Taken Hostage

by Jordyn Redwood

  This wasn’t an old prison. Where he and Regan had been wasn’t a cell designed to hold humans. These places held animals. Big ones.

  That likely meant they were in some sort of lab facility. Still operating? Sanctioned? Off grid? Unknown. The pieces of this whole mysterious undertaking were starting to form a loose picture in his mind. It made some sense why he’d seen Nico at Regan’s house. Someone Colby knew who’d transitioned into military work involving managing microbes.

  Now this weird facility... Colby could only imagine what would have been kept in these cages. It wouldn’t be worth building something so extensive unless it was for large primates.

  He walked the perimeter of the fence to do a little reconnaissance. The building was X-shaped. It looked sterile from the outside. Dark, large-brick-constructed walls and tinted windows. From another side, in a field slightly off in the distance, were numerous dog houses. What could those have been used for? To hunt and track animals? Had something nefarious escaped from this facility?

  The longer he was apart from Regan the more his stomach chewed itself up. Twenty minutes had passed but it felt like hours. He’d done enough laps around the yard to have created his own little trail of worry. Baldy was as stoic as the famed British guards in front of Buckingham Palace minus the fancy outfit.

  He didn’t appear to want to talk, and Colby didn’t engage him.

  In the absence of someone else to talk to, Colby’s mind wandered. How were his parents? How was Sam doing? Quickly, thoughts of Regan pushed his family out of his mind.

  He reached up and touched the bandage where her hands had fixed the cut to his forehead. Having her so physically close had been unnerving. Just thoughts of her presence caused his heartbeat to stammer.

  Even different from that was what he felt. Rarely had he ever felt cared for—like his needs were more important.

  During Brook’s treatment, if he were truthful, he’d surrendered all of himself with little in return. He didn’t begrudge her that and he’d do it again. But being her primary caretaker had both given him things he didn’t want to carry and taken things he desperately needed to have. Cancer had robbed him of a feeling of security. Of safety. It became the overwhelming theme of their lives: that he and Brook were victims of circumstance. What cancer had given Colby when Brook died was the sense that it wasn’t worth risking a relationship with any other woman. The heartbreak was too great. He wouldn’t survive something like that happening to him again.

  But living in loneliness was beginning to feel worse and he was starting to think he might abandon his isolation to be with Regan—that she was worth putting his heart on the line for.

  He both abhorred and loved the idea. It made him physically ill—nauseated, weak in the knees, light-headed.

  Colby needed to see her; wanted to know that she was okay. The longer they were held apart, the more he wanted to rip limb-from-limb the man that stood at the door.

  Colby sat and leaned against the fence. Prayer was not a usual thing in his life and he tended to only do it when his back was against the wall. When Brook had been sick, he’d prayed more than he’d ever thought possible. Feeling connected to God was still foreign to him. He mostly felt betrayed by God for unanswered prayers. For Brook still dying when he’d cried out, literally, for her life to be spared. For his to be taken instead.

  He leaned his head against the fence and turned his face toward the sun, feeling it soak into his skin. Somehow it soothed his frayed nerves.

  Lord, You and I haven’t been on the best terms. Maybe You’ve been there for me and I just haven’t seen it. I want to be able to see it. I want to be able to trust You. Trust that You want what’s good for me. Please, help me strategize a way to get all the innocent people here out alive. Regan, Olivia, me and Brian. Help me to see what’s really going on here.

  Bring Regan back to me. Let her be unharmed.

  His mind drifted to their last moments together. They were essentially twins now—each with matching cuts to their foreheads. It was easy to think of a woman like Regan as someone who didn’t need any help...didn’t want any help. She was beautiful, successful—seemingly with everything life had to offer. It just proved you couldn’t judge someone’s inner thoughts, feelings and emotions by how they presented themselves with clothing, housing and their job.

  Emotionally, she struggled. He needed her head in the game.

  For all their sakes.

  Inside, Regan was broken by the betrayal of her family. By the demands of her job. And she still put her needs behind those of everyone else—her daughter, her patients and even a man relatively unknown to her. The thought of how she’d been treated by her family, her ex-husband... All that had been laid at her feet would overwhelm anybody. It made Colby angry. Yet, Regan was still standing. He could change that. Taking care of her was different because she could give something back. She’d already done so.

  She had given him her trust.

  The door into the courtyard opened and Regan walked through. Colby scrambled to his feet and pushed away from the fence. She ran to him and he stopped, opened his arms to her, and she fell into him, burying her face into his chest.

  Her body shook from sobbing, and his heart exploded in wild fear. He gripped her tightly and pressed his lips to the top of her head. He could feel his chest vibrate in response to her distress.

  He wanted to say something but as soon as he opened his mouth to proffer something reassuring, the words were broken from his own emotion.

  Colby pressed his lips closed and rubbed her back.

  Eventually the crying eased and he could feel her bring up a hand to wipe her tears, but she didn’t pull away from him. He swallowed hard. “What is it?”

  Regan sniffed. “It’s terrible what they want.” She pulled away and looked into his eyes, as if he were her anchor—the only thing holding them steady in the torrent winds they found themselves in.

  “A bioweapon. They want me to take my cure and morph it into the deadliest bioweapon there is.”

  Colby’s mouth dropped and he pulled her against him because he didn’t want her to interpret his muteness as distance between them.

  That, despite all odds, they were in this together.

  It was like his time in the military: when he had first joined, it was to avoid the emotional trauma of his wife dying. It had eventually morphed into him staying out of true duty and honor in serving his country. Delta Force missions often were one thing in the beginning and by the end the goal had changed dramatically.

  When Colby first became involved with Regan, it was simply to ensure that Regan delivered the cure to Sam before she died. Now, that wasn’t the case.

  A switch had turned in Colby’s mind. The mission had changed. An injustice was being committed against Regan. Not only had these men taken her daughter from her—the heartache and anxiety that caused any mother was profound—they’d also killed someone she’d trusted. Not only that, they’d also thrown each of Regan’s patients and their families down a well of uncertainty.

  Colby was sure even his own mother likely thought Regan had abandoned her patients. Had news of her stealing the virus from the public been reported in the news yet? If it had, paired with the police naming Regan as a person of interest in Polina’s murder, Colby didn’t think he’d ever be able to change his mother’s mind from being poisoned against Regan.

  An injustice was occurring. They were asking Regan to proactively develop a weapon from her cure that would be one hundred percent lethal. They were asking—no, forcing—her under coercion to actively take lives. It was against everything she believed. Her war was against death and now they were asking her to summon the Grim Reaper forth for how many lives?

  The only thing that could right an injustice when words wouldn’t change the situation was war.

  Colby and Regan were
now comrades in a war against these men.

  TWELVE

  Regan and Colby were shoved back into their cell where their detention accommodations had changed. There were now three cots with sleeping bags, pillows and extra blankets. Each cot had a tray of food on the end.

  Regan stepped closer to examine the offerings. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with potato chips and a soda. Regan’s chest caved. Were they eating these things because they were Olivia’s favorites? Did the hostage-takers know that? Or was it simply dinner? Something cheap and easy because it didn’t require refrigeration. Regan touched the pop can. It was warm.

  “We should eat,” Colby said, his words funneling through her like a comforting, warm spring breeze.

  Regan picked up the tray and sat on her cot. Colby grabbed his, sat and faced her. Brian walked toward them and positioned his cot so instead of being side-by-side they were triangulated—easier for a conversation.

  Regan took a bite and the sandwich was as dry as a stack of stale saltine crackers. They were all likely dehydrated. Even if it was the close of just one day she and Colby hadn’t had much to eat, let alone drink. She opened the pop can and took a swig. Lemon-lime bubbles effervesced in her mouth like pop rocks and after several seconds of purposeful chewing she was able to get the whole glob down.

  “That good?” Colby asked.

  Regan set the tray aside. Despite wanting to please Colby, and knowing his statement about eating when they could was true, she just couldn’t do it. Her stomach was knotted with worry about Olivia.

  “I think you two should tell me what happened,” Colby said.

  “What do you mean?” Regan asked.

  Colby took a swig from his drink. “One of you knows what they’re talking about—about what happened in that lab. It’s the reason why we’re all here.”

  Guilt clawed up Regan’s throat. Her stomach turned. One of the worst times in her professional career and Colby was asking her to revisit it. To disclose what her worst fear was.

  To reveal what she’d always been in denial about.

  “Brian?” Colby pressed.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know what happened. I go home from work one day and the next, three people are dead and I’ve lost my job.”

  Regan narrowed her eyes. It seemed like such an odd thing to pair together. His words tinged bitter more at the latter part of his statement.

  “One of you must have a theory. Come on, this is crazy. Spill it.”

  Regan’s skin crawled and she clenched the metal bar of the cot. Why was this so hard to share? Because it proved she wasn’t as good as she thought she was. That she’d likely made a mistake and it had cost people their lives.

  Looking at Colby, she could see in his eyes that he wouldn’t take anything less than what he believed to be an honest statement. But providing such information riddled her with anxiety. What would he think of her? Would he still want to be with her?

  She blinked—the thought causing her mind to tilt off kilter. Is that what she wanted? To be with him? Not just now but after?

  “Regan... Brian... It will be better for me if I know what we’re up against. We can only plan a defense when we know the truth about what’s going on. Consider this a fact-finding mission. No judgments about whatever happened, okay?” Colby reached out to her, settled his hand on her knee and squeezed gently. “Please, trust me.”

  Regan pulled her lip through her teeth. Could sharing her theory really make anything worse than it really was? Of course, Colby could hate her and never want to have anything to do with her again.

  “At the time I was running the lab, we were working on early versions of what became the cure I have today.”

  “Modifying viruses should come with some care, don’t you think?” Brian asked, an edge to his voice.

  He blamed her. They both could have died just as easily. But had she been careless?

  “Of course. And I was careful,” Regan said, defiant.

  “The results say differently,” Brian pressed.

  Colby raised his hands. “The two of you antagonizing one another is not going to help our situation.”

  Regan folded her hands in her lap. “To theorize about what happened, you have to first understand what polio does in its natural state. Most people infected with polio won’t even know they’ve contracted it. Some make it through a polio infection with mild symptoms like other viral illness—fever, sore throat and headache. However, a small minority of people suffer from the most serious complications when it attacks their nervous system, which can lead to paralysis.”

  “When you try and change a virus, there can be serious consequences,” Brian said.

  What was Brian’s deal? Did he feel that she should have been punished? That she’d gotten away with something?

  Regan tried not to look at Brian’s intense stare. “The paralysis can affect the muscles that help a person breathe. If those muscles stop, then your body won’t pull any air in.”

  Colby nodded. “Was there an autopsy performed on the bodies?”

  “There was,” Brian affirmed.

  “And?” Colby said, pushing Regan to talk with the intense nature of his gaze.

  “The autopsy showed that all three workers had died from suffocation.”

  “At the same time?” Colby asked.

  “Considering the nature of how they were found, it was presumed that they died within a few minutes of each other.”

  “How is that possible?” Colby asked.

  Regan’s throat tightened into a hot and achy lump. This was the moment when everything changed.

  “Polio virus can be transmitted a couple of ways, but one way is person-to-person via droplets. Someone coughs or sneezes onto a surface. You touch that surface and then touch your mouth. It’s highly contagious.”

  “So the workers touched some active polio virus and died?” Colby asked.

  Regan shook her head. “No, I don’t think that’s what happened.”

  “The evidence doesn’t support that,” Brian said.

  “What does the evidence show?”

  “Well, first you need to know what the normal incubation period is for polio—the time it takes for the disease to develop once you’ve been exposed—which, depending on the type of polio, can be three to twenty-one days. The issue is, those deaths couldn’t have been from a previous exposure because I’d shut the lab down for a long Christmas break, which was over three weeks.”

  “Then?” Colby prodded.

  Regan fidgeted. “On autopsy, evidence of the polio virus was found in the muscles that control respiration and nowhere else. That, along with some other signs, led to the thought that the workers had died from polio exposure—exposure to death in a matter of minutes. It’s unheard of. I still don’t think it’s clinically possible.”

  Colby looked like she’d felt during a computer coding class she’d tried once—like she and Brian were discussing a foreign language. “The issue is that we know they didn’t contract normal polio because of the time frame. They hadn’t been to the lab in over three weeks, which is outside what we know to be the normal incubation period. The polio virus was found to be concentrated primarily in their diaphragms, the largest muscle associated with breathing. Plus, evidence of dead viral particles was also found in the ventilation system.”

  Colby nodded slowly. “They breathed it in.”

  “And it killed them within a few minutes of exposure. Nothing kills that fast.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing biological. There are a few chemical agents that kill very rapidly and most are neurotoxins.”

  “If there’s something more effective in killing people out there, why mess with this polio virus?”

  Colby verbalized what she’d been thinking a lot abou
t over the last two days. Why pursue this as a biological weapon?

  “A chemical agent puts everyone at risk, including those who deploy it. A shift in the wind can bring the agent back around, killing your own troops. However vaccines can be developed against viruses, so, in theory, you could develop a deadly biological agent and immunize your troops against it, thereby preventing their deaths even if they were exposed.”

  And what would the hostage-takers really do if they got what they wanted? Let her go? Doubtful. They’d need a scapegoat and a story. She could see the headline: Rogue Doctor Steals from Hospital and Disappears with Daughter—Kills Nanny With Potential Knowledge of Her Evil-Doings. Once they had what they wanted, they were all going to die.

  That meant, even if she could do what they asked for, she could never give them what they wanted.

  “Have they asked you to develop a vaccine, as well?” Colby asked.

  “No,” Regan said.

  “What does that mean?” Brian asked.

  “That maybe they really don’t care about the consequences,” Colby offered.

  Regan lay down on her cot and looked up at the ceiling. Disclosing this truth had taken everything out of her, and her body, physically and mentally, was starting to spiral into a shutdown schedule. She hadn’t felt this way in a long time—so spent. Not since she’d gone through divorce proceedings. How was there any way out of this? Truth was, there wasn’t. How long would they give her to do as they asked? Her work had taken almost a decade to get to the point it was at now. And in truth, it wasn’t like she knew exactly what had happened at the lab. When they went back to look at the polio samples, the viral samples were benign. Whatever airborne virulent strain of polio had burned itself out probably as quickly as those who had died.

  “What are you going to do?” Colby asked.

  Regan closed her eyes and ignored his question.