by Dale Mayer
“Hey, I came here of my own free will,” he said in a mild tone, knowing perfectly well that she would take that guilt on no matter what he said. “You are not responsible. These guys were. Besides,” he added, “did you ever get a chance to take a picture of any of the kidnappers?”
She shook her head. “No. Our phones were taken away. Just like our purses, and we even had to empty our pockets. Everything that we had on us was taken away.”
“Would you recognize them again?”
“Of course,” she said. “Why?”
“Could you give a police artist information for a sketch?”
She stopped and stared at him. “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t see the one hardly at all, but the other two were all in black. The only one I really saw close must have been one of the two guys you and Diesel took out.”
“Interesting,” he murmured.
“I wonder why he wasn’t wearing a mask, like the others?”
“Because it didn’t matter,” Diesel said. “He wouldn’t survive anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was targeted to not survive,” he said, “as in, once his mask came off, the others couldn’t afford to let him live.”
“But even by association,” she said, “if you find who one is, surely you can track down the others.”
“Unless they were hired out, using locals,” Diesel said. He brought up his laptop and started typing away.
“What’s he doing?” she asked, looking at Shane.
“Contacting our group to see if anybody has any information,” he said.
When Diesel lifted his head, he shook it and said, “The two bad guys left in the building are still unconscious. And the cabbie isn’t talking.”
“Interesting,” she said. “Maybe we should knock him out a little bit more. When they wake up, knock them out again if they won’t talk.”
“Hard to get answers from an unconscious guy,” Shane said.
“Sure, but it’s much easier on our tempers.”
He snorted. “You can’t just go in and wring their necks if they don’t want to talk.”
“Why not?” she said. “I never did understand that.”
“It’s about fair treatment.”
“But if you put a gun in their hands, how fair would their treatment of us be?”
“Not at all fair,” Shane said, as he looked at Diesel, busy pounding on the keyboard.
When he looked up, Diesel said, “I’ve asked for information on any SEAL groups taken out in the last year.”
“Revenge is best served cold,” she said. “So, if you’re referring back to what I was saying, go back at least three or four years.”
He looked at her, surprised, then shrugged and typed into the keyboard again.
As soon as she finished eating, she got up and walked to the bathroom.
Shane cleared off a spot for his laptop, then opened the Mavericks chat window. In the chat, he asked for access to all cameras in the city, particularly those around the telecom building. As soon as that link came up, he started going through the cameras in the building itself. But they were all shut down at the time. When Shelly rejoined them, he asked her, “Did you have any argument with anybody in the telecom building?”
“Nope,” she said from the bed. I wasn’t there long enough to get to know anybody, much less make enemies.”
“No, but you have a tendency to piss people off,” he said. “They generally love you or hate you, and it doesn’t take them long to decide.”
“Lately it’s been more about hate,” she said.
He looked to find her arms under her head, as she stared up at the ceiling. “Tell me about it,” he said.
“Nothing much to tell,” she said, “but apparently somebody else in the building wanted my job. Don’t know his name. Management didn’t bother to tell him, so, when he found out I got it, he wasn’t very happy.”
“Did you see him at some point in time afterward?”
“Every day,” she said. “I had to go up the same elevator with him every day.”
“Was he difficult to live with?”
“Yes,” she said. “He used to make derogatory remarks all the time. It was obviously sour grapes, but still it gets to be irritating. I tried to avoid him, even changing the time I would show up at work, in order to avoid seeing him, and things like that.”
“Do you think he could be behind any of this?”
“But then you’re making this about me,” she said, rolling to look at him, “when it’s really all about you.”
Diesel snorted at that. “She’s got a good way to put things back in perspective.”
“She does,” Shane grumped.
“That’s nothing new,” she said, yawning. She curled up, her hands under her head, as she studied the two men working.
“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” he said. “I just need you to stay low and out of trouble while it happens.”
“Says you,” she said. “At least I don’t have a job to show up to tomorrow.”
“But do you even know that? Maybe they would just relegate you to another department.”
“There is no other department,” she said. “Well, at least not one with a job I’m qualified for.”
“Do they have another building anywhere in the city?”
“Yes, but again not in my field.”
“Maybe we should take a look at the personnel records of everybody you worked with.”
“You’re putting it back on me again,” she said. “This isn’t about me. Remember?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe that was a diversionary tactic.”
“No,” she said, “they were talking about you. I heard them say it.”
“What exactly did you hear?” he asked, and both he and Diesel turned to look at her.
She opened her sleepy eyes, stared at them, and said, “There were talking among themselves, and I heard them say your name.”
“What name?”
“They said Shane. He actually made it sound pretty disgusting. Then he said I was your girlfriend, well, your ‘doxy,’ he said.” She snorted at that. “As if I’m anybody’s doxy. Do you believe that?”
“Back to the conversation,” he said, leaning forward. “Think back now, and tell me exactly what they said.”
She closed her eyes and thought about it for a moment. “Two guys were off to the side, saying that I was the important one and that you would only come for your doxy,” she said with emphasis. “He said, ‘Shane’ll only come for his doxy. They’ve been best friends since forever.’”
“So he already knew something about us then?” Shane said, frowning.
“Yeah, but then the other man said, ‘There’s no way,’ and the first man said, ‘Yes. You don’t understand the relationship. I do.’”
At that, Shane let out a slow deep breath. “So who do we know that knows about us?” he asked, staring at her quietly. “Because, although we’ve been friends for a long time,” he said, “we haven’t shared mutual friends together for that whole time.”
Her eyes widened, and she slowly sat up again. “That is very true. How many people do we know in common? And how many people have you actually told about us? I don’t tell anybody,” she said. “It’s just between the two of us. We used to have mutual friends, but it was way back when though, like in grade school.”
“Right, so how many names can you come up with of people who know about us?”
She thought about it and said, “Sam and Jimmy,” she said. “We used to go out with them sometimes.”
“Right, and both of them are in England right now.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Are they?” She shrugged. “I didn’t know that.”
“Who else?”
“Well, there’s Deborah,” she said. “But I know she’s fat and sassy with her fourth pregnancy right now.”
“Fourth?” he repeated, his tone rising.
She winced and said, “Yea
h, four. She just keeps popping them out.”
“As long as she’s happy, I guess,” he said doubtfully.
She laughed. “Hey, just because neither of us have been into the whole multiple-kid thing doesn’t mean other people don’t want it.”
“I just can’t imagine,” he said. “Okay, so anybody else you can think of?”
“What about people we may have come across through work?” she replied.
“Did you tell anybody about me?”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t think so. I don’t know,” she said. “I have known you a lot of years.”
“True,” he said. “Did the gunmen say anything else?”
“Only something along the lines of they needed to just be patient, and you would come.”
“Which is very true. Were there any comments from them about how I would come, or what training I had? Anything?”
“No,” she said. “Just that—” She looked at him and said, “One of them said, ‘I’ve waited a long time.’”
“Ah,” he said. “So there is something that goes back a long time in this scenario.” He looked at Diesel and back to Shelly. “I wonder how much somebody would have to hate me to do something like this?”
“They don’t have to hate you very much,” she said wondering how long until she could get her purse and phone back. “They just have to hate you enough. And usually that involves somebody else.”
“Meaning?”
Chapter 5
“I can’t imagine anybody hating you that much in a personal sense,” Shelly said. “So I’m imagining it’s probably something more oriented to your job. Or someone they lost because of you.”
“Diesel?”
“I don’t know, man. It’s hard to say,” Diesel said. “How about we try to get some descriptions.”
“Good idea. I don’t know why we didn’t do this before.”
“We started, then never came back to it. There’s really been no time,” she said, comfortably curling up again. “You’ll have to ask fast, before I fall asleep, though.”
“Okay. Height?”
Her eyes popped open. “Of what,” she asked, looking confused.
“The four guys. Or however many you saw.”
“I saw them all. Well, I saw four anyway. One was shorter, the unmasked guy, who I saw but just briefly,” she said. “The other three were tall, and actually two of them looked like they could have been brothers. They both had dark hair, dark beards, darker skin, of similar height and build.” She frowned. “I’ll say a little bit shorter than you. So maybe just over six foot or so.”
“Build?”
“Well, the two brothers were slim. Not a whole lot of beef on them. The third one was the odd man out.”
“Was he likely to be the boss or just another lackey?”
“More of the boss,” she said, “but honestly all four could have been lackeys. They all could have been hired to do this.”
“They probably were,” he said. “The question we have to answer is why. But in order to do that, I need to see the people.” Shane turned to Diesel. “Did you find anything on the cameras?”
“I’m still looking,” he said, “there are a lot of city cameras.”
“Yeah. Do you have anything from the sky?” she asked curiously.
He looked at her and frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, the only way for them to have gotten out was helicopters, right?
“That’s one of the more obvious ways, yes.”
“The third man, the odd man out,” she said, picturing him in her mind, “he was blond, shorter, and much more heavyset, but my sense is that he was pretty heavily muscled. He had a really big jaw on him.”
“Any accent?”
“Not that I could tell,” she said. “They all spoke English.”
“Limps, tattoos, or disfigurations?”
She shook her head. “Nothing that I saw,” she said. “We didn’t get a great look though, and then we were shoved into the one room, until I was singled out.”
“So you didn’t know what happened to the others, your coworkers?”
“No,” she said. “Nothing. Mary was the only one I saw, once they separated me. I didn’t hear the shots that took out my coworkers. I didn’t see or hear anything else,” she said then another thought hit. “I hope she has someone to look after her cats.”
“We’ll make sure the police know about them.” Shane said. “If you think of anything else, let us know.” Then he turned back to his laptop.
“What are you looking at?” she asked.
“I’m looking for neighboring buildings that are higher up that I might access cameras from.”
“Honestly there didn’t seem to be anything remarkable or memorable about them, other than the murders. They came upon us so quickly. The front door opened, and the receptionist came into the back area where we were all working. The gunman was holding a gun against her head, and they pushed us all into the one room. Then, like I said, I was singled out and taken off into another room. Other than that, I didn’t see anything,” she said, “until Mary was brought in.”
“Why Mary?”
“She was the older motherly type,” she said, “and we had been a little friendlier than the others.”
“Do you think they knew that?”
“A couple questions would have shown that to them,” she said. “So I have no idea if she volunteered that info or if somebody else said something to the gunmen.”
“Okay, so that’s a dead end,” Shane said, frowning. “I’m still struggling to find cameras, and they stopped—whoa, hang on.” He adjusted his laptop, as Diesel headed to look over his shoulder.
“What’s up?”
“What did you find?” she asked.
“The helicopter that took them off the building,” he said. Immediately he typed in the call numbers on the bird. “We’ll find out who owns that chopper right now,” he said. “It’s hard to see, but it looks like two men getting on.”
“The big question is still the same,” Diesel said. “What the hell is this all about?”
“I wonder what they planned to do when you got there?” she asked. “Would they take you away or would they just shoot you?”
He nodded. “Thankfully they didn’t get that chance.”
“Maybe it was a test. Both men looked at her, wearing puzzled expressions. She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, “but, for all we know, they wanted you for something else. Maybe it wasn’t about revenge. Maybe it was more to see if you could do the job.”
“Huh.” Diesel turned and looked at Shane and said, “I actually like that idea. Just think about it. If you got her out of there safely, that could stand as proof of your competence.”
“But they killed how many people to make that test happen?” Shane asked, frowning. “And what about his words, ‘I’ve waited a long time for this’?”
“They had to make it believable,” Diesel said. Just then Gavin replied in the chat window.
Helicopter is owned by a rental company. It was rented out for four days by a mining company that denies ordering the rental, although they confirmed that a company credit card was used. They have reported it as a fraudulent transaction.
“Great, so they assume the identity of another company and use it for the rental. Nobody knows who’s used it, and they’ve had access to wheels or wings for that time period,” he said. “Probably to hire local gunmen. Smart.”
“It confuses the issue, for sure.”
“Which seems to be a theme in this whole deal,” she said. “It’s like they’re keeping everything confused and off balance, so nobody knows up from down.”
“And doing a pretty good job of it,” Shane said in frustration.
“Maybe that’s part of the test too,” she said.
“If it is, I’m damn tired of being tested,” he snapped.
As he glared at her, she held up her hands, palms out. “I get it,” she said. “Maybe, just ma
ybe, they want something to do with you.”
“Maybe,” he said. “I just don’t understand what.”
“And, if that were the case,” Diesel said, “they would contact you.”
“Maybe,” she said. “The question is, in what way?”
“I didn’t even get contacted over the kidnapping,” Shane said suddenly. “The Mavericks did.” He quickly sent a message to Gavin. Any other communication regarding this scenario? Specifically, have the kidnappers contacted you?
Not yet, Gavin said. What are you thinking? Shane quickly filled in Gavin on the other possibility they had been kicking around.
It’s possible, but I don’t like the idea in the least. To even think that we were being tested for something like this is a bit much.
But we’ve seen things like that before.
Well, we all have job interviews but hardly in this way.
Gavin, do you know of any sensitive cases worldwide that might need somebody for a job like that?
Now that you mention it, yes. There was silence on the chat for a moment and then a link was posted. The missing daughter of one of the international oil tycoons.
He’s got his own team though. He’d get his daughter out on his own, Shane wrote, as Shelly and Diesel looked on over his shoulder.
“Not to mention that she’s a female,” Shelly said. Frowning, the guys looked at her, and she shrugged. “I know that, in some cultures, women have value, but, in others, they don’t. I’m not sure on this one.”
Wait.
Shane sat back. “Gavin’s got something.” Moments later another message popped up in the chat.
Check out the email I just forwarded to you.
It was a message addressed to the head of the Mavericks Department, which he didn’t even know existed. It was written in code, and it was a message to Gavin, saying Shane was needed for a specialized job.
“Hang on a minute. What the hell are they talking about?” he asked, trying to understand the missive. His phone rang just then, a call from Gavin. Shane put it on Speaker.
“Shane, this is a telecommunication missive encode that just came through our system,” he said. “And you’re right. They do want you for a job. But take a deep breath. You won’t like the price.”
