Finding Beauty (Rewrite)

Chapter 16

~The Hunter~ 

"You said it yourself!" Maris turned her old Chromebook around to show him the screen. It displayed a list of google search results with 'the Beast' highlighted. There were articles, blogs, pictures, YouTube videos, and even fan pages on different social media platforms. "You think Beth is still with the Beast so we should stick with the cops old method - look for the Beast as a way to find her. There's a lot more to work with that way." 

"Sounds like a plan." 

The two of them spent the next couple of days in Beth's kitchen chugging coffee to keep them vigilant over their respective screens. The only sound coming from the apartment was the buzz or whirling of the coffee machine and the tapping of laptop keys. 

Grayson circled some phrases written down in his composition notebook. Then he dropped the red pen against the table. It rolled over to Maris's side and she looked up at him through her glasses. 

"He hardly ever goes a week without being spotted somewhere - nonetheless without pursuing a criminal." He gripped the sides of his head and squeezed his eyes shut. 

He heard the tall brunette shuffle beside him and exchange his cup of coffee with the tea she had been brewing. 

"That's changed ever since he took Beth. It can be an encouraging sign that he still has her - that the cops are wrong." She pulled up a chair closer to him and he took the mug from her. 

"I suppose." At this point, nothing felt like a good sign. Every piece of information he found made him more uneasy about the state he would find Bethany in. 

That night Grayson had fallen asleep right there. Maris had tapped out around midnight and urged him to go home to rest or even to take a nap on the couch. He powered through the heaviness of his eyes, the thumping of his head, and the harsh stirring in his stomach for another four hours before crashing. He woke up with the imprint of keys on his face and a blanket wrapped across his shoulders. 

That morning, Maris took him to breakfast to ensure he had something to eat. When they came back to the apartment, they ran into Beth's neighbors. Mr.Cunningham, his wife, and their children Elizabeth and Tony were getting off the moldy elevator. The two kids were bundled up like it was the middle of winter in Alaska. Their scarves were almost pulled up to their eyes - that probably contributed to why they mistook Maris for her cousin. 

"Bethany?!" Tony threw his head back to peer up at her. 

Elizabeth's lips quivered under her scarf. Her eyes watered only a second after they were lit like a Christmas tree. "That's not Bethany." 

Grayson's heart sunk deeper into his chest. "This is Maris. She's Bethany's cousin." 

Maris gave the kids a sad wave. 

"Nice to meet you. I'm really sorry about Bethany," Mr.Cunningham offered. 

Mrs.Cunningham pulled her kids against her leg and patted their cheeks. "Yes. We miss her a lot! She wasn't just a babysitter to us. We always kind of thought of her as our daughter who lived next door." 

Grayson faintly remembered the couple threatening to report Mrs.Rodrieguez to child protective services when she was younger. He remembered Beth telling him she had begged them not to for fear of being thrown in the system. He knew the couple would have taken her in had they had the money to. 

"Thanks." 

The family continued out the hallway. Tony's voice slipped through the elevator door as it closed behind them. 

"Mommy, when is Bethany coming back?" 

He wished he could give the boy a solid answer. 

For the next day, Grayson could tell Maris was trying to get him to stop researching. She would call breaks every hour or try to get him distracted by asking him about school or his family. It worked sometimes, when he felt really exhausted or stressed. 

She had a point though. The only thing they could really do was speculate based on information open to the general public. He himself felt stupid for believing they could pull this off. 'A college sophomore and a twenty - something solve a kidnapping with Google as their only aid' wasn't a convincing newspaper headline. Did he really think it could happen? 

"Hey . . . Can I ask you something?" 

"Go ahead." 

Maris had somehow convinced Grayson to come out of the kitchen and flip through a family album that had been stuffed under the sofa. There were a lot of pictures of Bethany as a toddler into her tween years. That's when all the photographic evidence of her existence stopped. Mrs.Rodriguez became too 'occupied' to document her daughters' life. 

Maris asked if he had anything recent so he took out his phone to show her what little he had. A picture of Bethany balancing a stack of books on her head, one of her from her scholarship award ceremony, and one of the two of them fake chest bumping after a football game. 

"You and Beth . . . are you two together?" 

He paused his scrolling and placed his phone down on his lap. "What do you mean?" 

"Were you two in a relationship?" He stared at the picture of him and Beth for a long moment, until the floor moaned under Maris's shifting. 

"No," he said finally. Why had it taken him so long to answer? "We're friends." 

"Did you . . . Did you ever want to be more?" 

He thought back to the week leading up to Bethany's kidnapping. He remembered his friend Carter telling him one of the guys was interested in Beth and feeling threatened. He remembered asking his dad how he knew he was in love with his mom - and he remembered his knowing smile that made Grayson regret ever bringing it up. He even remembered starting to ask Bethany on a date the day he last saw her but getting cut off. 

"Yeah. I did." 

Perhaps Grayson had danced around his feelings for longer than he needed to but he felt like the situation was delicate. He loved Bethany as a friend for years. Therefore, he felt justified in taking time to make sure his romantic feelings wouldn't undue all of it. He knew for certain that the next time he saw Beth he would come clean. 

Grayson decided it would be rude if he didn't get out of Maris's hair - at least for a little while. Besides, his parents had called him several times to complain about him being out all the time. Although he was in college now, they made it clear that while he lived under their roof, he had to abide by their rules - one of them being keeping them in the loop about where he was. 

His father welcomed him home with some leftover dish his grandmother had made. He placed it in a bowl and microwaved it with all the care of a chef preparing a meal. He went as far as to sit down with him and make small talk - which he hated. It wasn't until Grayson's mother gave him a scowl for a greeting as she passed through the kitchen that it occurred to him that something was wrong. He didn't know what. 

His bedroom was a mess and it wasn't when he was last there. Jason sat in the middle of it, arms crossed and a pout on his face. "She's not Beth." 

"What?" 

"That girl you spend all your time with!" he shouted. "She's not Beth." 

He placed his book bag on the floor and tossed his jacket. "I know that. No one will ever be like Beth or ever compare to her." 

"So why are you with her all the time? I miss you." 

He swallowed a lump in his throat. 

"I miss Beth and I miss you." 

As he crouched down next to his brother, he could see his eyes were red and puffy. "I'm sorry, Jay. I didn't know." 

"Shut up!" 

"I'm sorry." 

He sat beside his brother on the bedroom floor until he stopped sniffling and his eyes were no longer swollen. 

"I'm really sorry."