by Dale Mayer
“It’s not the time to be worrying about specials right now,” Brandon said. “That can wait until tomorrow.”
“And what kind of special things do you prefer?”
“I hate pickles,” he said. “Only drink one kind of pop. Chips have to be rippled and plain.”
“Well,” Kerrick said, “we don’t have any chips nor do we have any pop. You can take the pickle off your burger.” He quickly filled the table with food and handed a burger to each of them.
Amanda looked at hers and passed it over to Brandon and said, “You can have them both.”
He turned toward her, frowned, and said, “You have to eat too.”
She nodded. “I do, but I’ll have my vegetables first.”
He wrinkled up his nose at her as if to say, Why on earth would anybody want vegetables?
She laughed and said, “You’ll understand this a little better as you get older.”
He shook his head. “Hard to understand that theory. Vegetables are nasty at any age.” His face wrinkling, he watched as she pulled out multiple boxes and containers of Chinese food and chopsticks.
She opened the containers, checked inside, grabbed the chopsticks, looked around, and asked, “Are there any dishes here?”
Kerrick got up to check the little kitchenette and shook his head. “Can you eat out of the container?”
When he turned around, she smiled, her mouth already full, and mumbled, “Absolutely.”
She settled back and had a portion of each of the different dishes, everything from almond chicken to diced chicken to beef and broccoli as well as several noodle dishes too. Her stomach registered as full in no time, and she was scared to overload it after so many days of contaminated food and water. When she looked at Brandon, both his burgers were gone and so were the fries.
He eyed her Chinese food, slowly reaching out.
When she pointed out the box of fried chicken, his face lit up, and he reached in and grabbed a leg.
She smiled and had one for herself too. She looked over at Kerrick and asked, “Is this supposed to be food for you and Griffin too?”
“Griffin will bring more back,” he said. “I’m waiting for coffee.”
She moaned at that thought. “I would absolutely love a coffee. But now that the food is in me, I’m scared to put too much more in my stomach.” Then she turned to Brandon. “Don’t eat too much. It might come right back up again.”
He nodded and said, “But I doubt it.” And then he reached for another piece of chicken.
She got up, walked around, had a drink of water from one of the bottles that Kerrick had brought, and said, “Now I’ll have that shower.” She looked down at her clothes. “Unfortunately I have no clean clothes to change into.”
“Not yet,” Kerrick said. But he didn’t give her any reassurances that clean clothes would be coming anytime soon or that she’d be heading back to her own apartment in the near future either.
But still, a shower would make a huge difference. She smiled, nodded, and said, “Don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone, you guys.”
Kerrick faced Brandon and said, “Now that your stomach’s almost full, is there anything you can tell me about Amanda that would help us find out what was going on in her world?”
“She’s doing cancer research. Her next step is to get approved for human trials,” Brandon said as he reached for yet another piece of chicken.
Human trials. Bingo. He’d float some theories on that by Griffin. But right now he didn’t want to focus any more on human body parts with Brandon. Kerrick was amazed at how much food that kid could put down. He might be ten years old, but he was eating for three grown men.
“So you didn’t eat any of the food that they gave you?”
“Only enough to keep alive. Even if it was poisoned, in the amounts I ate, it was not enough to put me under.” Brandon shook his head. “None of us have gotten much food at that place.”
“Did they have trolleys outside? Did you see if the other patients were getting food trays at the same time?”
“No,” Brandon said, “but the thing about being a kid is that they talk in front of me all the time because they don’t think I have any smarts to understand.”
“Gotcha,” Kerrick said. “So, what did you overhear?”
“They were talking about Amanda. How one of the bosses was pissed right off. They didn’t know if they could stop him from killing her.”
“But they wanted to stop him from killing her?”
“He wanted her to go into the lab and to start working again. He wanted to keep her as a prisoner for a long time until she was done with her work.”
“That’s not nice,” Kerrick said, frowning. In fact that was beyond ugly.
“There wasn’t anything nice about those men,” Brandon said.
Kerrick nodded. She could have been kept for years in that kind of a state. They would have been forced to give her food and water in order to have her brain function properly, but, if she couldn’t recover her original notes or prove her theorems, they might have just thrown her out with the garbage the next time.
Brandon frowned and said, “I think they were talking about something else too. I wasn’t sure though.”
“Can you tell me what they said?”
“Something about multiple buyers and multiple deals for the same person.”
“And did you have any idea what that meant?”
“Not really. Something about getting paid to do favors for more than one person at the time, but they were talking about Amanda.”
“You heard her name mentioned?”
He nodded. “They talked about her a lot.”
“How did you feel when you realized Amanda was in the room below you?”
“I wanted to tell her to run,” he said. “To get away.”
When Kerrick heard another sound outside, he peered once again into the darkness of the night.
But it was Brandon who said, “It’s Griffin.”
Kerrick glanced at him and asked, “How do you know?”
“I recognize his footsteps,” he said candidly.
“You’re really into this stuff, aren’t you?”
Brandon nodded. “It’s how I knew Morse code.” Then he frowned and looked toward the bathroom. “How did she know about Morse code?”
“Because I think, like you, she has eclectic tastes and interests,” Kerrick said. “Remember? She’s a Mensa too.”
Brandon nodded thoughtfully. “Most of the Mensas aren’t even like me. I think there’s something wrong with my brain. I think that’s why I’m a Mensa. Not because I’m really smart but because there’s something weird about my brain.”
“I don’t think so,” Kerrick said, shaking his head. “You are a Mensa and, even if you didn’t have that label, you’re smart. That’s the bottom line. Don’t ever try to hide it. Just don’t make a point of shoving it in everybody’s faces.”
Brandon chuckled. “I’ve been told that before too.”
Kerrick could imagine. When a series of knocks came at the door to their adjoining room, he nodded and said, “I’ll let Griffin in. You stay where you are, please.”
Brandon nodded, and, as soon as Kerrick turned away and then glanced back, Brandon had already reached into the bucket of chicken for another piece. At this rate, they would need to buy the same food all over again. The kid was a bottomless pit.
Kerrick went through the connecting door, barely shutting it, and opened the front door of the other room for Griffin, who stepped in and handed him two more bags.
“I hope more of this is food,” Kerrick said. “That kid’s eating us out of house and home.”
Griffin looked over at the adjoining door to see that nobody was there, and, in a lowered voice, he said, “There’s been no call about the kid being missing. We tracked his father down. We know who he is, but he hasn’t put out the word to anybody as far as we can tell.”
“What’s the chance that this is a pu
nishment of sorts for the kid? Or maybe his father was just happy to get rid of him?”
“There are a lot easier ways to get rid of someone that are more permanent and more cost-effective,” Griffin whispered. “His dad will never be Father of the Year material in my eyes. So, playing devil’s advocate, he could just take him out back and deep-six him. Better than that, his dad might as well sell his body parts and get some money.”
“Sad to say, just knowing that his dad didn’t report Brandon as missing, I can see his dad doing the worst possible thing—that second theory you mentioned.” Kerrick grimaced and shook his head. “Something weird is going on there.”
“I know. It did occur to me that, letting me again play devil’s advocate, what if the kid’s a spy?”
At that, Kerrick’s eyebrows shot up as he contemplated it. “Interesting theory.”
“Maybe, but doesn’t mean I’m wrong. We have to keep an eye on him.”
“Agreed. It would be an interesting twist to the tale. What else did you find out?” He made his voice louder as they walked through the connecting door to the other room. Kerrick put down the bags on the table and then took the coffee cup holder from Griffin and put it on the table too.
Brandon looked with interest at the cups, but Kerrick shook his head and said, “You don’t need any caffeine.”
“No,” he said. “I need sleep. And preferably a warm bed. And I suppose she’ll make me take a shower too.”
“When was the last time you had one?” Griffin asked.
Brandon just shrugged and said, “No clue.”
“Well, there’s your answer,” Kerrick said.
Just then the bathroom door opened and a smiling pink-faced Amanda walked out in the same clothes but with a towel wrapped around her hair. Immediately she looked at Brandon and said, “Your turn.”
He frowned at her, not moving.
She shook her head and pointed.
He groaned, but he got up obediently. Then, before really surrendering, he said, “Don’t finish the chicken when I’m in there.”
“I promise I’ll save you one piece,” Griffin said as he reached into the bucket and pulled out three for himself.
At that, Brandon raced into the bathroom. “I’ll be superfast.”
“Make sure you wash behind your ears,” Amanda scolded. “And, if you come back out and that hair is not clean, I’ll take you back in there myself.” The door was slammed harder than necessary on her words.
She chuckled and said, “Boys will be boys.” She walked over, looked at the food with interest, and then nodded and reached for a piece of chicken herself. “I think I’m full, and then, after a few minutes, I realize that I really want more food.”
“That’s fairly typical too,” Kerrick said.
She waited a few minutes, with her head cocked, and he realized that, once the water could be heard running in the shower, she turned and said, “Okay. Now, what did you find out?”
Kerrick sighed, motioned at the nearest empty chair for her, and said, “There’s no word at all about Brandon. Nobody’s looking for him. His father hasn’t called anybody, as far as we can tell.”
She sat down while staring at him in horror, and then, with a lowered voice, she said, “Do you think he paid to keep him there?”
“But why?” Griffin asked her on a mouthful of fried chicken. “Why would he?”
She sat back and thought about it. “I guess there are cheaper ways to get rid of a child these days, particularly given Brandon’s father’s line of business.”
Kerrick immediately nodded. He had his laptop up and was working away, his fingers clicking on the keyboard.
“So, what are we doing from here?”
“We’ll hang low for the moment,” Kerrick said, without looking up. “So get as much sleep as you possibly can. We’ll stand watch in shifts, and then, hopefully by dawn, we’ll have new plans.”
“I don’t know if I can go back to my apartment or my job,” she said abruptly.
“Obviously we don’t know everything about this,” Griffin said, “but your boss is definitely involved. That puts the spotlight on the company, Scion Labs, and its people will know where you live. It’s not even a possibility to consider going back to your office or to your home.”
She sagged in place. “I need my laptop,” she said quietly. “You have to understand. It’s got my life’s work on it.”
“Your place has probably been cleaned out of anything useful. Just think about it. Your boss was after your work already. And, when they found what they had was corrupt, don’t you think they would have immediately gone to your home office and took your electronics?”
“I had a laptop with me, when they kidnapped me,” she said. “They probably thought it had my research work on it.”
“And does it?”
She shook her head. “No, I ran a home server. It’s hidden.”
“Back to that scared of somebody stealing your research?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Can you log in to your server remotely and download the information?”
She looked at his laptop, frowned, and said, “Maybe.”
“Can you give me your router ID?”
Surprised, she nodded and said, “Well, I could, but what good would that do?”
“I could log in to your router and, therefore, into your network, if you’ve got the passwords memorized. And potentially we can access everything and download it to this laptop.”
She frowned as she thought about it. “I have a lot of it on cloud storage but that last bit, I need to get from the server.”
Brandon bounced out of the bathroom, already reaching for more chicken.
Amanda smiled. “Your hair is wet. Did you wash behind your ears?”
Brandon grimaced, immediately looking guilty.
“And did you wash all over, including your hair, with soap or shampoo?”
“Yes.” At Amanda’s questioning look, Brandon groaned. “May I eat more chicken before Griffin eats it all?”
At her nod, he ate like a starving kid.
Kerrick twisted around his laptop so she could see the screen and pointed her to the little chat window. “Type the router number in there.” She did that, and he said, “Then, once you see your network pop up, type in your network password.” She did, and, just like that, there were her files. She shuffled the laptop a little farther away from him and started moving material.
Kerrick didn’t want to butt in when she was so obviously trying to protect her stuff, but he said, “Unless you have a key, this laptop’s not totally secure either.”
She nodded. “I’m moving it to cloud storage, but I don’t want my footsteps tracked.”
He shrugged. “I can’t guarantee that’s possible right now.”
She looked at him for a long hard moment and then quickly moved the laptop closer to her and glanced at Brandon.
Brandon moved his chair so it touched hers. He continued to eat, but he gave her a nod or a headshake as needed with each of her looks or a finger pointing to the screen.
Kerrick didn’t know what she was doing as a workaround, but he suspected that the two great minds in this room would figure it out somehow.
When she and Brandon were done, she sat back with a pleasant smile and said, “At least now I have my material.”
“And you still need your laptop?”
“Preferably. I’d like to get my laptop and my server from my place. But it is all hidden. So, short of the bad guys finding it—and I don’t think they did, or they wouldn’t have needed one of my assistants to read my research notes—so I don’t think anybody looking casually will find it.”
“What about guys like us?” Griffin said.
She gave him a fast frown and said, “I don’t know. Depends on how well you look.”
Kerrick was interested to see what she would consider to be a hard-to-find hiding spot like that. “If it’s not a priority, I don’t want to make the trip to
France just yet,” he said. “That’ll just put both of you in more danger. But I can have your electronics picked up and kept somewhere safe.”
“And I can get it back when I need it?”
He nodded. “Absolutely.”
“Okay then. Let me know if your guys have trouble finding it.”
Kerrick smirked but said, “I will, if needed.”
She glanced at Brandon and then at Kerrick. “Do you have a safe house where Brandon and I can stay for a while?”
“We have a place,” he said, wondering about that himself, now typing in the chat box to find Amanda’s hidden electronics at her house and then to line up a safe house. “What about your father? What’s your relationship with him?”
Her face softened, and the corners of her lips tilted. “We’re very close,” she said.
“So we’ll get a message to him that you’re safe,” he said. “But I don’t think you should have any direct contact with him until we know more.”
She groaned. “Seriously?”
He nodded. “Because we don’t know yet who else is involved.”
“Well, as long as you pick up my ex-husband,” she said, “you’ve got one-third of the equation.”
“What’s he got to do with this?”
“No clue,” she said, “but Hinkleman told me three parties were interested in getting me out of the way.”
“Who?”
“My father’s enemy, my ex-husband, and then … Hinkleman himself?” She shrugged.
“That’s what I assumed too.”
Chapter 9
It hurt to say that her ex-husband was involved. Amanda just didn’t understand how or why. “He does make a good scapegoat,” Amanda said. “Yet I’m not exactly sure I believe Hinkleman when he said my ex was involved.”
“Why either way?”
“We signed the divorce papers five years ago, and he got nothing.” She shrugged. “So him caring now doesn’t make any sense.”
“So he wouldn’t be involved because you’ve already signed the divorce papers, but he would be involved because he got nothing?”
