I'm here (English Version)

Missing

It seemed like any other day at work, consisting of backlog of paperwork, coffee, and boring routine. It was a quiet town in its everydayness. I had brought Cerberus with me again. By now Alan had reassured himself that he could not cause any collateral damage having already personally delivered the famous laptop. It was just past lunchtime when he opened my office and told me we had a problem.
Again? As if we hadn't had enough already over the years. The rest were just neighborhood minutiae. Were they still arguing over parking spaces at the market? Was Mrs. Doe's son playing the guitar too loudly?
Instead, it was really a problem. A serious one. Mrs. Walters had arrived at the station, visibly agitated, accompanied by Lilly. Alfie had been missing since early that morning, not returning for lunch, and with him was little Marie, the neighbors' daughter. Alfie was now 17 years old and had grown into a big, tall, strong boy. He was a handsome boy, too. Too bad he had remained a child mentally. Alfie was self-sufficient in his basics. But he still always needed attention. He was able to do small chores, and each of us would take turns giving him something to do to keep him busy and not leave him alone. There were those who would get help carrying groceries, those who would ask him for help with wood, small things but important to him.  He hardly ever spoke; he had nonverbal communication made up of glances and gestures. Except with Marie. That chatty, sunny little six-year-old girl had broken through into his world and no one could explain how or why. He spoke only to her and answered only to her. And yes, the fact that it had been several hours since they had last seen them was a big deal.

When they had not returned they had immediately begun to worry. They had looked for them in the surroundings, calling them loudly. Old Gray had looked in all the places they used to go to play. He had gone as far as the lake although it was definitely far for a child Marie's age. Lilly had also sent Dan to look for them but they had solved nothing.
" -Hailey we need to find them before nightfall, it's getting cold and it will be dark soon, I'll organize the search teams right away-" I blessed the fact that I had Cerberus with me. He was a search dog and although of a certain age could probably have helped us. When I went outside Alan had already divided us into groups.

"-Hailey offered to help, you know how this town is, word gets around. They are still officers, they can be useful to us even if they don't know the place. She is already in my group. You have to accept her help even if you don't like her-" Alan said, pointing with a nod of his head to what I considered my worst enemy until two minutes before. I looked at him and thought that as long as I could find Alfie and Marie before the icy night ahead I would cooperate even with the devil if necessary.  And Cerberus also seemed to have realized that this was an important matter. He had gone into research mode as if he had never stopped working, amazingly ceasing to want to kill the male world. We went to the Motel and from there began to move farther and farther away.

" - Agent Bishop, could they have gotten away on a vehicle?" asked blue eyes, as we pushed into the woods calling Marie loudly. I realized at that moment that I did not know her name at all.

"-I don't think so, but I sincerely hope not. Because in the case they could be anywhere. And with anyone-"
A shiver ran down my spine as the image of the little girl in the trunk came back to me.
I banished that thought immediately.
We had to find them, and quickly, too.

"-Could he have hurt the little girl? I heard he is a boy with problems-" . I glared at him and growled back the answer.

"-You, don't you dare even think such a thing about Alfie-" .

"-Well, let's make progress, let's call each other by your name-" he said, smiling in a funny attempt to defuse the tension.
We weren't going to get anywhere if we didn't start cooperating. I smiled nervously at him. He was right, this was no time to get into an argument.
Old Gray suddenly remembered that that morning the supplier's pickup truck, had unloaded the drinks for that week at the Motel. He was then going to the next town to finish the deliveries. He would pass by the waterfalls and then go on. Yes, those waterfalls. Those damn waterfalls.
"-You, come with me.-" I ordered in a tone that admitted no blue-eyed reply after leaving the others to search the surroundings again. I looked for Alan, told him I had to check something, and as he always did for a long time now, he let me follow my intuition without asking for further explanation. Marie was always talking about the carriage ride, I was sure I had heard it several times in her conversations with Alfie. I left Cerberus to Agent Garcia, who despite being a perfect stranger as a female being had entered the good graces of His Majesty King of the Underworld in two seconds. I could not risk the head of blue eyes by having the dog loose in the car. She made a puzzled face but had no choice when I placed the leash in her hands and realized that protesting would not help.
We got into the car and headed in the direction of the falls. I had not been up there since. I had never felt ready to face it but this time there was no time for my existential problems.
All along the way blue eyes had not spoken. He had kept his gaze fixed on the window the whole time and had never spoken to me again. I had the feeling that he was avoiding looking at me. He was tormenting his tapered fingers by snapping them a little like pianists did before playing. He was nervous, I could see it but I didn't understand why. After all, I had stopped wanting to kill him and the dog was not there.

We then arrived at the walk past the open gate and here it would last a little longer. I remembered again when we heard the sound of the car and Hannah's crying. At that time we were convinced it was Michael. I tried to make some small talk to chase away those thoughts but got little to nothing. He was definitely not a talker, barely responding and often evading direct questions. He had lost his provocative streak. He was probably focused on looking for traces of Alfie. We arrived at the end of the trail with bated breath, and what I saw scared the hell out of me. And we arrived there. At the place of my worst nightmares. The entrance to the mine was open but I didn't know if it had always been like that lately. I knew I didn't want to go in but I had to look for Alfie and the baby. Yet despite this I could no longer coordinate a step forward. I had never gone in there. Never. And it was the last place I wanted to look. I was trembling and not even trying to hide it from my enemy. I couldn't have even if I had wanted to.
"Hailey," she called, resting a hand on mine and drawing my attention back. It was strange to me that she remembered my name but surely she had heard Alan call me just before. I had other things on my mind. He was handing me something. It was Alfie's toy car. The original one had been thrown away thanks to Thomas. Poor Alfie, how he had cried when Richy had given him that ugly mug in return. But some time later Jessy, when she offered to stay and work there, putting the warehouse back in order had found an identical one and had made Alfie happy again. I realized that all I could do was face one of my inner monsters. And I was afraid.

"-Hailey we found Marie. She was asleep inside the house of courage. She's a little cold but she's fine. Actually Cerberus found her. You can be proud of him-"
Alan's voice from the radio with the news of the child's discovery restored the air in my lungs.
You fleecy old devil, you've earned yourself a pack of steaks!

"-She said she and Alfie argued over which of the two was the braver. So she headed here alone but she has no idea where he is. We have to find him Hailey, he's not here. Where are you?"
I picked up the radio by unhooking it from my uniform.
"-Alan I'm at the mine. If I don't contact you in an hour send someone. We won't be able to communicate inside. I'm shutting down now.- "
I closed the communication before he could object. He knew what the place meant to me and would have told me to wait for him. But there was no time, really no time. I had to find Alfie.
I left the radio just outside the entrance resting on the ground so they would know, in case something happened, which way we had entered. But I hoped I didn't need it.

"-I think we should go in now. But I can do it myself if you don't feel up to it-"

I regained my bravado. Getting sympathy from him was out of the question. My story was all over the news ten years earlier, surely he knew it too.
"-I'm not feeling it? But if you're not even from here! You've only been here a few days, where do you want to go alone, I have to save you too.
You come from the city, it's a mine, what do you know about what it's like over there- "
I did know. Thanks to the pictures Jake sent me that night. And it was a dark, horrible place. Inside it, equally horrible things had happened. He and Richy had found a horrible death.

"-More than you think.-" he whispered as he moved forward confidently past the gate before me.