It's Ok to Cry

After a half an hour of getting the whole family at the house and everyone’s phones hooked up to tracking devices they waited for a call to come through.

Whether it be the kidnapper himself or the results from all the tests they were doing.

Mrs. Jonas was crying profusely, she actually didn’t stop since the high school. Mr. Jonas had his arms constantly around his wife to try and console her, some tears falling silently from his eyes. Kevin was sitting silently in a oversized chair, completely blank of facial expression while Nick was sitting on the ground by his parents, tearing up but refusing to let his tears fall. Joe and his fiancé, Hilary, were seated next to Mr. and Mrs. Jonas. Hilary was crying softly into Joe’s shoulder while Joe was trying console her, trying to keep his tears at bay and glancing at his mother who was sobbing loud enough for all of them combined.

Michelle and Luke were running through questions that they would need to ask some of the family members when they were able to talk while all the techs who were going to be running the tracking devices tried to keep themselves looking busy, despite the fact that there wasn’t anything left for them to do.

“Mrs. Jonas…or Mr. Jonas….we need to ask you a few more questions.” Luke finally spoke up and all could be heard was Mrs. Jonas’s heartbreaking sobs.

“You can ask me. My wife is….” Mr. Jonas started and squeezed his wife’s shoulders to try and console her as much as possible. “Incapable at the moment.” He looked over to his second oldest, Joe and gave him a look. But before Joe could even move over to take care of his mother, Hilary got up from his side and went to her, wrapping her up in a hug and they both cried together, embracing one another.

Mr. Jonas sighed a heavy sigh before nodding his head to go into the kitchen and answer any questions that he could.

Luke and him disappeared through the doorway, leaving Michelle to stand there, eyes locked on Mrs. Jonas and Joe’s fiancé while the three other brothers wore all blank expressions now.

She knew exactly how they were all feeling. All of them. She was at first the blank and emotionless expression before the sobbing actually started though for her incident.

She turned her head away from them all and blinked away her tears and the memories that still haunted her.

“This…” Joe voiced up, his voice cracking slightly from not using it and trying hold back his tears. “Is all your fault Kevin!” he yelled and everyone stopped their movement, crying and light talking.

“You don’t think I know that?! Jeez Joe! Way to make me feel worse! I already know this is all my fault!” Kevin snapped back at him while Nick looked over at Joe.

“This isn’t anyone’s fault except for the guy who stole Frankie from us. Don’t start pointing fingers Joe. It’s not his fault or the teacher’s fault for leaving or Jakes fault for stopping him. It’s the-” Nick started but Joe snapped.

“Shut it Nick! Of course you’d stick up for Kevin. It’s his fault and no one else’s.” and with that got up and went up the stairs to probably his old room.

Michelle looked over at Nick first to see a hurt expression on his face before sending Kevin a sympathetic smile and then looking over at his mother and Hilary.

“I’ll go-” Hilary started to say but Nick got up from the ground and patted his brothers leg. “I’ll go. You stay here with Mom. I’ll go talk to him.” and then went up the stairs to go talk to Joe.

Kevin looked like he was on the brink of tears again from feeling like it was all his fault his little brother had gotten kidnapped and Michelle couldn’t help but feel her heart being pulled at from seeing that.

“Kevin, I would…” she started, and tried making her voice sound less crackly and more authoritative. “I would like to ask you a few more questions.”

She took a few steps towards him and faintly heard Hilary lightly saying things like, “It’ll be ok.” and “Frankie’s a tough little boy. He’s gonna get through this and so are we.” to Mrs. Jonas.

He simply nodded his head and quickly wiped at his eyes to get rid of any near falling tears before getting up and walking around the corner that led towards the kitchen and backyard.

Luke sent her a semi-confused look when her and Kevin walked past him and Mr. Jonas, but she tried her hardest to act like she didn’t receive it and followed him out to the backyard, shutting the door behind them and proceeded to follow him to the little two person swing they had at the edge of their backyard.

They both sat in silence for a few minutes, Michelle sitting up straight and lightly pushing against the ground to have the swing, swing a little bit while Kevin hunched over and had his elbows resting on his knees and his head held in his hands as he sniffled slightly into them before rubbing his face.

“It’s not your fault ya know. They would’ve striked any other time if this was pre-meditated.” she softly spoke to him. All he did was nod his head and then lean back into the swing and looked at the back of his house.

“I know…but I still can’t help but feel this is all my fault still. I mean, sure…” he trailed off, sniffling a little and wiping at his cheeks and then went back to staring at the back of the house again like she was. “They would’ve striked another time, but it had to be the time that I had to pick him up and I was late by 10 minutes? Why me? Why this time? Why couldn’t it be Nick’s turn or Joe’s turn? Why me?”

“Because maybe….” she let out a heavy sigh and turned to look at him. His face as pale and tear stained somewhat. His hair was disheveled and even though he could pull off the messy curl look, it still didn’t look right on him at the moment. Maybe it was because of the reason behind why it was messy. “Maybe he man behind this whole thing knew that you of all people would beat yourself up more about this than them. You are the responsible one. He wants you to beat yourself up and blame yourself. Maybe that’s what he’s after more than actually the money. The suffering he’s causing to family. You never know with cases like this. But don’t worry. We’ll get him. We always do.”

He looked over at her and saw a small smile form onto her face when he looked over at her. Her dark brown with natural red highlights contrasted her deep green eyes and he couldn’t believe it took him this long to actually look at her and see how attractive she really was. And how young she was to be a cop.

“How old are you?” he simply asked, eyeing up her face yet again to try and get an age from it. He was guessing early 20’s.

“26. Just turned a couple months ago.” she stated and sent him a smile before asking him why he asked.

“Just…you look really young to be a cop that’s all. Don’t you normally have to go through a whole lot of training or something?”

“Yeah…but I had an inside source. My father was a cop and he took me to work with him a lot and taught me stuff and that helped me out in the long run. I didn’t have to go to school first, I just went straight to the academy since everyone knew that I knew about as much as them by the time I turned 18.”

“That’s pretty cool….but you’re dad is a cop. Not was.” he stated and watched as her face fell slightly.

What the hell am I doing? I’m talking about my personal life with him! That’s not part of protocol. That’s just…being stupid! Stop! Now! Just stop!

“Not is. Was. He’s no longer-”

“Hillbrook! Get in here!” Luke yelled from the kitchen doorway and the two instantly popped up from their swing session and ran to the house.

She looked at Luke with confusion in her eyes and he simply mouth, “Kidnapper.” and then pointed to the coffee table that had wires and phones all over it.

Nick was the one talking this time.

So they were right about one thing. He was trying to keep them in the loop but far enough out of it. And he was using Frankie to get numbers of the family.

One of the techs hit a button they all could hear what the man was saying to Nick once Luke gave him the “Ok” head nod.

“100,000. Leave it by the entrance of the Los Angeles Zoo on Crystal Springs Drive.”

His voice was deep and even though Michelle didn’t want to say it, it sounded evil. But that could’ve been because he was crazy and upset.

“How long do we have?” Nick quickly read off of Luke’s dry erase board.

“6 o’ clock tonight.” the man’s voice sounded through the room.

“Tonight? We can’t get that much money in a matter or a couple hours. It’s almost going on 4 right now!” Nick snapped at the man. “Plus, how do we know you haven’t killed Frankie yet? We’re not stupid.” he shot at the man and Mrs. Jonas was pulled away quickly from the room by Hilary and one of the techs since she started to cry from even thinking of Frankie dead.

Michelle walked over to one of the other techs who was running the tracking system and gave him look, asking him if they got him yet.

The man shook his head disappointedly and then grabbed one of the notepads and wrote,

He’s on a payphone right outside of the Zoo.

She bit her tongue to hold her “Damn” in and then patted the man on the back before walking over to her place next to Kevin again while they heard the man sigh.

“So little faith in me. You really think that I would kill the boy when I want the money? And I’ll wait until you can get me the whole amount. Let’s see…how long will the cop tell you it will take to get the money?”

Everyone turned their eyes to Luke in shock and Luke’s face alone made him look like a cherry tomato.

He was going to blow soon and it would not be good for Frankie or the rest of his family.

She watched as he took a step towards Nick but she quickly shoved Kevin out of the way and grabbed the phone while motioning for them to get Luke out of the room.

“Listen. This is Agent Hillbrook you’re talking to now. This isn’t some little game we’re trying to pull. We know where you are. You’re by the zoo. But we’re not coming after you because what’s the point? You’re probably wearing gloves to prevent finger prints and look like a normal person. Maybe wearing a baseball hat or something and look extremely nice and no one would suspect anything.” she ventured, listening to hear if he was going to gasp softly more maybe laugh. She was hoping for a gasp, meaning that he wasn’t wearing gloves, but unfortunately there was a smug little laugh she could hear for a split second. “Here’s the deal.” she continued. “We can get you half now and half tomorrow. That’s the best we can do. If you wait until tomorrow we’ll be able to get you the whole amount and follow your little instructions. Just as long as Frankie doesn’t get hurt.”

They all could hear Luke struggling against the 4 techs that were pulling him out back and silence on the other end of the phone.

It was quiet for at least 2 minutes straight and she sent a confused look to the one remaining tech who was doing the tracking. He simply shrugged his shoulders and shook his had, indicating that the call wasn’t dropped and it was still going.

“Fine.” they suddenly heard the man say, causing all the remaining people in the room to jump slightly. “Thursday night, my money needs to be in a black duffel bag and put it in the garbage can that’s across the way from the phone booth. Glad we could get this moving along. As long as you play by rules, no one will get hurt. Pleasure doing business with you Miss Hillbrook. I’ll be talking to you soon.” and with that, he hung up.

She let out a heavy sigh, knowing that she was going to be getting a talking to from Luke as soon as he was allowed to yell at her with no one around. Despite that fact that they both knew that he would’ve talked to him, nothing would have happened except for the man getting upset and hanging up on them. And that wouldn’t have been very good.

“Can I ask you something?” Joe voiced up a few second later when all eyes were on Michelle. She simply nodded her head and sent him a welcoming smile for him to continue.

“Why didn’t we just give him half now and half later? Why didn’t he take that instead of waiting until tomorrow?” he asked. “And we still don’t know if Frankie is ok.”

“First off…Frankie is fine. He wouldn’t have sounded so cool and smooth if he had killed him already. Plus he’s after the money. This guy isn’t a killer. He’s a thief. And he probably knew that we would track the money if we gave him half now and half later. He’s smart too which is what really sucks. He’ll probably call us tomorrow and change the money drop to someplace else since he’ll know we’ll have people patrolling that area for the longest time to find hiding spots for us when he comes to pick up the money.” she finished.

“Michelle Christine Hillbrook!” they heard Luke’s voice echo through the kitchen. “You have got A LOT of explaining to do!”

Once he entered the room and saw the little smirk that was on her face he looked at her somewhat confused.

“What are you smiling about?” he yelled at her when all she did was keep smiling.

“We got a time and place to drop off the money. He said he’d wait until tomorrow for it. Which means that we have more time to catch him before we have to drop off the money.”

A phone went off right after she finished saying that and everyone started to frantically look at all the phones that were on the table before they realized that it was Michelle’s phone.

“Heather, what you got for me?” she asked while sticking up one of her index fingers to indicate that she would be one minute and let the room to go into the kitchen to get some privacy.

“Well, nothing from the watch. Just a fake Rolex so it’s not like anyone’s going to be looking for it. But the tire treads…” she trailed off and Michelle could feel her body warm up with excitement from hearing that small bit of information.

“Well, their a match to a 215/75R15 tire.” she heard Heathers voice say and a smile came onto her face.

“And please tell me that those kind of tires correspond with a white van.” Michelle said to her, her hope rising that they could have a lead in the case.

“Well I wouldn’t know anything about a white van, but they normally are put on Subaru Outback’s, AP trucks, some jeeps for off-roading and vans. You want me to run it through the database to see what kind of vans they go on?” she asked after informing Michelle of the extent that she knew about the tire tread.

“Please and Thank You!” and with that Michelle hung up, smile on her face and entered the living room, sad looks on everyone’s. Even Luke’s whose was just radiating anger for no later than 5 minutes ago.

“What’s going on?” Michelle simply asked and they all turned towards the muted TV screen as if that would explain it.

A small picture of Frankie was on the screen before a little picture of their family that was taken recently was shown as well.

The public now knew.

How they knew…they didn’t know. But they knew and it was only going to make this investigation more difficult since people would be sending the family things for their condolences and calling them all the time.

Right when something good happens, something horrible is there to make you forget about it.