Chapter 13.

 

Jon knew there was something wrong and he was driving Connie crazy with his restlessness, but he couldn’t do anything about it.

“Go home, relax, eat, get some sleep. It’ll be okay, sweetie.”

He didn’t know how she knew it was going to be okay when she didn’t know what was wrong, but maybe it was just her maternal instinct kicking in. His own mother had died of cancer more than twenty years ago, so he wasn’t really sure what maternal looked like, except for the paternal version of that, which tended to be just as omniscient but with a firmer hand.

He went home and played with the cats, and then he cooked a meal that he didn’t want to eat. For once he wished that he had a television, just so he could lose himself in watching nonsense. His laptop news-feed was all about immigrant children being taken from their parents and the President who didn’t care about anything but his own power. He couldn’t take too much of that, and turned it off before he started screaming at the computer screen.

He tried to practice some yoga, and to calm himself with Connie’s reassurance that it would be okay. He managed to almost make it work for a few hours, until she phoned him asking if Ed was there.

“Huh? Why would Ed be here?” Then something in her voice kicked his worry into high gear. “Connie? What’s going on?”

“It’s okay,” she repeated, and then she hung up, talking to someone in the background as she did.

Do not panic, do not panic, he repeated to himself. The knock on the door was somehow familiar, so he opened it, and then couldn’t close it in time. Nice polite Valerie was standing there with the man who must be nice polite Bob, and they were both wearing bullet-proof vests and carrying guns.

Okay, you can panic now, he told himself. He edged down the hall towards his own gun locker, swearing at himself for keeping the guns locked up safely. If he could get a door locked between them, maybe he could get out a window, but what if they hurt the cats? What the hell was going on?

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” That was Bob, in a deep reassuring voice, cutting him off in the hallway. “Have you talked to your Dad yet? You have to talk to your Dad. That will be him,” as the phone rang. Bob would have made a good hostage negotiator, but Jon didn’t want to be a hostage again. He’d barely made it out alive the last time.

Bob handed him the phone, and he managed to mumble something into it.

“Jon, are you alright? Are Bob and Valerie there?”

Jon sat down, and was rescued from landing on the floor only by Bob’s good reflexes and even better muscles.

“Dad? Dad!?”

“It’s okay, Jon.” Jon was really beginning to wish that people would quit telling him that, when it quite clearly wasn’t okay.

“Bob and Valerie are with a private security firm, and Ed hired them to keep an eye on you in case his brothers got really stupid, which they appear to have done.”

“Ed!?”

“It’s okay, Jon, really. Look, sit down, have a cup of tea, I’ll be there in less than half an hour.”

When Jon felt than he could stand up safely he dredged through the kitchen cupboards until he found the emergency bottle of brandy, and poured himself a careful finger, with hands that were only shaking a little bit. He looked over at Bob and Valerie – were those even their real names? – but they shook their heads. They were working.

“Can you tell me what’s going on?” he pleaded.

“We don’t have the whole picture, Jon. Best to wait until Lawrence gets here.”

“Is Ed safe?”

“Probably. They’ve got trackers on him, and a contact with ... “ Bob elbowed Valerie and she shut up.

Probably. Jon had a sudden insight into how his father must have felt when he had been captured on that mission. The bottom was falling out of his world. Myrtle appeared out of nowhere to sit on his lap, and Vine sat on the back of the sofa beside his head and glared daggers at Valerie. He’d never seen his cat look at anyone like that, and another piece fell into place.

“You kidnapped him? You kidnapped my cat!?”

“Only a little bit. I borrowed him. I wanted an excuse to meet you, Jon, and Ed said Vine was a sucker for Thai shrimp.”

Ed. Everything came back to Ed, who was probably okay. Jon sank into himself, and waited. And waited. And waited.

When he got tired of waiting he looked up at Bob and Valerie suspiciously, and tried to figure out how they had come into this.

“That’s a coincidence, you living next door and all. Did Ed hire you because you were so close?”

Bob smiled nicely at him. “Ed installed us next door when he hired our company to look out for you. Although we should thank you for not calling the cops on us.”

“Why would I have ... oh. Seriously? Are you joking? Just because you’re black?”

Bob shrugged. “There are places it’s handier to be black, but up-scale white neighborhoods aren’t one of them. That’s part of the reason Val wanted an excuse to meet you early on in the game, just so we didn’t scare you.”

Jon shuddered. “Until just now, you mean.”

The conversation petered out until there was a knock on the door. Everyone froze, but the voice was blessedly familiar.

“Lawrence Sanderson.”

Jon moved to the door but Valerie held him back. Bob stood off to one side of the door and unlocked it. Jon’s father surprised him by opening the door and then taking a step in with his hands in the air.

“Thank you, sir,“ Bob said politely. “You carrying?”

“Just the one, the rest are still in my bag.” He gestured behind him, while carefully opening his jacket.

Bob patted him down and checked the gun in the shoulder holster, and Lawrence didn’t seem offended. Jon thought he actually looked pleased. Valerie frisked the bag, and looked impressed by the contents, and Jon didn’t think it was the underwear.

Lawrence saw the look on Jon’s face, and smiled.

“They’re professionals, son. I would have been worried if they’d done it any other way.”

The niceties over with, Jon was in his father’s arms and fighting back an urge to cry. He was twenty-nine, for heaven’s sakes.

“It’s okay, son. I love you, do I tell you that often enough?”

“Do I tell you, Dad?”

Fortunately before it got too mushy there was another knock on the door, and Jon recognized Connie’s voice.

“You’d better let her in, she probably brought food.”

Connie had brought food, and for a minute there Jon thought the pot was going to be used as a weapon. She was not as amenable to being searched as Lawrence had been, and the two teenagers with her went ballistic when they thought their mother was being attacked. It took the collective calmness of Valerie and his Dad to get everyone settled down, with Connie and her sons trying to defend each other.  Bob had the sense to keep out of the way, and became invisible against the wall, standing guard until things settled down.

Jon found that this time he was the one offering assurances that it was going to be okay, while his Dad got them seated and offered Connie a shot glass of the brandy. She tossed it back, and then sat rocking back and forth until she regained her composure.

“I’m sorry, it just brought back memories ...”

“Senora, I am so sorry you had to walk into that. It was thoughtless of us.” Lawrence apologized. “Your beautiful accent – you are from southern Guatemala? Antigua? That area is famous for the strength and beauty of its women.”

Jon stared at his father with astonishment. He’d never seen this side of his dad before, but Lawrence wasn’t joking around. He was staring at Connie with admiration, and the boys were staring at him the same way. Their mother was not an easy woman to calm down once she got on a roll, and they’d never seen anyone with the nerve to offer her a shot before. They looked thoughtfully at the glass and the bottle that was still on the counter, and Lawrence smiled gently at them. They sank back down on the sofa.

“Oh, I brought food ...”

“And I put it on my counter. I know how good your cooking is, and I didn’t want to lose any of it.” Jon smiled at her.

Everyone took a few deep breaths, and Jon took a mental inventory of everyone there. “Who knows what’s going on, or at least has the biggest picture? Where’s Ed?”

There was a whine in that, he knew. He tried not to sound desperate, but didn’t succeed. That was his Ed, and he wanted him back, no matter what it took or what it cost.

The phone rang, right on cue. Bob picked it up, shaking his head at the old-fashioned design, and hit speaker-phone as he gave it to Jon. Jon connected, holding on with both hands, shaking.

“Hello?”

“Jon? Captain Gordon Langstrom here. We need to talk, son. You have others with you already?“

His father gently took the receiver away from him, and gave Gord the roll call.  “Are you the one we’re looking for, who can tell us what’s going on here?”

“I am, and best I do it in person, I think.”

Jon swayed on his feet, and his father grabbed him. “Bad news?”

“Oh, shit, no, not that way. Sorry. Hug your boy, tell him to breathe. I’ll be there in fifteen, alright? I’m told I can’t work this case, I’m too close to it, but they’re crazy if they think I’ll stay out of it. I love that boy like a son.”

The next knock on the door announced the arrival of Captain Langstrom and Detective Manuel Rodriguez. At Bob’s polite request, they both came through the door with their hands up and holding their badges out. Bob checked those, and nodded at the holstered guns they flipped their jackets open to reveal.

“I have a hold-out, too, in the back”, Mani offered, and Gord glared at him.

The tension was relieved by Connie crying “Mani!”, and throwing herself at him. “Baby, you are involved in this?”

“I’ve been working protection for Ed, ma’am, although doing a lousy job by the looks of it. He was supposed to meet me this evening but didn’t show.”

Gord sighed. “And I’m the one with the whole picture, remember?”

Mani shut up, although Connie hugged him once more before she let him go.

Lawrence took over, getting everyone seated, offering tea, generally giving everyone a chance to pull themselves together. Mani sat beside Jon and hugged him.

“You’re all he talked about, you know, and he was so scared he’d hurt you, that he’d lost you forever. Then I saw your face when you walked into the Thai King, and felt like I’d stuck a knife into you myself.”

“It’s okay, sort of. I finally figured out where I’d seen you before, you and your family. That made it better. Although it would have been even better if I’d been in on it from the start ...”

“We didn’t think we could. Gord will explain. But just so you know, what we were looking at on the table? Pictures of my kids.”

Gord coughed. “So, once again, may I remind you ...?”

Once everyone was quiet again, he continued. “The information we have right now is pretty much what we were expecting, which is that Ed has been kidnapped on contract from his brothers, although they are pretending the gang that has him is holding him for ransom and they’re trying to save him. The first ransom note has just been delivered, with the usual demand not to contact the police.

We think there are two reasons behind the brothers doing this. One is that Kevin has political aspirations and thinks an openly gay brother would be a handicap in today’s political climate.”

Jon almost smiled. “Well, Connie’ll do our cake, won’t you sweetie?” He was going to hang onto that being their biggest problem.

“Oh, of course I will, sweetie.”

Gord ignored everyone and continued. “The second reason, which worries me a bit more, is that it looks like his brothers have been swindling him since their parents died. They’ve had control of the company, and he’s had no idea what was going on. Any change in the status quo is going to bring that theft to light. They brought that one on themselves in more ways than one, because Ed got angry when they were rude to Jon, and he told them he was bailing, breaking up the company. That has triggered an audit, of course, and now they’re desperately trying to put the horse back in the barn. If they can pretend they paid out a huge ransom, they can balance their books, which is pretty sick reasoning, but probably logical to them.”

Connie hugged Jon again, and rocked him gently like he was a child. He didn’t object. He just wished that his sweet Ed had someone to hold onto and bring him comfort.

Lawrence nodded. “I had my people make a few enquiries, and came to the same conclusion. That’s why I’m here, and Ed is wearing a mini-GPS bracelet.”

Gord almost smiled. “Okay, two horses. He’s also wearing a mini-GPS earring. We can hope that one of the two is still with him. We’ll coordinate the trackers in a minute. I don’t know if you got that far back, but we’re fairly sure the older Renfield brothers killed their own parents, rigged the plane crash that killed them – we just can’t prove it.” He looked apologetically at Jon. “They had expected Ed to be in the plane too. He would have been sixteen at the time. Amazing how much ugliness you can conceal with a suit.”

Mani hugged Jon again. “Don’t know how such a sweet man is related to a couple of idiotas like that.”

“So,” Gord continued, as though he wasn’t being interrupted all the time, “the final piece of the puzzle, the best piece, is that we already have men undercover in most of the gangs, for other reasons, and we lucked out. We not only know exactly where Ed is, but also that he is safe. One of my best is with him.”

“God, you could have said that first,” Jon burst out. “Can we just go get him?”

Gord scratched his head. “Ah. Well.”

Connie stood up suddenly. “Food. We need food.”

“Let me help you.”

Jon watched in astonishment as his father became Connie’s helper in the kitchen as she effortlessly created enough dishes to feed an army. Lawrence was flirting with her, in soft and fluent Spanish, and she was quite obviously enjoying it. Jon exchanged puzzled looks with Rafe and Miguel before he turned back to the Captain.

“Gord, Captain, why can’t we just rescue him?” It was a plea, and he could hear the whine back in his voice. “I don’t care how much they want. I just want him back. I’ll pay their damn ransom.”

“Sorry, son. The problem right now is that we can’t trace this back to the brothers, although we’re working on that. As it stands, they’re the innocent loving family trying to get him back. And if we can’t nail them, if they don’t incriminate themselves, they’ll try something else, and might be more successful. We need to settle this so that you and Ed are safe for your happily ever after.”

Jon felt sick, but Gord patted him on the knee. “Ed’s as safe as he can be, and so are you, which you have to know was his number one concern. You’ve probably got better protection than the President does right now. And you’re way better liked. So we wait, and we stay ready to roll fast if we have to. We’ve got an unmarked car with a team right up there by the house, too. It’s going to be okay.”

Gord looked at Lawrence. “After dinner, maybe we can have a look at those trackers. And I’m curious about what you have for technology. It’s changing so damn fast these days ...”