Stolen Lives : The Lives Trilogy Book 1 Read Free Page B

casings and marked them.  Carefully, he moved to the other side of the boy, took another stick and strip of cloth and marked the fat man’s footprint.
    Then George knelt down and studied the body.  A fly danced on the boy’s shoulder, then onto the wound on his head.  George waved his hand scaring the fly away temporarily, knowing that eventually, there would be nothing he could do.  He touched the boy’s shoulder gently, as if in apology, then got up and finished marking footprints, the skinny man’s cigarette butts, and finally, the van’s tire tracks.
    As he went to mark the footprints made by the man wearing the baseball cap, something caught his eye, and he squatted down to study it closer.  Between two tire prints, on the side of the van away from where George had sat watching the scene, he saw a dark spot on the sand.  Careful not to touch or disturb it, he took one last stick and strip of cloth and marked it, thinking that it looked like blood, knowing that if it was, there might be more in or on the van.  At some point, the men must have hurt the boy before killing him.
    At last, after marking every footprint and anything else of note, George knelt down at the boy’s body and touched the boy’s shoulder again.
    “I will leave now, but I will be back with help.  I will take care of you.”
    George walked away slowly, reverently, got on Nochero, took one last look at the dead boy and rode off to call his cousin.

CHAPTER THREE
     
    Every now and then, Brett heard one or more of the boys weeping out of despair or loneliness.  He could tell by the proximity or the voice who it was.  He tried to shut his ears to it, but nothing he did could drown it out.  Survive!  Everything came down to survival, and Brett knew it, so did the other eleven boys.
    He sat in the middle of the bed in a pair of stained beige-colored boxers with his chin resting on his knees, his arms wrapped around his legs.  He had just had his fourth date of the day, and he knew he might have two or three more by dinner time and probably two or three more before he fell asleep that evening. 
    He never really slept though.  Sleep was a rare commodity, and if it ever arrived, it was fitful and in snatches.  It had been this way for the twenty-two months, two weeks and four days since he had been dragged off his bike and thrown into a van while on his way to meet some friends for a pick up basketball game at his middle school.
    Brett had learned to close off all emotions after the third week or so in captivity.  He was unreadable, and that was one way how he and the other boys survived.  The only thing he couldn’t control was the pure, unadulterated hate emanating from his large brown eyes.  None of the guards or dates could read him.  Only three other boys knew him well enough to guess at his feelings because they, like Brett and the rest of the boys felt the same things: disgust, anger and hate, along with the sense that somehow, some way, they needed to survive.  So neither he nor the other eleven boys betrayed any feeling, any emotion, and they did what they needed to do to survive.
    Though he hadn’t been in them all, from what Brett could tell, all of the rooms were basically the same:  concrete gray walls with chipped and faded green linoleum, windows that had been sealed shut with thick plywood and covered with steel bars.  There was a cheap nightstand that had a box of tissues and a container of antiseptic hand wipes.  A small garbage can sat on the floor near the bed.  Each room had a beat up, stuffed chair that matched neither the bed nor nightstand.  In Brett’s room, the chair teetered back and forth because one leg was an inch or so shorter than the others.  Its cushion had white stuffing leaking out of a tear in the back. 
    The boys were about the same age.  All were locked in separate rooms that contained a lumpy double bed with faded sheets of a non-descript color that was either light green, faded