by Marie Ellie
“No, she’s still not awake. When she does wake up I’ll talk to her, I’ll explain and take her to the vault. Don’t worry sir, everything will be fine.”
Vault? Sir? What sir? Who is this sir? This guy who’s talking definitely isn’t William. He says he wants to talk to me when I wake up. What does he want to tell me? What does he want us to talk about? At least what I heard tells me two things: 1. That I am asleep and not quadriplegic and 2. that he is waiting for me to go somewhere. It shouldn’t be anyone who wants to hurt me, quite the opposite. Someone called him to ask about my condition, so someone is worried about me. So far everything is fine but William? Where is he? Did something happen to him? I need to wake up, wake up? What am I saying! I am awake, if I weren’t, I wouldn’t have heard anything or be here analyzing this thought or any other. What I need is to get out of this strange state that doesn’t let me move and figure out what happened.
...
My head hurts, I think I fell asleep thinking about William, my William, he was so handsome last night, so perfect that he was everything and I still don’t know how the night ended. Wait, my eyes are open! I'm in the EDITION, and I don’t have clothes on, I have no clothes. What I do have is a strong headache.
“Ma'am, are you okay?” I hear a very manly man's voice, the same voice I heard when I could not open my eyes.
“My head hurts,” I answer and when I look up, I see him. My God, an angel fallen from heaven was accompanying me in my Hotel room. Tall, with light hair, not yellow blonde but that blonde where you know that when he was little he had yellow hair, and as a grown-up, it has changed with him. With a modern cut, short on the sides and longer and more spiky on top. Perfect body, beefy, with a “I go to the beach every weekend” skin tone and blue eyes like the sea itself. No, I’m lying, they are clearer, they are blue like the sky. He can’t be older than 29 years old, and he is really handsome. The guy looks in his briefcase for a pain reliever, serves me some fresh water and hands it to me.
“Take this ma’am, for your headache.”
“Please, call me Grace. Ma’am makes me feel old, and we’re almost the same age. What is your name?”
“Charles.”
“Charles what?”
“Charles Elliott.”
“Very good Charles, can you tell me what happened? Where is my husband?”
“We don’t know, your husband activated the alarm on his mobile device. When we arrived, you were in bed, and he wasn’t here. I expected you to know what happened or to give me some additional details.” You want me to give you details? I'm naked under white hotel sheets, and I don’t even know what happened after drinking that wine.
“No, I don’t remember anything, the last thing I remember is ... we drank wine.” Not that I was going to tell this random guy that the only thing I remember was that I was so wet I could’ve flooded the entire Hotel.
“Well, in that case, I’m going to ask you to dress please and pick up your things. I'm going to take you home. While we are waiting for the gentleman to appear, I have orders to protect you and make sure you have everything you need.” And how does that guy know that I have to get dressed? How embarrassing!
“Okay, give me ten minutes to get dressed.”
“Sure, I'll be in the hall.”
This is very weird. Now it turns out that William isn’t here, no sign of him. There isn’t his suitcase or anything, and there's a guy who looks like he's straight out of a magazine that says he has orders to protect me and to keep me happy. But the question is, where is William? I need to find him, I need to know if he's okay, why did he leave like that without saying goodbye or even leaving a note or anything? Did somebody do something to him?
I look in the suitcase that William prepared for me; everything is there, toothbrush, toothpaste, panties, jeans, a sports shirt, sneakers, well, it seems he had plans to go on a safari. I go to the bathroom, take a shower, brush my teeth and comb my rebellious straight blond hair. I put on the clothes that William chose for me and put all my things in the suitcase. I take one last look at the hotel room and notice the bottle of wine and the glasses. They are there, almost an entire bottle and two glasses of wine, one empty and one with almost all the wine. Mine is the empty one, I remember that. William insisted that I drink all the wine that he served me, it wasn’t much, so I did it. We just left that hints, the wine glasses. It's time to go; I go into the hall where Charles is waiting for me leaning on the wall right in front of the door.
“You have to look for the truck in the valet,” I say to Charles with a cold and direct tone.
“The gentleman's truck is not there; we're going in my car.”
“His truck isn’t there? Then he has taken it.”
“We don’t know.”
“If you don’t know, did you call the police? They can investigate.”
“No, ma'am, it's not necessary, we're going to find him.”
“We who?”
“We ma’am, our team is already deployed, and we’ll soon find out what happened. For now, I have to take you home.”
“Do you know what happened to my cell phone? I can’t find it.”
“No ma'am.”
“Stop calling me ma'am please. My name is Grace.”
“Sorry.”
“We’ll stop along the way to buy a cell phone.” I'm already sounding bossy, but this situation has me feeling very nervous, I need to get a phone and call my father. He can help me find William, all he has to do is call and in two minutes he’ll have all the government agencies looking for William.
We got into the elevator, and this is incredible, this time we stopped on each and every one of the Hotel floors. It was eternal going down to the lobby from the 37th floor. When we finally arrived, Charles carried my suitcase with one hand and grabbed my arm with the other. He did not squeeze me or anything, I just felt his hand with enough force to guide me where he wanted me to walk. We arrived at the valet, and they gave him a sports car, BMW 428i dark gray, not bad for being an employee of my husband. They put my suitcase in the car while Charles opens the door for me. I see that the interior is red like a single man would have. I enter the car, waiting for Charles to get in and I say:
“Do you know any place that sells cell phones?”
“Fasten the seat belt.”
“Did you hear me? Hello! Cell phones!”
“My orders are to bring you home and take care of you there, I have no orders to take you to buy anything.”
“Who gives you your orders?”
“Mr. William McLaren, your husband.”
“And if my husband is missing, when did he order you to do this?”
“It's in the security protocol. I just follow the protocol.”
“I'm in my husband's work safety protocol?”
“Yes, ma'am, I mean Grace.”
What wife appears in the security protocol of the company her husband works for? It makes less sense every single time, what is clear to me is that at the speed that moves Charles with this car, I’m not going stop anywhere besides my house. I can tell him to buy me breakfast or something, although the truth is that I have a lump in my throat, like a burning sensation, it must be the worry I feel. Where is my husband, has someone taken him? That has to be it, they must have kidnapped him. There is no other explanation for abandoning your wife on the night of reconciliation. Why did they take him, what did they do to him? I have to find him, and Charles is a nuisance. I have to move fast; I have to make a plan to escape from Charles and be able to call my father, he can help me surely. I have a little less than three hours which is how long it takes to get to the Hamptons, although at this speed, we’ll probably arrive in 30 minutes.
As it is in life, yesterday while we crossed this same road, everything was happiness, love, and illusion. I was only thinking about spending a wonderful evening with a wonderful man, and now, on the way back, all I can think about is how to escape so I can find my husband, my William. How can I do it, I can’t th
row myself out of the car, I would kill myself, and this boy is not going to stop for anything in the world. And if I convince him? If I try to get him to understand me, maybe I'll go see my father, after all, if he's interested in finding William, he’ll know that the help of a powerful Congressman who already announced his intention to seek the presidency would be of great help.
“Hey Charles,” I say in a conciliatory voice.
“Tell me, ma'am.” I roll my eyes because I'm tired of telling him to stop calling me ma'am.
“I don’t know if you know, but my father is a Congressman, he’s very well known.”
“Yes, I know. Why do you say that?”
“Why don’t you take me to him? I'm sure he can help us find William, find out what happened, who has him, something! Please!”
“I can’t, ma'am, I really would like to help you but I can’t. I have ordered and I have to fulfill them.”
“But is there something more important than William's life? He must be in danger! We don’t know where he is or if someone has him against his will and you follow some stupid orders!! Tell me!! Tell me what is more important than his life!”
“Your life, ma'am. My orders are to protect your life, yours and that is more important.”
I don’t understand anything, this guy is an employee of my husband and has orders to take care of me and not William. I can’t understand anything, besides, I remember when I couldn’t open my eyes, I heard him talking on the phone, and he told someone that when I woke up, he would talk to me and then he would take me to the vault. I don’t know what vault he was talking about, but as far as I know, we're on our way home. I need to call my father, I need to understand what is happening and I need to find William.
CHAPTER IV
BACK HOME
At last, we got home, I got out of Charles's car, and at that moment, I remembered that William locked the house up, I don’t have the keys. When I turn to tell Charles, he's already on his way to the door, takes a keychain out of his pocket, looks for a key, inserts it in the lock while I watch him closely. To my surprise, the door opens, Charles enters and deactivates the alarm, all this in less time than it would have taken me, who have been living there for 5 years. How is it possible that an employee of my husband has the keys to my house and the alarm’s code? Can William's employees come in and out of here whenever they please? Are they going to tell me that all that information is in the company's security protocol? This is expert level security or what the hell? I'll save the subject for later because right now I'm very worried about how I can get out of Charles's sight to go and find William, or at least go find my father so he can help me. That would be the best thing, my dad should have experience locating people, and I wouldn’t even know where to start.
Charles is already taking my suitcase out of the car, we go into the house together. I ask for the suitcase to go upstairs, and he tells me to stay where I am while he checks the whole house. He pulls a gun from his belt that I didn’t know he was wearing because his jacket covered it and he starts inspecting every millimeter of the house. After a few minutes, he returns to me and tells me that the house is clear and that I can go upstairs while he stays downstairs securing the entrances. I’m going to obey him but only because I want to be alone. Before going up the stairs, I watched his movements for a few minutes. Charles goes to the front door and activates the alarm. This time the code isn’t the same. How? Charles just activated the alarm with a different code than the one I’ve been using for the last 5 years. This is already making me pretty afraid but I prefer not to think about it.
I go up the stairs, I’m carrying my suitcase with me so I can not run as fast as I would like. I enter my room and go straight to the landline that I’ve never used in my life. We have it as a decoration or at least that's what I’ve always said. William said it was for emergencies and this is definitely an emergency. I pick up the phone and...it sounds like it’s disconnected. The phone is dead, or it’s been a decoration for who knows how long. Sweet! My cell phone is lost, the phone is dead, and this mysterious employee won’t lend me his cell phone. What do I do? The laptop! There must be internet.
I go to the room’s desk and take a MacBook Air that William had bought me a few months ago out of the top drawer. I turn it on and realize that it doesn’t have a lot of charges, so I look for the cable and connect it to the wall outlet that is behind the desk. I make sure it’s loading and move the cursor to the wi-fi icon, perfect! There is a connection available; it’s very weak, it must be from a neighbor. Since the nearest neighbor is just over 100 feet away, the signal is really weak, and I have to move somewhere closer. How will I know where the signal is coming from? I have to try it in every corner of the house. I can’t waste that much time, let's think it through for a second. If I’m in the main room in the left corner at the front of the house, I have to move to the opposite side and check if the signal improves. On the opposite side is the guest room that’s never received a guest.
As I cross the hallway to the last room on the right at the back of the house, Charles starts going up the stairs, and I hear him say my name.
“Grace! Are you okay?” he asks me from the stairs landing. I leave the laptop on the hallway floor, look out and answer him, so he doesn’t climb any more steps.
“Yes Charles, I'm trying to calm down a bit and rest. You still don’t know anything about William?”
“No, ma'am, still nothing. The team is working on that, and as soon as I have news, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks, Charles.”
“Ma’am!”
“Tell me.”
“You haven’t eaten anything, do you want me to prepare something for you?”
“Is cooking also included in the protocol orders?”
“No, ma'am, I’m doing it out of courtesy.” Poor guy, he's trying to be nice to me while I’m just thinking about how to get rid of him.
“No, Charles, thank you, I don’t have an appetite.”
“Well, I'll be in the kitchen in case you need me.”
“Fine,” and I stand watching as he goes down the stairs to the kitchen. When I don’t see him anymore, I run without making much noise, I lift the laptop and go to the guest room. I closed the door and settled in one corner of the bed, I opened the computer and checked the signal.
Perfect! It has a signal. I can try to do a video call to my father who is surely in his office. I open the program, enter my father’s contact information and press the button to start the video. It starts to ring, then makes a peculiar noise that indicates that the other person has answered and suddenly, when the connection was finally being established a message appears on the screen “the internet connection has been lost, please reconnect and try again” How!!! But if ... what the hell happened to the signal? It’s not there! I no longer have any signal, neither weak nor strong. This can not be happening, something or someone is interfering with the internet signal. They just screwed up my plan, so I need to think about something else.
If I want to get out of here before they take me to the famous vault, I have to have a plan, and it has to be good. Charles has me under surveillance, surely he noticed the internet signal and blocked it with something or did something, I don’t know what but something happened. I'd better go down to William's study, there should be everything I need to come up with a plan good enough to get out of here.
Under the stairs, while I'm going down I decide to go to the kitchen first, maybe I'll chat Charles up a bit, I'll put him to sleep, I'll tell him a fairy tale and leave him alone while I escape. I'll do that, I'll go to the kitchen first to talk to Charles.
When I take my first step off the stairs, Charles says out loud:
“Ma'am, is that you?”
“Yes!” I answer as I enter the kitchen and find him standing up from one of the chairs at the kitchen island about to take his gun out of the holster. “Easy boy! It’s just me. I came down because I already got a pretty vicious and decided to make some
thing to eat. Did you eat something? You want something to eat?”
“No, ma'am, I do not have the authorization to eat here.”
“And since when do protocols decide who I invite to eat at my house and who not? You eat, and that’s final. I’m not a very good cook, but I can make a mean sandwich. So I'll prepare two or three because one probably won’t fill you up.”
While I gave him a speech about the sandwiches my grandmother used to prepare when I stayed at her house, Charles looked at his tablet. On it was a map of the house with all the doors and windows on both floors. Everything that had an entrance to the outside, Charles controls them from the tablet. Very interesting, that gadget. It has two floors of the house completely controlled.
“I tried to connect to the internet to download a book, but I don’t know what happened, right at that moment the signal died,” I said to start a conversation and to get him to trust me more.
“That’s weird! And what book did you want to download?”
Ha! He's very smart, he wants to catch me in the act. “Well,” I start answering him almost immediately, “you know my father announced that he wants to run for the presidency of the United States, so I'm interested in reading the book that a former employee of the current president wrote, I want to know what it says about him and his administration.”
“They say it's very interesting and that everyone is reading it.”
“Yes, I'm dying to learn about the inner secrets in the life of the President, it must be very entertaining at least.”
“If you want, I can ask someone to bring you a physical copy of the book.”
“Don’t worry; I’ll get it when the internet returns, I prefer digital books and that way we aren’t cutting down so many trees.” And suddenly, while I'm preparing these sandwiches, I realize I’m enjoying a conversation with this guy I was about to try and trick. It might be a better idea to continue with the sandwiches.
