He stormed out, and the room went back to work without comment.
By the time Brock Wendel stepped into the room, McGyver was so involved in his research, he barely noticed. He’d hacked into the database of an app that lets people meet up based on their location, and he was looking through the pictures everyone in the vicinity had taken that morning. Once he had access to the app’s server, he had access to everyone who’d given the app permission to use their pictures — which was damned near all of them.
Two of the pictures showed the bike station just down the road, and he called across the room to Chance. “What are the odds someone riding one of the rental bikes has a picture from this morning? Before I hack into the Chattanooga Bike Transit Company to see who deposited or picked up a bike at that station this morning, I figured I should check to see if you’re already in.”
“I am. We consulted on their security.” He was already clicking on his keyboard. “A few minutes, and I’ll have a list we can split up and dive into.”
“Seven people within twenty minutes of… only three within ten minutes. Two of those three have a cellphone in their own name, and I’m sending you those names and numbers,” said Chance. “I’ll dig through parent records on the third and find a cellphone.”
Three minutes later, McGyver discovered one of those people had a live-streaming GoPro, and thirty seconds later, he was watching the morning’s stream from the guy’s personal cloud account.
“Got it! Black Ford Expedition. Tinted windows.” He rattled off the license plate while he went to the DMV app on his laptop, and seconds later, he announced the name of the owner and the address.
“Hang on,” said Chance. “Odds are, it belongs to someone who’s out of town, and it was either stolen from long term parking at the airport, or from their house.” His fingers clicked across the keys, he asked for date of birth, and then more clicks. “Yeah. Took a plane out yesterday. Due back in another four days, so it won’t be reported stolen for a while. Next up, we look through the airport feeds and see if we can get an image.” He spun in his chair. “Great job, Mac. We have people who are used to watching feeds in fast motion. Let us follow this lead, and you work to find us another. We need your skillset tracking down new leads and not watching video feeds.”
McGyver nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Ya’ll don’t have rules against eating in here, do you?” He didn’t want to stop and eat, but he couldn’t risk going hungry.
Gabby laughed. “Just about everyone allowed into this part of the building is a predatory shifter, so no — ya’ll are allowed to eat wherever and whenever you want. I need to stretch my legs. I’ll walk with you to the vending area.”
Mac looked around and realized Iris’s father wasn’t in the room anymore. He must’ve just stopped in to see the people working, and then been taken somewhere more comfortable.
The vending area had boxes of fresh barbecue sandwiches in the refrigerator on the honor system, with a box on the counter full of money. The sign said three dollars per sandwich and a dollar for a personal-sized bottle of milk. MacGyver got three sandwiches and two bottles of chocolate milk, put fifteen dollars in the box, and watched Gabby get a huge salad, some water, and toss a five into the box. She grabbed a bottle of salad dressing, squirted it onto the salad, put the dressing back, closed her container, and motioned to the door. “I’ll eat while I work, too. C’mon.”
“Do you risk losing control if you don’t eat?” MacGyver’s wolf needed food. He had perfect control so long as he kept his wolf fed, and in stressful situations, he had to feed him even more. He had no idea how it would be for a rabbit shifter, though.
“Once upon a time, I was starved while I was tortured. For days. Getting hungry under stressful situations can pull up a form of PTSD, so I have to make sure I don’t get hungry when I’m stressed. I’ve worked through all of the emotional crap around it, but sometimes, the physical stuff rears its head.”
“Are the people who tortured you dead?”
“One of them is, and I’ve forgiven the others. They meant well. It’s a long story. I’ve been analyzing the blurry video of the original abduction, and I believe one of the men has studied Krav Maga. Another moves like an eastern European. Hard to explain, but I’ve studied posture and stance of various cultures, and there are subtle differences. Show me five Asian people, and I can tell you which ones grew up in China, Japan, or America just by watching how they stand, move, and walk. Same goes for Europeans. Germans stand and move different than Norwegians, who stand and move different than the British, and don’t get me started on Parisians.”
“What does this tell us? Her abductors aren’t Americans?”
“Possibly. I think it means we look for dark hair over blond hair, and someone who grew up in Eastern Europe over someone who grew up in America. The Krav Maga guy, all I see is military, but I can’t tell you which military. Odds are better he’ll have dark hair over light, but not enough to say one way or another while we narrow people down.
“Micca has a theory that the eastern European guy is over forty, but I think it’s just as possible he’s recovering from an injury or is perhaps sore from an intense workout and moving a little stiffer than someone in their twenties usually would. Both are fit. No doubt about it.”
McGyver sat and looked at the smartboard. Micca and Gabby had a list of things they were certain of, and a list of things considered probable or possible. Under the certain column — there were two men plus the driver, gender unknown. Heights for the men were listed to the inch, and weights within ten pounds. Krav Maga guy was right handed, the other guy was left handed. The brand of jeans was noted for one, and the sneaker brand for both. Items in the uncertain column included ages at twenties for one and forties for the other, hair color of dark or black (despite the balaclavas), and a list of off-the wall comments, like whether they’d ever had braces. It was a super blurry video with the kidnapping shown in the distance, and they’d gotten all of that?
Wow. The GoPro video was a higher resolution even though they were still off in the distance, and he was suddenly optimistic Micca and Gabby would find clues he wasn’t expecting when they began analyzing it.
Chance put up a map showing the route the stolen Expedition had taken when it left the airport — straight to a church that used to be an athletic store, just a few miles away, and then nothing. They’d taken it there and disabled the GPS.
“They did this after dark last night,” Ranger said. “Twenty minutes after a large flight landed, and others were in the lot, too. We need to see if the church has security cameras. These guys are pros, and I’m betting they either disabled the security or stayed out of sight, but we need to check.” He looked to McGyver. “We’ve reinforced Wendel’s training of how to answer a ransom call, but one hasn’t come in yet. I have Micca on the new GoPro video, and Gabby’s watching old footage in and around the math and engineering building while Iris came and went, because it’s a no brainer these guys heavily scouted the building ahead of time, and she’ll recognize their walk. I need you to close your eyes and eat, and think back to her mentioning someone creepy, or feeling as if she were being watched. Just relax and eat and let it come to you. If Wendel gets a ransom call, it’ll come over the loudspeaker in here so we can all hear.”
Chapter 21
Iris was too afraid to ask to use the restroom, and she needed to go so bad it hurt. When they landed, she figured she’d be moved soon, so she finally wet herself while the plane taxied down the runway.
But no one said anything.
Literally. No one said a word.
She was put on a stretcher and covered with a blanket before being taken off the plane. She didn’t know if she was put into an ambulance, but she supposed it made sense, and was less suspicious than carrying a grown-assed woman down the steps.
She thought about screaming for help once they were outside the plane, but with all of the engine noise, she was certain the only people who’d hear her were her kidn
appers, so she remained silent.
This time, they drove perhaps fifteen minutes with around ten minutes of it on the interstate. She couldn’t see, and didn’t know for sure, but she had the sense the vehicle backed up to a garage, so she was unloaded in such a way the neighbors wouldn’t see her. If there were neighbors. It’s possible the house was in the middle of nowhere.
The weather was cooler here. It’d been in the fifties at home, and she’d guess low forties at this location. She had no idea how far north that might mean. Someone lifted her from the stretcher and put her over their shoulders in a fireman’s carry. She still ached from the hogtie earlier, and it was hard to keep from yelling out in pain, but she managed.
She was carried into a warm house, down some steps, and semi-gently settled on the floor. On cold concrete.
A few seconds later, a mechanical voice said, “I’m going to cut your wrists loose. Count to one hundred before you remove your mask. You’ll find written instructions. If you don’t follow them, we’ll cut your right ear off first, then your left, and then we’ll begin removing fingers. Follow instructions and you won’t be hurt so long as your father also follows instructions.”
Iris’s pulse thundered in her ears and terror threatened to overtake her again, but she sat still, counted, and did her best to keep her fear from taking over and becoming panic. Starting at thirty, she timed her breathing with the slow counting — in for ten counts, out for ten counts. She didn’t stop at one hundred but kept going to one hundred and twenty, just to be safe.
When she pulled the mask off, she found herself in a large room with cinder block walls and a steel door. A single bulb with a pull chord hung from the ceiling, and video cameras were mounted in three of the four corners near the ceiling. A table had Twinkies, oranges, and apples. She opened the refrigerator to find sandwiches and water. Two containers of baby wipes were also on the table, and three more of the cotton dresses in the same charcoal color as the one she’d been put in.
The typed note said:
* * *
You’ll find enough food and water to last four days, but we don’t expect you’ll be here that long. A five gallon bucket with a lid is in the corner, and you should use this for your toilet. If you’re instructed to do something, failure to comply will mean great pain. An escape attempt will also mean great pain.
* * *
She’d posted to social media about starting a new book a few days earlier, and it was on the table, along with four other books by the same author.
She used the baby wipes to clean herself under the still-damp dress, took it off, and put a clean one on as quickly as possible. She put the soiled dress in the bucket and sealed the lid. The room had a full-sized mattress on the floor. No blankets, no sheets, no pillow. The light was over the food and refrigerator, the mattress was in the middle of the room, and the bucket was on the far side, perhaps twenty or twenty-five feet from the food. No part of the room was dark, but the farther from the light you went, the dimmer the room.
Panic wouldn’t help, so she took inventory: Cheap folding table, mini fridge, paper towels, baby wipes, bottled water, various food items, some paperback books, a mattress, a few dresses, a bucket, and lid. Also, a light bulb and three cameras, but she wouldn’t be able to reach them even if she stood on the mini fridge, and she didn’t trust the table enough to stand on it.
No windows. Only the steel door. She might be out of camera range in the corner with the bucket, but she figured they just wanted her to think she was. These people had planned for everything, and she doubted they’d decide to give her privacy to pee and poop.
She did pushups, crunches, planks, and then some basic yoga poses. She pulled the mattress under the light, opened the book, took some time to figure out how far in she’d read, and then dog-eared the page — and secretly hoped it annoyed whoever was watching. Under normal circumstances she’d never harm a book, but these weren’t normal circumstances.
She didn’t trust the food or water, but if she was going to be here for days, she’d have to at least drink something. She got a bottled water and settled down with her book.
She didn’t see any air vents, but the temperature was about right. She’d be happier with a lightweight blanket, but she was okay.
The ransom call didn’t come through until six that evening, when McGyver, Ranger, and a team of Drake employees were on a plane with Kendra, heading in the general direction of DC, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. Kendra had been put in a coffin-type box to be moved from her house to the plane, and now she was in a light-tight room. She pointed the direction, and Ranger relayed it to the pilot.
“You have to know I’m going in when we get there, right?” McGyver told Ranger once everyone had settled after the call. The exchange was set for noon on the following day, once again in a warehouse district in Philadelphia, though this meet was a few miles from the previous one. Everyone was on edge, and there was no way McGyver was sitting this out.
“We may not even go in,” Ranger told him. “Her dad’s good with paying, and that may be the safest solution. He won’t miss sixteen mil.”
“The exchange was set with her mom, too, and things went to shit. If we know where she is, we should bust in and get her.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Kendra. “I can read the minds of everyone in the house. We’ll drive by and I’ll lock on, and then we can move about a mile away and I can stay with their thoughts.”
McGyver didn’t argue, but no way in hell was he leaving her in that house longer than he had to. He’d get her out as soon as he thought he could safely do so — with or without Drake Security’s help.
Kendra’s voice sounded in his head. You hired me. Let me know what you want to do, and if it’s at all possible, we’ll make it happen.
Thank you. If there are only three people, I’m going in. It’s nice to know you’ll back me up.
If there were three people, you’d think they’d have asked for fifteen mil. Sixteen makes it feel like there are four people.
McGyver’d had the same thought, but it was also possible the first million was for expenses, and the rest was what they’d split.
The sun was fifteen minutes away from setting when they landed in Philadelphia, so they waited for it to clear the horizon before the recon team headed out in the SUV. Kendra had requested a vampire in the area have someone bring it to them, as well as the keys — this meant there was no need to rent one, and no paper trail.
Kendra drove, and Ranger sat in the passenger seat. She didn’t slow down even a little when she passed the driveway, and they drove two miles away to a convenience store.
Meanwhile, McGyver had already pulled up detailed satellite shots of the home from all angles.
“Five heartbeats. Five active brains. Four bad guys plus Iris. They have her locked in a basement room,” Kendra told them. “She’s unhurt, and reading a book at the moment. Some aches and pains from being bound earlier, but she has full freedom of movement now. They provided food and water. She’s hungry, but choosing not to eat. She’s drinking the water, though. She was dehydrated and had to risk it.”
McGyver breathed easier, but he wouldn’t relax until she was in his arms and safe.
“These are the same people who abducted her mother,” Kendra continued. “The leader was arrested while they were holding her mother, and the others panicked and killed her rather than trying to finish the mission without him. He’s been out of prison four months, and they’ve spent all that time preparing for this second abduction. They’d done a little legwork before he got out.”
“Why was he in prison?”
“Jewelry heist. A detective realized the guy’s girlfriend was wearing something from the robbery, and they made a deal with her. She called her boyfriend, crying that her Great Dane broke his leg and she couldn’t get him to the vet by herself. He went to her house to help her with the dog, and they arrested him.”
“Aaron arranged for a rental house,” said Ranger. �
��We’ll meet the rest of the team there and figure out who we’re dealing with. As long as the leader isn’t arrested again, she’ll probably be safer if we wait and let the exchange happen, but let’s nail down the people in that house before we decide for sure.”
McGyver focused his thoughts toward Kendra. I need names.
He made a note of them on his phone, and opened his laptop.
Chapter 22
One o’clock in the morning, and they were finally ready to fucking move. Thankfully, Iris’s father had decided he didn’t want her with the people who’d killed his wife a second longer than she had to be, so they were going in.
The official story was that Mac had gone back over the original abduction and ran every person who’d been even a remote suspect — around three hundred people. The fact one of them had been arrested the night before the exchange, gone to jail, and was recently released had made him dig farther, and Aaron had sent him to Philadelphia with a team to check things out. They had four heat signatures upstairs, and one downstairs, alone.
Mac had hacked into their feed so they could see Iris downstairs. She alternated reading with working out, but hadn’t gone to sleep. She seemed safe for the moment, but McGyver needed her in his arms.
Ranger had okayed McGyver to go in with them, which meant — including Kendra — they had a six-member team. Two of them wore GoPro devices beaming audio and video to the Drake offices.
McGyver Page 15
