The Search for Artemis - By P. D. Griffith Page 0,8

afraid he’d underestimated the severity of his potential crime. He always thought that it would be the police looking for him since it would have been a simple case of domestic violence gone wrong, but these guys definitely didn’t work for the police. They were like FBI, CIA, NSA, or something. Why would they get involved in something like this?

After feeling particularly alone and frightened, Landon went back to his apartment building—the place where it all began. By the time he got there, a storm had rolled in, and it poured down rain. Lightning was flashing overhead and the sound of thunder bounced deafeningly through the city streets. He tried not to get too close; he stayed in a dark alley across the street and just looked at the building, counting the windows until he found his apartment. Once he located it, he noticed that the lights inside were off. He stayed there, staring at the window for quite a long time, imagining what his mother would be cooking for dinner and what random school activity she would try to convince him to join next. Then a cab drove up to the building and Mrs. Bradford got out.

Landon didn’t really have grandparents. His mother’s parents died in a car accident while she was in college and his father’s parents wanted less to do with him than his father did. While growing up, Mrs. Bradford sort of stepped in. Landon even called her “Nana.” Her husband had died of a heart attack a few years before Landon was born, and she lived alone in the apartment down the hall from theirs. Before Landon started high school, she used to walk him back to the apartment building from the bus stop and watch him while his mother and father were at work. She made him cookies and other baked goods, and they worked on random art projects or played card games. Her favorite game was gin rummy, but Landon always seemed to beat her. He never figured out if it was because he was so good at it or if she let him win. He eventually decided on the latter.

He watched her ascend the stairs into the building, noticing she was having a lot of difficulty juggling her bag of groceries, her umbrella and her keys. As she tried to unlock the entry door, her grocery bag slipped out from under her arm and tumbled down the stairs, spilling its contents all over the sidewalk. Immediately, Landon bolted across the street to help her. He wrangled up all of the loose produce and canned goods and placed them back in the grocery sack. He then went up the short staircase and handed them back to Mrs. Bradford while making sure to keep his head down.

“Thank you so much, my dear boy,” Mrs. Bradford said.

“No problem, Nana,” Landon replied.

“Nana?”

With a speed much faster than Mrs. Bradford should be capable of, she gently placed her hand under Landon’s chin and raised his head up to look at him. Mrs. Bradford saw the boy she helped raise over the past fifteen years.

“Landon?” Mrs. Bradford questioned. Her voice was barely audible as her tears held her words back. “Is that really you? I was so worried!”

Landon looked at Mrs. Bradford in horror. He pulled her hand away from his face and stumbled down to the sidewalk, never taking his eyes off of her. The rain beat down on his soaked body, weighing down his clothes and making it difficult for him to see. He realized that in an instant, he’d revealed himself and potentially jeopardized his freedom. He also knew by the face of Mrs. Bradford that he was wrong about his parents’ survival. They were not alive. If they lived, she wouldn’t have responded like she did. Once back on the street, he turned and ran into the alley. He heard Mrs. Bradford calling to him from the apartment steps, begging him to come back. That night was the first night Landon cried.

The next morning the men in black showed up again, and Landon moved to a dark spot next to a dumpster behind a convenience store.

• • • • •

Landon awoke with a start. The convenience store clerk had thrown a bag of garbage into the dumpster he was sleeping behind, and the metallic clank reverberated in his ears. Watching the rusty water drip from the back of the green dumpster, Landon came to reality. Fortunately, the heat wave had lifted, and a breeze