by Dale Mayer
We need to find it.
On it.
Of course they were on it. The car could be key to finding Stanley. But at least now he knew where the lorry had stopped, where the lorry might have dropped off Amanda. It was a run-down commercial area of town; Kerrick could get back into the traffic cams to find the car hopefully. Moving his laptop from the bed back to the table, he sat down, logged again into the traffic center, and searched through the feeds. He didn’t have access to the main city of Liverpool, though he quickly asked the chat window for the login. It took a moment, and then he had another link. He was loving this. He seemed to have access to anything. Granted, he didn’t have free direct access, but, if it was a reasonable request, so far he had been given whatever he needed.
Back in the traffic cams, at this one location where the lorry had stopped—at least as far as he could tell from this particular angle—was a large loading bay. And that would make sense. There would not likely be any cameras picking up the lorry, but, … if Kerrick was lucky … He sat here for the next several hours, fighting exhaustion and jet lag, skimming through the traffic feeds and looking for the car or the big lorry. Then his laptop dinged as the chat window provided another link. He clicked it to see a video camera feed of a big lorry backing up to a loading bay off to the side of some huge industrial building, its rear doors open. As he kept watching, the blue car reversed out of the lorry and drove away. He crowed in delight. That’s it.
Instantly a thumbs-up emoticon appeared in the chat window.
He laughed. So you do have a sense of humor. We need to track that car now.
But, of course, they already were. It took another two minutes, and then his screen flashed. Frowning, he checked out what was coming—a feed recorded earlier, showing the route that the blue car had traveled. Unfortunately he never saw the driver. It could have been Stanley, since it was his car. Or it could have been Tom, since he was mainly driving the car that Sunday. Hell, both men could have been in the vehicle for all Kerrick could tell. That left Jimmy to return his lorry back to the overnight parking lot at the trucking company. So he was driving that third vehicle after all. Kerrick never tracked it very far, only seeing it a couple, three times. And then it disappeared—into the back of the lorry. Pretty brilliant for three stupid crooks.
“Interesting,” he murmured as he quickly took notes. The car headed past a hospital, turned around into the back, but then, almost as if thinking it was in the wrong place, pulled back out again and headed away. He frowned at that. “What’s the matter? This guy not know where he’s going?”
He kept watching as the vehicle pulled ahead into another large medical complex with a huge but run down sign out front. There, it went into an underground loading area, where Kerrick couldn’t see it anymore. Kerrick waited and watched but in Fast Forward mode. The vehicle came back out close to forty minutes later per the time stamp on the video. The thing is, this time, from what he could see of the driver, just his shirt-covered chest, it looked to be a different driver, a bigger guy. Kerrick zoomed in as the car took an incline and could see it was a larger man with a beard now.
“Damn it.” He sent a screen shot to his people via the chat window. Got a partial facial photo but try to match it.
Won’t be easy. Only got his beard to go by, and the beard covers major facial markers needed to ID him.
Do your best.
Kerrick frowned, wondering what had happened to the original driver—Tom? Stanley? Jimmy? Someone else?—and that’s where the feed ended. He immediately dropped back into the chat box, asking for the rest of the feed. We need to find that vehicle, he added on his message.
He was given immediate access once more. He quickly searched and watched as the car was picked up by various traffic cameras on its route, and then finally he could see it off in the distance, heading toward a country pasture. Another vehicle was close behind it, with only a driver inside—and this car was not the third one used earlier as a diversion at Dover. These two vehicles got up to a bridge, and Kerrick lost the blue four-door there. He kept searching and waiting, but nothing else showed up again. Kerrick sighed. It was a blind spot in the cameras. But he did catch the other vehicle, a gray two-door, driving away, and this time two people were in the front seat. The picture was grainy, the car too far down the road. Interesting …
That canal needs to be checked up at the bridge. Stanley’s blue four-door car will be down there. Still, we could find the dead bodies of Stanley, Tom, and/or Jimmy anywhere anytime now too. Let me know what you find.
There was an acknowledgment on the chat window, and Kerrick was happy to have the help on that because Kerrick didn’t have time. He checked his watch and realized it was almost midnight. He needed at least four hours of sleep a night, but that would have to come later. He closed the chat window, dropped the lid on his laptop, made his preparations quickly, gathering all he would need for his upcoming night maneuver, and had a hot shower.
Chapter 6
The darkness played with her senses. Amanda lived in an unceasing cycle of dim light. She tried all the doors in the hallway for her floor, deemed the basement as far as she knew. Every door was locked. A knock and her whispered, “I’m here to get you out,” didn’t get any responses. Only her door was unlocked. She quickly dashed to the far side of this building, but she was in a corridor of more locked doors. She opened one to find it was a closet. She stepped inside, looking for anything to help her. She found a pair of coveralls that she hastily pulled on over her dirty clothes and an old hat. She stopped, looked around for a weapon, finding instead a mop and also a bucket—not much of for weapons. But both would give her a bit of cover.
She grabbed them and carried them out into the hall and checked every one of the doors on each side of this hallway and again found nothing unlocked and nobody responded to her whisper at each door either. She headed back down the third hallway, doing the same checks for each hallway for each side of this building. There had to be a way to get out of this damn place. She passed a double door and stopped. She opened the door, relieved to find that it wasn’t locked. It led her to stairs heading up and stairs heading down. Her heart pounded, worried that a ton of the bad guys were in this building and that she wasn’t the only kidnap victim here.
Up or down?
She hesitated, but the little boy who spoke to her in Morse code was up one floor. So she bolted up the stairs, still carrying her mop and bucket as she headed to the next flight. She could see a small window showing the outside world, so this floor where the boy was held was at ground level. Which meant she had been incarcerated belowground, and yet, another floor was below hers too, given the up and down staircases she had just seen.
Where the hell was she? What was this place? It was dark outside, but her days and nights were all twisted up and turned around, so that she didn’t know if this was dusk or dawn. She should have warned Brandon that she was coming, but there’d been no time. Neither could he likely tell her where he was located in this mausoleum. Still, she had a good idea where she had been, and he was directly above her.
She went into the first hallway on this floor and again found it empty, nobody responding from behind the locked doors. She didn’t have a clue what all these rooms held. Around the corner was the next hallway on this floor and had almost no doors. She kept tracking the direction to where her room would be underneath. Why had she seen no workers here? Orderlies? Guards? For all she knew, this building was empty and deserted, except for its captives, with a crew coming once a day or every couple days to throw food and water at them.
She raced as fast as she could, using long strides to get down to what she thought would have been the equivalent of her room below. She stopped at the corner, considered how many doorways were to the left, then walked over by three and grabbed the knob and turned it. It opened. But the room itself was empty.
Shit. She stopped. She reorganized her thoughts, trying to figure out how many doors to the left down her hallway were there, but
this was the corresponding room she was searching for on this level. She was sure of it. However, just in case the floors weren’t quite exactly duplicates, she went one door to the left and opened it. It was also empty. Cursing, she went one door to the right, and it was locked. She tapped on the door, and there was a delay before she heard a responding tap. She then tapped a question in Morse code. Is it you?
The answer came back Yes.
She tried the door again, but it was locked. She could hear him pounding on the door. She waited until he stopped and then tapped Stop. Be quiet. I have to find out how to open the door. I’ll be back.
And then she left. A matching closet should be down the little boy’s hallway as well, if this floor was anything like her floor. There, she raced inside, looking for anything. Again she found nothing to use as a weapon. But there were more coveralls. She quickly checked inside the pockets of each pair, looking for keys that would unlock that door, but found nothing. Then she found the mother lode. A large key ring. Hanging on a hook on the wall.
She stared at it in joy but then realized it could take her an hour to figure out which one belongs to which door. And surely it was just keys to places that didn’t matter, right? Because they wouldn’t leave prisoners behind locked doors and also leave behind the keys displayed openly on a wall, would they?
Pulling out one of them, she smiled because it was a master key. She headed back to the same room, and, just as she was about to put the key in the door, she heard voices. She immediately disappeared around the corner and returned to the closet. She rehung the keys on the wall but not before she took the master key. She tucked it into her pocket and disappeared, hiding behind the rack of coveralls.
The only way to make this work was if she tried to be as flat as she could with the coveralls hanging before her. She heard the voices come down the hallway, but they didn’t open the door to the closet. She waited, knowing that, if they went one direction, they had to come back again.
But how long would they take? As she waited, she heard the footsteps again. This time they stopped at the door. Somebody opened the closet and said, “This is just the broom closet, in case we need something for spills or to clean up the blood. If it’s a big job, we call in the cleaning crew.”
She frowned at his tone and his wording, almost as if giving a tour to somebody on his first day at a new job. But the sound of cleaning up blood didn’t make her feel any better. And, if it was bad, bringing in a cleaning crew? Yeah, she could imagine.
The voices continued, and she heard, “During the night, we clean out the chamber pots. It’s gross. Every one of these rooms should have their own bathroom. If they were in the upstairs rooms, they do, but these downstairs rooms don’t.” Then the closet door was closed again, and she heard their footsteps getting farther and farther away.
She snorted silently. “Great,” she muttered. “I get to be in one of the worst rooms. Doesn’t that just suck?”
When she thought it was long enough, she slowly opened the closet door and stuck her head out. Saw no sign of anyone. She stepped into the hallway and raced back to Brandon’s door, hoping that the men hadn’t taken the kid away. Using the master key, she quickly unlocked his door. A terrified pale-faced boy stood on the other side. “Brandon?” She opened her arms, and he raced into them. She quickly shut his door again and whispered, “We have to go now.”
He wore just shorts and socks and a T-shirt. He held his shoes in his hands, almost as if he thought he could sneak out quieter without wearing them. She motioned for him to get those on fast. She looked around, thinking of anything else in that closet which would be of help to him. That old jean jacket. She held up a finger, raced back, quickly snagged it, and brought it to him, putting it around his shoulders. And then she led him back to the stairs. What she didn’t know was how to get out of this building.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Brandon asked in a loud whisper.
She shook her head. “No. I found stairs but no exit yet.”
He nodded. “We need to find that first.”
“Suggestions?” she asked, hating the idea of going down the hallway any farther. “That’s where the men came from,” she said, pointing. “I just about got caught by two of them.”
His only response was to stare at her, and she could see the whites of his eyes and how his mouth was pinched tightly together.
She nodded, as if making a decision, then said, “The stairs have to go somewhere.”
He stayed close to her as they headed to the stairwell.
There, she motioned up top and said, “Let’s go up one more flight. I can see light there, and I know we’re aboveground here, but we should check the next level anyway. Then decide on our next move.”
They quickly made their way upstairs to what appeared to be the main floor, and, sure enough, they found a door, with an alarm at the top. She hesitated, pointed at that bright red light, and said, “When the door opens, an alarm could go off.”
“But we still need to open it,” the boy said as he peered through the nearest window into the darkness. “Do you think there’s any chance of getting away from here?”
“This is our chance,” she said firmly. “If we don’t get away on this attempt, we’re in deep trouble. They’ll lock us up, throw away the key, and then we won’t even be given that little bit of food that we’ve had so far.”
“What food?” he mumbled. “I could eat this jacket by now.”
“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Just when she was about to take a deep breath and open the door, they heard voices again, and the door at the top of the stairs opened. They stared at each other in horror. She quickly grabbed him and pulled him back so they were out of view—as long as nobody came down the stairs—hoping that the new arrivals were going up instead.
The voices at the top of the stairs called out, “So do we need to show you the downstairs again too?”
That sent Amanda and Brandon silently scampering down to his floor. Again. Where they waited to see what the newcomers did next.
Kerrick had parked one-quarter mile away and hiked the rest of the distance to the GPS location where the lorry had unloaded the car, and hopefully Amanda too. Google Maps had ID’d the location as a huge sanitorium that had closed down and been left derelict. And yet, if it was derelict, this building shouldn’t have been powered, and there was definitely power. He could see lights on inside. A few vehicles were parked around the building too. So obviously not derelict, no matter what Google told him.
He headed toward the side fence and jumped over it, just in case working cameras checked out people at the main entrance. If other people were held in here, then it was quite possible that the kidnappers had a very extensive security system. Kerrick hoped not but knew he would do what he could to not trigger any alarms. “Hang on, Amanda,” he whispered. “I’m coming.”
Once he got to the building, he quickly geared up, shaking his head at the surprising haul hidden in his car. Bolstered to have everything he needed, he walked around, looking at the six stories rising above, potentially a seventh or a penthouse that he couldn’t quite see. He had no idea how many stories deep it went. But, depending on how many rooms filled each floor, there could be hundreds of patients held here. There was no business sign, no welcoming entrance, and not even a set of double doors that evidenced any kind of regular interaction with people. And yet, this place appeared operational. He crept alongside the building, noting the exits. Two were at the back, with a fire exit on the other side.
Kerrick also found a shipping bay for deliveries on the right-hand side. The driveway dipped into a floor-to-ceiling gated area and went down where a series of raised docks were for unloading at the same level as the lorries. All in all, pretty standard stuff for a commercial building. But the double doors on the bays looked old, as if they probably wouldn’t even open. At least, not easily. And that was something else to consider.
If that’s where th
e lorry had driven, which to the best of Kerrick’s knowledge it was, why here? Why not just park in the front, unload the woman, and take her in that way? Unless it was just easier down there. It’s also possible no cameras were down there to ID the woman. Although the street cams had caught sight of the lorry as it backed up here.
With that thought in mind, he crept his way down the back of the building in the darkness, dressed fully in black, his face blacked out too, and checked for an unsecured entryway, finding an unlocked side door. He opened that and stepped inside. He wore night-vision goggles, which made it easier to see anything. He moved slowly, getting his bearings on the inside of the building.
While the bay door area was for trucks to drive into the lower levels of the building, Kerrick noticed the downward slope of this more pedestrian area, diving deeper into the same area, he presumed.
One of the things about large and supposedly empty buildings like this was that it was often easy to lose track of your navigation sense. And that’s something he couldn’t afford to do. He kept on moving quietly through the floor. Boxes were off to one side, which he noted without investigating them further, but then farther along he found large pallets. He checked to see it was foodstuffs, and that meant people lived here, so they had to feed them. And they were feeding lots of people because there were multiple pallets.
He kept on moving, but he took photos as he went. He still saw no signs of anyone. It was a small operation based solely on how few cars were here, but he had already taken images of each of the vehicles parked out front—two lorries, a car, and an SUV. He did a complete search of this floor and counted how long that took. Twelve minutes. Realizing how long it would take to check every floor—even without opening every door to every patient room—he had to pick up his speed. But it was just him out here and no backup. He didn’t like that part at all. His phone vibrated at his hip, and he pulled back into a far corner and checked it.