by Lynsay Sands
"Gran!"
"Yes, dear?" Maggie Spyrus gave her granddaughter a distracted smile that turned surprised as Jane grabbed up a dish towel and rushed to the stove. Turning her wheelchair, she watched Jane drag the door open, wave at the smoke, and grab up a tray of very black scones to dump them in the sink.
"Oh, my! I guess I lost track of time and left them in too long." Gran scowled as Jane rushed to open the window.
"That's okay, Gran. I wasn't hungry anyway." Jane sighed as she used her dish towel to try to sweep the smoke away before it set off the fire alarm. She gave up the attempt as the alarm blared to life.
Muttering under her breath, Jane hurried to the kitchen closet in search of a broom to reach up and press the reset button on the alarm. It was only when she saw that it wasn't in its usual spot that she recalled having used it in her workroom the night before last. She'd forgotten to return it!
"I'll be right back," she shouted, although it was doubtful Gran could hear her above the alarm.
Rushing past Abel as he entered the kitchen, Jane raced down the hall to her workroom.
The broom was exactly where she'd left it, leaning against the wall by the door so that she'd remember to return it. Jane grabbed it, then froze as her eyes caught the laptop computer on her desk. There was a tiny satellite dish next to it. She stood still for several minutes, a stupid look on her face as she recalled the tracking tampons Edie had borrowed. Then the alarm from the kitchen went silent. Abel must have found a way to silence it on his own.
Letting go of the broom, Jane moved to her desk. Unraveling the cord attached to the satellite dish, she plugged it into the special socket she'd installed in the computer, then lifted the computer's lid and switched the laptop on. The machine finished booting, and Jane clicked on the voice program. "Sam, open BTT," she ordered.
The voice program had needed a call word, something to tell the computer it was being addressed, so Jane had chosen Sam. She was a big fan of Casablanca, and the "Play it again, Sam" line had run through her head when she addressed the computer the first time--so Sam it had been.
The screen turned red, then filled with several options. Jane took a deep breath. "Sam, initiate agent tracking," she continued. A small box promptly appeared with the words enter tracker ID. Jane hesitated. Each tracker had a different ID number. This was to ensure that Operations could tell whom they were tracking at any given time. However, Jane had no desire to go search out the numbers of the twelve trackers she'd created, then enter the six numbers for the BTTs that Edie had borrowed. After a hesitation she decided, "Sam, select all and click enter."
The screen immediately changed again, this time becoming a large gridded map of the Vancouver area. A yellow beacon representing one of her trackers lit up downtown just before the screen shifted once more: The streets of Vancouver disappeared, replaced by a map made up of main highways as it zoomed out to encompass a larger area that included part of Washington state.
"Oh, Lord," Jane breathed. But the screen wasn't done yet. It blinked a third time, zooming out even farther. The names of towns and cities became smaller as it struggled to include more than half of Washington. Much to Jane's horror, a red beacon lit up between Seattle and Olympia. And it was moving south.
"Abel!" Jane ran for the door.
------
"I don't know how I could have burned them." Despite her words, Maggie Spyrus didn't sound all that upset.
"It's easily done, I'm sure," Abel assured the old woman as he stepped down from the chair he'd used to reach the reset button. He assumed that this was what Jane had worried about: Apparently her grandmother, for all her sixty or seventy years, was not much of a cook.
"Jane went to look for a broom to hit that button," Maggie was saying. "She isn't as tall as you and can't reach it even standing on that chair."
Abel managed a smile despite his impatience. None of the calls they'd made so far had gained any results, and he wanted to get back to his search for his sister. Worry was growing inside him and lodging itself in his throat, choking him with its expanding presence.
"I'll go tell her it isn't necessary," he said. He left Maggie rolling out fresh dough for another try at scones. He knew he didn't really have to tell Jane that he'd turned the fire alarm off--surely she would hear that--but he wanted to speed her up, get her back to their task. He had a bad feeling about Edie's absence. They had to find her.
Abel had no idea where Jane had gone to find a broom, but she couldn't be hard to locate. The living room was empty, which left a hall he presumed led to the bedrooms. Edie's apartment was a single-bedroom style; this one had at least two, possibly three. Still, it wasn't that large. Abel passed the first closed door. He moved instinctively toward the open door farther on and nearly found himself bowled over as Jane came rushing through.
"Abel!" she gasped and clutched the lapels of his suit jacket in a panicky grasp.
"What is it?" He caught her elbows with concern. She looked frantic, and that made him frantic too. "What--"
"Edie!" Grabbing his hand, she hurried back into the room she'd just come out of, dragging him along behind her. "She's in Washington state almost to Olympia."
"What?" Abel stumbled to a stop at a desk, staring with incomprehension at the laptop Jane turned toward him. There appeared to be some sort of gridded map on the screen, but he didn't have a clue what it represented. "What are those blinking things?"
"They're...The red one is Edie."
"What? How--?"
"Edie borrowed a..."
"A what?" Abel prompted as Jane trailed off. A flush had risen to cover the young woman's cheeks, and she looked embarrassed.
"She borrowed a...a necklace," Jane got out at last, but the way she couldn't quite meet his eyes made Abel think she was lying.
"A necklace?"
"Yes." Jane flushed even deeper and said, "She stopped in last night before her date and borrowed a necklace that I had brought home from work. It has a tracker in it."
"It has a what?" he asked with bewilderment.
"A tracker. A transmitter."
"A tracker," he echoed blankly. "Why?"
"Why?" She appeared amazed that he would ask.
"Why would she borrow a necklace with a tracking device in it?" he asked impatiently. "Did she suspect something was going to happen? Did you know she might be in trouble all this time? And if you knew we could track her, why didn't you check this"--he waved vaguely at the screen--"sooner?" He straightened and added suspiciously, "And just where the hell do you work, anyway?"
"Tots Toy Development?" Jane answered the last question first, but it came out as more of a question than an answer.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
He wasn't surprised to see irritation flash across her face. "Look," she said, rubbing her forehead as if the beginning of a headache was making itself known. "I work for Tots Toy Development. Most of what we create are toys. However, I came up with the idea of a tracking necklace that little girls could wear allowing parents to find them should they get lost or what-have-you. My boss thought it was a good idea and told me to run with it."
Abel felt absolutely positive that every word that had just come out of this young woman's mouth was a lie. She even appeared to be making it up as she went along. Then it occurred to him that he didn't know this woman. He didn't know anything about her except for what she'd told him--and he was beginning to wonder how much of that was true.
"And you brought one home and Edie borrowed it."
He didn't bother trying to hide his doubt. She ignored it though, and nodded. It seemed they were going to pretend he believed her.
"Yes. Edie came in just as I was taking Tinkle out for a walk, and I said to borrow whatever she wanted. But I never thought she'd borrow tho--that."
"But she did. And you were able to call her up on this thing." He turned to peer at the screen again where the red blip was moving closer to Olympia. Olympia, Washington, he realized and shook his head in de
nial. "That can't be her. What would she be doing in the United States when I'm here? She must have given the necklace to someone else."
"She would hardly just give away a necklace of mine," Jane pointed out impatiently.
"Well, then, maybe she was mugged and someone stole it," he guessed.
Jane began to rub her forehead again. It was obvious she was upset and anxious, and was searching for a way to convince him. Abel didn't want to be convinced. Edie was just late, not halfway across Washington State.
"She must have been mugged," he repeated. "Edie simply wouldn't take off on a road trip. She knew I was coming."
"That's right," Jane agreed as if he were a slow child. "She wouldn't willingly go on a road trip. But the tracker is in Washington and heading south, and it shuts off and turns yellow if taken out--off the wearer. So that is definitely Edie. Besides," she added when he would have interrupted, "if that isn't her heading south, where is she? Why didn't she pick you up?"
Abel had no answer to that. But he definitely didn't like Jane's explanation.
"It's her, Abel. And the tracker is only good for two--"
"You think she's been kidnapped," he said, wanting to be sure that he wasn't misunderstanding. The very idea was horrible. It brought images to mind of his little sister bound and gagged and crying in some dark hole that could only be the trunk of a vehicle. That vehicle was taking her miles away from him for heaven knew what reason.
Jane blew out a breath of exasperation. "I don't know what to think. However, the Edie I know--if at all possible--would have been at that airport fifteen minutes early to pick you up."
"Yes," Abel agreed unhappily. Edie was the sort to show up early rather than risk being late.
"Only she wasn't there at all," Jane said, as if he might have forgotten. "And she isn't here now. Which suggests to me that she's not able to be here. Now, she left wearing that tracker and I know she's still wearing it. Which means she's currently..." Her gaze dropped to the screen to read the data being spewed. Her eyes widened in dismay. "One hundred and seventy-one miles away. Dear Lord," she exclaimed. "We have to get moving."
"Just a minute." Abel caught her arm when she started around the desk. "Why would someone take my sister to Washington? Why--?"
"California is south of Oregon, which is south of Washington, and they're heading south," Jane pointed out--incomprehensibly to Abel. "And didn't you say she said there were strange things going on at work? Something about if anything were to happen to her...?"
"So?" Abel felt as if Jane were talking a foreign language. None of this was making any sense. Edie couldn't be kidnapped. She couldn't be in Washington. And what did California's location have to do with his sister's workplace?
"So, it seems to me that Edie once mentioned that the head offices of Ensecksi Satellites were in California."
Abel felt a shock jolt through him. He was silent, absorbing this news, then became aware that Jane was closing her laptop and rolling up all its plugs and connections. What on earth was she bothering with that for when his sister was kidnapped and being dragged to California? "We have to call the police."
"The police won't do anything for twenty-four hours," Jane pointed out, shoving the laptop, the mini satellite, and all its plugs and wires at him. Abel accepted them automatically. "Besides, we don't have time. The trackers are only good for two hundred miles. Another half hour and she'll be out of tracking distance. You couldn't even fill out a missing persons report in that time."
"What?" Abel's hands tightened on the equipment he held, and he gaped at her as she began opening and closing desk drawers and throwing their contents willy-nilly on the desktop. Lipsticks, eyeliners, and perfume vials were rolling every which way. "It's only good for two hundred miles? Why didn't you say so earlier?"
"I tried. You were too busy arguing that it wasn't her." She finished at the desk and rushed around it to survey the room at large as if trying to decide what she needed. Abel glanced about for the first time since entering the room, his eyes widening as he saw that he was in some sort of workshop. The walls were padded with a strange material, work benches ran along each wall, and tools and makeup items were everywhere. There wasn't a toy to be seen. It looked more like a Revlon laboratory than a toy factory...except for the tools.
"We have to grab anything we might need and get on the road."
Abel turned his attention back to Jane. She seemed to have decided what she needed and now rushed to the closet beside the door to retrieve a black nylon bag.
"If we lose her..." She let the sentence fade away, and Abel felt panic grasp him at the very thought. He started for the door. "I'll go get some things from Edie's apartment."
"There's no time! Just grab the essentials and let's go," she said firmly.
She was now flitting around the room, grabbing up lipsticks and makeup and throwing them in the bag as she went. Abel goggled. Did the woman consider all this makeup as essential, he wondered--then his jaw dropped when she gathered not one, but six neon-pink vibrators from one of her work benches. She threw those into her bag as well.
Dear Lord, Abel thought with dismay. I'm depending on some sex-crazed madwoman to help me find my sister.
"Go tell Gran we're going on a road trip, and to get ready," she ordered.
Abel hurried out of the room and rushed back up the hall to the kitchen. She may be a sex-crazed madwoman, but if what she said was true and that red beacon on the screen was Edie, then Jane was his only link to her.
Actually, he realized, stopping halfway across the living room, she wasn't the connection. His gaze dropped to the laptop and mini satellite dish he still held. This was the connection. He glanced toward the entry and the door. He could grab his luggage, borrow the laptop, and...
And what? He'd have to rent a car. How much time would that take? How much time did he have? And could he figure out how to run this tracking thing Jane had shown him?
Before he could decide, something bumped him in the behind and Jane's voice lashed out: "What are you doing standing around? We have to get moving! Have you even warned Gran to get ready?"
Abel peered over his shoulder to see that she had two black bags in hand, one of them what had hit him. She was frowning at him as if he was proving to be a disappointment. It seemed she was something of a bossy bit of baggage. "I--"
"Never mind. Here, put that laptop in here for now."
Abel reluctantly placed the computer in the nylon bag she opened, setting it on top of half a dozen small foil-wrapped squares. It was only as he released it and retrieved his hand that his brain registered the writing on the little square packets:
B.L.I.S.S. Special SW Condoms.
Dear Lord, the woman was a sex addict. How could she think condoms were necessities at a time like this?
"Come on." Closing her bag, Jane moved past him and led the way to the kitchen. Abel followed, glaring the whole way. He wasn't at all sure he shouldn't just snatch the laptop and run for the nearest car rental agent. Hell, he could hire a taxi to trail his sister if necessary. Edie was certainly worth the expense.
"Gran, we'll have to forget about scones for now," Jane announced as they entered the kitchen. "We're going on a road trip."
"Oh?" Maggie Spyrus blinked, then shrugged and smiled. "All right, dear."
That was it. She didn't ask what sort of road trip or where to, she just rolled her wheelchair back from the table, turned it toward the door to the living room, and rolled out calling gaily, "Tinkle! Come, darling, we're going on a road trip."
Both women were mad, Abel decided. Then, in a somewhat panicky voice he asked, "We aren't taking that mutt, are we?" He hadn't yet forgiven the beast for tinkling on the back of his pant leg.
To give Jane her due, she didn't look at all happy at the prospect either. But she said, "I'm afraid so."
He was about to argue when she pointed out, "Right now we're almost three hours' driving time behind Edie and whoever has her. We might not catch up to her until t
hey stop in California--if that is indeed where they're heading. That's got to be a good fifteen-or sixteen-hour drive. Sixteen there, sixteen back, and who knows how long to actually save her?" She shook her head. "Tinkle can't be left alone for that long. And we don't have time to take her to a boardinghouse."
"No, I guess not," he agreed reluctantly.
Jane set her bags on the counter and began pulling dog food out of the cupboard. Canned of course. Abel wasn't surprised. Tinkle seemed the spoiled sort.
"Could you get a grocery bag out of that cupboard behind you?" Jane asked.
Abel moved automatically to do as she requested. When he turned back with the bag, she'd added bottled water to the stack of dog food. The sight of the bottled water reminded Abel of Jane refilling the water bowl earlier for Edie's cat. He paused and smacked himself in the forehead. "Mr. Tibbs!"
Jane turned in dismay then closed her eyes. For a moment, he thought she'd suggest they leave the cat behind, but instead she dug into her pocket and pulled out Edie's apartment key. She handed it to him, took the bag he'd retrieved for her, then turned back to start filling it with what she'd collected. "Edie keeps Mr. Tibbs's carrier in the hall closet."
Abel went to the door, but he was brought up short by the return of Jane's gran. The old woman wheeled herself into the kitchen, face and clothes still sporting flour, but now she had a huge hat perched on her head at a jaunty angle. Tinkle, leashed, sat in her lap on top of an enormous, bulging purse.
"We're all set," Maggie Spyrus announced cheerfully. "Are you ready?"
"Almost," Jane answered, but Abel noticed the suspicious way she was eyeing the bulky bag on her grandmother's lap. Then she seemed to let the matter go. Turning to him again, she said, "Don't forget cat food. And litter. And the litter box."
Nodding, Abel hurried for the door, his heart sinking with each item she added to the list. He could hardly carry all that and his luggage too. And he suspected there wouldn't be time for two trips. Or to change. It appeared he would be riding to his sister's rescue in stained pants.