by Clare Cole
"Do you have the money?"
Rick scowled as he answered the heavily disguised voice. "Yes. It's on its way."
"Good. I hope you've picked some speedy couriers, Mr Borrell. There is a sculpture of Lenin on the south-east corner of La Brea Avenue and 4th Street. Some bullshit modern art that us taxpayers really shouldn't be having to finance in this recession. As a sort of cruel irony, I'd like you to place the $5 million in a sealed, plain black holdall at the foot of the sculpture at exactly 4 PM this afternoon. Place it behind the structure so it cannot be seen from the street."
"And then what?"
There was a slight pause. "Then, Mr Borrell, you will fuck off. As soon as the money has been recovered and verified as genuine, your son will be released."
"Why the hell should I trust you? What's stopping you from just taking the money and keeping Luke?"
"You have no choice but to trust me, Mr Borrell. While I accept my methods have given you little reason to, you have no other options. If it's any comfort to you, I'm not the paternal type. The sooner I get to hand back your child, the better. Just remember to do exactly as I say, Mr Borrell, or the only way you'll be getting your son back is in a body bag."
The line went dead and Martin turned to Rick. "There we have it, then. We have to find where that router is transmitting from before 4 PM."
"And if we don't?" Rick asked.
"Then I'm afraid you're going to have to make a trip to the bank."
Chapter Three
"So, officer, you think the signal may be coming from the north of the city?"
The mere sight of Jake made my skin crawl. Since he arrived, he seemed more interested in speaking to the police than actually asking about what had happened. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but every fibre of my being distrusted him.
"If we don't have a breakthrough in the next hour, I'm going to have to pick up the money."
I turned to Rick and gently kissed him. "I don't want you to do this. It's too dangerous. I'm worried about you."
He brushed my cheek with a thumb and gently kissed my forehead. "Don't worry about me, Amy. I'll be fine. I'm more likely to get jumped by autograph hunters than anyone else. Besides, I don't have a choice. Michael was partially right."
"He didn't mean what he said. He was just being rash."
"I know. But my life is too insane for the average person."
"I'm still here," I smiled.
"Well, you're anything but average. All of this makes you think, you know? I've lived a selfish life for so long, jumping on a plane or a tour bus and going off to play gigs anywhere and everywhere around the world without a care for anybody. When I think of all the people I've left behind, all the failed relationships, Luke even…"
"But you're here now. That's all that matters."
"I can't change the past. There's no point dwelling on this but I don't just want to live in the present either. It's time to start thinking about the future, Amy. As soon as this is over, things are going to change. I won't let you be the one that got away."
I placed a hand on his arm, softly squeezing the rock-hard muscle beneath the fabric of his designer top.
"Don't you worry about me, superstar. I'm not going anywhere."
"All right, everybody. Can I have your attention please?"
We turned to see Martin in the centre of the room, a tablet computer in his hand. "We appear to have made something of a breakthrough. We've traced the router signal to an industrial estate in north-eastern LA."
"How big an area is that?" I asked.
"Pretty big but we're working on triangulating the signal right now. We have teams ready to move in if need be but I don't want to have any kind of visible presence there just yet. If the kidnappers are still at that location then it's only going to rattle them. I'll have more news as soon as we get it."
I noticed Jake take several steps into the empty kitchen at the back of Julia and Michael's house. I didn't trust him to begin with, but now his behaviour seemed really odd. Why had he just turned up here? And why was he wiping sweat from his forehead as he talked quietly into his mobile phone?
I made a point of marching into the kitchen, pretending to get a drink.
"Is that the new iPhone, Jake?"
"Yeah, yeah it is," he stammered.
"I'm thinking of upgrading mine. Mind if I take a look at it?"
"Why?" he asked, visibly nervous.
"I just want to see if it fits in my handbag, that's all."
I noticed his hand shaking as he slid it across the granite countertop towards me. I picked it up, pretending to look at the dimensions. "Hmm, it's a little longer than I would've liked. Maybe I'll keep my existing one."
I quickly swapped his handset for the identical model I had in my back pocket while he turned away. Now I had to fight to control my hand shaking as I passed my own iPhone over to him.
"Thanks," he said, hurriedly putting the handset back in his jacket pocket. He seemed too distracted to notice anything, let alone check the phone itself.
"What did I come in here for again?" I said, rolling my eyes skyward. "Never mind, it'll come to me." He grabbed my arm as I walked past, hurriedly attempting to get out of the kitchen and back into the living room.
"I hate you, Amy. You do know that, don't you?"
"The feeling is mutual," I seethed through gritted teeth.
"Your little love affair with my client has cost me a fortune. I just want you to know, there's plenty of hard feelings. Mountains of them, in fact. I know a million gossip columnists and bloggers in this town. Anything that's in your past, I'll find out. Anything that's in your present, I'll find out. Anything that's in your future, I'll destroy. Your plus-sized ass is mine."
I snatched my arm away. "Don't bank on it, Jake. You're nowhere near as smart as you think you are."
I hurried into the main hallway of the house and pulled out Jake's iPhone. As I scrolled through the messages on-screen, I was horrified. Brief, coded updates of how the police were progressing; warnings to move "the boy" as soon as possible. I beckoned Rick over and showed him what I had found.
"It's Jake's phone. He's working with them, keeping them one step ahead of us."
"Son of a bitch…"
I called up his voicemail to find a new message. Rick grabbed Martin and we huddled around the phone on speaker. On the other end was a desperate sounding Sean, pleading with his brother to stop.
"Jake, man! You've got to end this! This has gone way too far. I'll talk to Zee, man. We'll work something out. Let's just stop this, okay?"
"Who's Zee?" Martin asked.
"Sean's drug dealer," Rick replied. "He owes him money. A lot of money."
"Not $5 million worth, surely," I asked.
"No way. But between paying him off, making up for the lost royalties from disbanding Beautiful Losers and some good old-fashioned greed, $5 million probably sounds like a nice round number to these assholes."
A panicked Jake suddenly came running down the hall, his face ashen. "You bitch…you took my phone…"
Before any of us even had chance to open our mouths, Jake was on the floor, on the receiving end of a bone crunching uppercut from Rick.
“Where is he?” he screamed. “Where the fuck is my son?”
Chapter Four
What the hell kind of life had I got myself into?
This so-called dream of mine, this fairytale that I was living had begun to spiral into something I didn't understand any more. The entire day had become a complete blur, so much happening in the space of such little time but it was hard to keep track of it. Jake was now in custody, led away by police for questioning. He had already given up the location of Luke – the exact warehouse where he was being kept, an empty former paint factory. All around me police were suiting up and loading weapons, the constant buzz of radios and mobile phones becoming nauseous.
My days of being unable to pay my rent seemed so far away. I'll never forget the time when I saw the words "
eviction notice" on a letter through my door. You never really understand the gravity of what that means until it actually happens to you. I remember pleading with a guy from the electric company not to cut off my supply – begging him to at least let me cook something that night. He took pity on me, saying he would tell his employers he couldn't find the address that day but I had just 24 hours to figure something out. I literally pulled together every last penny I had the next day to pay that bill. Simple acts of kindness like that from a stranger reminded me that there were still good people in the world.
Now, my life was unrecognisable from what it had been – but at what cost? I had gradually lost contact with all my old friends – those who were happy for me simply couldn't relate to my constant travelling and bizarre change of lifestyle. I had become some kind of quasi-celebrity myself, a curiosity of sorts. Gossip magazines and websites photographed me taking the bins out or heading home from the shops. I was famous for not doing anything other than being the partner of a rock star – a partner constantly criticised or praised depending on which day it was for my weight, my dress sense, the amount of make-up I had on.
Now, I was sitting in yet another surreal scene being played out before my very eyes. In the midst of it all, a child had been kidnapped and we all faced up to the terrible prospect of what might happen next. What if a rescue attempt went horribly wrong? What if Jake was lying and Luke was long gone – or worse? I shuddered at the thought.
"You're to stay back – right back, understand?"
Rick and I nodded as Martin secured bullet-proof vests to both of us. To say this was becoming utterly surreal was an understatement.
"I want you to both stay in one of the surveillance vans. You can go with Miriam, one of our best techs. Do not engage, is that clear? The only reason you guys are even coming is because I fear some kind of negotiation may end up taking place. So far, the kidnapper has only spoken to you," he said, pointing at Rick." Heaven forbid, if something goes wrong, we may need to keep that line of communication open."
Rick looked at me without saying a word. He didn't need to. I saw the anger, the panic, the hope and the fear in his eyes. I wrapped my hand around his and squeezed it tightly. "Don't worry," I whispered. "We going to get Luke back. I just know it."
I was lying, of course. I didn't have a clue what was going to happen. Part of me wanted to run for the hills back to that boring little life I had while the rest of me wanted to stay by Rick’s side forever, being there for him both at times like this and just because. That's what love does, I guess. When you're staring down into a bottomless chasm, suspended by only the thinnest of wires, love makes you do the unthinkable. If cutting your cord would save the person you love, you'd do it. As irrational and crazy as that may seem, I had been ready to jump into the abyss with Rick a long time ago. No matter what happened, we were in this together – feet first and everything else behind.
"We're here."
One of the police officers who had escorted us from Julia and Michael's house turned to inform us that the location Luke was being held at was simply yards away. The journey there had gone in a blur, notable only for its deafening silence. It was like one of those moments where you drive home from somewhere and can't remember how you got there, like your entire body and mind is on autopilot. I felt a sudden rush of adrenaline – or was it fear? – as we came to a stop. This was real.
This was happening. Now.
A bank of monitors flickered on as the police attempted to pin down exactly where Luke was being held. Obscured from the warehouse, agents with heat sensing cameras were closing in on the structure and relaying the images back to us.
"It's a thin brick building," an officer operating a computer stated. "With any luck our guys won't have to get too close before we can get a position on the boy and whoever else might be in there."
Rick took a deep breath. "What if he isn't in there?"
The officer smiled. "Oh, he's in there. Don't worry. We're picking up the signal from that router right now. Somebody has sent emails from it in the last few minutes. The network is active. There's people in that building."
Suddenly, Rick's phone rang. We all jumped and turned to look at him.
"Shit," he said, raising his eyebrows. "It's Sean."
I blinked in disbelief. "Sean? What the hell is he ringing you for? What in Christ’s name is going on?"
"I guess we'd better find out." Rick placed a finger to his lips and we all fell silent, the police officers turning down their radios immediately. "Hello?"
"Rick!" Sean's panicked voice spoke in a whisper over the phone's loudspeaker. "Rick, you've got to believe me man, I never meant for any of this to happen. This is nuts. We’ve got to stop this, we’ve got to stop this now! That poor kid…" He started sobbing uncontrollably.
"Sean, calm down. Take it easy, okay? Just calm down for a second. What's going on? Where's Luke?"
"He's here," Sean cried. "I grabbed the kid while the other two weren't looking and made a run for it. I'm shitting bricks, Rick. They've got guns, dude. Fucking huge guns!"
For the first time, Rick looked genuinely worried. "Sean, you've got to tell me where you are. Are you in the paint factory?"
"No, I'm in a building further down. We’re trapped in here, man. I can hear them walking around, looking for us. Shit, dude…this is scary…"
"Which building? Sean, there are Police everywhere. Tell me where you are and we’ll come and get you both…"
Sean's voice grew even quieter. "Fuck, they're really close. There was a sign on the outside…something 'brass'. Rick, I'm going to have to go. This is too dangerous now."
The line went dead and Rick started to jump out of the back of the van. "Rick!" I yelled. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Stay here, Amy. I'm going to find Martin."
Rick disappeared down the street at breakneck speed and I toyed with whether to run after him or jump back into the van. The air crackled with the sound of radios buzzing with orders and directions.
"Miss, get in! We're on the move!"
My heart began beating out of my chest as we hurtled towards our next destination. The calm of analysing monitors and looking for traces of where Luke might be had suddenly gone out the window, replaced in a split-second with reactionary panic. Disembodied voices barked orders over police radios, frantically attempting to coordinate what had become an even more deadly situation than the one we had all expected.
"Old Brass Works, at the Western end, over."
A staggering urge to throw up suddenly came over me. Not because I was being thrown around the inside of a police van, although that didn't help. It was the feeling you get when you run out of energy, when you hit the wall in a marathon. No amount of trying to breathe steadily worked. My heart rate was through the roof, my breathing fast and panicky. Beads of sweat began to run down my back and forehead. I desperately, overwhelmingly felt like vomiting, right there and then on the floor of that vehicle.
But nothing came.
Instead, we screeched to another halt and I was horrified at the sight I saw through the front windscreen. What seemed like dozens upon dozens of heavily armed and protected police officers, some with huge SWAT symbols on their backs, swarmed everywhere in front of us. The buzz of helicopters above grew deafening and, in the midst of it all, I saw Rick running towards the warehouse Sean had told us about before disappearing inside.
In a blind panic I began to make my way towards the back of the van to get out until I stopped in horror at the voice calling over the police radio.
"Shots fired! I repeat, shots fired. Man down!”
I tried to scream but no voice came. Instead, tears rolled down my face uncontrollably as I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach with a sledgehammer. I mouthed the name I wanted to call. "Rick…"
"Suspects in custody. I repeat, suspects in custody. Urgent paramedics required. Man down, I repeat, man down. No vital signs. Urgent assistance required. I repeat, no vital s
igns, over."
My legs were like jelly as I made my way through the throngs of officers towards the building. The second he had ran from the police van, I knew he was doomed. His intentions would have been so clear in his head.
Got to save Luke. Got to get him back. Got to save my son.
I knew Rick was dead. My heart ached for him, like a sibling knows when something has happened to their brother or sister. Everything around me was muffled and eerily silent, despite the chaos that was unfolding. But I knew they were talking about Rick on the intercom. Every inch of me, every fibre of my being, wanted to believe he was okay. I desperately wanted to believe the unbelievable. But I saw him go through that entrance. I heard the sounds of panicked officers saying shots had been fired immediately after. There was no one else who could have been hit. I braced myself, knowing he was gone.
