"Dad!" Hassan called out to his father.
Jakub looked up and saw his son staring at him through the window. Again, something did not feel quite right, then he heard a sudden scream and saw Hassan being yanked back suddenly.
"Hassan!" Jakub screamed and ran to the door, pushing it open. He saw those two men holding his kids. His in-laws were on the couch, holding themselves in horror. Luckily, no one was hurt.
"You're here!" Ahmed's voice came from his right. Jakub turned and saw the man staring at him with a cynical smile. "I hope you brought what we need. We wouldn't want another...accident on our hands."
"Let my children go."
"Of course, I definitely will. Just give me what I want."
Jakub's thoughts started flying. He looked at Hassan, who was struggling in the arms of the one that had punched his nose. Reina held on to the other one quietly, her face wet with tears and her mouth pouting. His jaw ticked at the thought of the men hurting either of them.
"Don't be a hero, Jakub. Be smart," Ahmed warned, as if he could read his thoughts.
"I don't have the documents here with me. They are in my car."
"Alright. You!" Ahmed said to the one holding Hassan. "Follow him to his car. If he tries anything, kill him. Like I said, Mr. Stilinski, don't be a hero, or your kids will end up as orphans."
Suddenly, the goon holding Hassan screamed, and Hassan ran to his father. Hassan had bitten him. The goon held up his gun at the boy, but Ahmed shouted at him to stop.
"Daddy!" Hassan cried, holding on to his father's leg when he reached him.
Ahmed laughed. "Looks like we have a hero after all. Are you so stupid to let a child trick you?" he asked his man, who glared hard at Hassan.
"Follow him to his car and hurry back. I have an appointment after this."
Jakub tapped Hassan slightly, and the boy let go of his leg as the goon approached them. His son had strong teeth, and the man was bleeding on his hand where he had been bitten. Jakub knew they were all relaxed, that they were sure nothing could go wrong, and he would use that to his own advantage.
Just as the man reached him, Jakub launched himself forward and managed to snatch the gun right out of his hand. Without thinking, he fired at the first man's head, killing him. He aimed at the second and missed the shot.
"You fool!" Ahmed screamed.
Jakub was sure he did not have a weapon now. He was skeptical about it, but it was obvious the man was incredibly arrogant and did not think himself in any danger.
The second goon had shoved Reina to the side, but her grandmother caught her. Jakub also shoved Hassan aside to protect him as a shot was fired toward them. He felt something pierce through his side as he fired off his own gun.
"Kill him! Kill him!" Jakub heard Ahmed screaming, but he just kept firing away until he could not hear anything again. His shots had met the second guy, and he was lying dead. Reina was screaming and crying again.
"You don't know what you have done! You fool! You—"
Another shot was fired, and Ahmed's words were cut off.
Jakub lowered his hand, staring at the hole he had made in the middle of the man's head. Suddenly, the pain hit him. He looked down and saw that he had been shot in the thigh and at the side of his stomach.
"Dad!" Hassan screamed; he was crying too at that point.
"Get your sister," Jakub groaned and pulled off his shirt.
"What just happened?" Sofia's mom asked, sobbing.
"Those are the men who killed my wife," Jakub answered as he tore the shirt up and tied it around his thigh to ease the bleeding. "They'll keep coming. I need to get myself and the kids out of Gaza immediately."
"Where will you go? They'll find you. Oh God!" she cried, holding on to her husband, who had a completely stoic face.
"Don't tell her that. Don't tell us. Take them! And go now!" he said and held his wife.
Jakub nodded and limped outside with Hassan's help. Their neighbors were out and were staring, but it did not matter at that point. He needed to get away as soon as possible before the police arrived. In that moment, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.
"Hello?" he said when he picked up the phone. It was a pilot with instructions on where to go. Some sort of relief flooded over him as he buckled his kids into the car and drove off. They would be safe…for a while.
Chapter Four
New York City
April 2014
The front door gave way at the first turn of the lock, and Dani banged the door behind her when she walked into the living room. She did not care that the loud bang could be a nuisance to the neighbors. Dani rolled her eyes when she heard a voice next door cussing her out.
With her arms akimbo, Dani scanned the room with her eyes. There were many possible places Miles could have hidden the cash. Perhaps it was in plain sight, or even right under her feet. Was it a coincidence that she was standing on Miles's favorite spot? As the idea struck her, she moved her feet away from the spot and brought out her phone. She turned on the flashlight as she tried to see if there were any unusual markings.
Dani slowly lowered herself on all fours so she could get a better look at the floor. It took some time before she found the clue she needed. There was a scratch, very slight, but it was there alright. Dani felt the area close to the scratch with her fingers and was disappointed when she discovered it was just a scratch made from moving furniture around.
She angrily stood up and kicked the table.
“Brute!” she snapped.
As she made to move away from her position, she clutched her protruding belly and bent over as a stabbing pain hit her. She knew she was exerting herself physically, but her clenched jaw showed that she was not ready to give up yet.
With her hand held over her belly, Dani went into the kitchen and headed outside through the backdoor. She made straight for a pile of garbage that lay beneath the kitchen window. For some reason, Miles never disposed of this pile.
Dani felt around the bags with one hand until she found another bag hidden beneath the pile. She pulled the bag into the house with her and dumped it in the middle of the kitchen.
Dani grabbed a knife from the rack and carefully cut through the bag; a bunch of old books and magazines poured out on the floor. Earlier on in her pregnancy, Dani had developed a very strong aversion to certain smells and objects. She had made Miles throw out some items and books just because she could not stand the smell or sight of them. Miles had simply tied them up in garbage bags and kept them somewhere away from the elements.
The kitchen was littered with smelly books, and Dani made herself believe it was all Miles’s fault. She had no time to clean it up either.
“I’ve got to find it. It has to be somewhere in this house,” Dani muttered to herself as she made for the bedroom. Without turning on the lights, she took off the sheets and moved the mattress aside. Pulling out the boards was not as easy as she had thought; she risked spraining her back. But Dani thought all the million bucks she was about to find was worth the ache. She lifted the board with so much force that she almost landed on her backside. But there was nothing there either, just some stray socks that had somehow found their way there.
There was one more place to search. Dani went down into the basement and returned with a ladder. She dragged it down the hallway to the spot between her bedroom and the kitchen. She placed it against the wall, and without waiting to check if it was balanced, she went up the first, then the second rung. The ladder shifted slightly, and she quickly climbed down. She tried again, and this time, she made it to the top, panting and sweating.
Dani crawled through the manhole into the roof, but she couldn’t get far because it was dusty, and there were so many cobwebs getting into her hair and nose. She was getting frustrated by the minute. Then an idea occurred to her. Perhaps Miles had decided against hiding the cash and had gotten a foreign account somewhere.
Maybe she should be looking for documents, not a bag of cash stashed away
on the roof. Dani searched through the drawers for some clue that might lead her to where the money was. She looked in every jar, flower vase, behind the washing machine, and every crack she could find.
Exhausted from the intensive search, Dani made her way to the sitting room. The toll of such physical exertion and the sight of the disheveled house overwhelmed Dani, and she ran into the bathroom to cry her eyes out.
The bean bag let out a soft sigh as it sagged under Dani’s increasing weight. It had become her favorite furniture in the past few months because she found the sofa rather uncomfortable for her back. Moreover, she had almost ripped the cushions on the sofa apart and could not sit on it. Charlotte, the poodle, gave a low bark before she jumped onto Dani’s lap for a taste of popcorn.
Dani offered Charlotte some popcorn, which she licked and stuck out her tongue in distaste before returning to her place beside the bean bag.
“Silly, Charlie, I can’t figure out why you always try to lick it when you already know you won’t eat it,” Dani said. She knew Charlotte loathed the buttery popcorn, but she couldn’t help it because her pregnancy made her crave weird stuff despite the doctor’s warnings.
“Now, here’s something you would like.” Dani offered Charlotte a cookie, which she bit eagerly. Dani put some more cookies on another plate and placed them on the floor in front of Charlotte while she helped herself to more popcorn.
Dani turned on the television to take her mind off the current situation. She had spent a greater part of the morning waiting for a call from Miles or his lawyers but had gotten none. She stared at the television screen as she tried to make sense of the football highlights showing on the sports channel. She always told Miles she wanted their baby to be a football star if it was a boy and a sports reporter if it turned out to be a girl. So, she spent hours watching the sports channel because she argued that babies could hear sounds while in the womb.
“Ugh,” Dani sighed, “I left my cell phone in the bedroom. Charlie, remote, please. I need to check the weather forecast.”
Charlie gave a low bark before she went over to the table and picked up the remote with her mouth. She brought the remote to Dani, who flipped impatiently to the news station and rolled her eyes when she didn’t see the weatherman swinging his arms in front of the camera. Dani groaned at the thought of waiting fifteen more minutes for the weather forecast to come up.
The caption on the screen, PIERCE: THE LOOT GONE WRONG, caught Dani’s attention. She turned up the volume a bit.
“Tell us, Hayden, how you were able to notice that someone had tampered with the network security,” the journalist asked.
“My team and I were testing a new product we recently developed. The launch was in a few days, and I had to make sure everything went as planned.”
“What’s this new product?” another journalist asked. “I believe everyone would be keen to buy it.”
“That’s right. Everyone wants to know the product that exposed the looters. And this is going to be a huge market. Wait a minute, I feel like I’m doing a free ad for you,” he chuckled.
Hayden looked from one reporter to the other with a big smile on his face. He looked so eager to tell them everything. The reporters held their breath as they waited for him to say something.
“The source code isn’t available anymore. It belongs to the firm now, and we are not selling it to the public or anyone either.”
The journalists didn’t see that coming, but they did not reckon that Hayden was that smart either.
“Pierce Neumann and his team almost pulled off a smart one. A whopping 2.5 billion dollars from the Japanese tech company and the gunner was aiming for another 15 billion dollar deal. My, it must take lots of guts and brains to pull off that stunt."
Dani’s jaw dropped when she heard the figures mentioned by the journalist.
“Son of a bitch,” she muttered under her breath.
Charlotte quickly sat up on her hind legs. Her ears stood as she sniffed the air warily. She barked at the television and bent her head to one side as she watched Dani fuming.
Dani was not the only one displeased with the journalists. Hayden wore a deep frown on his face as he listened to them talk about Pierce Neumann, the looter. He was not too happy with the way they enthused over a man whose greed almost cost him his job.
Hayden had worked hard to get a position as a junior developer at the Bloom and a few more years of cubicle hugging to become a senior developer. He looked from one journalist to the other as they marveled at Pierce Neumann’s ingenuity.
“Pierce was a tough nut to crack, and we learned he only got caught because he assigned part of the task to someone else.”
“It didn’t matter if he did it himself or had someone else do his dirty job. Our product is designed to catch the thi…sorry, any intruder,” Hayden replied.
Pierce’s picture flashed across the screen again; he looked as dashing as ever.
“In case you are just tuning in, Pierce Neumann has been arrested for hacking into the Bloom’s financial database and attempting to make away with the unbelievable sum of fifteen billion dollars. He is also charged with swindling a Japanese tech company of 2.5 billion dollars. And with us here is the hero who saved the day, Hayden Emett.”
Facing Hayden, one of the journalists said, “So Hayden, with this new feat you have pulled, it is certain that the big shots will come calling for you. Everyone needs a hero to rescue them from a mire, and I bet there are lots of companies out there who have been praying for their Messiah. Do you plan to leave the Bloom for greener pastures?”
“Well, as a professional, it is my job to provide network security and beef up any vulnerability that might entice hackers.”
“Hmmm, that’s a good answer.” He turned to face the camera again. “So, 2.5 billion stolen from a Japanese tech company? What an infamous way to live the yacht life.”
“Two and a half billion dollars?” Dani muttered to herself. “Where did that villain hide it? Damn.” She ran her fingers through her hair. She was tired of hearing the news. She flipped to another channel, and it was the same news flash. Two other stations were also talking about the same thing.
She dropped the remote and went over to the refrigerator to get herself a drink. She was about to pour herself some juice when she heard the presenter calling the figure over and over again like a mantra. Dani dropped the bottle of juice and picked up a bat from behind the refrigerator that she always kept for intruders. With her jaw set, she marched to the television and smashed the bat into the screen.
“Shut up, jerks. Shut your gutters up!”
The presenter laughed at something, and Dani lost it. She continued hitting the television as glass and sparks flew about.
Charlotte was shocked to see her otherwise calm new friend acting crazy, and she snuck under the pile of cushions Dani had thrown about in her frenzy. Tired and unable to continue the destruction, Dani stared at the shards and frayed wires that were left of the television, and she laughed mirthlessly.
Then her gaze fell to her bulging belly, and she broke down in tears.
Chapter Five
Brooklyn Detention Complex
New York
April 2014
The guard at the entrance rolled his eyes when the beep got louder. Visitors always failed to read the instructions put up on the wall right next to the door even though it was in clear bold letters. The bright yellow color, which was totally the chief warden’s idea, didn’t catch their attention either.
“Please, will you step back from the foyer and come this way with me?” the guard asked Eric in the politest voice he could muster. He knew it could be some coin or jewelry the offender could easily take off. But it wasn’t always easy to get them to remove it.
Most visitors coming to see family or friends wanted to show the inmates as much of the outside world as possible. They wanted to share everything in so little time. It could be understood that they missed their loved ones and didn’t w
ant them to miss out on what was going on in their lives outside the walls of the penal complex, but they went overboard sometimes.
There was a woman who wore three different wigs on her head along with the most outrageous lingerie ever sold. Then there was this guy who spent more than half of his visiting time sticking more than fifty pictures to the table, and he spent the remaining time just staring at them with his friend. They said nothing, just stared at the pictures in silence.
“Please, can you take off any jewelry you might have on you?” the guard instructed.
“Oh, sorry. I had forgotten I had this wristwatch on me. It was a souvenir from Rome.”
The guard gave him a forced smile. He knew what would come next. Visitors always insisted on going in with everything, and it was usually exhausting trying to convince them to do otherwise.
Surprisingly, Eric took it off and dropped it into the basket without a word.
“Thank you,” the guard said before he proceeded to search Eric thoroughly.
Eric walked into the hall, which seemed larger and busier than similar places he had been to. As he walked down to an empty table, he heard the familiar conversations that were much common on prison visiting days. The blame games, the confessions, the denials. The father who had been sentenced for a few months trying to explain to his wife and kids that his crime was committed in his desperation to prove how much he loved his family.
Eric sat down at a table and waited patiently for the inmate he had come to see. He occupied himself with a magazine he found on the table, but his attention was on the conversations around him.
Not far from his table, someone was trying so hard to convince his lawyer that he could get away with his crime. He was threatening to fire the lawyer and make sure he never practiced ever again. The lawyer kept insisting he should simply own up and perhaps get parole.
Hunt for the Lost Sanctum Page 4
