Last Seen: A gripping edge-of-your-seat thriller that you won’t be able to put down

They didn’t.

Cal and Faith’s search of the Chambers had proven to be fruitless.

“This way.” King led them to one of the exits, and the outside stairs down, returning them to the chutes to where a small group of Ultra-Fun staff had gathered.

Amid the chattering walkie-talkies, some of the staff cast looks of awkward pity at the Hudsons standing helplessly at the slides—their faces bearing small smears of stage blood. It had now been nearly half an hour since Cal and Faith had last seen Gage, yet all around them the fair kept going, people kept squealing with joy, the thrill rides kept spinning and twirling, the music kept rocking, as if nothing had changed.

But everything had changed.

Faith’s breaths started coming in gasps; her hands started shaking. “Cal, this can’t be happening, not to us!”

“Take it easy.”

“Maybe, maybe Marshall’s and Colton’s families are here and this is a big joke to scare us? That’s got to be it, right?”

“Faith, I don’t think so.”

“No. No!” Faith’s knees buckled and Cal caught her. “Gage!”

Gage couldn’t be missing, Cal thought. It couldn’t be true. Maybe it was part of some pranking TV show? He struggled to grasp it all but their futile search of the Chambers with its grotesque faces and sets was a descent into Dante’s circles of hell.

Cal felt something monstrous had raked a claw across their lives while the screams of the midway grew louder and he reached for his phone. His fingers were trembling when he pressed the numbers for 911.

“River Ridge Emergency Dispatch, what’s your emergency?”

“My son is—” Cal started but his heart was hammering in his chest and his mind was swirling with disbelief. He glanced at Faith, her anguish piercing him. He couldn’t believe this was happening. What kind of parents lose their kid? He had to stop thinking that way and stay in control.

“Sir, what’s your emergency?”

Cal gripped his cell phone with such force he nearly cracked the casing. “My son is missing.” He resumed reporting Gage’s disappearance, but for one burning instant he felt trapped in a dream.

Wake up, go to Gage’s room—you’ll see he’s there. Wake up!

But Cal didn’t wake up because he wasn’t dreaming.

5 (#ulink_a8d01f42-a484-5947-9095-0dc354016414)

Four minutes after Cal’s call, River Ridge police officers Angie Berg and Erik Ripkowski arrived at the chutes. Already briefed by their dispatcher, they wasted no time and followed procedure.

“We need to talk to you separately, folks,” said Berg, reaching for her notebook before taking Cal aside while her partner stayed with Faith.

The two officers had been close by. Today was their third shift on midway patrol, which was considered a semivacation usually involving nothing more than community relations duty. Berg had become partial to the fudge, while Ripkowski loved the Polish dogs. Up to now, their most serious call had been a woman who’d attempted to steal a fifteen-year-old girl’s phone. Turned out the woman was the intoxicated mother of the boy the girl had dumped. The woman’s husband, who was embarrassed, apologized and took his wife home.

But the Hudson call was different.

It went well beyond a midway nuisance, and of all the young officers on the River Ridge force, Berg and Ripkowski were two of the brightest.

“Take a breath, sir, start at the beginning,” Berg, her sandy hair pulled up in small bun, told Cal, her pen poised.

At this point Gage had been missing for almost forty-five minutes.

Nearby, Ripkowski, whose bodybuilder arms strained his uniform, was taking careful notes as Faith recounted to him what had taken place. At the same time the officers had requested that Vaughn King, who was watching from the distance, keep the Chambers of Dread closed and keep all staff on hand.

“We mean everybody.” Ripkowski pointed his pen. “Nobody leaves.”

After obtaining the Hudsons’ initial statements, details on Gage’s height, weight, hair and eye color, Berg and Ripkowski moved fast, making a number of transmissions on their shoulder microphones and calls on their phones, to their sergeant, and to the River Ridge Fairgrounds security and operations people.

“Do you have a recent photo of your son?” Ripkowski asked. “We need to get it circulated as soon as possible.”

Faith rummaged through her bag, seizing her phone. “Last Saturday—no, sorry, it was Sunday—Gage went to his friend Ethan Clark’s birthday party. I’ve got a picture.” She swiped through images, stopping at Gage smiling for the camera while behind him some joker, likely Marshall, was holding up two fingers bunny-ear-style above his head. “See, he’s wearing the same blue Cubs shirt. It’s got the mustard stain from his hot dog at the party. I told him to put it in the wash.” Faith was almost embarrassed. “I wanted to get the stain out but it’s his favorite shirt.”

“Okay, send it to me now.” Ripkowski held up his phone displaying his email. His phone chimed receipt of the picture after Faith, fingers shaking, typed it into her email app and sent the photo. Ripkowski then forwarded it to a number of addresses and made a call, speaking urgently to a fairgrounds person while nodding to the billboard-size TV screen suspended high above their section of the midway.

The sign was flashing with ads, selfies and images of people having fun at the fair, much like the giant screens at Times Square. There were four screens overlooking the grounds, one at pretty much every compass point.

“Here we go,” Ripkowski said.

Faith gasped when the screen suddenly went blank, then popped to life with Gage smiling down at her, the words Lost/Missing shouted above his head. Gage’s name and description appeared next to his face, in missing-person poster-style with a message urging anyone who’d seen him to call 911.

“That’s up now and will stay up on all the screens,” Ripkowski said. “I’ll send copies to you and your husband to spread the word, too.”

* * *

In the minutes that followed, Cal and Faith called the parents of Gage’s friends hoping that by some wild coincidence they were in fact also here, and maybe Gage had seen them and joined them.

“Hey, Pam, it’s Faith. This is going to sound weird, but are you guys at the fair today?”

“No, I’m home doing a wash. Dean’s with Colton at Walmart looking at fishing rods, or reels, or some man-thing. Why, what’s up?”

Faith stifled her tears, cupping her hand to her face as she spun around in the chaos, seeing Cal on his phone, hearing him speaking to their friends the Thompsons.

“Jack, any chance you, Michelle and Marshall are down here at the fair right now?” he was saying.

Those calls and the others they’d made didn’t yield Gage, but their friends, shocked by the gravity of Gage’s disappearance, began mobilizing to come to the fairgrounds to help. Cal and Faith, both ashen-faced, watched from a few yards away as the search for Gage continued widening with great speed. There was one thing that could help.

Cal called Stu Kroll, his editor at the Star-News.

“It’s Cal again—listen—”

“Hey, it’s okay, we caught it. Changed it to fifty. It’s all good.”

“No, Stu, listen. Our son’s missing down here at the River Ridge fair.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to send you his picture and information from the police—”

“The police?”