Chapter 3: The Trail of Broken Homes
Over the next three days, Mia and the Denver police department tracked Ryan’s movements across the city. They found him at a bus station in downtown Denver, but he’d escaped through a back exit before they could arrest him. They found his backpack at a laundromat, filled with clean clothes, a drawing pad, and a stack of fake IDs, all with different names and addresses. They also found a handwritten journal, filled with entries about his foster homes, all of them ending with the same phrase: “Another one gone.”
Mia read the journal cover to cover, her heart breaking as she learned about Ryan’s past. He’d been born to a single mother who’d died in a car crash when he was four years old, and he’d spent the next six years in a group home, before being placed in his first foster home. His first foster mom had abused him, hitting him and locking him in his room for days at a time, and he’d run away when he was 10 years old, living on the streets for six months before being taken back into the system.
After that, he’d been placed in 12 different foster homes, all of them either abusive or neglectful, and he’d started to feel like no one would ever love him, that the only way to get attention was to hurt himself or other kids. “If I make them sad, they’ll notice me,” he’d written in his journal. “If I make them scared, they’ll remember me.”
Mia showed the journal to Lisa, who cried as she read it. “I had no idea,” she said. “I thought he was just a quiet kid, but he was hurting so much. I should have seen it.”
Mia put a hand on her shoulder. “You couldn’t have known,” she said. “Ryan’s a master at hiding his pain. But we’re going to find him, and we’re going to get him the help he needs.”
They tracked Ryan to a small apartment in a run-down neighborhood on the east side of Denver, and they set up a stakeout, waiting for him to come home. At 10 p.m., they saw him walk through the front door, his backpack slung over his shoulder, and they rushed in, arresting him before he could run away. He didn’t resist, just looked at Mia with a quiet, sad smile. “You found me,” he said.
They took him to the police station, where he confessed to causing all four of the collapses, including the one in Colorado Springs. “I didn’t mean to hurt them,” he said, his voice breaking. “I just wanted them to notice me. I wanted someone to care about me.”
Mia sat across from him, her voice soft. “I know you’re hurting,” she said. “But hurting other kids isn’t the way to get attention. There are people who care about you. We can help you.”
Ryan looked up at her, his eyes filled with tears. “Will you?” he asked. “Will you actually help me?”
Mia nodded. “Yes,” she said. “But you have to be willing to work with us. You have to get the help you need.”
May you like
Ryan nodded, and he told her everything he knew about his past, about the abuse he’d suffered, about the way he’d started to hurt other kids to get attention. Mia listened, her heart breaking, and she knew that she was going to do everything she could to help him, to make sure that he never hurt anyone else again.
