He had more important things on his mind. The only thing holding him back was the fear that his father would follow through on those threats to file criminal charges against Brian. But there had to be some way to both appease Craig and help out Brian. It was just a matter of timing. Careful timing.

Justin made it to History class a mere ten minutes before the class was due to let out. Dickson was lecturing on some obscure historical topic, his monotonous voice droning on and on, immediately losing Justin’s interest along with that of ninety percent of the rest of the class. Instead of taking notes, Justin used his father’s notebook to sketch the details of the vision he’d had the night before; Gus in the tiny, dark room and the ugly kitchen. 

The minute the class let out, Justin cornered Daphne and demanded she turn over her phone. 

“Good morning to you too,” Daphne replied, giving him shit but not hesitating to hand over her phone. “Are you going to tell me what the hell happened to you last night? I texted Brian, like you told me to, and he seemed really happy to get your message but then he texted back this crazy response in the middle of the night.”

Justin had already pulled up the texting app and saw the response in question: ‘I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE!’

“So, are you gonna tell me what happened? Or leave me dying of curiosity? Because, if you want me to be your middleman, Justin, I’mma need more deets here.”

“I don’t have time to explain completely, Daph,” Justin answered at the same time as he was typing out a message to his understandably distraught lover. “Short version: I had another vision of Gus and . . . It was intense.” Justin tapped at the phone to ‘send’ the message and then handed the phone back to his friend. “Okay, I hope he gets that and knows I’m on my way. They’re doing the ransom drop today and I’ve got a feeling he’s going to need me . . . Can you take notes for me in classes again?”

“You’re skipping again?” Daphne jumped right to the pertinent point. “Are you sure that’s a good idea, Jus? You’re already grounded till you’re, like, a thousand years old . . .”

“Brian needs me, Daph,” Justin insisted as he walked towards his locker with his best friend trailing behind. “I have to be there in case something goes wrong, you know?”

“Yeah, ransom drops never work out well, at least not in any of the movies I’ve ever seen . . .”

“Well, let’s hope that real life doesn’t immitate the movies this one time . . . But, yeah, I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Justin agreed, beginning to offload the majority of his books out of his messenger bag. 

Daphne sighed deeply. “I guess you have to go then, but *I* have a bad feeling about you skipping school again.” 

Justin merely shrugged as he lifted the strap of his bag over his head and securely settled it across his shoulder. “My plan is to be back here before school lets out so my dad won’t know I skipped. Unless the school calls him again. But, either way, it doesn’t matter. I have to do this.”

“I get it. Just be careful. And TRY to get back here on time or your dad might do something drastic this time.” She squeezed his arm reassuringly and offered up a weak smile. “I’d be really bummed if he sent you away to military school or something.”

“Me too,” Justin agreed with a sudder. “And thanks for not giving me too much shit about skipping again, Daph. You’re the best.” Justin gave his friend one last, lopsided smile, and then resolutely turned towards the side exit, hoping to be able to make his escape without being seen.

Unfortunately, when he was only a dozen meters from the door, his path of escape was cut off and Justin was surrounded by a group of large, menacing, and clearly unhappy members of the school’s football team. In the forefront of this hulking wall of buff flesh was none other than Justin’s nemesis, Christopher Hobbs.

“Where you goin’, faggot?” Chris drawled, smiling evilly down at his intended victim.

“Hobbs,” Justin groaned, “Damn it. I don’t have time for this shit. Can we please just just do the bullying thing later? I’ve got someplace I need to be right now.”

“Fuck that,” Hobbs stepped closer, invading Justin’s personal space and in the process towering over the shorter teen. “You think you’re gonna get away with all those lies you were spouting yesterday without sufferin’ any consequences? Well, think again, asswipe.”

“Yeah, except they weren’t lies, were they?” Justin replied, too angry and stressed out to listen to his more prudent side. “Everything I said yesterday was one hundred percent the truth . . . Which is why you’re so piss-in-your-pants scared, isn’t it, Hobbs? Because you're terrified that the truth will come out and all your buddies will know you’re another big fat fucking fairy too . . .”

“You take that back, faggot!” Chris demanded, grabbing Justin by the front of his jacket and using his grip to shake the shit out of the smaller blond. 

Just then the bell indicating the start of the next period rang and the few remaining students that had been standing around them in the halls disappeared into their various classrooms, leaving only Hobbs, his bully boy friends, and Justin occupying the hallway. Ms. Santos, the Spanish teacher, whose classroom was the only one in this section of the hallway, appeared a moment later, and eyed the group of boys with disapproval. However, since Hobbs had been standing with his back to that portion of the hall, he didn’t see the teacher until she had come up right behind him.

“Shouldn’t you be getting to your classes, gentlemen?” Ms. Santos asked pointedly, startling a surprised Hobbs.

“I’ve got a dentist appointment, Ms. Santos.” Justin pulled the bright pink hall pass slip that he still had from earlier in the morning out of his pocket, waved it vaguely in the air, and then immediately shoved it discreetly back into his jacket before the teacher could look at it more closely. “I was just on my way out.”

“Fine. You’re excused, Taylor. But the rest of you need to get to class, now, or I’ll have to write you all up,” the teacher warned, pinning each of them in turn with a warning look that was full of righteous administrative weightiness.

“This isn’t over, Taylor,” Hobbs whispered, before turning on his heel and slouching off down the hall, presumably towards his next class, his cronies following in his footsteps.

Justin didn’t wait to see what would happen next; he was already out the door and jogging down the sidewalk in the direction of the closest bus stop, hoping he would be in time to meet Brian before the ransom drop. 

///~///~

Justin got off the bus at the last stop on Liberty Avenue and ran the rest of the way down the street towards Point State Park. It was already after ten and he was worried he was going to be too late. The ransom note had demanded that Brian deposit the ransom before 11:30, but he knew that Brian and the police wouldn’t wait till the last minute, so it was possible they’d already done the drop. If so, he’d have to scramble to figure out a way to meet up with Brian while the man was still waiting to hear if their plan had worked.

Justin bounced to a stop at the intersection where a four lane highway separated Liberty Avenue from the park. He was surprised that there was so much traffic at midmorning on a snowy Tuesday. He pressed the pedestrian crossing button at least two dozen times, impatient at the wait. Soon enough, though, the light changed, allowing him to sprint across the street and head into the greenway area that separated downtown from the park proper.

Only, today, there was no green in the greenway. Everything was spread with a thick coat of winter white from the weekend’s snowstorm. It was beautiful and stark. It also slowed Justin down quite a bit because the walkways through the park were only barely shovelled and there were still icy patches that threatened to send him sliding into a snowbank if he wasn’t careful. Luckily, though, the sun was finally coming out, and the temperature was rising, so hopefully the ice would be melting soon. In the meantime, though, Justin had to make his way through the maze of pathways, dodging other pedestrians and slippery patches, all of which slowed him down far more than he liked.

As he jogged past the little cafe that occupied the southeast corner of the park, Justin was again surprised at how many people were around that morning. Point State Park was usually a quiet oasis in the middle of the city. A place for downtown workers to eat their lunches or go for a jog in better weather. In the winter months, especially on a weekday, it was usually empty. But not today. Today there were several large groups of people waiting in line at the cafe, moving slowly around on the snowy paths and, off to his left, moving in his direction from the parking lot that was bursting with cars and even a few big yellow school buses. 

Probably not the conditions that the police would have wanted for a ransom drop.

Justin jostled his way through the crowds, eventually making his way to the underpass that allowed people to cross under I-279 into the park proper. The Fort Pitt Museum was just beyond the underpass, off to the left. He didn’t make it far, though, before he was blocked by an entire horde of school kids, taking up the entire pathway between himself and the museum, their teacher/guides pausing to relate some historical tidbits about the founding of Pittsburgh. 

“Fuck it! I don’t have time for this shit,” Justin mumbled as he backtracked and took a different pathway, thinking he could avoid the logjam of students by taking the longer way around.

Even this alternative route was pretty crowded, though. He got more than a few nasty looks and even an admonitory comment or two as he rudely pushed his way through the slow moving groups of people blocking his way. Finally, just when he was approaching the juncture where the path he was on turned left and merged with the Three-Rivers Heritage Trail, he was again forced to stop altogether by another larger group of field trip kids. Justin growled under his breath and then decided to just give up trying to be civilized. With total disregard for the fact that his trainers weren’t meant to double as snow shoes, he headed off cross-country, wading through the banks of shovelled snow lining the pathway so he could cut across the snow-covered field, skirting the gaggle of students blocking his way.

His shoes full of melting snow, he eventually made it all the way to the smaller walkway that circled around the old Fort Pitt Block House - the only remnant of the original fort that used to guard the strategically important confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers - and was able to get back on relatively dry land. He overheard a guide in front of the Block House talking about how it was the 255th Anniversary of the building of Fort Pitt and elucidating on the conditions the original pioneers had been forced to endure that first, long, cold winter in what was then the American Frontier. 

“The Fort Pitt Block House is the oldest authenticated structure west of the Allegheny Mountains . . ." the guide was lecturing as Justin passed by.

“Great. Just our luck Brian’s kid had to get abducted in the middle of some stupid Anniversary Celebration of the founding of Pittsburgh,” Justin mumbled to himself as he passed by the Block House itself, circling around behind the building to get to the plaza fronting the museum. 

Considering how cold it was, Justin was rather surprised by the number of people loitering around outside in the snowy area surrounding the Museum’s entrance. Over the front doors, there was a huge banner advertising the celebration of ‘Pittsburgh’s First Winter’ - clearly the reason for the large crowds of people and the groups of school children on field trips. No wonder there had been so many people around this morning. Of course the kidnapper had picked this muddled scene of disorder as their preferred ransom drop locale; Justin had no idea how the police would find the abductor in this moil of people. 

Apparently, though, the police were better at monitoring the crowds than he’d expected because, within two minutes of Justin showing up in front of the museum, he was approached by a man dressed in a heavy winter coat, it’s hood pulled forward so that only a tiny wedge of the man’s face showed. 

“What the fuck are you doing, Taylor? Do you want to blow this whole operation?” the man growled in a low undertone that wouldn’t carry beyond Justin’s ears. At the same time the man grabbed Justin’s arm and began to tow him off to the side of the little plaza area. Justin might have protested if he hadn’t recognized Detective Horvath’s gruff voice. “You can’t just come barrelling in here. What if the kidnapper was watching this place and recognized you?”

Justin didn’t have time to reply before Horvath had pulled him up the ramp that climbed the embankment to the east of the Museum and in through a door at the back of the building that he hadn’t even known existed. The door clanged shut behind them with a bang that echoed through the silence of the room. It took Justin a moment before his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the interior after being outside where the sunlight glinting off the snow had practically blinded him. When his vision had adjusted, he discovered that the small room was packed full of people and equipment with several computer monitors set up along a folding table against the wall and, sitting right in the middle of the bunch, was the very man he’d come to see.  

“Hey, Brian. Just the man I wanted to see!” the teen exclaimed, and was then immediately hushed by several of the others present, all of whom were concentrating on the images flittering across the computer screens. 

“If you’re going to stay, Son, you need to be quiet and let my officers work,” Horvath warned him in an insistent hiss. 

Justin nodded and moved over so he was standing directly behind the chair where Brian was seated. He reached down with one hand to squeeze Brian’s shoulder and the man raised a distracted hand to cover the youth’s fingers in acknowledgement. But that was all Justin got. Other than that brief gesture, Brian’s attention was completely fixated on the various monitors arrayed in front of him. So Justin looked at them too and noticed that they were displaying video feeds of the front approach to the museum from multiple angles as well as at least two views from inside the building. 

“I take it you already dropped the money in the garbage can like you were told?” Justin queried, his voice just barely above a whisper, as he noted that at least three of the cameras were solely focused on the area surrounding the one large trash receptacle set up to the west of the front entrance. 

“Yeah,” Brian replied quietly. “I put the briefcase with the money in there about a half hour ago.”

“And? Anybody approach the trashcan since?”

“Yeah, about a hundred school kids, who have thrown their crap in there,” Brian grumbled.

And, right on cue, as they watched, yet another group of kids moved across the screens in front of them, several of the students stopping to drop trash in the bin before moving into place around the closer of the two small, grey-metal, replica cannons that flanked the museum’s entrance. The teacher who’d been guiding this group started in with a lecture about the defences of the fort in its early days - something Justin already knew about from his own previous field trips to the museum as a child - as the masses of students milled around in a thoroughly distracting way. Meanwhile, the police surveillance team tried to scrutinize every face in the vicinity to the best of their ability.

Justin, who’s sole aim up to that point had been to locate Brian so as to be there for his lover, didn’t know what he was supposed to do now that he’d found the man. Brian was focused on the video feeds to the exclusion of all else. Justin probed at him with his empathic skills but got nowhere; Brian was as closed off emotionally as ever. With all these other people around, there was no way they could talk freely, either, so it wasn’t like they could discuss what had happened the night before. Maybe Justin coming down here to be with Brian had been a mistake after all? Not that he was going to leave again, though, at least not until there was some resolution.

But the resolution seemed like it might take a while. A long while. They all just stood around and watched the damned monitors for what felt like eons. Justin, who didn’t know precisely what they were all watching for, quickly got bored. One group of school kids with their teachers and parent-chaperones looked pretty much like the next. They all milled around in the plaza area in front of the museum, most of them stopping to look at the miniature cannons, until a museum worker would come out to get them when it was time for the next group of visitors to enter. Then another group would take its place around the cannons. And another. And another. Until all the faces seemed to blur together in Justin’s mind. Eventually someone offered Justin a chair so he could sit instead of stand, which allowed him to be bored while seated, but that was the only change which happened for seeming hours and hours.

At about 11:00, the first groups of kids began to leave the museum - presumably these were the earliest tour groups from that morning who, having seen all that the museum had to offer, were now being dismissed to return to their schools. As these groups left the museum, most of the kids deposited additional trash in the bin that the police were watching, including all the empty lunch sacks from the brown bag lunches they’d eaten while inside the museum. The trash bin filled up pretty fast after that, until the garbage was overflowing the receptacle. Before long, a museum janitor came out of the building, pushing his wheeled supply cart along in front of him, with the apparent intent of emptying the trash.

“What the fuck?” Brian complained, gesturing with alarm at the monitor in front of him. “Horvath? Aren’t you going to stop him? He’s going to cart away the fucking ransom . . .”

“Hang on, Kinney,” Detective Horvath advised. “It’ll be fine. We’ve got guys out there monitoring the situation from the ground. They won’t let the janitor take the ransom money anywhere far. But we can’t just run out there and stop him without letting on to the kidnapper that we’re here and watching. We have to stay calm . . .”

“Fucking shit . . .” Brian grumbled, slouching back into his chair as he continued to watch the screen, seemingly resigned to letting the police do their thing, but Justin could feel the man’s aggravation levels ramping up to the point that his distress finally broke through the emotional shields he’d been trying to maintain. 

Finally, there was something Justin could do to help. The empath focused his attention on the back of Brian’s head and willed a sense of calm in the man’s direction. He didn’t know if Brian would fight the link or not, but hopefully at least some of the serenity he was trying to transmit would get through and help soothe the poor man.

Justin was so intent on that task, however, that he almost missed the moment when everything fell apart.

Out of the corner of his eye, Justin vaguely noticed that the janitor had lifted the bulging trash bag out of the bin and, after tying off the top with a twist-tie, had set the bag on the bare concrete ground next to him while he dug through his cart to find a fresh bag. A second later, they were startled by the blaring of the fire alarm going off, the repetitive alarm deafening in the small confines of the little room where the police had set up their monitoring operation. 

And that’s when all hell broke loose. The front doors of the museum flew open and a stream of hundreds of kids, with their parents and teachers in tow, began to stream out. Once free from the strangle point of the entrance doors, the various groups of students spread out everywhere, walking and sometimes even running away from the building, and in the process obscuring the police’s view of the front of the building and the garbage can they’d been watching so intently. 

“What the hell?” Horvath stood up, spent several long seconds staring in horror at the screens and the chaos they evidenced erupting everywhere around, and then the man started screaming into a walkie-talkie he’d pulled out of his pocket. 

“Adams, Clark, who has eyes on the package? Where the hell did the janitor disappear to? Hell . . . Jeffers, get your ass over there and secure that garbage bag!” Horvath, slammed down the walkie-talkie and shoved at one of the men who’d been sitting in front of the monitors. “Ruiz, get out there and find out what’s going on, damn it!”

Meanwhile, for those left inside watching the scene, it was clear that they’d completely lost control of the operation. The lines of students leaving the facility were starting to dwindle down to only the stragglers followed by the museum personnel. The teachers and chaperones were busy gathering their groups of children, all of whom were standing in little huddles randomly arranged all across the snowy lawns of Point State Park. The kids looked unhappy and cold, most of them coatless and shivering, since they’d had to evacuate the building without their jackets. The teachers looked harried and annoyed as they tried to take roll and figure out if anyone was missing. The sound of fire engines’ sirens could be heard in the distance, rapidly coming closer and closer. 

At the same time, Horvaths’ men could be seen standing around in front of the museum, all of them staring dejectedly at the remains of the trash bag that had once held Brian’s briefcase full of ransom money. The bag had been trampled into shreds by the hordes of children exiting the building as a result of the fire alarm going off. There was trash strewn everywhere for meters around; lunch bags and tissues and food scraps and soda bottles everywhere. But the one thing that was nowhere to be found was the bag of cash that had been meant as Gus’ ransom . . .

///~///~