The Child Thief

PART I

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Peter

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Chapter One

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Child Thief
In a small corner of Prospect Park, in the borough of
Brooklyn, New York, a thief lay hidden in the trees. This thief wasn’t
searching for an unattended purse, cell phone, or camera. This thief was
looking for a child.
In the dusk of that early-autumn day, the child thief peered out from the
shadows and falling leaves to watch the children play. The children scaled
the giant green turtle, slid down the bright yellow slide, laughed, yelled,
teased, and chased one another round and round. But the child thief wasn’t
interested in these happy faces. He wasn’t looking to steal just any child. He
was particular. He was looking for the sad face, the loner…a lost child. And
the older the better, preferably a child of thirteen or fourteen, for older
children were stronger, had better stamina, tended to stay alive longer.
The thief knew Mother Luck had smiled on him with the girl. She’d
been a good catch, too bad about her father. He smiled, remembering the
funny face the man had made as the knife slipped into his chest. But where
was Mother Luck now? He’d been hunting for two days. Nothing. He’d
come close with a boy last night, but close wasn’t good enough. Grimacing,
the thief reminded himself that he had to take it slow, had to make friends
with them first, gain their trust, because you couldn’t steal a child without
their trust.
Maybe Mother Luck would be with him tonight. The child thief had
found city parks to be good hunting grounds. Strays and runaways often
camped among the bushes and used the public restrooms to wash, and they
were always looking for friends.
As the sun slid slowly behind the cityscape, the shadows crept in—and
so did the thief, biding his time, waiting for the falling darkness to sort the
children out.