by Steven James
With my eyes open just enough to make him out, I watch as he studies me, assessing things, the gun aimed directly at my chest.
At last, holding his weapon in a tactical position, he edges my way.
As he does, I notice that Tane has cracked the door open slightly.
No, that wasn’t the plan. He’s supposed to wait. He needs to—
But then I have to close my eyes as the man arrives at my side, then nudges my leg with his foot.
I remain limp.
A moment later I hear him walk toward the door. “Henrik?”
Opening my eyes again, I see him press it open. As he enters the room, there’s a flash of movement—Tane leaping out and punching him once in the gut and then landing a savage uppercut directly to his face.
The guy goes down hard.
By then, I’m on my feet.
Tane grabs Alysha’s hand, rushes her out of the room, and we bolt toward the elevator.
“That wasn’t the plan,” I say.
“I got impatient.”
“He still has his gun.”
“Yeah, that part sucks.”
We whip around the corner.
The elevator is about forty feet away.
“He’s coming!” Alysha announces, obviously picking up the sound of his footsteps behind us.
We come skidding to a stop at the elevator doors, I hit the button to open them, and as they part, the man turns the corner and shouts for us not to move.
The doors slide apart.
We dash inside.
I hit the button for the next floor up as he starts sprinting toward us.
Tane pounds the button that’s supposed to close the doors, but they don’t respond.
“C’mon! C’mon!” He smacks it again.
The man pauses mid-stride, just as the doors begin to glide together.
He slings his gun forward.
Aims.
I step in front of Alysha as the doors close. The sound of gunshots reverberates through the air and four bullets rip into the metal.
“Use the key card,” I tell Tane. “Swipe the top floor.”
He slides it through the card reader and a blue indicator light blinks on.
“You stepped in front of me.” Alysha rests her hand on my good shoulder. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
And as the sound of more gunshots rings out below us, we begin to ascend.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
We reach the top level and the elevator stops.
Tane and I stand ready, not sure what to expect when the doors open, but when they do, there’s no one there.
Instead, we find an empty, wood-paneled room not more than ten feet long and six feet wide with a door on the far side.
Tane strides over and tosses it open. There’s a sign emblazoned on the other side: “Authorized Personnel Only.”
Beyond the doorway lies a parking garage.
“Talk to me,” Alysha says.
“It’s just a small room that leads to a parking garage,” I tell her.
“Are there any steps? A stairwell to the lower levels? Anything like that?”
“No. Not in here.”
She hands her cane to me. “Jam this in where the elevator doors close. If they can’t shut, it won’t go down and those men won’t be able to get up here. It should at least slow them down, buy us some time.”
“How are you going to get around without your cane?”
“You can be my eyes.”
We wedge the cane in place to keep the doors from closing, then she takes my arm, holding it just above my elbow, and we leave the paneled room.
“So we’re in a parking garage?” she asks me.
“Yes. There are seventy-two cars visible, so wherever we are, it’s busy. It looks like we might be on the ground—”
“Hang on. I hear something. A phone.” Her words are urgent. “That’s the same ringtone from Malcolm’s phone before he disappeared.”
I can’t hear anything.
“Don’t you hear it? Either of you?”
“No,” I say.
Tane shakes his head. “Uh-uh.”
“It’s . . .” She points ahead of us and slightly to the left. “Hurry! We need to find it before it stops ringing.”
We run maybe thirty-five feet, but I still can’t hear the phone. By the look on Tane’s face, I can tell he can’t either.
“Wait.” Alysha pauses, tilts her head slightly to the side, concentrates, then points again, this time further left. “Go!”
We head in that direction and when we’re about halfway to the cars parked along the wall, I finally hear the ringtone echoing faintly off the concrete.
But then a moment later, I don’t.
“It stopped.” She swears, something I don’t expect, then gestures toward the wall. “It’s somewhere over there. I can’t tell how far. The acoustics in here are all screwed up.”
“Malcolm?” Tane shouts. His voice echoes hollow and vacant through the garage. “Are you there?”
No reply.
Alysha tells us to keep looking. “I know that was the same ringtone. He might be hurt.”
Tane and I scour the area, but find nothing.
I’m about to give up when he hollers that he’s got it.
I lead Alysha over to him.
He’s standing between a sedan and a white minivan holding Malcolm’s phone, swiping across the screen to check the calls. “That was someone named Brad Amundsen. He’s listed under Malcolm’s favorites.”
“I don’t know the senator’s first name,” I tell them, “but Malcolm mentioned the last name of Amundsen. That might be him.”
“The reception in here is gonna suck. Besides, we should probably take off before whoever was shooting at us finds a way out. C’mon.”
He starts for the exit.
With Alysha and me by his side.
Kyle watched as Mia and Nicole emerged from the cafeteria.
Both were smiling.
“Benjamin Jameson,” Nicole announced. “He’s a junior from Athens, Georgia. Likes avocados, hip-hop, and zombie movies. Goes by ‘Jamin’ for short.”
“How did you get all that?”
“We looked for a guy who couldn’t keep his eyes off us. Then we just smiled demurely, giggled girlishly, peered at him with doe-like, wide-eyed innocence, and asked him what his name was.”
“That’s all it took?”
“At first he just told us ‘Jamin,’” Mia explained, “but I winked at him and said ‘We need your last name too if we’re gonna be able to find you after camp tonight to party.’ From there it was a done deal.”
Nicole held out her arm. A phone number was written in pen on her wrist. “He could hardly write it down fast enough.”
“You girls are good,” Kyle said.
Mia scoffed lightly. “Guys are sheep.”
“Come on.” Nicole pointed toward the field house. “Let’s go find that registration form.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Outside the parking garage, the day is bright and starkly hot, especially compared to the cool air of the subterranean hallways we just came from.
Traffic rushes by. Skyscrapers tower around us. Pedestrians hurry past.
“Where are we?” Alysha has her face upturned toward the sunlight.
“I don’t recognize the skyline,” I tell her. “It’s a major city, though. We’re downtown near a park. There are some fountains. A Ferris wheel.”
A woman is walking toward us, and when she’s about ten feet away, Alysha calls to her, “Excuse me, Ma’am. I’m a little bit turned around. Can you tell me what park this is?”
“Centennial Olympic Park.”
“And what city would that be in?”
The woman stares at us strangely. “You’re in Atlanta, dear.”
“Thank you.”
After she has gone on her way again, Tane says to Alysha, “You called her ‘Ma’am.’ How did you know it was a
woman?”
“She’s wearing high heels.”
“You heard them on the sidewalk?”
“Didn’t you?”
“Right, well . . .” He looks impressed and lets his eyes linger on Alysha for a moment, then studies the park. “Atlanta fits in with what Malcolm told me. Now that we know where we are, let’s try to figure out where he is.”
I ask him if I can see the phone. As he hands it to me he asks what I’m thinking.
“It’s not just Malcolm we need to find, it’s the senator’s daughter too. Petra. I figure we call Brad Amundsen back and find out whatever we can.”
The phone’s screen isn’t locked and I scroll to the recent calls, hit “Reply,” and after one ring, someone picks up. A man’s voice: “Malcolm, do you have them?”
“Is this Senator Amundsen?” I ask him.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Daniel Byers. Something happened to Malcolm. We’re not sure where he is. I’m one of the people he brought in to help.”
“You’re Daniel? From Wisconsin?”
“Yes.” I’m not sure if I should be thrilled or not that he’s heard of me. “We want to help find Petra—Malcolm told us she was taken.”
“Who is we?”
“Alysha and Tane are with me.”
A brief pause. “Where are you now?”
“Downtown Atlanta. Centennial Olympic Park.”
“Alright. I have some people in the area. I’ll send a car to pick you up. My house is about forty minutes from where you are. We’ll talk more when you get here. Until then, I don’t want to chance that someone might be listening in, so don’t contact me. And whatever you do, don’t call the police. The people who have Petra said they’ll know if we do. They said they’ll kill her.”
“Okay.”
He gives me the name of two streets that meet at an intersection nearby and tells us to be there in ten minutes.
“Don’t be late.”
“We won’t.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
12:00 P.M.
9 HOURS UNTIL THE DEADLINE
Flanked by Mia and Nicole, Kyle approached the field house.
“So, talk me through this one last time,” he said.
“I go in first,” Mia replied, with a somewhat impatient sigh. “I get the guy to leave, you two sneak in, find the info on who paid for Daniel’s registration, and cruise before anyone sees you.”
Through the windows, he could see that the same receptionist from earlier was still at work, now typing on his keyboard.
Kyle turned to Nicole. “Listen, you’re better at computers than I am. While I look for the registration form, see what you can pull up from their system. There’s got to be some sort of financial program or something that tells who paid for the players’ tuition.”
“Perf.”
“I can maybe get him to go down to the locker rooms,” Mia informed them, “but don’t count on him being gone for more than three or four minutes, tops.”
“And when he finds out Benjamin Jameson isn’t hurt?” Kyle asked.
“I’ll improvise.”
Kyle and Nicole waited out of sight around the corner while Mia threw open the office door and rushed inside. “Hey, we need your help. My brother’s hurt and they have to take him to the hospital!”
The receptionist looked up from the screen. “Your brother?”
“Benjamin Jameson, from Athens, Georgia. Get his medical release form. Now. Come on! Hurry! They said they need you to bring it over!”
The guy rifled through the drawer of forms, pulled one out, and then hustled after her down the hallway.
As soon as they were gone, Kyle and Nicole slipped inside.
Kyle thumbed through the papers looking for Daniel’s paperwork while Nicole took a seat in front of the computer and clicked her way to the program registry.
“You gotta be kidding me,” Kyle exclaimed. “How could these things not be in alphabetical order?”
“Are you serious?” She was scrolling through the files.
“There must be three hundred campers. How did that guy find Jamin’s so quick—wait.”
“What is it?”
“The forms are listed under the states where the guys are from.”
He went to the back of the drawer.
And flipped to Wisconsin.
A black, impeccably polished executive car pulls up to the curb at the corner where Senator Amundsen had directed us to go.
Considering Tane’s size, there isn’t a whole lot of room in the backseat for all three of us, so he takes shotgun and Alysha and I climb into the back.
“Gotcha.” Kyle snatched up Daniel’s registration form and glanced it over for any info about who’d paid his fees. “Okay, so the payment came from the Marly Weathers Foundation.”
“What’s that?”
“No idea. Do you have anything yet?”
“This computer’s a dinosaur. It’s taking forever to—hang on . . . let me search under that name. You said Weathers?”
“Yeah, Marly: M-a-r-l-y. And Daniel’s form is 178b. Maybe plug that in, or his room number in Berringer Hall—303.”
Outside the window to the hallway, Kyle noticed Mia and the receptionist returning.
“Hurry, Nikki.” He folded up Daniel’s form and stuffed it into his pocket.
“Wait.” She typed furiously.
“There isn’t time.”
“Hang on, just—yes. Okay.”
“They’re right outside the door. C’mon!”
Nicole whipped out her phone, snapped a picture of the screen, and quit the program. She leapt up, but before they could get out of the room, the receptionist started opening the door.
Kyle pulled Nicole toward him and they flattened their backs against the wall. He just hoped the guy wouldn’t glance to the side or he’d see them just a few feet away.
Mia was walking beside him saying, “I don’t know what happened. They must have gone on to the hospital already.”
“Uh-huh.”
When she saw her friends, her eyes grew large.
Quickly, she repositioned herself so the receptionist wouldn’t look past her and notice them.
“Well,” he said to Mia, “I’ll give the head coach and the trainer a call. In the meantime, why don’t you just wait in that chair right over—” He started to turn.
“Um . . .” She drew him close and kissed him on the lips, while gesturing urgently with one hand for Kyle and Nicole to get out of the room.
They crept past the guy—who didn’t seem to be in too huge of a hurry to pull away from Mia.
As they were escaping into the hall, Kyle heard him say, somewhat breathlessly, “What are you doing?”
“Sorry.” Mia patted his cheek, spun on her heels, and headed out the door, leaving him staring dumbfounded after her. “Wrong vibe.”
They regrouped by a flowerbed around the side of the building.
“Kissing him?” Kyle said. “That’s what you call improvising?”
“I had to think on my feet.”
“He didn’t seem to mind too much.”
“Well, what’s not to—wait. You’re—are you jealous, babe? That is so adorable of you.”
“But how did you know he’d close his eyes when you kissed him? Wait, lemme guess—guys are sheep.”
“Now you’re catching on. So, anyway, what’d you two get? Please tell me I didn’t kiss that receptionist for no reason.”
Kyle held up Daniel’s registration form. “The camp fee and the debit card both came from something called the Marly Weathers Foundation—whatever that is.”
Nicole pulled up the photo she’d taken of the computer screen. “I’ve got an address here from where the camp registrar sent the receipt. It’s in Philly. And there’s also an email address.”
“So what now?” Mia asked. “It’s not like we’re gonna be able to go to Philadelphia. And Marly Weathers isn’t Malcolm Zacharias—unless, who knows. Maybe he is?
”
“I say we find out all we can about this foundation.”
“Hold on a sec,” Kyle held up his hand. “That’s a good idea, but I’m still in my running clothes and I could use a shower and some food—I never did get any breakfast. Let’s head back to Sue Ellen’s house. I’ll clean up and change, then we can grab some lunch and figure out where to take things from there.”
“That’ll work,” Mia said.
As they started across campus toward the car, Kyle shook his head. “I still can’t believe you kissed that guy.”
“I’ll make it up to you later.”
“I can work with that.”
“Stay focused, you two,” Nicole chided them. “There’ll be time for all that after we find Daniel.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I ask Senator Amundsen’s driver if he can tell us anything, but he just explains that the senator will fill us in when we get there.
Now, as he maneuvers us through the hectic city traffic, I explore Malcolm’s phone, but most of the apps, including the address book and email, are locked or password protected.
The camera works, though.
It makes me think of Kyle’s hypothesis about being able to use photos to tell what’s real and what isn’t—but since I’m not having a blur at the moment, it’s not exactly the ideal time to put things to the test.
I briefly consider calling my friends or my parents to tell them what’s going on, but then I realize that wouldn’t be a good idea—for all sorts of reasons.
After all, Malcolm remotely monitored our phones. Who’s to say that someone couldn’t do it with his as well? And not that long ago, a man was trying to kill us. The people he worked with could go after whoever I might call.
Also, it’s possible that getting more people involved will put Petra’s life at even greater risk, especially if her kidnappers were to suspect that someone had called the cops—and calling my dad would definitely fall into that category.
Yeah, best to hold off from calling anyone, at least for the time being.
“What are you thinking?” Alysha asks me.
“That we have a lot more questions now than we did earlier.”
“Go on.”
“Well, why the mathematical equations in the hallways and the video monitors? How long was Malcolm planning on keeping us down there? Who was shooting at us, and how did he and his buddy find that place?”