by Tara Ellis
“Kevin,” Ally answers, coming to sit on the other side of the lumpy mattress.
“Kevin is not my dad!” she nearly yells, hands balling up into fists. “Is Erica okay?” she asks before anyone can respond, turning quickly to Sam with a concerned expression.
Her rapid change in demeanor makes her hard to follow, and Sam shakes her head briefly to try to think clearly. “Erica and your mom seem to be okay, Carrie,” she says calmly, her eyes flitting to Ally, hoping that her friend understands how fragile she really is. “We suspected that Kevin wasn’t who he said he was, and we uncovered some things that were pretty strange. When we saw your S.O.S. flashing last night, we decided to come find out if you were really here or not, but…” she looks sheepishly at her brother and John. “Things didn’t really go quite the way we had planned. We’re sorry we aren’t more help to you, but we promise we’ll find a way out of here!”
As both Sam and Ally place a reassuring hand on her cold, dirty arms, the young girl finally breaks out in silent, wracking sobs. Scooting up next to her, Sam puts an arm around her waist and motions to the concerned boys to just let her cry. After a good ten minutes, Carrie finally takes a big shuddering breath and smiles weakly at them.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, wiping at her running nose. “I’ve just been so scared. I didn’t think anyone was ever going to come.”
“You don’t need to apologize.” Ally is quick to reassure her. “I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you!”
“Carrie,” John says gently, leaning against a nearby support beam. “Do you mind if I ask why you’re here? We figured out some stuff, but we really don’t know what’s going on.”
“How much do you know?” Carrie asks, already looking stronger.
John describes everything that has happened since they arrived at Wood’s Cove, with the rest of them adding to the story as necessary. Sam is rewarded with an approving smile when she explains how she made the connection to her cell phone cover on the boat, and Erica’s missing sister.
“I’m impressed,” Carrie admits, when John finishes with his deciphering the S.O.S. signal she sent the night before. “But there’s a whole lot you don’t know,” she continues, the smile vanishing. “My mom is in a lot of trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” Hunter mumbles around the zip tie that he’s trying to bite through. They’re the thick ones and all he’s accomplished so far are some sore teeth. “And how’d you know how to make that distress signal?”
“I was in Scouts,” she answers the simple question first. “Jacque forgot the lantern again last night, so I got a couple of series off before he remembered and came up.”
Sam once again finds herself wishing she had joined Ally’s aunt’s troop when she’d invited them a couple of years ago. Then she realizes what Carrie’s explanation means. “They leave you alone up here all night without even a light?” she asks, looking at the teen with a new respect.
“I get the lantern until it’s dark enough for it to show from a distance.” She shrugs, as if it’s no big deal. “But forget about the light. I need to explain about BioCore, and then we need to figure out a way to escape.”
“Why?” Hunter questions, having given up on chewing his way to freedom. “According to what Kevin just said over the radio, they’re gonna be done tonight with whatever it is they’re doing. It sounded like they’re picking up those two guys down there at low tide and getting out of here. Why cause problems? We just have to wait until our parents figure out where we are…and they will. They’re good at that.”
“No!” Carrie is shaking her head impatiently. “You don’t understand! They’ll never let my mom go. They can’t! They won’t let me or Erica go, either. I’m sure they’ll leave the four of you up here, but not me.” Standing up, she begins to pace the room.
“Doesn’t your mom work for them?” Ally wonders. “Why are they doing this to her?”
“My mom is a scientist,” Carrie explains. “A geneticist. She has her own small development company. Several years ago, she came up with something that is going to change the world of medicine. A way to genetically alter a virus, and then use that to fight illnesses. Her only problem was that it was theoretical. She didn’t have the facilities or specialized equipment to create it. That’s where BioCore came in.”
Already tired from her few trips across the room, Carrie sits back down in between Sam and Ally.
“Mom had gone to just about everyone she could think of, pitching her idea and trying to get the funding she needed. After a year, she was ready to give up. Her company was struggling by then because of all the time she was spending on it, instead of the paying jobs the rest of her employees were trying to get done. But then Kevin showed up. It was like a dream come true. They offered her a grant large enough to rent out the lab and everything else she needed.”
“Didn’t she know about the shady stuff they did?” John interrupts, hoping he wasn’t going to offend her.
“If you’re talking about what happened over in Africa,” Carrie states, turning her flashing green eyes on John. “That wasn’t reported until just this past year, long after Mom started working for them three years ago. I don’t remember all that much from then, but I do know that at the time, they were only involved in government contracts. At least, that’s all that was publicized. They seemed legit, and Mom was convinced that it was the answer to her prayers. At first…it was. Everything was going great for the first time since my dad died when I was ten. We moved into a huge house so that we could be closer to the lab. Mom was able to hire a special team from her own company to assist her. It was slow, tedious work, but she was always very positive and happy. That is, until a few months ago.”
“What happened?” Sam prompts when Carrie falls silent, lost in her thoughts.
“The article you read was brought to her attention, and after she started asking questions about it, her team began acting strange around her. Kevin gave her a bunch of excuses, but my mom is smart. Like a literal genius. She wasn’t falling for it and I could tell she was nervous and having second thoughts about the whole program. But…she was so close to being able to apply for a patent and start patient trials. That’s when it happened.
“I’ll never forget the look on her face when she came home that night,” Carrie says quietly, her voice going hoarse with emotion. “It was a couple of weeks ago. Mom was getting ready to turn in her final work to BioCore, and file it with the US patent office at the same time. To celebrate, she rented the beach house for a whole two months. We’ve come every year since I can remember, but we usually only stay for a week. We were all really looking forward to spending the whole summer here and taking some time together before she got even busier.
“But something had gone horribly wrong. What was supposed to be a congratulations dinner at work turned into an ambush. Kevin had already gotten to the three other scientists working for Mom and bought them out.”
“Bought them out?” Sam repeats, growing more confused. “I don’t understand. Wasn’t he already paying them?”
“No. BioCore gave my mom several million dollars in grant money, and she in turn used that to pay her employees. They were still technically working for her company. The agreement was that BioCore gets their name attached to the patent, as well as my mom, which is basically the power to control how the invention is used. But BioCore has other plans. They never intended to file it, because they don’t want to use the technology to create just medicine. They want to secretly make the medicine and sell it to the highest bidder, and…” Carrie wrings her hands nervously, looking back up at her now captive audience. “And they’re going to force my mom to use the same methods to turn it into a biological weapon!”
Sam has watched enough movies and read enough books to know what Carrie is talking about, but it’s still difficult to believe it. It was hard to accept that someone would actually be capable of taking something meant for saving lives, and turn it into a way to harm peopl
e.
“I still don’t understand how they can make your mom do that,” Sam finally breaks the stunned silence that has settled over the room. “Why didn’t she just go to the police or something?”
“And tell them what?” Carrie retorts, clearly frustrated. “It’s called corporate espionage, and she did try to go to the FBI. But like I said, BioCore had already paid off her team and gotten them to agree to it. For months, they had been working to frame my mom, and make it look like she was the one plotting all of it. So by the time she found out, it was too late. Kevin basically told her to either work with them, or end up in a federal prison for the rest of her life. She pretended to go along with it, but we left in the middle of the night and came out here. The next day she tried to arrange a meeting with the FBI. But…Kevin showed up instead. She really underestimated them. While she was gone, those goons downstairs kidnapped me and brought me here.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Hunter interrupts. “If they’re so rich and powerful, why didn’t they just lock you all up at their company until your mom did what they wanted?”
“He has a point,” John agrees. “I don’t understand why they would bother with this whole charade. They knew where your mom was and that she tried to report them to the FBI. Why take a chance of her telling someone by leaving her and Erica at the beach house? There had to be a better place to keep you then here!”
“Oh my gosh,” Carrie huffs, frustrated. “I told you, she was still a week away from finishing. She had to have access to her lab, the equipment, files, and virus samples. It took about two years to build that stuff and it’s the only lab of its kind in the whole country. Only a few places in the world are set up for the kind of virus work she’s doing. They couldn’t just ‘lock her in a room’ until everything was done.
“She’s also well known in her field and very active in several scientific groups. If she suddenly disappeared when she was about to achieve her life’s work…the feds would have swarmed her lab and locked everything down. So they had no choice but to keep her out in the open and let her go to the lab. It’s a two-hour drive from here, and the other scientists that betrayed her are there, watching everything she does. But they had to have a sure way to control her, which is why they took me.
“They didn’t expect her to run, so they had to improvise when she came to the beach house. At first, they had me on their boat, but after I nearly escaped a second time, they brought me out here.
“For the past two weeks, they’ve been coercing Mom into finishing the rest of the work so that they can move forward with the human trials in a country where no one will even know what they’re doing. Don’t you see?” Carrie cries, looking to John because he is the oldest. “She didn’t have a choice but to go along with it. But I know my mom, and she’ll never help them develop it into a weapon. We have to get out of here before they come back! The only way to prove all of this is for Kevin to be caught while he’s here with mom and the incriminating documents are in his possession. Otherwise, they’ll never let us go!”
“Well then, we better get to work.”
Carrie looks at Sam in surprise. Still sitting beside her, Sam has found a tear in the bottom edge of the mattress and has part of a metal spring pulled out of the hole. “And I know how we’re going to escape!”
21
GOT A LADDER?
The spring breaks free from the mattress as Sam makes her bold claim, and she looks up triumphantly with the prize in her hand. Everyone except John looks confused, and he eagerly comes to sit in front of Sam, holding his bound wrists out a little further.
“Good thinking, Sam!” he says approvingly, causing her to blush slightly.
Concentrating on scraping the plastic with the jagged end of metal, she’s careful not to cut into his wrists. This is going to take a while. “I’ve been looking at the windows,” she says, without looking up. “There’s no way any of us could fit through the two small ones, but that old stained-glass one up high might work.”
The two square windows are set low to the ground and face the cove, but there’s a large round opening near the tall ceiling, overlooking the sea. Sam figures it had ornate stained glass it at one point, based on the remnants clinging to the edges and the colored fragments littering the floor below it.
Carrie is straining to get a good look at it, but then slowly shakes her head. “I don’t know, Sam,” she says, standing and going to the wall below it. “We’re about seventy feet off the ground here. I think this used to be the room the light keeper would stay in. The actual spotlight is above us. Jacque took me up there once, to give me some fresh air. They stopped letting me out to bathe after I took off down the beach one time,” she adds quietly.
“Is there a balcony or anything up there?” Hunter asks, suddenly interested in the plan. “It looks like there’s a big widow’s walk around the whole thing in this picture,” he explains, pointing at the lighthouse on the front of his shirt. Ally grabs at his t-shirt and pulls the material tight, so she can see the picture more clearly.
“Yeah, there is,” Carrie confirms. “But I didn’t dare go out on it, even if Jacque would have let me. Who knows if it’ll hold up under any weight? This whole thing is falling apart!”
“Well, that might be our best chance,” Sam tells her. “Or our only chance. There!” she shouts, as John gives his hands an extra tug and the weakened plastic snaps in half. “Next?” she says, turning to Hunter, who is already stepping up eagerly.
After what seems much longer than it really is, due to Hunter’s impatience, they’re all gathered below the window. It’s a good four feet above John’s head, but Sam figures she can reach it by standing on his shoulders. John fastened the bedsheet around her waist, and then added Ally’s long swimsuit cover-up she was wearing, and his and Hunter’s t-shirts to try to make it long enough. Sam could almost laugh at the irony, looking at the distorted lighthouse and Sea Creature dangling at the end.
“What if the balcony isn’t right above that window?” Ally is bouncing back and forth on her feet anxiously. The whole idea of Sam climbing out a window over seventy feet off the ground is terrifying. “Or what if it collapses?”
“We’ll catch her,” John tries to reassure his sister. “If this make-shift rope isn’t long enough, then she isn’t going to even try to reach it. Right, Sam?”
“Right,” Sam confirms, taking a few deep breaths to calm her shaking legs. “Let’s do this.”
John kneels down so that Sam can step cautiously onto his shoulders, with Ally and Hunter on either side to help her. She wobbles precariously as he stands slowly, and reaches out to put a hand against the cold stone wall for stability. She’s able to grab at the windowsill before he’s even all the way up, taking some of the weight off his shoulders. “I got it!” she calls triumphantly, careful not to put her hands over any sharp pieces of glass.
Once John is standing, she’s high enough that she can easily pull herself up into the window, balancing in the opening, the thick stucco wall providing a wide ledge. Trying hard not to look down at the dizzying ground below, Sam instead looks up, and is relieved to see the underside of the walkway less than two feet above her. “I can reach it!” she calls back into the room. Looking down at her friends, she finds that Hunter is now sitting on John’s shoulders, holding tightly to the end of her rope. This will give her the extra few feet that she needs.
Bracing her hands on either side of the open circle, she squats inside the window and then slowly stands, leaning out slightly so that she can grab onto one of the balcony’s braces with both hands. Having accomplished this, Sam feels a sudden rush of fear, realizing the dangerous position she’s now in, leaning out and away from the window. The bedsheet is pulling tightly at her waist and she knows there isn’t any more slack.
“Sam!” John calls urgently. “What are you doing? Can you make it?”
“Come back, Sam!” Ally pleads, her voice full of dread.
Looking around desperately
, Sam tries to find a way to go up, since she isn’t sure that she can make it back without falling. The balcony is made of wrought iron bars, spaced evenly apart. There are several spots where the metal has become corroded and fallen away, and fortunately, one of these areas is just to the right of the brace Sam is clinging to. Still holding onto it tightly, she shuffles her feet over until she is under the hole. Nearly crying now, Sam forces herself to let go with one hand and reach up into the hole, grasping the nearest bar. When it doesn’t come loose, she gives it a little tug and it feels secure. Her confidence growing slightly, she does the same with her other hand. When she stands to her full height, her head and shoulders fit through the hole and she’s able to lift herself up the rest of the way.
Rolling over onto the balcony, she ends up face down, which is a big mistake. The craggy cliffs, buffeted by large waves crashing against them, appear tiny below her. There’s no question that one wrong move would mean the end of her. Temporarily frozen with fear, she might have stayed there forever, if it weren’t for Ally frantically calling her name. Someone is also tugging slightly at the sheet around her waist.
Starting with her left foot, she carefully slides it over until it’s inside the lighthouse. The windows lining the balcony were broken out long ago, so there is nothing standing in her way. Still too afraid to speak, she goes through the same motions with her left hand, and closes her eyes in relief when she gets a firm grip on the inside ledge. Using what strength she has left, she pulls herself across the bars and then finally falls to the safety of the floor.
The tension on the sheet goes limp, followed by a cry of terror from Ally. Sam quickly hops up onto her knees and calls out to her friend. “I’m okay!” she shouts, hopefully loud enough for them to hear her, but no one else. “I made it!”
Encouraged by the following cheers and clapping, Sam sits back against the wall in relief. She needs to take a minute to pull herself together, and isn’t sure if her legs will hold her weight.