by Beth Abbott
“Obviously they were right.” Hannah nodded. “Neither woman is famous, but both are related to men who have money.”
“How much do you think they’ll ask for?” Robbie asked, worriedly. “I know I earn a fantastic amount compared to people with regular jobs, but almost all of my money has been invested for me in property or bonds. I can probably come up with maybe two hundred thousand, if I’m given a couple of days to get it together. My dad and Joan could probably lend me another fifty.”
“Don’t worry how much they’re going to ask for.” Luke stepped up to Robbie and smiled. “If we have to find the ransom money for Suzy and Megan, I’ve got both of them covered. Of course, that’s plan B. Plan A is still to find them and rescue them.”
“But don’t kidnappers usually ask for millions in ransom money for just one person?” Robbie frowned. “They’ve got Suzy and Megan, so they’ll be asking for twice as much. The only way I can get my hands on that sort of money is to sell or mortgage my house.”
“Whatever they ask for, I can cover it.” Luke reassured him, and Matt smiled.
“Believe him, Robbie.” He nodded. “Luke’s like our own personal Bill Gates. Rich as fuck, and an uber-philanthropist.”
“But as Luke also pointed out…” Hannah interrupted their conversation. “That’s plan B. Can we focus on plan A? Getting our girls back and then torturing those kidnapping fuckers to within an inch of their lives, before handing them over to the cops?”
Robbie stared at Hannah before looking at the guys in turn.
“Erm, is she serious?” His gaze finally landed on Matt.
“It depends entirely on how Suzy and Megan are returned to us.” Matt shrugged. “If they’re returned in pristine condition, having been fed and held in relative comfort, we might just slap the kidnappers around a bit before we hand them over. How badly we hurt them will obviously increase with how badly they’ve hurt our girls. It’s kinda like a sliding scale.”
“Can I join in?” Robbie asked.
“Doubtful.” Matt shook his head. “You have to keep fit, and your body has to be in tip-top condition for playing football. We, on the other hand, have no concerns about bruising the odd knuckle, or occasionally busting a knee. We’re highly trained in ass-kicking, and it’s almost necessary that we get some practise in at least once a year to keep our skills sharp.”
“Can I at least watch?” Robbie asked hopefully.
“Let’s wait and see how this plays out, Ok?” Evan smiled. “The important thing is to get our girls back safely. If we get the chance to teach the kidnappers a lesson or two, it will just be a bonus.”
“Speaking of getting our girls back, Abbey, have you got anything on the van yet?” Hannah turned to Abbey and Logan.
“We thought we did for a minute.” Logan shrugged. “We were convinced we had the number-plate for all of two minutes, but every time we flipped the angle to check it out, it was a different van. It’s almost as though the various different cameras have their time stamps set incorrectly. They’re all different.”
“We found something like that.” Danny leaned forward and slid a notepad to Hannah. “That number-plate kept popping up heading north-east away from the stadium, but every time we tried to get a head-on shot, it was a different plate.”
Hannah picked up the notepad and walked around to where Logan had a similar pad.
“What the f…!” Hannah stared at the pad for so long, Matt stood up and looked over her shoulder.
“The numbers are the same.” He murmured. “Were there two vans?”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” Hannah started to laugh. “Those cheeky little fuckers!”
“Hannah, can you please clue us in?” Matt growled. “My nerves are already shredded.”
“We both have the same two plates because we’ve both found the right van.” Hannah grinned at Abbey and Logan. “The sneaky assholes have different plates front and back, to throw us off. It sure as hell threw me off, but that’s probably because I spend most of my visiting time in America in either Pennsylvania or Tennessee, where vehicles are only required to have plates on the back.”
“So, what do we do now?” Matt stared at Hannah.
“We use the police database and track down both plates to see where they’ve pinged on the network.” Hannah smiled.
“Are we doing this legally, or illegally?” Danny grinned at his wife.
“It depends on how far out David is.” Hannah shrugged. “I’d like to stay on the right side of the law if possible, but if it puts our girls at risk, then to hell with it.”
“See if you can get hold of him.” Matt instructed. “If he’s already on the chopper, it’s not even an hour’s ride from Manchester.”
Hannah pulled out her phone and started tapping away.
“Is there anything else we can be doing for now?” Evan asked.
“Yeah, you can start looking at maps to see what’s to the north-east of the stadium.” Hannah glanced up from her phone. “Once they left the city and headed into the countryside, there would be fewer cameras. We might have to start employing some educated guesswork.”
“What are we looking for?” Logan frowned.
“Derelict buildings, closed down factories, that kind of thing.” Hannah shrugged. “They’ll want somewhere under cover, but miles from anywhere.”
“You’re sure about that?” Robbie frowned.
“Nope, but it’s what you’d call an educated guess, based on my first-hand experience.” Hannah smiled at the youngster. “Until we find out anything to the contrary, based on the way Suzy and Megan were just randomly grabbed off the street, we’re gonna assume that these guys aren’t professionals. That means they’ll probably lack any sort of imagination and will probably just copy something they’ve seen on TV. Somewhere derelict or abandoned fits the bill perfectly.”
Matt couldn’t see anything wrong with Hannah’s logic, so he sat down and pulled up a map of the area on his tablet.
There must be more than a thousand suitable buildings in a fifty-mile radius. How the hell were they going to check them all?
He rolled his shoulders and took a slow, deep breath.
He’d search every one of them door-to-door if he had to. If it took him a month of Sundays, he was going to find Suzy.
That was the only acceptable outcome.
Chapter 48 – Suzy
“Can you hear anything at all?” Suzy asked as Megan stood with her ear to the crack of the door. “Voices? Anything?”
“Nothing.” Megan shook her head. “Which means they’ve either moved to one of the rooms upstairs, or they’ve gotten in their van and buggered off back to Birmingham.”
“They won’t necessarily have all left.” Suzy frowned. “If they’re going to be demanding a ransom, the first thing Matt will do is ask for proof of life. They’ll have to leave someone here with a phone, so we can speak to whoever they contact.”
“I don’t know whether Robbie would think of asking for proof of life.” Megan moved away from the door to sit with Suzy. “He’s so young and naïve when it comes to anything beyond football.”
“I’m guessing that by now, he and Matt are with the rest of the Alpha Company family, and they’ll have found out what’s going on.” Suzy insisted. “They’ll look after him like he’s one of the family, so he won’t have to cope with anything on his own, and I’m sure Evan will be with him as well, so he definitely won’t feel isolated.”
“I hope so.” Megan nodded. “I hate to think of him by himself, worrying about me.”
“Matt would never let that happen, sweetheart.” Suzy smiled. “He’s got a heart of gold, and always thinks of others first.”
“That’s not exactly what you were saying a couple of hours ago.” Megan chuckled. “You were calling him to pieces, especially about Lacey.”
“Ah, yes. Lacey the Bitch!” Suzy nodded. “That’s the name I gave her when she was pissing me off, and my friend Claire, well, she’s more like my
second mother really, she thought it was appropriate, so when she’s trying to cheer me up, we have lots of chats about Lacey the Bitch.”
“She sounds like a tame version of my half-sister, Cerys the Leach.” Megan smiled sympathetically. “Poor Robbie doesn’t have the maturity yet to deal with her, and I worry that she’ll fleece him out of so much more money before he does. He tries so hard to say no to her, but if he doesn’t give in to her demands, she makes his life unbearable. I swear there are things missing from the house that he’s bought, or that we’ve bought for him as gifts. If I ever find out she’s been taking and selling them, I’ll… I’ll… Oh, I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’ll think of something.”
“Honey, you need to spend more time with the Alpha-Stalwart women.” Suzy grinned. “I promise you we’ll broaden your horizons so that you’ll never be unsure what you’d do to someone who’s wronged you or yours. In fact, you’ll probably end up with a tick-list and have to restrict yourself to your favourites.”
“Do you give lessons on how to wield a baseball bat?” Megan looked at Suzy hopefully.
“I’ve actually found that a baseball bat is something that, once it’s in your hands, you just know how to swing automatically.” Suzy grinned.
“It’s a pity we didn’t have one down here with us.” Megan scowled.
“I’d settle for a phone.” Suzy tried to move to get the weight off her numb backside.
“Do you suppose your people will be able to trace my phone if those idiots have left it switched on?” Megan wondered.
“Yes, without a doubt.” Suzy nodded. “But I doubt that those assholes are stupid enough not to have thought of that.”
“Do you have any idea whether they brought my bag inside?” Megan sat up and stared at Suzy.
“I thought I heard something drop on the floor when they were pushing us down the stairs, and I remember thinking that it sounded like a purse dropping, and loose change going everywhere.” Suzy nodded.
“That definitely sounds like my bag.” Megan nodded. “My purse is always packed with change for the parking metres outside the hospital.”
“Why does it make a difference?” Suzy asked, unsure why that might help. “If they’ve already got your phone and switched it off, what good is your bag? Unless you’ve got a concealed weapon in there.”
“Not a concealed weapon, no.” Megan sighed. “But I might have a concealed phone in there.”
Suzy leaned forward.
“Might have? Or have-have?” She wondered.
“Have-have.” Megan smiled slowly. “I have a phone supplied by the hospital, because I regularly accompany patients when they’re taken by ambulance from our wards over to the children’s hospital. I used to have to sign it in and out, but because I agreed to be on call, they let me keep it permanently. There are a team of us on call, and last night wasn’t my turn to be on standby, so I turned it on silent. No ringtone and no vibration.”
“Who knows about the phone?” Suzy frowned.
“The staff at the hospital, obviously.” Megan nodded. “And I gave the number to Robbie in case of a life or death emergency.”
“Do you think he’ll remember it?” Suzy asked hopefully.
“Probably not, because he’s never had to ring it.” Megan shook her head. “But I’m hoping that when I don’t show up for work, the hospital will try it. Then, when they can’t get hold of me, they should ring Robbie as my next of kin. Between them, hopefully, they’ll jog his memory, and he can give the number to your friends.”
“As long as the phone is upstairs, I’m sure it’s going to be traceable.” Suzy smiled. “What do you think the chances are of them having found it and destroyed it or switched it off?”
“I don’t know if you spotted it, but my bag is one of those with pockets everywhere. Even the pockets have pockets in them.” Megan shrugged. “They’d have to do a pretty thorough search to find it.”
“Can you think of any way we can persuade those assholes to give us the bag back?” Suzy frowned. “Do you have any medication in there? We could tell them you’re sick or something, and you need to take your meds.”
“Not really, although I have a good supply of headache and migraine tablets.” Megan nodded. “Maybe I could tell them that the bang you sustained on your head is worse than it looked, and I need to give you one of my tablets. They’re not going to understand the difference between a migraine and a concussion, are they?”
Suzy smiled.
“You’re a smart cookie, Megan Powell.” She chuckled.
“Yeah, well, we have to convince them first.” Megan scoffed. “If we hear them coming back, lie on the floor with your eyes closed and start moaning. I’ll try and put my acting skills to good use.”
“Sounds good to me.” Suzy nodded. “What time was your shift due to start today?”
Megan glanced at her watch.
“About an hour ago.” She shrugged. “It could take them ages to realise I’m not there, especially if they’re busy.”
“Ok, so we just play it out as it happens, try and get your bag back, and otherwise bide our time in the hope that the guys can trace us.” Suzy smiled.
“Sounds like a plan.” Megan nodded. “So, for now, why don’t we try and get some rest. We’re going to need to save our energy for later.”
Suzy slumped down onto the cold and dusty floor.
She knew that Matt and the family were out there somewhere looking for them, and she knew Alpha Company’s track record at hostage recovery was as good as it got.
But now she had first-hand knowledge of what it was like to be on the other side of the equation, she’d kinda like them to get the hell on with it!
Chapter 49 – Evan
The list in front of him was getting longer and longer with the GPS data of derelict buildings and closed down factories, and Evan was starting to get a feel for the gargantuan task they’d be faced with.
Even if they got the police involved and had officers from every constabulary for a hundred miles out searching, covering an area fifty miles square could take them weeks, and that was working on the assumption that the kidnappers hadn’t changed vehicles.
There was a limited distance the van could have travelled without being pinged by a traffic camera, but in a new vehicle? They could be anywhere in the country within eight hours, from Scotland to Cornwall, East Anglia to West Wales.
“How’re you guys doing?” Danny sat down beside Evan, including Robbie in the question.
“We’ve got three pages of possible locations already, and we’ve only looked at the one quadrant.” Evan shrugged despondently. “There are going to be too many locations for us to process, even if we had an army of people helping us.”
“There are a lot, that’s for sure.” Danny nodded. “But we’re already eliminating many of them as fast as people can come up with them. That’s what Hannah’s working on.”
Evan glanced over to Hannah sitting by herself in the corner, a pair of headphones sitting on her head, blocking out the noise from the room.
“Why does she need four screens in front of her?” Robbie was looking in the same direction.
“Hannah is in communication with our Hub in London, and they’ve pretty much dropped everything they were working on to help out.” Danny smiled. “Hannah’s called in a lot of favours for this one, and has about sixteen satellites pointed at the Midlands, with our London team searching the co-ordinates they’re being given for signs of life. Hannah has four screens because she’s looking at four different satellite images at once, to try and speed up the process.”
“What exactly is she looking for?” Evan frowned.
“Any signs of activity where there shouldn’t be any.” Danny shrugged. “She’s using thermal images in some locations to see inside buildings, and high-resolution pictures to see if there’s been any recent activity.”
“How can you see recent activity if it’s already happened?” Evan frowned.
; “Some of the satellite images are so high-resolution that she can zoom in and still see clearly like she was just a few feet away.” Danny shrugged. “Recent activity might be fresh tyre-tracks, or footprints where there shouldn’t be any.”
“It could even be recently dropped litter or cigarette butts where nobody should have visited for years.” Hannah’s voice came from behind her husband.
Danny stepped aside and guided Hannah forward.
“You’d be surprised how often a crime can be solved simply by looking at what’s there that shouldn’t be, or what’s not there that should be.” She smiled. “It’s basic Sherlock Holmes stuff, but applying twenty-first century technology to find the clues.”
“How are you getting on?” Evan asked. “Found anything of interest yet?”
“Not yet.” Hannah rolled her shoulders to stretch the kinks out of her neck. “But we’ve already ruled out quite a lot of places on the list. Do you have any more for us?”
“Sure… three pages full.” Evan carefully ripped the A4 sized sheets from the note-pad and handed them over.
“Great. The more you can find the better.” Hannah smiled.
“Are you sure any of this is going to work?” Robbie frowned. “What good are satellites from space when it comes to rescuing someone on the ground? Shouldn’t we have police out looking?”
“Firstly, you could have a million police officers looking, but if they’re looking in the wrong places, it’s a monumental waste of time and manpower.” Hannah explained. “And as for satellites, I managed to track down two little girls in the Arizona desert in the middle of the night, with only one thermal imaging picture from a single satellite. If I can do that in a huge wilderness, imagine what I can do with sixteen satellites and a much smaller search zone?”
Evan watched Robbie nod his head slowly, his confidence levels not exactly sky high yet.