Hunter’s Choice: A Stolen Kidnapping

A phone call from a stepsister with whom he hasn’t had contact for almost twenty years suddenly entangles Peter Graves in a faked kidnapping plot.

While Peter is reluctant to get involved, his stepsister’s death that very same evening leaves him as the only person who knows where the kidnapped child is hidden. Another problem is that the boy, Hunter Driscoll, is non-verbal. Though not deaf, Hunter communicates by signing or writing notes.

Not wanting to call the police in case it is assumed that he was involved in the kidnapping, Peter goes to where Hunter is locked away. Peter offers him the choice of going to his father’s apartment in the city, or to his mother, where he normally lives. Hunter, however, vetoes both choices.

He explains that his parents are never home, he is in the full-time care of a nanny, and that he would rather go to his grandmother, who was his first nanny until the age of seven. He hasn’t seen her in two years. Hunter also demands that he doesn’t ever want his parents to know where he has gone.

Eventually, Peter decides to accede to the boy’s request, even though the grandparents now live hundreds of miles away. Such an undertaking will also be difficult because Hunter’s picture is in the news.