My Mother Paid A Bus Driver $50,000 To Kidnap Me — But She Made One Fatal Mistake
Part 1
The pneumatic hiss of the bus doors closing usually meant I was five minutes away from home.
Craig, our regular driver, pulled the lever and the heavy glass panels sealed shut.
I stared out the smeared window at the empty sidewalk.
The last kid on the route had just hopped off at the corner of Elm and Maple.
It was just Craig and me left inside the hollow yellow tube.
I shifted my backpack onto my shoulder, waiting for the familiar right turn toward my neighborhood.
Craig kept his foot on the gas and sailed straight past the intersection.
I figured there was roadwork blocking the main street.
My gaze drifted back to the passing houses, expecting a quick detour.
We crossed another intersection that would have taken me home.
“Hey, you missed the turn,” I called out from the middle rows.
Craig didn’t glance up at the rearview mirror.
He kept his hands loose on the massive steering wheel.
I stood up, keeping my balance as the bus lumbered down an unfamiliar commercial strip.
“Craig, my stop is back that way.”
He shifted his eyes to the mirror, meeting mine with a cold, hollow stare.
“It’s just us now,” he murmured, his voice barely rising over the engine’s roar.
“And we’ve got a long drive ahead.”
A chill crawled up my spine.
I marched down the rubber-matted aisle, gripping the backs of the green vinyl seats.
“What are you talking about?”
He tapped the turn signal and veered onto a narrow, tree-lined road I didn’t recognize.
“There’s construction on your street,” he said, offering a tight, emotionless smile.
“Taking a detour today.”
I pulled my phone from my jacket pocket to text my dad, Brian.
The screen showed zero bars of service.
A hollow laugh echoed from the driver’s seat.
“That won’t work out here,” Craig muttered.
“Don’t worry about your dad.”
“He won’t notice you’re gone until his shift ends at ten o’clock.”
My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit.
Brian worked the loading dock across town, and nobody knew his schedule except family.
I gripped the metal pole behind the driver’s partition.
“How do you know my dad’s schedule?”
Craig’s smile widened, revealing slightly yellowed teeth.
“I know everything about your family.”
“I know your little sister Megan gets picked up from daycare at three-thirty.”
The mention of my sister sent pure panic coursing through my veins.
I demanded he leave Megan out of this and open the doors immediately.
Craig kept his gaze fixed on the asphalt rolling beneath us.
“Megan is such a sweet kid,” he mused, drumming his thumbs on the wheel.
“So trusting.”
I lunged past him toward the red emergency lever above the main doors.
Craig’s thick arm shot out, his calloused fingers wrapping around my wrist like a vice.
He shoved me backward with a brutal force that sent me tumbling into the front row of seats.
My shoulder slammed into the metal frame, knocking the breath from my lungs.
“Try that again and you’ll regret it,” he growled, the fake friendliness entirely gone from his tone.
I scrambled up, pressing my back against the vibrating window.
We were plunging deeper into an abandoned industrial district.
Craig adjusted his mirrors and asked if I remembered my old bedroom at my mother’s house.
He specifically mentioned the glow-in-the-dark stars pasted to the ceiling.
Nausea washed over me.
I hadn’t seen Brenda in two years.
A judge had signed a strict restraining order forbidding her from coming anywhere near us.
“Your mom never forgot about you,” Craig continued, his tone eerily conversational.
“She talks about you and Megan all the time.”
He accurately described Megan’s favorite stuffed animal, a ratty purple elephant she carried everywhere.
He even knew Brian ordered pepperoni pizza on Friday nights because he was too exhausted to cook.
This stranger had been watching us from the shadows for months.
I glanced over my shoulder through the dusty rear window of the bus.
A silver sedan had been tailing us at a steady distance.
Craig had his side window cracked to let in a sliver of air.
I thrust my hand through the narrow gap, waving frantically at the car behind us.
I screamed for help, begging whoever was driving to dial 911.
Craig’s shoulders shook as a dark chuckle filled the cabin.
“She’s not going to help you, kid.”
“Who do you think is paying me fifty thousand dollars for this little family reunion?”
I twisted my head back toward the trailing vehicle.
The sun shifted, illuminating the driver’s seat of the sedan.
Brenda was behind the wheel.
My mother locked eyes with me and offered a cheerful, enthusiastic wave, completely detached from reality.
Then my gaze dropped to the back seat of her car.
A tiny figure sat strapped in, clutching a familiar purple elephant.
They already had my sister.
I stared at the tiny figure in the back seat holding a purple elephant, realizing my mother had already stolen my sister, and we were heading somewhere nobody would ever find us.
