Vanished

Bar

"Another round," Ron shouted to the bartender, and the rest of my coworkers cheered like they thought this was the best night of their lives. They'd already had quite a lot to drink but were still going strong. Part of me groaned at their thoughtlessness and part of me wished I could be like that. All relaxed and having fun.

But that wasn't my life.

Me and my brother were back to being on high alert. After us yelling and screaming in the kitchen last week, we'd gotten our shit together and started to plan.

Since we knew it was important to change our habits, I had changed as many of my routines as I could think of over the past week. And that was one of the reasons I went out to the bar with the guys after work. The other reason was that I could really use a couple of beers.

The week that had followed my dad's last text had been crazy. My brother had spent every waking hour in front of his large screens searching for any and all things he could think of, with no success.

I cleaned out my closet of things I never wore and organized things, so it would be easy to pack whenever we'd need to. I also went to the barber and got a buzz cut and shaved my face so it was completely bare. It had been a long time since my hair was that short and it was weird to look at myself in the mirror at first. I looked younger without the three-day scruffiness on my face. And I felt a bit more vulnerable, too.

We hadn't made it up to Maine again yet, but we went to New Hampshire and bought a new car. Well, it was a used one, similar to what we had. We didn't even spend much money since we traded in our old car, which was only a year older.

The new car was a silver colored SUV, instead of the old black one we had. There was nothing special about the new one, which was exactly why we got it. Just something common enough that it wouldn't stand out.

The bar I was at was a block away from the office building. They had some decent happy hour specials, and Ron loved their wings. I'd been there a couple of times before and knew the layout. There was both a side exit and one through the kitchen in the back. Not that I thought it would come to that, but it was good to be prepared. Especially now when things were up in the air and we didn't know what we were dealing with.

I had called my brother to let him know I'd be late because I was stopping at the bar. His only response had been "good."

"Do you need anything? Do you want to come?"

"No. I'm still going through all the surveillance videos from last week, and I think I might have found one thing, but I'm not sure."

"What?" I asked eagerly.

"It's not much, so don't get excited," he warned, but that was already too late.

"There's this dark sedan," he continued. "The driver always parks it on the street in front of Winslow's Restaurant."