Taken Hostage

by Jordyn Redwood

  “Is the person the temp was covering for okay?” Regan asked.

  “Unknown at this time, and we had someone from the bank discharge the temp. It didn’t seem to raise any eyebrows,” Abrams said. “Regan, we need you to find out who the other interested buyers are. This broker isn’t likely the only one. You have forty-eight hours to determine that. The more information we have, the more likely we can stop your knowledge from falling into the wrong hands.”

  Regan took one of the pills from his open palm and eyed it warily.

  “It’s all right,” Colby said. “Nico and I have our differences, but I’ve never known him to be a liar.” Colby grabbed the other gel capsule and one of the water bottles sitting on the table. Taking a swig of water, he then swallowed his capsule.

  * * *

  This is insanity. This whole scenario is straight out of some spy movie and I’m caught right in the middle of it. A doctor. A healer. A mother.

  Regan’s hand started to shake. She watched Colby for a good minute. If it were poison, particularly cyanide, the signs would present themselves quickly.

  “Why do I have to swallow one?” Regan asked. “Why can’t you just track Colby?”

  “Double insurance.”

  “Nico thinks the hostage-takers view me as expendable,” Colby said.

  Abrams smoothed his tongue over his lower teeth. “Colby’s right. You’re the high-value target. I’m actually surprised they’ve let Colby live this long. He’s a physical threat to them. Only reason to keep him alive is for leverage over you. They think that you care for him. That they might be able to bend your will to theirs if they threaten his life.”

  That you care for him.

  Are my feelings more transparent to other people than they are to myself? Do the hostage-takers sense that I’d do everything I could to protect Colby as much as Olivia?

  Regan closed her eyes. They needed to get out of this vault. Time was ticking. They only had a few minutes left.

  Lord, don’t let taking this capsule be the death of me. Let these people be true to their word—that they’re really here to help us and not harm us.

  Before she could think of myriad reasons to not go along with this plan, she put the pill in her mouth, grabbed Colby’s water bottle and drank it down.

  “Good,” Abrams said. “We’ll determine your location from the chips. Colby, 1200 in two days, we’ll take the compound via assault. Do whatever you can on the inside to get all the hostages in a safe place. It might be best to keep Brian alive for interrogation.”

  Regan showed her key. “I still need the contents of the box or they’re not going to believe anything I’ve said I’d do.”

  “Of course.”

  Nico and his charge stepped aside. Regan and the bank woman stepped up to Box 114 and slipped their keys in. Regan pulled open the box, took out the inner core and set it on the table. She couldn’t keep her mind off the capsule in her stomach. Each minute that passed she worried about it less because Colby remained upright and didn’t exhibit any signs of discomfort. Anxious tendrils wormed their way through her gut. She opened the box and stared at the notebooks that contained the ghosts of her past. Black-and-white composition books. She pulled them out and the bank rep put the core back into the box.

  Nico turned to Colby. “Forty-eight hours.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They left the vault with just the bank employee and crested the stairs. Baldy and Green Eyes were pacing the center of the bank like feral cats looking for rodents. When Regan approached them, Baldy said, “You didn’t have a lot of time left. What took so long?”

  “My apologies, sir,” Gloria said. “There was some trouble with my key. It’s been happening on and off lately.”

  Regan exhaled slowly in relief as Gloria’s answer seemed to satisfy Baldy.

  The foursome walked to the car without being stopped. Regan scanned the area. There were several people milling around the bank. None seemed to give her a glance.

  But who was enemy or friend? Who was with the hostage-takers? Who was against them? Did this broker still have men outside the bank? Was it even worth the time to figure it out?

  Once inside the car Green Eyes took the notebooks from Regan. “Get buckled up.”

  As Regan pulled the strap across her chest, she saw something whistle across the parking lot.

  A flash of white, pain and then blackness.

  FOURTEEN

  Colby’s ears were ringing. Acrid smoke hung heavy in his nostrils, and his first deep breath caused a racking cough that sent spindles of sharp pain through his ribs. Everything felt off. He opened his eyes and he was back in Iraq. Smoke swirled near the bank building, and it was hard to tell if the structure had been hit or not. He was upside down—the force of the blast had taken the parked car and upended it. His seat belt dug into his abdomen. There was a pool of blood trickling from the end of his fingertips.

  His mind was in a fugue state between his past and present. He groped his chest and was met by buttons and fabric versus the hard contour of his Kevlar vest and the military radio he wore when he served.

  Thoughts popped like rocket fire in his mind.

  Where am I? The bank. What was I doing here? With someone. Regan. Regan!

  Turning left, he blinked several times and didn’t see her seated next to him. He looked down and found her crumpled against the roof of the car, showered in glass, still and unmoving. He looked forward and didn’t see either Baldy or Green Eyes.

  Colby wasn’t sure of the best way to get out of the predicament without falling right on top of Regan, but his mind hastened action. He gripped the side of the blown-out window, released the seat belt and lowered himself next to her.

  Placing a hand on her back, he checked to see if she was breathing. After what felt like minutes, he finally felt a shallow rise. He couldn’t see any obvious injuries, but explosions were funny things. Just the concussive force of a blast could kill a person without leaving a mark.

  Colby had to get Regan out of the car. And then what? What had exploded? Who had set off the blast? Abrams’s crew? Cohorts of Green Eyes and Baldy? Bad guys they didn’t know? Colby settled on his knees next to Regan’s head and eased her onto her back. She was limp. Unresponsive. There was a shard of glass embedded in her right arm. He resisted the urge to pull it out.

  It seemed easy enough to pull her from the car through the blown-out passenger window. He scooped his hands under her shoulders and began to crawl backward when he felt the muzzle of a gun directly behind his right ear.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Baldy. The more vicious one. Alive and seemingly unharmed.

  Colby glanced over his shoulder and glared. “I’m trying to get Regan out of the car. Do you have a plan?”

  “There is another vehicle waiting for us. Go ahead and pull her out and then you’re going to cross the street, away from the bank, to the white SUV with the hatch open across the road.”

  Colby shimmied and pulled Regan out. The space next to them in the parking lot was vacant, which gave Colby plenty of room to wiggle out and pull her to a flat surface. He must not have been out long. People walked around in a daze. A woman screamed in the distance. No sound of sirens.

  “Pick her up,” Baldy ordered. “Let’s get moving.”

  “Do you have the notebooks?” Colby asked.

  Baldy looked at him, at first perplexed, and then seemingly realizing what Colby was asking.

  “Don’t do anything you’ll regret. Little Olivia’s life is still on the line.”

  Baldy bent and crawled inside the front end of the vehicle. When he emerged he had the notebooks with him. One was significantly torn and tattered around the edges, having taken the brunt of the glass breaking as the shards were propelled into the inner compartment of th
e car.

  “Let’s go,” Baldy said.

  The ringing in Colby’s ears wasn’t lessening and he found himself relying on reading lips. He scooped Regan up and dropped her over his shoulder, easing her gently into the tailback. Ice Man, armed, as well, closed the hatchback and raced to the driver’s seat. Colby jumped in the back. There wasn’t any way he would let them have Regan alone. Whatever happened, they’d have to take him along.

  Or kill him.

  Baldy got into the passenger’s seat, showing Colby his gun to reaffirm the continued threat.

  Colby raised his hands in surrender. While Ice Man pulled into traffic, Baldy held up a zip-tie and motioned Colby’s hands forward. Colby reached his arms out and felt the plastic strap enclose his wrists. He then settled his hands in his lap and stared straight ahead. The sound from a multitude of sirens barely penetrated when the flood of emergency vehicles moved toward the bank. A divided street meant Ice Man didn’t have to stop and pull over. Before much time had passed, they were outside the city limits.

  The car was quiet, unnervingly so.

  Colby glanced into the back. Regan remained unconscious.

  “We need to take her to a hospital,” Colby said.

  “She’ll be fine. Just knocked out. Like you,” Baldy said.

  “What about your friend?” Colby asked, referring to Green Eyes.

  “Not knocked out. Shard of glass in the neck. Bled out, I’m sure. Or is bleeding out.”

  What if Green Eyes lived? Didn’t Baldy worry about the man talking?

  “Was that your team? Did you cause the explosion?” Colby asked.

  Baldy didn’t respond, seemingly lost in his thoughts. If it wasn’t people friendly to their current hostage-takers, then Ice Man and Baldy had expected trouble in some measure by having a backup vehicle ready to go. Almost like the Secret Service.

  “It wasn’t us. The man we’ve been working with doesn’t like middle men,” Baldy finally said.

  Just as Nico had said and their hostage-takers had seemingly anticipated. Had this broker tried to capture Regan directly? In such a deadly way? A way that could have easily killed her?

  The driver hit a dirt road and stopped. Baldy put the black hood over Colby’s head again. “Lie down on the seat.”

  Colby did as instructed. At least they hadn’t ordered him out of the car. He agreed with Abrams’s assessment. His life was more at risk than Regan’s. He was the expendable one.

  Lord, please be with Regan. Let her be okay. Bring her back to me. Let her wake up. Keep Olivia and Sam safe. Help me figure out a way to end this with all of us alive and the cure intact.

  Colby must have drifted off as he’d prayed because an abrupt stop and car doors slamming brought him back to the present. The hood was yanked off unceremoniously and Colby blinked against the sun. Baldy clipped the zip-tie while Ice Man watched Colby at gunpoint. Colby exited the vehicle.

  The two men rounded the back of the car and opened the hatchback where Regan remained. They motioned to him and he picked her up and carried her inside.

  Instead of going back to the cell, they took him to a different area of the compound. They unlocked the door and there were four medical beds with monitoring equipment.

  “Do what you can for her,” Ice man seethed. “For your sake, you better get her to wake up.”

  Colby rested her on one of the gurneys. His medical knowledge didn’t near hers, but he had gone through basic EMT training for situations just like this, providing enough medical care to keep someone alive until they could be evacuated to a field hospital.

  What did he do when the patient was the doctor and had all the information he needed to save her life?

  Colby turned the heart monitor on and grabbed the white skin patches and placed them on her chest. Next, the blood pressure cuff. The oxygen probe on her finger. He found a stethoscope in a drawer and listened to her breathing. Everything checked out. Her heartbeat was strong, steady and not elevated. She was getting enough oxygen by just breathing room air. Blood pressure mildly on the low side of normal.

  Carefully, Colby pulled Regan’s eyelids up. The pupils were equal, mid-size and responding to light.

  Looking at her right arm, he noticed the glass had fallen out and the cut that remained looked shallow. He found some roller gauze and dressed it.

  Colby pulled a chair and sat next to her. This reminded him too much of how Brook had been toward the end of her life when treatment was no longer an option and she’d opted for hospice care. He’d spent many days just like this, beside her, a presence, to affirm to her that she was not alone.

  Tentatively, he reached out and covered Regan’s hand with his. It was cold. He glanced around the room and saw a blanket warmer, a small box resembling a microwave that held linens inside. He got up and pulled one out and tucked it around her body hoping for a greenhouse-like effect.

  Sitting back down, he snaked his hand under the blanket and held her hand. “Regan,” he said. No movement, but...did he see what he thought he saw?

  Colby zeroed his eyes on the heart tracing. “Regan, it’s Colby. Time to wake up.” It was there—just the slightest upswing in her heart tracing. She’d heard him. Responded to him. Even if in the moment she couldn’t open her eyes.

  He lowered the side rail and rested his head on the mattress, kneading her hand with both of his. “Olivia needs you. Whatever is happening, you have to fight through it. Come back to me.” He leaned forward and kissed the tips of her fingers. Could just his touch get her to open her eyes? He was willing to risk it—exposing his emotions physically if it brought her back to him.

  Seeing Regan like this, so still and cold, brought forth all the emotions that he’d been trying to keep under wraps. That she was worth his putting his heart on the line again. He couldn’t bear to just let her slip away like his wife. With cancer, sometimes there came a time when nothing could be done and it was best to let go.

  But that wasn’t now. Regan was strong.

  The door opened and in walked Brian, holding Olivia’s hand, Baldy a few steps behind him. At least the assault rifle was pointed down.

  “I thought this was worth a try,” Brian said.

  He released Olivia’s hand and backed out of the room. Baldy made of point of forcing Brian down the hall. Colby didn’t know what to make of the scene—whether it was a ruse or not. His brain was tired of trying to calculate every contingency.

  Colby wanted things to be simple and straightforward.

  He pushed his chair back. Seeing her in the light versus the sealed black of darkness, Olivia Lockhart was a spitting image of her mother. Long auburn locks with streaks of darker red in her hair. Eyes, cornflower blue. Their eye color the only real difference between the two of them.

  Colby reached his hand out to her. “Olivia, it’s me. Colby. The same man who tried to help get away from these bad men a couple of nights ago. I’m still helping your mom.” He waved her forward.

  She responded, though unsurely. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “I’m not sure right now. I think she’s just knocked out. Sometimes it takes a while to wake up.”

  Olivia kept walking until she stood directly next to Colby. “They keep telling me that she’s going to leave me here alone.”

  “I think you’re old enough to know the difference between good and bad people.”

  “Bad people kidnap you from your home.”

  “Exactly. When people do bad things then we can’t trust what they say. We have to remember what the person has always done for us before.”

  Olivia nodded. “When will we get to go home?”

  “I’m not sure.” Colby patted his leg. “Want to try and talk to her?”

  “She can hear me?”

  Colby looked at the monitor and it was then
he realized Regan’s resting heart rate was up a good twenty points. Colby lifted Olivia onto his lap. “Yes, she can definitely hear you. You can hold her hand, too. Want to try?”

  Olivia reached forward, much more bravely than Colby, and grabbed her mother’s hand, placing her fingers in between Regan’s and squeezing hard. “Mom!” A sweet singsong voice. “Let’s go home. Can we go home?”

  Olivia bent forward and kissed Regan’s hand. “Time to get up, Sleeping Beauty.” Olivia glanced back at Colby. “That’s what she always says to me in the morning.”

  Colby smiled at Olivia’s sweet innocence. No child should have to endure the things that Olivia had gone through. An abusive father. Grandparents that had disowned her. Colby reached out and put his hand on top of the two of theirs. Something in this moment felt inherently right. They all fit together.

  “Thank you,” Olivia said.

  “For what?” Colby asked.

  “For helping my mom—and for trying to help me.”

  “Do the bad men say anything to you?”

  “They tell me that they aren’t ever going to let me leave.”

  She’d confirmed what Colby had always suspected. It wasn’t just about the cooler and what was in it. It was about Regan and what she knew.

  “Do you think they tell the truth about anything?” Olivia asked.

  “I don’t know, why?”

  “Because they told the truth about my mom, that she was sick, and that’s why they’re letting me visit with her. They also said that you’d be coming back here even if my mom got them what they wanted. They say I’ll never see my home again.”

  A vacuous pit grew in Colby’s stomach. It didn’t surprise him, these words spoken so innocently by Olivia but holding so much gravity for their future. The gunmen hadn’t tried to hide their faces from them. Once they’d fulfilled their duty, they either had to keep them imprisoned or kill them. They were all expendable—eventually.

  And if Regan didn’t wake up soon, how long would they really keep any of them around? She had a lot to do in the next forty-eight hours.