Chapter 16
Bristol awoke, feeling groggy and disoriented. She lay still for a moment, her mind grappling with the new reality—one of pain and confusion. She wanted to move, but this voice screamed through her head that said, Lie still. She didn’t know whose voice it was or if it was her own subconscious—but it was strong enough to keep her still.
She lifted her lids ever-so-slightly. She was in danger and had no reason why. Her mind struggled to put the jumbled memories back in the right order. Her father had been taken. Devlin and she followed him with the swallow. They’d found the house and her father. Relief washed through her at that. Surely whatever happened after that couldn’t be all that bad.
And that’s when she remembered the rest. The needle, the look on the man’s face as he shoved the needle deep into her arm, and the panic and fear as she slowly slid sideways, unable to help herself. She remembered the last cry in her mind as she called out for Devlin. Not only had her father not been saved, they’d both been taken.
When she thought about the sequence of events, she realized no police had shown up. Just an ambulance. Then how else would one cart an unconscious man around? Particularly if they’d been forced to drug him.
Or if he needed medical assistance. But she highly doubted these ambulance attendants had any medical training. They were just the same as the other men. Men who would do anything for a price. Men who didn’t give a shit about the chaos they created or the pain and destruction they left in their wake.
Her body rolled with an odd movement. She opened her eyes wider to see she was laying on a bed, her father beside her. No, not a bed—more like a bench. She had no idea where she was. Outside of her father, nobody else appeared to be in the room. She rolled over to her back and frowned. She was inside a boat. Maybe the main cabin. She could see sunshine outside and graying skies. And yet she could hear traffic. Then she understood. She and her father had been stashed inside a boat towed on a trailer.
Considering she was on a boat, were they heading for the harbor? That was not good. Once they hit the shore, headed out to international waters, it would be even harder to escape.
She tried to move her arms and realized her hands were tied. No, they were taped. She studied the tape around her wrists and realized the abductors hadn’t expected to run into her. They’d taken her father, who didn’t need anything to keep him immobilized, but they’d had to improvise with her, using medical tape, and it was damn tight. She glanced around, looking for something to cut it with. Her thoughts forewarned her, if she was inside the boat, were the bad guys watching her? She searched for a camera. Thankfully she didn’t find one.
As she sat up, she realized her feet were tied with the same type of tape. She pulled her knees up to her chest and with her nails tried to scratch and rip the tape around her ankles, but it was too tough. She needed something sharp. A kitchen was down here. She doubted she’d be able to find anything, not if her captors were smart. But she had to look. Likely they thought she’d sleep the whole journey, but her body reacted differently to most medications.
She slid her feet down to the floor and although woozy and unsteady with the jolting movement as they traveled, she hopped her way to the galley. And sure enough, although she found no knives, there were various other instruments. One looked like a meat fork. She grabbed it, sat down on the floor, and stabbed at the tape. Anything that would break the integrity of the material would allow it to be ripped apart easily. In less than a minute, the bindings on her ankles gave way. The trouble was her bound hands would be a little bit harder to get to.
How did one stab something holding the hands together tightly? She reversed the tool, and with her feet together holding the fork, she plunged her hands up and down against the prongs. Several times she stabbed herself, but she persisted.
Panic started to set in. How long had she been gone? Had Devlin figured it out yet?
As soon as her hands were free, she found the chip below her elbow and, with a great deal of pain, pressed down on it hard. An alert button should send a signal back to her central control. With any luck, Tesla or Ice might see it.
She didn’t have the swallow with her; it was back in the car with Devlin. Did he have enough knowledge to switch over the programming? Tesla should know. Bristol had left the instructions with them. She shook her head. But she hadn’t taught anyone. It never occurred to her that she’d also be kidnapped.
Now free, she grabbed a napkin and pressed against the blood flowing from her skin. She didn’t bother cleaning up the blood droplets on the floor. If anything happened to her, that trace of evidence might help fill in the trail of her abduction.
Back on her feet, she made her way to her father. He appeared to be unconscious, but from the state of his skin and the lax way his body laid, she figured he’d been drugged. She reached out a hand and gently brushed the wispy white hair off his forehead.
She considered how to contact somebody. Anybody. She peered out the window to see traffic going by. Lots of traffic. How the hell would she get somebody’s attention? Quickly she searched the cabin, looking for anything that would help. There wasn’t much.
She went back to the tape that had been her bindings and ripping apart the multiple rounds they had used, and with a black pen, she taped the word Help! on the window. She’d already checked her pockets. Her cell phone was gone, and her father didn’t have anything on him either. Although the cabin appeared to be wired with radios, she didn’t see any electronics she could put together to contact anybody. Neither could she see what vehicle was pulling the boat.
She went to the cabin door and tried to open it, but it appeared to be chained shut from the outside. Of course, it was probably just locked. She ran back to the galley, grabbed the meat fork, went back to the door and worked on getting it open. The fork broke off in her efforts, both pieces falling to the floor. If this didn’t work, she would start smashing windows. On the third try, something gave way. She propped open the door and slowly climbed to the deck. She waved frantically, screaming for help. As the traffic roared past, several people stared at her in surprise from inside their vehicles.
She screamed, “Help! Help me please.”
She saw several people grabbing their phones, but she had no idea how long it would take before anybody came to her rescue. She dashed back inside, checked on her father, grabbed the sheet that covered him, and quickly took it outside, flinging it up and down in the air. If there was ever a universal sign of distress, it was the white flag.
Just then the truck pulling the boat slowed, and she realized she may have caught their attention too. Turn signals blinked on the truck, and it turned right. She screamed louder and harder, and hoped somebody had called in the license plate number, if there was one. She had to do something fast. If she found a place to jump off, then she would take it.
Only … how could she leave her father behind?
*
Devlin set the swallow on top of the car, the laptop beside it. “Tesla, I don’t understand what I’m doing here.” He’d been following instructions to send the swallow back up again; thankfully all the programs had been left open. “She also said she had the same tracker.”
Tesla, in a calm voice, said, “As long as she has it on, we can track her right now.” She gave him careful details on how to start the program.
When the swallow lifted in the air beside him, both Easton and Ryder stepped back, whispering, “Whoa.”
Devlin realized he was finally getting somewhere. He took another couple steps, and the swallow shot off into the distance.
“It’s gone, but where the hell is it?”
Behind him, Ryder said, “I’m driving. Easton, sit in the front.”
They helped get Devlin and the laptop into the back of the Jeep.
In his ear he could hear Tesla asking, “Can you get to the GPS page she had open?”
He quickly tabbed through until he found the program he was looking for. “Yes, it’s here, and some blinking thing is in the center.”
“Check the beep and tell me what the number is.”
He gave her the numbers that showed up.
“Okay, that’s her father’s tracker. Can you see any kind of location?”
He remembered Bristol tracking the GPS coordinates. He moved the coordinates into Google Maps and said, “They’re heading toward the harbor.” He quickly gave the street name to Ryder, and within seconds, they were headed down the highway.
Devlin tried to stay calm and kept an eye on the tracker.
“Ice is beside me,” Tesla said. “She said there’s chaos on one of the highways. Apparently a woman is in the back of a boat with a sheet, screaming for help.”
Devlin raised his gaze and stared blindly out the windshield ahead of him. “A boat. It would certainly be a unique camouflage.”
“Reports are coming in from all over the place. She taped the word Help! on one of the windows. We don’t know if it’s connected. We’re trying to get an image, but she doesn’t have satellite here. We’re connecting through the compound. Levi’s setting it up.”
Devlin shared the information with the men in the front.
“So they transferred her from the ambulance to a boat?” Easton asked. “It’s not bad. Boats have space below. It would hold her father, and if she was unconscious, they had a place to put her too. Obviously she’s woken up, and, if they’d restrained her, she’s gotten loose.”
“Yeah,” Ryder said. “What do you think they’ll do to her when they see she’s out in the back of the damn boat, shaking a white sheet?”
Silence descended in the Jeep. They all knew exactly what would happen to her.
“We won’t give them that chance,” Devlin said in a hard voice. “We must find them before they separate. If she gets off that boat, we have the tracker for him, but not for her.”
“She has a number for herself, right?” Easton asked.
“Yes, Tesla’s trying to find it.”
“Jesus. People are being microchipped now but way back when? Who thought such a thing was even possible.”
“It happens in wealthier families. In this case her father was involved in big military warfare experiments. And he’d had one put in her when she was a toddler.”
The others shook their heads.
He gave them the new coordinates. “They’re taking a turn off the main highway.”
“I presume the swallow goes from point A to B. It doesn’t follow the roads, correct?” Easton asked. “That makes the most sense, but not if it’s coded to follow some kind of a navigational system.”
“I have no idea. Never thought to ask her that. Why doesn’t she just have a system where she can punch her father’s code into the laptop? That should work. Why have the swallow in between?”
Ryder said, “That would be the easiest, but I think her mind leans toward complicated details.”
“Her father must’ve been quite something in his day.”
“Besides, this was done a long time ago. ID chips are different now. Bristol and her father’s were probably never upgraded. They just created a new program to find them.” He shook his head. “I’m sure Tesla would understand that.”
“Tesla does understand that,” Tesla said in his ear. “And you’re right. These chips are quite old. Bristol and her father had always talked about getting upgraded models, but because these were deep in their flesh, it wasn’t something they wanted to remove. At the same time there was no need to because they were perfectly capable of finding each other.” Her voice dropped as she said, “I just never considered we’d be tracking both of them down. Of course, the swallow has another purpose as well,” Tesla said. “Don’t forget it’s weaponized.”
“When you say weaponized, how close does it have to get?”
“The instructions have a spec sheet attached. The last model had to get within one hundred yards, which is a hell of a long shot. But Bristol said she did a ton of improvements on this one. She liked this one more for personal protection. But not everybody will sit around with a drone flying close by. We often argued on the applications for each of these because without a market, inventions are hard to sell.”
Devlin nodded. “Right. But if we could alert the drone that the person they were guarding was under any kind of imminent threat, that would be a huge help.”
“I believe she was working on something like that. Some kind of early camera awareness that some person was holding a weapon. The problem is, a person can hold lots of weapons that would put someone else in danger. How do you determine if a person is holding a weapon in a threatening manner or just showing off a weapon for others to see?”
He sat back and stared out the window. “It’s hard to believe what she’s doing is even possible.”
“Hundreds of people around the world are currently working on this. She just happens to be one of the most gifted in the area. But she’s also the most underfunded. She’s doing this on her own. If the military had any idea what she was capable of, they would do a complete flip out and offer her half the world.”
“Sure, and if the enemy found out, they’d do a complete flip out, and they’d offer her the entire world. Tesla, we need somebody in the military to look at this.”
“I know. I’ve been thinking about that.” Her voice had a distant echo ring to it.
He smiled. “Surely between all of us, we know somebody.”
“Between all of us, we know a lot of somebodies. But it’s a matter of knowing the right somebody.” Then she gasped. “I’m getting feedback from the swallow,” she exclaimed.
He frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Now that the swallow is up and targeted, we’re getting the vitals on her father. Because it’s close enough. I’m not sure I can switch the swallow over to her. But that would allow us access to the condition she’s in.”
“And her father?”
“Probably sedated from the looks of his vitals,” Tesla said. “But he’s alive. And we’ll hang on to that.”
“Right.”
“It’s closing the gap on the GPS location. The swallow’s still flying, but its speed is slowing. Let me check.” Silence was on that end of the phone for a moment. “Yes, speed is definitely slowing.”
Ryder asked, “Coordinates?”
“The swallow is not far ahead,” Devlin said. “According to Tesla, the vitals for the father are low, but stable. She’s assuming he’s sedated. We don’t have an update yet on Bristol’s condition. However, the police have been alerted. Apparently at this point about a woman crying for help.”
Ryder said, “I still need new directions. It feels like I should be turning here somewhere soon.”
“Turn on the roadway exit coming up,” Devlin said. “Then go four blocks forward. And take a left.” With those instructions completed, Devlin added, “We’re almost on top of it. We’re looking at another couple hard rights.” He quickly read off the address and glanced out at the streets. “This is a much different area than before. This is a very high-class community. And it’s gated.”
“That’ll be a bit of a problem,” Easton said.
“Like hell it is,” Ryder said. “We’ll just go over the top.”
“Why the hell aren’t a ton of police vehicles around here? If she was standing on the back of the boat, screaming for help, surely a half-dozen cop cars would be on her tail very quickly.”
“Unless the kidnappers got out of traffic immediately and drove in here and parked.” Devlin hated to bring it up. “No guarantee they are still together.”
Into his phone, he said, “Tesla, we’re outside the gated community. The swallow coordinates that we have say the McEwans are in there. I don’t know how to bring the swallow back.”
He now stood outside the parked vehicle with the laptop on the roof of the car. The men had already gone to check out access to the community. In the daytime, chances were they didn’t have any kind of electrified fence over the top of the wall. This secured compound wasn’t to keep people out; it was to keep vehicles out.
“Okay, got the instructions here,” Tesla said.
Devlin quickly typed in the commands, made several mistakes and had to retype it. Finally, by the time he was done, he looked up to see the swallow coming in for a landing on top of the car. He stared at it. “That’s amazing.”
“It is, but are you sure you wanted to call it back?”
He said, “I’ve got the small remote thing she had as well. If we keep this on standby, she’ll be able to control it if I give her the handheld, right?”
“I’m not exactly sure how her new system works,” Tesla said. “But when she puts the swallow on alert, she should be taking the remote with her. Otherwise how would it work?” She shook her head. “Don’t forget I’m only helping out. These aren’t my babies. Even with the instructions, I can only absorb so much, so fast.”
When Devlin finished, he put the laptop back inside the vehicle, and the swallow sat atop the car, which he was hesitant to leave. But he didn’t know what else to do.
His phone buzzed with a text from Ryder. “We found a house, and the boat is parked in the driveway. It appears to be deserted. But of course, there is no guarantee. Easton’s gone to check the boat.”
Quickly Devlin sent back confirmation he was on the way. He walked around, looking for the easiest place to scale the stone wall. He clicked on Ryder’s GPS and followed the trail to where he stood. He walked up to him behind a cedar hedge. “News?”
Ryder pointed to a house two doors down, the one with a large sailboat, schooner-type thing, on a trailer parked in the driveway. Then he saw the boat window. “Oh, my God, you can still see the word Help! on the side.”
“Yeah, that means it’s the same boat as seen on the highway. So she did get herself free, but we have no idea what happened after that.”
They didn’t wait long. A vehicle drove up, parking in the drive next to the boat, and two men hopped out. Ryder took as many pictures as he could from where he stood with his cell phone.
Devlin waited, knowing Easton was inside the boat and could get caught any time.
But the men marched up to the front door and went inside. Devlin and Ryder crept along the side of the house and came up on the blind side where the boat was. In the garage Devlin could see the truck used to pull it. What they needed to do was disable all the vehicles.
Devlin opened the driver’s door, reached underneath and disconnected the wires behind the panel. It was a simple enough trick to put it back together again, if they knew what they were doing. But at the moment, he didn’t think anybody inside had that kind of know-how. He searched the truck quickly but couldn’t find anything of interest. Back outside, he checked out the area. Ryder and Easton both stood at the edge of the garage, out of sight. They motioned him over. He stuck to their side.
“The boat’s empty. Found blood at the front area, and a bit of a mess in terms of cut tape and a sheet. No sign of either of them.”
“Are we assuming they’re in the house then? In that case I want to disable that car.”
Easton snorted. “Screw disabling. Let’s go take out the tires.” He pulled out his pocketknife, opened the blade casually and walked down in the shadow of the boat. He peered around the edge, then dashed to the car.
They couldn’t see what he did, but Devlin trusted him to stab both tires on the far side. He came back around the front, reached under and cut the side wall on the front tires as well. He closed the knife, slipped back alongside the boat and rejoined them.
“Two vehicles are not moving. Let’s go into the house.”
They could gain access via three doors that they knew of. One door went inside the garage, plus the front door, and potentially at least one, if not two, rear doorways. Devlin chose to take the back. He slid around the house and did a full check. Found a large porch, downward stairs to some kind of a basement entrance as well as double French doors off the deck. A nice house. A large swimming pool. It was fenced but only four feet high. The easily scalable backyard was empty.
He slid down to the basement entrance, and his phone buzzed. He pulled it out and checked it. Tesla. She’d set the swallow onto Bristol’s coordinates. According to the reading, Bristol was in the house as well.
Exactly what he needed to know.