More Than Human_Scifi Cyborg Romance

by Anna Lewis

  “When will Donovan get here?” I asked hoarsely. Wondering how I missed his call to NYPD, was I in shock for that long?

  “Ten minutes. What do you want to share with him when he gets here?”

  “Just enough to have the cops go after Giovanni’s right hand man and whatever other thugs Kane has enough info on to damn to hell and back. I want Giovanni.”

  “They’ll search for Maddy and Gio either way, that may lead them to Giovanni regardless,” Jackson said.

  “Doesn’t matter…they’d be holding him for me if they do,” I said, knowing exactly how far Kane would go if things got tight. We’d had that conversation strictly one on one. Jackson’s phone rang then and he was quick to answer it without a word.

  “Fine. Come back to the penthouse to do what you need to here,” he said grimly. I closed my eyes, a wave of nausea passing over me as I imagined what Jackson would tell me next.

  “What is it?”

  “Marcus and the others are going to continue patrolling the area, Mo’s coming back to help Terry try and hack into a few systems to pinpoint the town car and where it could go.”

  “Patrolling the area…it means the town car got away,” I said and turned to look at Jackson, who’s shoulders were tight and his face pinched in a simmering anger as well as focus.

  “They aren’t in Manhattan as far as he can tell,” he told me.

  “Fuck…” I felt like hitting something, hell I needed to hit something. I ran my fingers through my hair several times instead, cursing anything and everything.

  “Tell me when Donovan gets here…” I murmured and barely excused myself to my bedroom. I could still smell Maddy’s perfume in the air. She packed up so fast, getting what she needed, what Gio needed. She left, just like that after we had such a phenomenal day. I’d wanted Gio’s birthday to be perfect…but now it ends with them being kidnapped and it’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have kept things from her.

  Chapter 2

  Officer Donovan was now a detective, and arrived along with his new partner, Detective Arby. Donovan had a look on his face that said he was sincere in doing all he could to find Maddy and Gio. Arby seemed a bit jaded and was trying to hide his doubt. I simply paced the room, my arms crossed over my chest as Jackson filled the two in on everything I told him to go forward with.

  “We will certainly follow up on these leads and of course continue our search for Maddison and her son. We’re working just as hard as you, but we have to say it…whenever you see NYPD, stay out of our way,” Detective Arby said to Jackson. Donovan was busy tracking my movements around the living room. It was no secret how badly I wanted to do something.

  “Will do detective, thank you for coming by,” Jackson said, shaking their hands. I went over to shake hands with Donovan and Arby.

  “Mr. Aberdeen…we’ll find them,” Donovan said, his gaze giving a whole lot away. I knew then with that simple handshake that I had him on my side if I needed him. I had a feeling I would need him, particularly for his access. The cops left and I tried calling Maddy’s phone for the hundredth time. It went straight to voicemail. Banging my phone down on the counter I went to pour myself a drink at the bar. I needed my own version of AA at the moment. Alcohol and air. When I had my glass of bourbon I went out onto the living room balcony and sat down on one of the lounge chairs. Looking out over the city I tried to spot that damned black town car. All I could see were a lot of lights and ant sized people down below.

  I downed my drink in two swallows and went back inside for another, when was Kane getting in again? My head was starting to pound with the combination of downing a half cup of bourbon in under thirty seconds and everything that was going on.

  “Hey Josh, Kane is getting in in about an hour. Once he gets here it’ll just be go, go, go. Maybe you want to take a nap or something?” Jackson was standing near the bar, looking out the floor to ceiling window at the city, he glanced at my glass pointedly.

  “Fine…yeah,” I murmured. I went to the pill cabinet in the kitchen and searched for Advil, there was Motrin…Tylenol…cold medicines, vitamins… As I dug through the very back of the cabinet I found the bottle of Advil, but knocked almost everything else out. Jackson came over to help me with the mess. I picked up a pink and white bottle, staring at it, though I wasn’t sure yet why I was staring.

  “Prenatal vitamins?” I said and checked the expiration date. These pills weren’t old by any stretch of the imagination. I glanced up at Jackson and held up the bottle.

  “Do you know anything as to why there’d be an open bottle of prenatal vitamins in my house?” I asked him. My mind already slowly checking out. The capacity to take anymore news I couldn’t handle was beyond me. Jackson would know…he and Terry saw almost everything that went on. Jackson also shadowed Maddy from time to time, along with that guy Marcus.

  “It isn’t…my place to say,” Jackson started off slowly.

  “But I’ve already found this, so start talking,” I said through clenched teeth. Already I could feel my body shaking and my vision was tinted red.

  “About two weeks ago we took her to the drug store to pick up pregnancy tests. Then the day after, on her day off from work, she went to see the doctor. That’s all I know.”

  “Jesus…fuck…” I couldn’t keep it together after that. I collapsed to the ground with the damn vitamins in my hand and chucked it across the room, my head falling into my hands. If that Giovanni fucker hurt Maddy…if he hurt her the baby…my baby could be hurt too. “Why didn’t she tell me?” my voice sounded broken, but I didn’t care. Jackson was seeing me at my lowest but I’d already lost everything that I love because of my lie so I could care less about dignity.

  Everything about Maddy’s subtle shift in behavior made sense, she no longer drank coffee. She didn’t drink alcohol at all when we visited my family. All of a sudden she was taking fucking vitamins when she never used to, not to mention her dizzy spell earlier in the day. Why hadn’t she told me? We’d been doing so well, why hadn’t she told me she was pregnant? Distantly I heard a cell phone go off. Three seconds later Jackson was handing mine to me, the word ‘Aida’ on the screen.

  “I can’t talk now…just tell her what happened, tell her we’re busy trying to find them,” I said hoarsely, and Jackson answered the call for me as I finally pulled myself up off the floor. I took two Advil as I had intended to do earlier and walked over to pick up Maddy’s vitamins and set them on the counter. After that I went upstairs and took a cold shower, changed into a durable hooded pullover and jeans and went to sit on the couch in the living room. Someone had turned on the gas fireplace. Glancing around I realized Mo had gotten back. He and Terry had set up another makeshift headquarters right there on the breakfast bar. Jackson was watching them intently, intermittently calling and receiving calls from his guys out still looking for Maddy and Gio.

  I felt the strangest stillness inside. Maybe I was numb, or dead a little bit, probably both. My would be wife, son, and unborn child were in the hands of sadistic fuckers and I hadn’t a clue if we could actually find them before it was too late.

  Chapter 3

  Maddy

  “We’re here,” the car door opened and I knew that if I hesitated to get out we might be pulled out by force.

  “Come on Gio, I promise everything is going to be okay…Josh will come for us,” I whispered in his ear as I slid out of the car with him. All he did was nod and hold my hand with a vise grip.

  “Look at this! They have packed bags and everything!” I glanced up at the big white Virginia style farm house. It was on a wide patch of land with seemingly no one around but a few cows and goats as far as I could see. Giovanni was standing on a porch that seemed to wrap around the side of the house. There were three black SUV’s in the drive and a half dozen of his thugs milling around, not including the two that brought us here.

  “See I knew you wanted to come back to me,” he said with a smile as he hurried down the steps to approach us. I felt Gio
cringe into my side and took a deep breath to try and center myself. I couldn’t let either he or Giovanni see my fear.

  “What do you want with us Giovanni…we left you,” I said in a level tone.

  “I know exactly what you did. You stole my son away from me in the middle of the night. What I want is for us to work things out and be a family again. What is so unreasonable about that? You make me come all the way out here…” He shook his head, his brown hair falling into his face and framing his dark eyes.

  “We left you because you’re a sick and evil man,” my voice was still surprisingly calm.

  “If I’m sick and evil then so are you, and so is he,” he almost spat the words. His eyes drifted down to Gio who was almost completely hidden behind my leg. “Happy birthday mini me…” Giovanni’s voice changed from cold to warm in under a second. “Did you miss me Gio?” he asked, looking for a direct response. But Gio simply shook his head and held on to my leg even tighter.

  “I see, you’re a little worried about what’s going on. But don’t worry, daddy’s not going to hurt you,” Giovanni’s tone was sweet, but his cold gaze swung up to me and held so much promise. A cold sweat broke out across my back as my heart rate intensified. I started praying, hoping he wouldn’t do anything to make me lose the baby.

  “Well come inside! It’s a little nippy out here.” Giovanni turned on his heel and I was nudged forward by one of his guys to follow him inside. I first bent down to pick Gio up and he held on to me tight as we went inside. “Don’t get attached to the house, it’s not mine. But we’ll be here just until the buzz of your disappearance dies down and such.” Giovanni began talking, going on and on, about how difficult this all was and how easy it could have been should I simply have gone back to Chicago when I had the chance.

  We were led into the living room and made to sit down on the couch. Gio wouldn’t leave my lap, he was still holding onto me so tightly.

  “You know mini me, you shouldn’t be so clingy to your mother, it will make you a weak man.” Giovanni had stepped close enough to us that if he wanted to, he could reach out and touch us.

  “I’m not a bad guy like you,” Gio said in a small voice, peeking at his father.

  “Being a ‘bad guy’ isn’t weakness son. In fact, it’s made me stronger. All that crap your mother’s pathetic boyfriend provides I can do ten times over.” He didn’t yell at Gio, he wasn’t in his face, it was as if Giovanni was having the most natural conversation. Bile rose in my throat; I couldn’t believe what Giovanni turned into. We were fine, more than fine, we were great. Then one call from what I thought was his long lost father and he turns into a completely different man. He was more aggressive, unpredictable, erratic. Now it seems he’s lost his mind completely.

  “Don’t waste your breath trying to convince my son that you’re worthy of us because you aren’t. He knows exactly what kind of monster you are. We left you because we weren’t going to let you put us through hell any longer,” I said, my voice low with thinly veiled rage.

  “Your son?” his hard gaze met mine and I braced myself for any sort of backlash. All he did was laugh and take several steps away from us. Both Gio and I let out silent breaths of relief.

  “We’re going to fix this. We’ll fix our family before we go back to Chicago,” he said resolutely and then quickly left the room.

  “Let’s go Miss, your room is upstairs.” I glanced up at one of the men who was standing by. Marco, Giovanni’s right hand, had disappeared with him from the room. When we made it upstairs I was showed to a quaint bedroom.

  “He sleeps next door,” the man said, attempting to extract Gio from my side.

  “No! I want to sleep with mommy!” he protested and held on to me with all his might.

  “If you don’t want your father to punish you, you’d do what I say,” the man said in a hard voice and I knew it was the truth. I knew Giovanni well enough to have guessed he wouldn’t want Gio and I in the same room. Giovanni wouldn’t lay a finger on Gio, he never has before.

  “It’s okay Gio, I need you to be brave for me okay? I’ll just be in the next room, right here,” I told him. Tears welled up in his eyes and he took deep breaths, trying to be brave like I said.

  “We’re not getting separated, don’t worry,” I promised him and he nodded. “I love you,” I said and kissed him on the forehead. He slid down onto his feet and the man led him into the next room before gesturing me to enter mine. I stepped inside and jumped when the door slammed closed behind me and was locked from the outside. I heard Gio’s door get locked as well before the man’s footsteps faded away down the hall.

  Chapter 4

  Joshua

  “You’re wasting time trying to be too techy. Look up exactly what I told you to. He took eight men with him. One of which is Marco Santorini. Look up all properties owned by each of them. I gave you a list of the possible others he brought to New York with him.” Kane was pacing around the living room, possibly just as keyed up as I was. Terry and Jason were busy at the computers and Mo was coordinating with the men still out in the city looking for Maddy and Gio.

  “Mo pull them back, that town car has had to have reached its destination by now,” Jackson said grimly. The way he said it made me think of Final Destination.

  “Josh maybe you can call Donovan, he has the access we need to pull up full dossiers on these guys. It would be a big help.” Terry glanced over at me and I was almost grateful to have a task. I walked over to look at the list of names Kane gave them.

  “Detective Mark Donovan,” he answered on the second ring.

  “Hey Donovan, it’s Joshua Aberdeen…”

  “Do you have something new for us?” he asked, getting right to business.

  “Yes, I have a list of names for you to check out. We need some info on these guys, it could be some of them are here with Giovanni,” I told him.

  “Sure thing, I can fax you copies of what I pull up in the database,” he said and I gave him the names and thanked him for his help.

  “Let’s get back to what we’re doing when we have the location.” I glanced at Kane who nodded, his hand on his mouth as he was deep in thought.

  “We’re moving in on wherever they are.”

  “What about the detectives already looking for Maddy and Gio?” I asked him.

  “Donovan’s on our side and I know his partner Arby. If they were doing things by the book they’d still be here with another officer in charge of the search party. People go missing in this city every day, it’s up to us. Whatever happens we’ll call them after the fact. Chalk any injuries up to self-defense,” he said brusquely.

  “We can’t call them after the fact, at least when we know where we’re going we should let them know when we’re on the way.”

  “Joshua we’re going up against people from a longstanding mafia organization. We can’t work with the cops on this one and even they know that. Their efforts won’t last past a forty-eight-hour BOLO then subsequent wanted and missing posters.”

  “We have the forty-eight hours to pinpoint them and show up or else they’re on the next flight out,” Jackson piped in.

  I took a deep breath and went upstairs to see if Donovan faxed the information yet. The fax machine was printing as I stepped into the office. As I read what Donovan was faxing over I realized that he was sending exactly what we need. After the ten pages printed Donovan called me back.

  “Joshua, I have a feeling they could be holding Maddison and Gio upstate. Gio’s right hand man, as you’ve told me, owns a house there…” I hurried downstairs as I flipped through the pages to bring up Marco’s information. I pointed to the list of known addresses in his name and handed it to Kane who hurried over to Terry and Jason.

  “So what are you going to do?” I asked him slowly.

  “I’m going to go to Arby with this and we’ll visit the residence. If nothing looks out of the ordinary…we’ll have to keep searching,” he answered honestly. “We’ll be heading up in the nex
t ten minutes. I’m going to have to ask you guys to sit tight until I call you back with news.” I took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of my nose.

  “Alright…fine, thanks for faxing the info by the way,” I said, thanking him again and I ended the call.

  “So what, are the cops going?” Kane asked me and I nodded. He ground his teeth for a second then took a breath. “Alright, let’s hope they find nothing and we do. There’s only one other New York address in this pile and it’s an abandoned warehouse in Harlem,” Jackson said as he studied one of the documents.

  “I wonder what’s there…” I mused, and Jackson got on the phone.

  “Yeah…I need you to check something out and tell me what you find…”

  Everyone seemed to be doing something. Yet there I was again simply standing by and trying not to think about the fact that Maddy was pregnant, that Giovanni had Gio, that Maddy could be hurt or worse.

  “Fucking hate having to work around the cops…” Kane muttered. I glanced over at him and could see the tension rolling off of him in waves. He wanted to take Giovanni down and had perfect reason to. In his early days of being involved with his father’s mafia Giovanni had killed two cops, brothers undercover. Both were brothers to Kane.

  In the two hours that followed Jackson called his men back to the penthouse and Kane had a couple of his own trained friends come by, guys who he said ‘owed him a favor’. Kane had laid out the plan, it was a ‘simple’ search and rescue. Since we were calling the police after we arrived the aim was to incapacitate only so they could make their arrests.

  “Hey Josh…can we talk for a sec?” Kane pulled me aside, into the kitchen. Maddy’s prenatal vitamins were sitting there on the counter. My worst fears represented by that pink and white bottle. When Kane pressed the black automatic pistol into my hand my gaze snapped back to his. “When the time comes, if I’m not around, will you do what you have to?” I glanced down at the gun and back up at him. “I know you want that fucker dead just as much as I do, my pride doesn’t block out my need for vengeance. If there’s a chance we can kill him today, by all means I don’t care who’s pulling the trigger.”