I Ran So Far Away - Complete

Chapter 5

"Just leave him," my father muttered as I fled the great room for the solace of the master bedroom. In the three days since Ana and Teddy had been taken, Escala was packed; my parents, Ana's and even my siblings staying to support me. In other circumstances, Gail would have loved it – never happier than when entertaining a crowd – but with Ana and our precious Teddy missing, the mood was far from festive.

Taylor had Ryan, Prescott and Reynolds, our core security team, working around the clock along with Welch and Barney and our two new hires for Teddy leaving no stone unturned in the search for my wife and child. Yet with every hour without a lead, my hopes faded.

The worst thing was, Ana and Teddy had been missing for at least an hour before someone raised the alarm. The last to be evacuated from that floor, by the time security checked the area, found Sawyer knocked out in the hallway, and Lorna drugged and dumped inside a pharmaceutical storeroom, the abductors and my family were long gone. My long-anticipated call to our families to announce Theodore Raymond Grey's arrival instead became a panicked early morning call to tell them my wife and son had been kidnapped. Shell-shocked, our families congregated at Escala, listening as the police briefed us on their initial findings.

With Carla already at Escala when the hospital security rang, she was the first to hear the news, waking to my distressed shouts echoing around the great room. Her sobs were audible in the background as I rang my parents. Mom and Dad agreed to come straight over with Mia, but Elliot and Kate arrived first. They lived closer, and Mom called them on her way over. Ringing Ray was the hardest phone call I'd ever made in my life. I'd promised to keep his little girl safe, yet I'd left her alone and someone had taken her along with my little boy. I'd never forgive myself if anything happened to them, and there was no way I expected Ray to forgive me either.

I'd wanted to send Charlie Tango to fetch Ray, but Taylor had rightly pointed out it might be needed to retrieve Ana and Teddy if they were located quickly. Begging Ray to wait for someone from my security team to collect him from Montesano, issuing a few choice expletives Ray declared he'd get to Seattle more quickly under his own steam and to expect him in just over an hour. Reminding him Ana would want a father to come home to, so to drive carefully, I hung up, hoping against hope that by the time Ray got here his daughter and grandson would be located.

At first, the police suggested Ana might have left the hospital of her own volition. While I appreciated they had to consider every possibility, the notion of Ana knocking out Sawyer with a fire extinguisher and fracturing his skull before absconding with our newborn just hours after a caesarian operation was preposterous. Carrick had all but exploded at the suggestion, calling Police Commissioner Andersen at home demanding his attendance at Escala despite it being five in the morning. Once the hospital security system had been accessed, and witness accounts taken, it became clear two people had abducted Ana and Teddy. Barney tried his best to enhance the blurry footage involved, but it was basically useless.

"What the fuck is the point having a security system if you can only see enough to know a crime has occurred but not who's responsible?! This is a fucking joke! If anything happens to Ana and Teddy, anything at all, and that hospital will not know what's hit them!"

Gail took Mom, Carla, Mia and Kate to Ana's library, leaving Dad, Elliot and Ray to try to calm me down.

"She could be anywhere!" I screamed at them. "Don't you get it? Anastasia could be anywhere, and I might never see her and my son again!"

"We get it," Ray snapped, only just holding onto his temper. Like me, he was a man of action and this sitting and waiting, being dribble-fed information was killing him.