by Dale Mayer
“Exactly. So unfortunately some people book me in advance, when their son or daughter or whoever doesn’t even have a partner yet.”
He snorted, stared at her in shock.
She laughed. “I’m very exclusive, and I don’t know who the nuptials are for until we get to the planning stage. And that’s usually about a year and a half or two years out.”
“Wow,” he said, almost too stunned for words.
“They give me a nonrefundable deposit,” she said. “And that’s half a million.”
He kept from stumbling in response to all this rapid-fire information of a world he didn’t understand. “So, say this person potentially didn’t want to wait as long as you were saying. What would have happened if they had taken out one of your clients somewhere along the line?”
“If there’s a cancellation,” she said, “all funds, less expenses incurred up to that point in time, must be refunded, and then I jump to the next person in line.”
“But surely dates have been set?”
“Yes, so the next couple is given a choice. If they wish to, they can move their wedding date ahead, or they can become a little more elaborate with their current wedding plans, as my time frees up.”
“Do you ever squeeze anybody in?”
She winced at that. “I try not to do that, but it has happened, yes.”
“So this kidnapping was somebody wanting to make sure that their wedding was next, is that it?”
“Maybe,” she said.
“And what’s this about the twins being models?”
“No,” she said. “They were models for several years. They are beautiful with something special to their features, and they photograph wonderfully. But they’re too high-strung and found it too difficult to deal with the lifestyle.”
“Not to mention full-time careers?”
“They’re fairly self-sufficient, or have been, within reason of course. They don’t cook or anything like that,” she said. “But the older they get, they want much less to do with that world.”
“So they have money of their own?” He presumed they had maids or assistants for everything.
She nodded. “From their modeling, yes. I made sure it was invested so that they’re taken care of, and, of course, I have money too.”
“Do you have other children?”
“I have a son,” she said. “He’s a businessman in Geneva.”
“Does he have anything to do with the twins?”
She hesitated, and he pounced. “The answer is no, I presume?”
She shrugged and said, “They don’t get along.”
“Is he younger or older?”
“He’s younger but, of course, in many ways seems much older.”
“So I’ll ask a difficult question,” he said. “Is there any chance that your son had anything to do with the kidnapping of the twins?”
She stared at him in shock, and then a visible tremor racked her body. She shook her head. “No, of course not.” She frowned and looked at him in confusion. “And what’s that got to do with the wedding I refused to plan?”
“I don’t know for sure what any of this has to do with any wedding,” he said calmly. “We often find that, in cases like this, it’s all about what somebody wants.”
“Yes,” she said. “The future bride wants me to do her wedding.”
“But you said it takes years to do it properly.”
“Yes,” she said; then she groaned. “Well, you might as well know all about it then.”
“If you want our help,” he said in barely restrained exasperation, “I need to know every detail.”
“This woman came to me years ago. She was engaged. We set it up. She paid the deposit, and then she and her fiancé broke up. She canceled her spot, and I moved on.”
“But now she’s engaged again, and she wants her spot back?”
“Yes, and she wants the same wedding she had before. So, in many instances, everything is already designed, but we must rush the orders.”
“What are the things that take the longest to order?”
“Well, honestly, if I have enough people and enough money, I could probably pull off a wedding in two weeks,” she said. “Except for things that are pertinent to the bride, like her wedding dress. But, in this case, she already has it.”
“And the wedding rings and all the other stuff?”
She nodded.
“So, because you said no, you wouldn’t fit her in somewhere along the line …”
“She thought she’d go to the top of my list, which would be anytime now. We had a very difficult confrontation several months ago, and then I never heard from her again.”
“And so you suspect she is behind the kidnapping of the twins.”
“Well, she must be. Her name was on the ransom note.”
His people had already dredged up her name and addresses, with a most likely one here in Shanghai. “And what’s the ransom note say, exactly?” He had already seen a copy of it, but he wanted her take on it.
“She wants five million US dollars in cash within one week—which is now five days away—and the wedding to go off without a hitch and the world to not know what happened. Otherwise, she’ll keep the twins. They make great pets,” she added in disgust.
Asher still didn’t understand the weeklong delay in the kidnapper getting their money. Something else was going on here. He’d run it by Ryker later. “And does any of that ring true for her?”
She shot him a hard look. “More than you know. She has an exotic pet collection.”
“Ah. So that was a little personal touch, so you know that she meant business and that it was from her.”
“Exactly.”
“And, when we get the twins back, what will you do?”
“I’ll make the ransom note public, and I’ll make sure that she’s no longer the fashion model she thinks she is and that her businesses go under.”
“So she’s not royalty. Does she have any big money or big families behind her who would hire another thirty odd gunmen to take you out?”
“No, … not yet. But should you not find the twins in time, then she will have my five million dollars in five days. I’ve already gathered the cash, have it at one of the local banks, just awaiting her delivery instructions to come later,” she said. “That’s why I must destroy her. Otherwise, she would come back after me.”
“Or you get the twins back and carry on with your day as if nothing happened,” Mickie said from a chair beside them.
Asher looked at Mickie in surprise and then back at the mother.
“But she won’t quit. You know that,” Chandra said.
“Maybe a private message would be better than a public humiliation,” Mickie said. “Or you could go to the police.”
She laughed at that. “Everything is for sale here, particularly the police.” Chandra sagged against the couch. “I need you to get them back, and I need them back fast.”
“Were their medical conditions well-known?”
“Anybody from the modeling industry would have known. We always had somebody with them to make sure they took their medications.”
“So then the kidnappers likely have a doctor with the twins to keep them in good health?”
“And I would presume that they’re being handled with great care,” Chandra said, “because my wrath, should anything happen to my daughters, would be horrific.”
“And they’ll know that?”
Chandra gave him a flat-out stare. “Young man, my skills are legendary. But my wrath beats out even that.”
Chapter 4
Mickie nodded. “That’s quite true. It’s one of the reasons that she has fewer arguments than a lot of people who handle this level of weddings. Nobody wants to go up against her.”
Chandra laughed bitterly. “And yet, years of cultivating that attitude seem to have backfired.”
Mickie spotted Asher, already heading to the door. “Wait. Where are you going?”
He t
urned and looked at her in surprise. “To get the twins.”
“Why? Don’t you need anything else?”
He shrugged. “This is really best done with minimal force.”
“You’ll need me to look after them,” she said, racing to his side.
“Maybe,” he said. “If, in fact, they know you.”
“They do.” She glared at him. “I’m coming.”
“The twins love her,” Chandra said. “She’s very good at calming them down.”
He nodded. “Fine. But if she can’t keep up …” And he headed for the door.
Chandra anxiously called out, “Mickie, are you sure?”
Mickie waved back and said, “I’m fine. I’ve known Asher for a long time.”
“If you say so,” Chandra said. “I’d be happy to find more men to send along.”
“Don’t bother,” Asher said, his voice hard. “They’ll just get in my way.”
Mickie followed him to the elevator. “I don’t remember you being such a hard-ass.”
“Circumstances,” he said.
“Circumstances or me?”
He shrugged. “Not necessarily you. Although it was a bit of a surprise to find out you were here.”
“Yeah. Apparently I’m the plus-one. Just in a work environment, not a personal one.”
“Well, we tried that once. It didn’t work so well. So here we can try the first one.”
“It worked fine,” she said.
He snorted. “So why’d we break up again?”
They went down the elevator, again with him refusing to let anybody else on. She watched his ability to keep that elevator door closed and shook her head. “You’ve done this a time or two.”
“All the time.”
When the door opened, she froze, staring at the loading dock area. “This isn’t where I expected to get off.”
“Yet it’s where I expected to get off,” he said calmly.
She groaned. “Yes, we did break up, but we were after different things.”
“If you say so.”
The breakup had been mostly her doing. “It was the right thing to do at the time,” she said.
He stayed quiet, and she looked around and asked, “What happened to Ryker?”
Just then a small vehicle drove up beside them. Asher reached for the back door of the vehicle, opened it, and said, “Get in. Ryker is driving.” Surprised, she scrambled into the back seat before they took off and left her standing there.
As soon as he got in the front, Ryker asked Asher, “Did you learn anything?”
“Yes,” Asher said. “I’m never getting married. Those weddings are nuts.”
Ryker laughed. “You will when the time is right.”
“I doubt it,” Asher said. “Came close once. That was close enough.”
That was a barb at her. Damn.
She sagged in her seat, wondering how she would get past this. Obviously Asher still had some hard feelings. Here and now wasn’t exactly the time to talk to him about it. Back then she had thought it was the right thing to do, that she was holding him back, just like she felt now. Last time she’d opened the cage, and he’d taken his freedom. But, what if maybe, just maybe, what she had seen as him taking his freedom had actually been him feeling rejected and running? What the hell did she do with that? Of all the mistakes in her life, cutting ties between them was what she regretted most.
“Do we have a plan?” she asked, leaning forward between the two front seats.
“We need a secure hotel room, and we need blueprints and some weapons,” Ryker responded instantly.
“Blueprints of?”
“Where this princess-type future bride is,” Asher said. “We need to do reconnaissance first because I highly doubt the twins will be where the bride-to-be is currently living. More likely they’ve been stashed somewhere else.”
“We need to get the video camera feeds from the hotel,” Mickie suggested.
“Beau already got them,” Ryker said. “They were disabled.”
“Who’s Beau?” she asked.
“Our contact person,” Asher explained.
“The street cameras?” she asked.
“He’s working on it. I need to check in.” Asher opened up his laptop, did something funny to it as she watched from the back seat, and opened up a chat window.
She asked, “What about facial recognition?”
“We’re on it,” Asher said. “The trouble with the twins being models, their faces are still on various internet locations that they may not even be aware of.” He quickly asked Beau for an update in the chat window. “So the kidnappers must keep the twins out of the public eye or risk them being recognized.”
Going through city cameras right now, Beau typed. We suspect that the twins were taken outside with hoods over their heads because of their notoriety.
Suspect they were unconscious as well. In a vehicle with smoked windows.
Beau sent him a link.
Asher quickly clicked on it and up came a video camera feed. “Okay,” he said. “We’ve got a video from the hotel garage.” He watched as ten different vehicles left within about a ten-minute span. “Shit. Your hotel is really busy.”
“They’re checking all the vehicles that came and went at the time of the kidnapping?” she asked.
“Yes. This is a ten-minute piece that Beau’s given us from around midnight.” He looked back at Mickie. “Do you know when you were attacked?”
“It was probably about eleven that night,” she said. “We had been late getting in.”
“So you had just arrived here in Shanghai that day?”
“Yes,” she said. “Our flights were all messed up. The twins were very upset, and it was an extremely taxing day. By the time I got them up to the room, they were beyond done. So was I, for that matter.”
Into the video camera feed again, Asher quickly checked and said, “Okay. We have you arriving at ten minutes past eleven and up to the room by twenty-five minutes past. The cameras went out at fifty minutes past. So, twenty-five minutes later, at twelve-fifteen, the camera system goes down, and, at twelve twenty-eight, the kidnappers have moved the twins into the vehicles underground.” He scrolled through at superspeed, looking for anything potentially connected with the kidnapping.
Because two grown women were being moved, the trunk of a car wouldn’t be enough, but that didn’t eliminate one woman in the trunk and one on the back seat. He hit Stop when he came to a delivery van. He studied the interior and saw two men inside. Asher tried to zoom in for a closer image. Interesting. He took a screenshot and sent it to Beau. See if we can identify these guys. He had no way to turn the cameras to get a copy of the license plate, so Asher sent the full image and added, Track this through the city.
His chat window disappeared as Beau headed off to get the information they needed. “What do you think?” Asher asked Ryker. “A delivery van left just after midnight,” he said. “Two men driving and dressed in black.”
“Possible,” Ryker said. “Doesn’t mean it’s them though.”
“I’m still scanning,” he muttered.
Just then they pulled up to Mickie’s hotel.
Chapter 5
“Did we take a detour or a long way around?” Mickie asked.
“Yes,” Ryker said. “To make sure we weren’t followed.”
“Got it,” Asher said. “Beau tracked the van. More intel coming soon.”
“While you’re being so helpful,” Mickie said, “any chance of food?”
“I’ll order something up,” Asher said, opening his passenger’s side door.
She quickly jumped out of the car and followed him.
Still holding the laptop in his hands, Asher walked casually toward the elevators from the underground parking lot. The area was empty, dark. Their footsteps rang hollowly. But only two sets. Ryker had disappeared again.
She looked to see where he had gone, but she saw no sign of him. “Is he not coming with us?”
/> “He’ll be back,” Asher said quietly.
Then she realized that, although he held the laptop as if he were completely engrossed in whatever was on the screen, his gaze was checking out the entire area. She could feel shivers rocking down her spine as she noted just how intense his focus was. She really was out of her element. Resolutely determined to stay as far away from being a problem as she could, she stuck to his side.
“You’ll still be in the way,” he muttered, as if reading her thoughts.
“Maybe,” she said, “but I’ll do my best not to be.”
In the elevator, he once again did something so they went straight up to the room, without the elevator stopping on any floor.
“Where are we going?”
“To my room,” he said. It was on the tenth floor, and, as soon as the elevator doors were open, he checked the hallway. It was empty; then he typed something on the keyboard, and she watched his screen to see them appear. He opened the hotel room door beside her.
“What did you just do?” she asked.
“Shut down the security camera in the hallway for just a blip, long enough to hide our presence.”
“So you can do that again for Ryker?”
“Maybe,” he said cheerfully. “But Ryker is already in the room beside us.”
Just then the connecting hotel door opened, and Ryker walked in. She frowned at him. “And how did you get here so fast?”
“You’d be surprised,” he said. In his hands were large bags of food. “Chinese food for all.”
She stared at him, looked at the food, and shook her head. “How? I don’t know how,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll enjoy the food regardless.” She quickly emptied the bags, while the two men set up the electronics.
As soon as he was up and running, Asher walked over, snagged a large bowl from one of many, and started eating. He looked at her. “Eat,” he said. “You need energy.”
She nodded and picked up one of the rolls in a small container, then moved on to the next dish. Finally filled up, she sat off to the side.
Asher could see the fatigue on her face, the worry and the unrest. There had to be a certain amount of disquiet just being in a scenario so different from her norm. “You doing okay?”
