Because, Brett... [BxB]

Chapter 21: 24 Hours Apart

Seth

Eight days. He's been gone for eight godforsaken days.

The first twenty-four hours were the worst though. After Alice had called me Tuesday morning asking if Brett had stayed over and if he was okay because he hadn't been answering his phone all night, it didn't take us too long to figure out he was missing. We had first checked anywhere Alice thought plausible — it being made very clear to me that she had no idea of the situation he was in — before we hightailed it down to the police station.

No matter how much we pleaded with the officers, they wouldn't file a missing person report until at least twenty-four hours after the last sighting, which was by his boss at 1 AM that morning.

As well as anyone else, I knew that if he wasn't already long gone, he would be after twenty-four hours. It's as though the law purposefully gives the criminals a head-start. I'm no detective, no Sherlock Homes, I don't even know where I would've begun if I'd gone out on my own to search for him. All I could do was wait, with my head in my hands, in a crowded police station as I imagined all the horrible outcomes that could befall Brett.

Had his stalker finally made a move? Did he want to kill him? Did he want to rape him? Would he sell him into human trafficking?

Each sounded as sickening as the next.

When it reached late that night and office hours were closed, the officers tried to usher us out. I'd told them that I wouldn't leave, not until they filed the report and started looking. Predictably, they were frustrated and just wanted to go home. Maybe it was unfair of me to be so insistent. They were only following protocol, and in their shoes, I probably would've done the same. But I wasn't in their shoes. I was standing angry and tired on my own two feet, and I couldn't understand why they couldn't comprehend that my boyfriend — Alice's brother — had likely been kidnapped. I was grief-stricken.

I'm aware that Alice had tried to calm me, to hold me back as I threatened the policeman before me to just goddamn look. When I was shot down again and told to go home and cool off before returning the next morning, I lost my head. I was always so careful to make sure I didn't lose control. I had been an angry teenager, brought up in a broken home by a father who never had enough time or money for me. And that's what I could feel erupting from within me then. All my withheld emotions from my days of being ignored were exploding like Vesuvius, clouding my senses in the ash of the past, and I did the only thing I knew would force them to take notice of me. To take notice of my pain and for once just fucking do something about it.

I hit him.

My knuckles were consumed in a glorious sting as the man stumbled back with a hand over his gushing nose. For those few seconds, I was in heaven. Until suddenly, I felt a body colliding with mine as one of his colleagues shoved me into a wall face first. I remember the burning hiss on his tongue as he clicked cuffs in place around my wrists: "Fine. If it means that much to you, you can stay here tonight."

With that, I was led to the back, handcuffs removed and shoved into a holding cell to spend the night for 'assault'. Alice went home presumably and I tried to make myself as comfortable as I could with what I had to work with. It didn't really matter to me though. Not when my head cleared and I remembered why I was in the police station to begin with. Not when I realised Brett could be in far worse conditions.

That next morning, they let me go without charges. Alice returned with no news of Brett's whereabouts and the officers finally filed the report, saying that it would be looked into and the investigation would be in good hands.

It's common knowledge that it's the first forty-eight hours that count after a disappearance and I couldn't help but seethe in anger due to the fact that they had wasted the first thirty or so of those.