Lost then Found

by Valerie Wilde

  “I’m going to make you pay for this,” I hissed at him. It sounded like some dreadful cliche, but I really, sincerely meant every word of it. He put a hand on my back, right in between my shoulder blades and shoved me forward.

  “I doubt it, get on the boat.”

  I stepped across the rubber fenders where the two yachts touched.

  “Get down below,” Marcus ordered, undoing the moorings with one hand, the gun still in the other.

  I hesitated. Was this my chance to get away from him?

  The water in the harbor was deep, but maybe I could jump into the sea and swim away. I’d be able to hide behind one of the other yachts.

  Except, what about Jack? I wouldn’t be able to swim quickly holding onto him.

  I ducked my head, following Marcus’ orders…for now.

  23

  Aidan

  I hurried to the bridge of the yacht.

  Although I employed a crew, I knew how to sail the yacht myself - I didn’t need to wait for the crew to come back from their shore leave. I would get us out of Montecarlo now. It would be simple enough to get a message to the crew to meet us further along the coast. The most important thing was getting away from Monte Carlo.

  I was going to have to deal with Marcus after all this was over. Yes, he was family, but this time he had gone too far. He was coming after Erica - after everything I’d done, all the ways that I protected her, it still hadn’t been enough! She was supposed to be safe on the yacht!

  I turned the key in the ignition with one hand, gripping hold of the steering wheel with the other.

  Nothing happened.

  There wasn’t a sound, the engine didn’t start. Nothing.

  I frowned, twisting the key again. Again, nothing happened.

  I swallowed. I’d sent the security team ashore with the rest of the crew. The marina was private, with guards at the gate, so I thought we’d be safe for a few hours.

  Had Marcus got onboard and tampered with the yacht?

  I gave the ignition one last try. Still nothing. Dead silence.

  What could Marcus have even done to the yacht? The only thing I could think of was that maybe he’d got into the engine room. Maybe he’d unplugged something. I’d have to go down and check.

  I hurried down to the engine room, deep in the bowels of the yacht. Opening the heavy door, I looked around the gleaming, metal equipment. I was never going to see what the problem was down here. I walked around, looking in between the various pipes. Everything was turned off, so it should be silent in here, but it wasn’t.

  Something was ticking away. What was that sound? I walked around, trying to find the source of the noise.

  There! Tucked behind one of the thick cooler pipes was something that didn’t belong in that room…or any room. There was a timer on the front, ticking down, different colored wires connected it to ten unlabeled canisters. That was a bomb!

  There was a bomb and Erica and Jack were still on the boat!

  Fuck! I needed to find them now! I needed to get them off the yacht now!

  I ran, faster than I’ve ever run in my life, yelling as loud as I could, as I bounded up the stairs to the main deck. Where the hell had Erica got to? Why wasn’t she answering me?

  There had been nine minutes left on the bomb timer. How much time was there now? How far away did we need to get to be safe?

  I opened door after door on the main deck, our stateroom, Jack’s bedroom, the dining room, my study, the evening lounge, room after empty room. I hurtled down to the next deck, searching every room, yelling as I went. Maybe Erica had taken Jack for a swim. The changing area was empty, and the shower stalls. Adrenaline pumped through me, my neck prickled with that sense of impending doom. I knew that any second could be my last. They weren’t on this level either! I went down another flight of stairs, racing against the clock as I rushed along the crew deck. The kitchen was deserted, the crew lounge and then on until I reached the crew’s cabins. There was no-one here!

  God, how much time was left? How long had I been searching!? Where the fuck are they!?

  24

  Erica

  Jack had stopped crying. I hoped he’d believed me that this was all a game, but from the pale frightened expression on his face, I didn’t think so. The two of us huddled on a padded bench at the back of the bridge, the desk in front of us was covered with nautical maps.

  “You’ll have to excuse the cramped conditions,” Marcus said, waving his gun around the bridge. It was hardly cramped. This was a luxury yacht! It just wasn’t as opulent as Aidan’s. “I’m afraid the three of us are going to be sailing alone today. With no crew, I’m going to have to drive this myself.”

  He sat down on the captain’s chair, the gun trained on both of us.

  “Don’t get any silly ideas now. I need both hands to get us out of here. If I hear one peep from either of you….”

  He left his threat menacingly unfinished.

  Swiveling the chair around, he lowered his gun and put it down on the dash next to the yacht’s steering wheel. My eyes stayed on the gun. I felt so furiously powerless. I wasn’t going to let Marcus get away with doing this!

  I just had to get hold of that gun.

  Marcus started the engine and, with a sharp jolt, the boat lurched forward. There was a window behind me and I turned to look out of it. There was Aidan’s yacht - was he still on board? Had he noticed the sound of Marcus’ yacht? I couldn’t see anyone on the decks!

  I wished more than anything that I would catch a glimpse of Aidan!

  I could picture him now, alone on the yacht, working out that Marcus had taken us, but not knowing where or how.

  We got further away. Aidan’s yacht getting lost in the mass of all the other yachts as we sailed out to the open sea. We were getting too far away now, he wouldn’t be able to follow us. I turned back around, giving up on trying to catch one last glimpse of Aidan.

  Marcus had his back to me, his attention focused on steering the yacht.

  I sat up straighter, the leather of my seat crinkled quietly and, immediately, like he’d been listening for the slightest sound, Marcus’ hand went for the gun. His short, fat fingers cradling it, one finger already on the the trigger, though the gun wasn’t pointed at us and he hadn’t even turned his chair around.

  He kept the gun in his hand, manipulating the yachts controls with one hand now.

  “Not long now, my dear. I just need to find a cosy little spot where we can stop and have a good chat.”

  “There is nothing I want to talk to you about!”

  “Tut tut, don’t be so sure. I think after you’ve heard what I have to say you’ll be very interested.”

  Ugh, the way he spoke made me physically sick!

  “You’re threatening to kill my son. Why would I be interested in anything you have to say!”

  Marcus’ hand moved quickly over the controls and the yacht lurched abruptly to a standstill. He checked over the panels for a second and then turned around in his chair.

  “You mean this?” he said, turning the gun in his hand, like he was showing it to me. “This is just business. You’re a business woman. You know that sometimes there can be a little unpleasantness, but that shouldn’t get in the way of making a deal.”

  I stared at him in shock, my mouth hanging open! He expected me to stay here and make a deal with him?!

  He was insane, that was the only explanation.

  I shut my mouth with a snap…If he wanted to make a deal then that meant he wasn’t about to kill me. That tight feeling in my chest loosened slightly. I could see a way out of this. I could just go along with this, nod along with whatever Marcus said and then…well, I wasn’t sure about the details. The important thing was that we weren’t in immediate danger….and that Marcus wouldn’t get away with this, but I was going to have to work on that later.

  “Look on that desk, under that map.”

  I frowned. The nautical map was completely unreadable to me. It was a
series of squiggles and numbers that would only be meaningful to somebody who had been trained to read it. I folded the map up and saw at once that there was an entirely different kind of document underneath.

  I felt a shiver of cold go through me, my fingers heavy as I lifted up the paper. The heading on the top of the document was the official crest of Imperial Bank of Askovia. I’d seen photos of documents that looked like this - I’d never actually touched one in person. Any important legal changes that happened at the Imperial Bank of Askovia were written out on legal documents like this.

  Why would Marcus have something like this? What deal could he possibly want from me that involved something like this?

  “Ah, it seems that you already know what this is.”

  The old fashioned paper felt thick in my hands, like some kind of medieval manuscript. The thick black script had the density of a legal document. I tried to scan through the words, trying to make out what it was about.

  My eyes caught sight of a few phrases, ‘acquitted, exonerated and forever discharged from and against’ and ‘Mutatis Mutandis’.

  Sometimes these IBA documents were written in Askovian. This one wasn’t, but it might as well have been! It was full of legal jargon! And Latin!

  “I don’t…What is this?”

  Marcus smiled slowly, leaning back in his chair like he had all the time in the world to just sit back and relax.

  “Why, it’s a contract, my dear. I’ve had it drawn up just for you. It says that in the event of your husband’s death, you will renounce all claims to the Presidency of IBA. You and little Jackie here. That doesn’t sound to bad, does it?”

  “In the event of my husband’s death?!?”

  I stared, not wanting to understand what Marcus was saying. I’d been so sure that Marcus had kidnapped us from under Aidan’s nose, that he’d been on the yacht, alive and well, and as soon as he learned we were missing, then he was going to come looking for us. But now…now I shook my head in horror. What had Marcus done to Aidan?

  Was he even still alive?

  “Don’t get hung up on the details. I know that he was paying you to be with him, so you couldn’t have cared that much about him! Don’t worry, you’ll still get the money he promised you. That’s what’s really important, isn’t it? Look, pick up that pen, sign the document handing over the company to me and then I’ll let you both go and we can end all this unpleasantness. The company should have been mine anyway. This just makes it…cleaner.”

  “What…” I felt like my voice wasn’t my own, it was difficult to form each word, “What have you done with Aidan?”

  Marcus shook his head in annoyance, “Everyone is always so concerned with Aidan! It would be much better if you stopped worrying about him. I’m simply a businessman. A better one than my half-brother, I might add, and I want to make a deal with you. I’m willing to pay you quite handsomely.”

  All my anger and frustration were reeling away in my belly and Marcus would not answer my question. I couldn’t hold it back anymore.

  “What did you do?!?”

  I screeched, my voice high-pitched and raw. Jack, tucked into my side, shook, his little hands grabbing me.

  I was scaring Jack and I needed to be calm for his sake. I stroked a hand through his hair, combing it with fingers like I sometimes did while I told him a good night story.

  “I didn’t do anything to Aidan. I did put a small explosive device in the engine room of his gratuitously large yacht. If he happens to still be aboard when the bomb goes off, then…well…I won’t say it will be a shame…”

  “You…you killed him?”

  “No, no, well…Not yet. We’re still close enough that we’ll hear it when it goes off. Although…it shouldn’t be long now.”

  “You can’t just blow up a yacht in the middle of a marina! You’re going to kill innocent people!”

  “Oh, my dear. I really don’t care. Don’t you understand that?”

  “Even if I sign this, you can’t imagine that you’ll just get away with murder! You’re going to be arrested. You can’t be President from a jail cell!!”

  Marcus shrugged. “I don’t think you’ve grasped what it is to be a billionaire. The local authorities won’t bother me, especially as you aren’t going to say anything to them. Aidan’s death will ruled as an accident. The explosion will start in the engine room. It will look like a mechanical failure, a simple, unfortunate accident.”

  His voice sounded coolly logical, but his words didn’t make any sense to me. No-one would ever believe that a bomb was just an accidental explosion!

  Billionaires didn’t just die in random accidents!

  “I’m going to tell the police what you’ve done!”

  He smiled knowingly, like he’d been expecting me to say just that.

  “I know that he offered you money to marry him. Tell me, how much was it? How much did he pay you?”

  I glanced at Jack.

  My stomach felt like it was tying itself in knots, hot and heavy knots that were making me feel sick. It felt a lot like shame.

  I shouldn’t feel ashamed for accepting money to marry Aidan! That money was for Jack! To give him the childhood he deserved!

  “Did you know that he loved you? I imagine he would have paid a lot of money for a chance to be married to you. I hope you drove a hard bargain and made him pay through the nose!”

  He leaned forward, resting an elbow on his knee, like he was sitting there, having a friendly chat with me. I almost expected him to offer me a cup of coffee. I curled my lip in disgust. I could hardly stand to look at that smug expression on his face. He sickened me.

  “So…It’s clear to me that you’re the kind of woman who knows the value of money. You sign that document, and keep quiet when the police ask you what happened…you can just tell them that you left him alone while you introduced your son to your brother-in-law.

  “And…in exchange, for those two, very small, little things, I will give you a lot of money. More money than you’ll be able to spend in a lifetime. More money than you can throw at your cute little boy there.”

  He leaned back, kicking his leg back and forth, the gun held loosely in his hand, resting on his thigh.

  “Aren’t you going to ask how much money I’m willing to give you?”

  “It doesn’t matter -”

  “Shhhh,” Marcus stopped me, raising a finger to his lips. “Money always matters. One hundred million dollars. Imagine what you could do with that. Imagine the life you could give little Jackie. What do you say?”

  It wasn’t even an option. I knew that no matter how much money he offered, I would never go along with what he wanted. Not when I hated him so much that just looking at his pompous face made me want to spit.

  Still, it wasn’t too late. There was still time to help Aidan. I hadn’t heard any explosion and so he was still alive. I held on to that thought, letting it give me hope.

  “Marcus,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady and coax him back to sanity. “The bomb hasn’t gone off. Let’s go back. We can still save Aidan. Let’s just forget about all of this. He’ll forgive you, you’re his brother -”

  “No! Shut up!”

  He raised both hands, one still holding on to the gun, the barrel pointing up, as he pressed his fists to his ears. I stared at him in horror. He was mad.

  There was a loud noise in the distance, making me jump. My nerves were already on a hair trigger, and I moved without thought. I automatically huddled my body over Jack, protecting him. And then, I understood what the noise was.

  “No, no no,” I sobbed, burying my face in Jack’s hair. This couldn’t be happening. I’d just got Aidan back in my life. This past week had been paradise, spending time together, raising our child together. I knew now that I loved him!

  I didn’t care about how he had left me, that wasn’t important anymore, I forgave him. I loved him, I loved him so much…and now it was too late. He was dead and I had never even got the chance to tell
him how I felt.

  25

  Aidan

  I thought that I had felt fear before, making multi-million dollar decisions, hearing about my Dad’s heart attack, but now, as I ran out of the dark interior of the yacht and into the harsh sun of the deck, I knew what it was to be truly afraid. Every fiber of my being and thought in my head had crystallized, focusing on goal, find my family.

  Erica and Jack simply weren’t on the yacht, and the bomb was going to go off any minute.

  I looked out over moored up boats, the marina and to the Mediterranean beyond. My mind whirred, making plans for how I would find them.

  I stopped, catching sight of something in the distance.

  There, sailing away, out onto the open sea, was a small yacht.

  I recognised that boat!

  That the Intrepid - it was one of Dad’s yachts!

  Marcus must be using it! I knew, with dreaded certainty, that he had taken the two of them.

  Anger and fierce determination flooded my veins. I had to catch them.

  How?

  There were two jet skis stored in the aft bay of the yacht. I hadn’t had a chance to use any of them yet but I’d planned to take one of them out for spin over the next few days.

  I ran back into the yacht, I was going to have to be fast. I had no idea how long it would be until the bomb went off, but I knew it couldn’t be much longer.

  I ran into the aft bay, pressed the button to raise the sea doors and got one of the jet skis ready.

  I got astride the machine, riding it out from the aft bay and into the marina. There wasn’t much activity out here today, and no other boats were around. I could really get some speed up, setting my sights on that far away yacht. Trying to catch it up before it got out into the open sea where it would have an advantage.

  The water sprayed up, feeling cold as it soaked my clothes. I barely noticed it.

  My phone was in my pocket and, with one hand and over the noise of the jet ski engine, I put in a call to Felix.

  “Yes sir?”

  I could barely hear him. The engine was just too loud, but I couldn’t slow down. I couldn’t just cut the engine and chat with him!