Never Look Back

Chapter Three

Ethan

After the whole McDonalds incident happened, Sammantha has been a lot more talkative. Why she is, I do not know. My theories are: either she got smart and is trying to charm me into letting her go or she is crazy, and convinced herself she was on a road trip with a nice young man. Whichever one, she was definitely blocking out bits and parts. And I think she was just happy that I untied her arms. We were discussing our chances on surviving the zombie apocalypse when she suddenly opened my glovebox and asked, "Ooh, what's in here?"

"Agh! Don't! I have private stuff in there!" I yelled trying to shut it without causing a wreck

It was too late. Sammantha pulled out a little black leather book, and started going through it. Of course, out of all the little black books in existence, mine just happened to be a certain leather picture book my brother slipped in there the day before he went to jail.

"Oh look, it's a little baby Ethan sitting in his mommy's lap!" Sammantha teased as she pointed to the only picture on that page

Just to be nice, I looked over, expecting to see a very embarrassing photo, but what I saw surprised me.

"That's not me," I explained, "I think that was our neighbor's son."

"Wait a second," said Sammantha, her tone turning serious, "I think that's Marcus."

"What?"

Jade

"So did you know him personally or something?" I asked Ashton as we walked into Momma Mayes

I know I said I wasn't going to take the bait, but this involves my dad, so now I can't leave until I get answers. I was surprised the place was even open since it was so late. The smell of the restaurant smelled like my grandma's kitchen, filled with the nostalgic scent of homemade food. I couldn't help, but think about how much I missed her when an overly cheerful worker, with a name tag that read: Hi my name is Sadie, approached us.

"Welcome to Momma Mayes! Sit wherever you like." She said right before running over to another table to give them their receipt

We sat at a corner booth near the back, Ashton making sure we avoid any cameras. I'm still a kidnapped person, though I highly doubt anyone is looking for me. I don't really have what one would call a family anymore. After my dad left, my sister and I had to move in with our abusive uncle, who wasn't even our real uncle. Just a 'friend' of Dads. He was a heavy drinker, so when he got drunk, which was pretty much every day, he would get extremely angry and you know what happens after that. Grace, my sister, usually took the heat his rage, but other nights, if he could catch her, he would throw her in the closet and lock her in. Then, he would let his frustrations out on me, once he found me. See, every night before our uncle got home, Grace would make me hide somewheres so he couldn't find me, but as time went on, most of our hiding places were destroyed and I starting getting more of what he called my 'share' of his hospitality.

After my twelfth birthday, Uncle Walter got himself into trouble with a extremely powerful group of people, who of which owned several gambling joints. To get him to pay, I guess they figured that if they ransomed one of his 'nieces,' he would cough it up. The whole ordeal makes me hate people. Since Grace was already nineteen and was working a full time job, they decided that I would be the easier one to capture. Of course they were successful, considering I was a little weakling that couldn't fight off a tree limb.

Walter, as expected, didn't give two hoots that I was gone, which made the scary people even angrier. Eventually, I managed to escape them by squeezing through the air vent, and crawling my way to freedom. While my living nightmare was happening, it seems Grace was having her own. I do not know what happened, but she snapped and all that lovely killing stuff happened. I always assumed that she just got tired of the years of abuse, but you can never tell. Then, that led to the CIA incident, which led to this. I just haven't made a connection yet.