by Alec Peche
“Hi Damian, what’s up?” Hannah asked.
“Today is Saturday. Can you tell me which date your parents were abducted?”
There was silence on the other end of the phone, he wished he could see her face to see if she was thinking, or perhaps trying to swallow around tears, or perhaps silently crying over the terror of watching her parents abducted and maybe murdered.
“Monday; my mom always liked to play this song called ‘Manic Monday’ on Monday, and so she played it earlier that day before she dropped me off at school.”
“Thanks, Hannah, I have the hard drive from your safe room and it will go much faster if I can look at a specific date. When you visit later today, I’ll give you all the stuff I grabbed from your closet and chest of drawers in case you want any of it.”
“Thank you, Damian,” and then the kid didn’t say anything more. Damian wasn’t sure how to end the conversation or even what was going on in the kid’s head. So instead he asked, “Is Ariana near you?”
“Yes.”
“Would you ask her to give me a call? I’ll see you this evening for dinner,” and they ended the call. He wished he wasn’t so awkward dealing with this teenager. He knew so little about her other than the fact that she was smart and had a core of strength about her. He would have gladly mentioned the Warriors’ game, but he didn’t even know if she followed basketball or indeed any sports.
Seconds later his phone rang and he saw it was Ariana.
“I need lessons talking to a teenager. I don’t know if I’m supposed to immediately say what’s on my mind or if I’m supposed to ease into the conversation. I don’t know if I’m making her cry or she’s thinking or she’s sullen like so many other teenagers. You’re going to have to help me, Ariana.”
He heard bubbling laughter on her end of the phone and then she replied, “Ha, I don’t know a single adult that has that magic formula. You’re on your own, Damian. I’m fighting for my own survival first. What time should we head over to your island?”
Damian had to unstick his grinding teeth before he could reply, “How about 4 o’clock? I have company here from about 12 to 3. That detective I mentioned has a son that’s a friend and he’s bringing his fiancée to my home for an introduction and to watch the Warriors game. He’s an attorney and he could enumerate all of the illegal things we’re doing to take care of Hannah, so it’s better if your paths don’t cross.”
“You have a full schedule today! Tell you what, I’ll bring dinner with me, and maybe we can eat down in your lab while we work on Hannah’s identity,” Ariana suggested.
“You’re a woman after my own heart, I love being able to do two things at the same time.”
“Three things, Damian.”
“Three?”
“Yeah, you’ll be getting to know Hannah at the same time.”
That gave him pause and then he asked, “Is she being a good kid for you?”
“Too good, I’m wishing she would relax and give me a little teenage rebellion.”
“Be careful what you wish for and I’ll see you later,” and so he settled into working on the camera footage.
Focusing on the date of Monday, Damian reviewed the footage. About 11 o’clock at night he saw the masked men enter Hannah’s house in a very systematic fashion. They wore gloves and their faces were by no means identifiable. He assumed they were men, but he admitted to himself that was just a guess; he could be looking at a group of female ninjas that pulled this off. He saw Hannah’s parents leap out of bed and make a run for their safe room, but they were caught by the masked men before they reached the room. Damian watched as each parent thrashed wildly until they went limp. Damian had to replay the footage several times before he realized the parents had each been injected with something. They were soon zipped up inside of bags and taken out of the house. The cameras had not shown where they were taken to or what kind of vehicle. Nor could he tell if they were dead or alive. Poor Hannah, watching this in terror, and then seeing what clearly was the men or women searching for her. They’d entered her bedroom, perhaps a minute after that of her parents, but it was enough time for Hannah to reach the hidey hole and lock the mechanism into place.
They searched the house for perhaps an hour looking for Hannah, but then they left leaving one person behind. It appeared as though Hannah had waited and watched the lone man for about thirty-six hours. She waited for him to fall asleep and then Damian saw her exit the house. He also went back and studied the interaction between law enforcement and the moving company. He didn’t have sound for the recording, but he could guess what was being said and he had to agree with Hannah, that someone from law enforcement was involved with her parent’s kidnapping.
He leaned back in his chair and thought about what to do with the footage. Certainly he’d save it, but should he say something to Natalie or Trevor? He had no good answers and decided that no immediate decision was necessary. Having watched the abduction of her parents several times as well as the footage of the man left behind, he saw no opportunity for them to have left DNA in the house, so if he did say something to Natalie, the only evidence he had was the video recording to prove that it happened; but neither the people, their fingerprints, nor their DNA appeared to be left in the house from his amateur point of view. He decided he would share the footage later with Ariana since she was a smart woman and was implicated in their less than legal guardianship of Hannah to see if she agreed with his decision-making. He looked at his watch and realized that Trevor and Haley should be at the marina about to board the boat to his island. He put everything having to do with Hannah in a locked closet off of his laboratory. It wouldn’t do to leave anything accidentally sitting around that Trevor might see.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Damian stood on the edge of his island watching Mike’s boat approach. He saw Trevor and a woman on board along with a few packages. He often had packages delivered to Mike who would store them until he had a reason to go out to the island unless Damian made arrangements to get them sooner. He’d made his way down to the beach where they would get off the boat and where the packages would be deposited. It seemed rather rude on his part to wait on the cliff’s top rather than greet them down below.
Mike kept a lightweight ramp in his boat that he now slung from the boat to the beach. It was the easiest way to move people or packages off his boat. Introductions were made and then Haley and Trevor assisted Damian with moving packages off the boat and onto the sand. Within a few minutes, the ramp was back in the boat and Mike was waving goodbye having confirmed that he’d be return at three to take them back to the marina.
Once the boat was out of earshot, Trevor said, “Hey, Damian, Haley’s an engineer and her company’s experimenting with drone delivery. I bet she’d be good at operating your drone and depositing the packages on your doorstep.”
Damian smiled and handed her the controls, “It’s all yours.”
Haley went to work while Trevor beamed with pride at her dexterity with the drone, moving the packages in record time. Damian said, “You’re really good at that. On rare occasions, I haven’t wanted to bother Mike with picking up something from me, and so my drone can reach the marina. However since it’s over the water for much of the journey, I never feel comfortable, fearing I’m actually going to drop the package in the water, but with you at the controls I think I could relax.”
“I’ve played a lot with drones at work and I’m developing the software that will allow a company to program an address and have the drone deliver it. The software directing the drone has to be smart enough not to hit anything in its way and to find an address. We’re making progress, but we’ve had our share of drones smacking into walls,” Haley said.
“Trevor didn’t mention you are an engineer. I’ll have to show you my lab as I have lots of projects underway there.”
“Trevor told me you had wave technology here to make the island livable but intrude as little as possible on its environment. I hear there�
�s a little zip line we can take instead of climbing up that hill,” Haley said pointing to the cliff that Damian had descended in order to meet the boat.
“The zip line is the fastest and likely safest route to the top. That hill can be slippery and I’ll admit I’ve left some skin behind. The game starts in ten minutes, so we best get going,” Damian soon had all of them on top and they walked into his house.
Damian spent an enjoyable several hours with Trevor and Haley. He thought he would spend the whole time watching the clock wondering how soon he could escort them off the island, but he should have known better; they were great company. During halftime, he gave Haley a tour of his laboratory and had a great in-depth discussion about his wave energy technology. She perfectly recited the physics behind his theory but also understood his corrosive issues with water. She half-jokingly said that when he was ready to take on an engineer to help him, that she’d move to Berkeley and commute to his island daily to assist.
“Honey, how can we begin a life together if you want to live in Berkeley?” Trevor asked.
“You can quit your job with the public defender’s office and do the same one for Alameda County. You’ve got a reputation, you won’t have any trouble finding a job. I love the idea of using my engineering smarts to solve a problem for a Third World country.”
Damian could tell that if he had offered her a job, she would seriously consider working for him. However he knew as long as Hannah was in his life, that he would need to keep people distant from his island. Of course he could set up a company close to the marina in a building and commute there every day, but he thought that some of his creativity came from living surrounded by water.
“Hey, didn’t mean to cause discord between the two of you. Let’s go back upstairs, grab a beer and sit down for the second half of the game.”
The rest of the afternoon went off without a hitch with the Warriors winning. He was soon escorting his guests onto the boat and waving goodbye. He texted Ariana that the coast was clear, and they could visit at any time. It was early, but he wanted to give her that option. She texted back that she had a few more errands to run and that she and Hannah would be over in about an hour.
In the end, Damian decided to get a hard thirty minute run in on his treadmill since his exercise schedule had been so disrupted the last few days. That would also give him some time to think about all of the oranges he was juggling at the moment. He kept pen and pencil on the treadmill as he often thought of problems to solve and ways to solve problems that he had. He realized he hadn’t thought of Greg Watson in the past few days and found himself wondering if anyone had followed-up with Natalie on what was going on with the search warrant by the Phoenix Police Department and the knife edge match from the medical examiner. He finished the run and wrote Natalie an email about the Greg Watson case and his pleasure in meeting Haley. He had just enough time to shower and catch a few fish for the cats and then he saw Ariana’s boat approaching.
He opened his watercraft garage and extended the dock for Ariana to tie up the boat. He’d have to think about whether there was a better and more secretive way for her to park her boat at his house. For now, he welcomed the two women and the dog into his house. He’d brought the bags of Hannah’s stuff out of the locked room so she could sort through it and see if she wanted to keep anything. Hannah looked older as she’d decided her new look would be radically different from the old. Her long brown hair was replaced by short black hair tipped with the shade of deep purple. Her eyebrows perhaps had also been dyed black and shaped. She had a flower tattoo on her upper arm and a ring of ivy around her ankle. She had heavy eye makeup on and a flawless complexion. Hannah was waiting for him to say something about her transformed looks.
“Hannah, I like your radically transformed look. I think it will help keep you safe. Are those tattoos permanent or temporary?”
“Temporary why?”
“If your parents are alive and able to return to you sometime in the future, I’m just keeping a list of sins that I will have committed as your temporary guardian. Permanent tattoos would have made my list because they are much harder to change than hair color. How do you feel about your look? Is it typical in your age group?”
All of a sudden she looked like a typical teenager when she gave him a look that said, ‘you are such a dumb adult’. He felt so good getting that look.
“I had such an ugly hair color, but Mom wouldn’t allow me to change it. I really like this new look and I think I’ll fit in perfectly with kids at my new school on Monday. Ariana took me shopping to a few shops in the downtown area and I saw other kids with my look.”
“There’re a few more things she could do to change her appearance. She could get a couple of moles on her face as temporary tattoos as well as have a makeup artist show her how to make her eyes look more almond shaped. She has till the end of tomorrow to finish her modifications, because come Monday she’s going to have to have her picture taken for her school ID.”
“Actually, we should probably complete any changes to her face that we want her to have for the foreseeable future, as I need to take some pictures and age her backwards, so that there is a history to her new name. Hannah, have you decided what your new name will be?”
“I think so. My full name is Hannah Katherine Sherwood and I would like to keep the same initials. Since I love Harry Potter, my new first name is Hermione and the second could still be Katherine, right, and for the last name, how about if we chose Smith? Wouldn’t Smith somewhat hide my identity since there are so many of them?”
“I can see now that I’ll have to read Harry Potter again,” Damian replied. “My oldest daughter was reading it and loved the story. Okay from this moment forward, we’re going to call you Hermione. Smith is a good choice for the reasons you cited. Now the next question is how to make you related to Ariana.”
“Or yourself. I could have ended up with you as my guardian, but because there’s no school on the island, and Ariana is a good friend, she agreed to house me.”
“Hmm, you may have a point there, Hermione, as I have no family to explain you to, whereas Ariana has lots of family.”
Hannah giggled the first time that Damian called her by her name and she suspected it would take a while to get used to the new name.
“Ariana, what do you think?”
“There’s a lot to be said for that explanation. I feel I might blow it sometime when I’m introducing Hermione to my family since I would constantly have to switch from my branch to that of my husband’s and that might trip me up at some point. Describing her as your ward, but staying with me for school is much easier to explain and less likely for me to make mistakes with.”
“Okay. After my family was murdered, I lost touch with everyone that we used to hang out with. I’ll go back and build an identity based on one of those families as a model. I’ll see where they are now and just use the same story for your background. I like the term guardian as that accounts for this coming out of the clear blue sky. Sorry, Hermione, but I’ll have to kill your imaginary parents in a car crash.”
“That’s okay, it’s all make-believe.”
“What are your parents’ first names?”
The teenager frowned in thought, then nodded, she understood the reason for Damian’s question, “Jason and Amy.”
Damian didn’t want to kill imaginary parents with the same names as the kid’s real parents.
“Okay, let me get your picture, then I need your vaccination records, any surgeries that you’ve had, and your school records. Do you think you could remember any of that?”
“Actually, if you get my phone working, there’s a picture of my vaccine record and my transcript for grades 1-8. It also has my birth certificate. I had to have that information when I entered school and it seemed like they kept asking those questions, so I just kept a picture of it on my cell phone.”
“That was brilliant, of course, assuming Damian can get your phone working again, but my money�
�s on him being able to do that! We want to keep you in good health so before I forget, do you have any allergies - medications, food, bees?” Ariana asked.
“I’m allergic to raw tomatoes. My mouth gets real itchy, but if you cook the tomatoes like in pizza sauce or spaghetti then I’m fine and I’ve never liked ketchup but it doesn’t seem to bother me on hamburgers.”
Damian quickly researched raw tomato allergies and saw what Hermione was talking about. All three read the article and Ariana made a note to have the first pizza or spaghetti with Hermione near or inside a hospital just to be sure that this wasn’t a full blown allergy.
Damian took her picture that he would use for various identifications and said, “It’s a shame I didn’t get a picture of you before your transformation that I could use for aging you backwards.”
Ariana said, “I took a picture before her hair was cut; let me send it to you.”
“Thanks, that will make this much easier since I won’t have to spend time editing the picture back. I can do the rest of this on my own at a later time. Let’s go upstairs and eat.”