by J. Judkins
"You said cops showed up? What did they want?"
"The cops were before. Some guy, beaten up in the parking lot.”
“And…” Kim prompted.
“And what?”
“What were they asking?”
He shrugged half-heartedly. “I got the impression they were just going through the motions. The victim was an asshole and his friends are assholes. They asked if anyone saw anything, glanced at the tapes to see what they covered, then figured everything happened off-camera and went home. The guy was unconscious, so he wasn’t talking.” He shrugged again, then grinned. “They might want to give whoever did it a medal.”
“So the cops don’t suspect the girl?”
The clerk perked up at that. “Why? You think she had something to do with it?"
Kim ignored the question. "Did you tell them anything about me?"
"Who? The cops? Hell, no! Wouldn't even if they asked. Besides, the cops were here for the parking lot guy."
“So, tell me everything that happened that night.”
He sighed. “It goes like this. Some random asshole gets beaten up. Paramedics take him away. A couple cops eventually come in later that night and look around, ask if we saw anything. We say no. They give up pretty easy and go away.
"About an hour later, the imposter cop shows up waving the girl's photograph around. He doesn’t care about the parking lot guy. He's all about the girl. Did we see her, he’s asking. No one did because she never came inside.
“Anyway, he’s not happy about that, and insists on looking at video from days before. We get permission. Few hours later, he picks you out as regular. He leaves. Later on we find out no one's ever heard of him.
"Fast forward to the other night. I look out the window and see you standing there with the exact same girl from the picture. The two of you go up the hill…" He made quote marks with his fingers. "…and didn’t do anything," he finished with a smirk.
Kim’s face started to burn. The clerk winked at her and laughed.
"I'm leaving now.”
"Then you show up this morning, and now we're all caught up! So you’re saying she beat the guy up?"
"Yeah. I guess she did."
The smirk was back. "And you took her home and made her your girlfriend?"
Kim tried to glare, but her irritation seemed to feed his amusement. "Not at first."
His grin widened. "That is so cool. I can’t wait to tell the others what’s going on. You've made my year. Free drinks, anytime you want ‘em. Bring the girlfriend next time!"
Irritated, Kim snapped up her food and drink and started for the door.
He held up a hand. "Wait. You mentioned cameras?"
Kim looked back, one hand resting on the door.
“Cameras, right? You were asking about cameras?” he tried again.
Kim turned away from the door.
Guess I owe him something. "Yeah. Someone hid them all along the path leading up the hill and in the trees.”
His eyes twinkled. "You think there's some good, high quality video of you and the girlfriend not doing anything in the moonlight?"
The clerk's maniacal laughter followed her outside.
Kim was halfway to her car when she snapped back around. Fuming, she threw open the doors. "For your information, we didn't do anything because those cameras were everywhere!"
The man nodded solemnly, without a trace of amusement. "I see,” he said evenly. “Yes, that would have stopped me, too. Thank you for clearing that up.”
"But we weren't going to, we didn't, I wasn't planning on-"
His serious expression broke into a smirk and degraded into uncontrollable giggles.
Only years of believing in the sanctity of caffeine kept Kim from throwing her drink in his face.
Kim returned to her car, her mind was once again racing with the possibilities. At least now, she had more information. The clerk’s words convinced her Angel’s hunters were nothing more than private citizens working for a company with limited resources, and that made them safe. These people were nothing more than amateurs. They may play with guns and might be intimidating in packs, but they wouldn’t have the skills necessary to back it up. They’d do amateurish things and make amateurish mistakes.
That meant Kim had an edge. Unlike other people, Kim had spent decades watching action movies, playing roleplaying video games, and reading a hell of a lot of books. She’d gone through hundreds of rescue simulations in her lifetime, educating and familiarizing herself on likely scenarios and every possible outcome.
All of this gave her the confidence she needed to know that somehow it would all work out for her in the end. She was the good guy. The hunters were the bad guys. This may not be a romance story and she wasn’t an action hero, but none of that mattered anyway because she was still going to win.
But first things first. She needed to recover that undamaged camera they'd hidden.
All high-priced electronic devices had serial numbers. Those numbers could be traced. Kim didn't have a clue how to do it herself, but she knew it could be done. That was enough for her. To unlock this secret, all she needed to do was take a page out of Angel’s hint-guide and look up how to do it on the internet. Child’s play.
The other cameras had been destroyed Monday night. This was Thursday morning. Those cameras weren’t designed to constantly transmit, which meant someone needed to come out from time to time to physically pull and replace the memory cards in order to review their data elsewhere.
If it were up to her, she’d check them at least once a day. Someone must know they’d been destroyed by now.
Hopefully, they’d assume their prey wouldn’t be stupid enough to come back to the scene of the crime. That was a nice hope to cling to, now that Kim realized all at once she had been stupid enough. She’d even made it easy for them, standing next to her locked car doing nothing while she thought it through and realized what a convenient trap she’d just walked into.
Fortunately, her adversaries were even bigger idiots. If they were out there watching, they might assume Kim was setting a trap for them, waiting with her engine running to jump in and flee at a moment’s notice, all to get a license plate and track them down at her leisure.
Kim unlocked and started her car, just to make it official.
Nothing.
Seeing as she wasn’t caught yet, she took a chance and ventured out into the weeds. She found the camera right where she’d thrown it, cold and slightly damp from the dawn of the new day. The morning sun offered more than enough light to read by. She examined it for a serial number.
There wasn’t one.
Kim turned the camera over and over, searching, becoming more and more frustrated.
Still nothing. Not even a stamp to indicate the manufacturer.
A custom job? Who custom makes their own cameras?
And this one had a memory card, Kim noticed, which didn’t make sense. She’d taken all of the memory cards and erased them, herself.
And it was powered on!
A vision of Admiral Ackbar flashed in her head. “It’s a trap!” he cried.
Kim needed no further prompting. She hurried out of the weeds, but had only taken two steps onto the concrete when an unmarked white van swerved into the parking lot and braked to a stop directly into her path, tires squealing in protest.
For a moment, Kim simply stared, gaping in surprise, the camera clutched tightly to her chest. The sight of the van had shaken her confidence, but then her inner strength and innate ability to deny reality in the face of all evidence boosted it right back up again. She'd predicted a trap, and she’d been right. She knew all along there was nothing wrong with her skill at detecting traps.
Too bad she lacked the reflexes to avoid setting them off.
Kim blamed Angel for this. Angel had shown her that falling into traps could be downright pleasant sometimes.
Wouldn’t it be nice if I had the foresight to set up my own cameras? Then I might hav
e a record of my abduction so the next set of rescuers could find me and…wait a moment…
Kim looked down, and grinned. She did have a camera!
After verifying it was still on, she set off at a walk, angling towards the van’s blind spot. Given her luck this morning, she half expected someone to jump out of the vehicle and cut her off, but the way remained clear. Kim slowed only to make certain she’d picked up a decent shot of their rear license plate as she passed.
A door opened behind her. She quickened her pace.
"We'd like you to come with us,” a male voice said.
Kim stopped. Slowly, she turned in place, making sure to sweep the camera’s field of vision over the van and the two men staring back at her. Then she pulled the camera back to her chest, as if clinging to it for comfort.
They looked young, perhaps in their twenties, but both looked out of shape and didn’t seem intimidating in the slightest. Both wore dark sunglasses and the same off-grey shirts and dark pants, but the outfits didn’t look like true uniforms to her. Their mannerisms suggested “security guard.” The fact that Kim hadn’t yet been muscled into the van reassured her they weren’t government agents.
Neither had even pulled a gun. That was almost insulting. She could probably make a run for it and get away clean. Her car waited with its engine running.
No. They had Angel.
She wouldn’t run. Angel had been taken away by these men, or by faceless minions just like them. Angel had a plan for breaking out, even if she hadn’t shared it with her. These men offered her the best chance for seeing Angel again.
“Come with us, please,” the tall one said once again.
Kim gave him an incredulous look. "You're kidding. You're kidding, right? You expect me to get in a van with two strange men?"
"We're looking for a specific woman, and we know you've had contact with her."
"Oh, please,” Kim snorted. “You already have her locked up somewhere."
The two men exchanged glances. "Would you like to see her?" asked the shorter one.
"I'm not going anywhere with…" she started, then stopped. "Okay."
They looked at each other again, which confirmed Kim’s suspicions. As it was with old married couples, the security guard mind-link was direct line-of-sight only. She filed this information away for later use, should it ever become needed.
Kim used her nonexistent sleight of hand skills to pull the memory card out of the camera and flicked it behind her in a hopefully unnoticed manner. The two men didn't react, and Kim suppressed a grin of triumph. She'd gotten away with it.
At least now she had an insurance plan of some sort if things turned south. Her co-workers would notice when she didn’t show up to work that morning. Eventually, they’d grow concerned. Police would be informed.
Probably on Monday, given her luck.
Regardless, eventually someone would come looking for her. They’d find the car with the engine running and, hopefully, the memory card in plain sight next to it. One of their brilliant detectives would cleverly put it all together and she’d be rescued by next week. With any luck, he wouldn’t throw her in jail immediately afterwards for changing her license plates.
The two men stood aside as Kim approached the rear passenger side door. She turned to the shorter of the two and held up the camera. "I'm sorry, but does this belong to you?"
The man gave a slight nod.
Kim gave him a disarming smile, then hit him over the head with the camera as hard as she could. The man crumpled soundlessly, like a marionette thrown to the ground by an impatient and frustrated amateur puppeteer who lacked the skills necessary to make it behave as shown on television.
“That’s for spying on us, you jerk!” she cried. A pleasant warmth spread throughout her body. It felt good to finally take direct action. Maybe she was an action hero, after all? Action heroes always dropped the lesser minions with one hit.
The minion’s partner pulled a gun.
Kim’s smile wilted and faded.
She raised her hands high into the air, then raised them a bit higher before dropping the obviously expensive camera with a smirk. This seemed to annoy the remaining minion, which cheered Kim right back up again.
“Get in the van,” the man ordered, and waved the gun in a manner that might have been threatening if Kim weren’t immune to subtle hints and petty concerns like imminent danger and certain death.
Kim ignored the gesture. The man was holding the gun close to his chest. This implied he was worried she might suddenly spring into action and use some advanced martial arts technique to kick the weapon away from him should he dare venture too close. Kim was no more of an expert on guns than the man seemed to be, but even she knew enough about firearms to know that this was not the way to hold a gun properly if he had plans on using it.
Only action heroes favored the unrealistic one-handed grip with high-powered handguns. This man was using his weapon as if it were a magic wand, as if waving it around would make people magically obey him.
This confirmed Kim’s theory. Like the goon bleeding at her feet, he was nothing more than an amateur.
"Get in the van," he demanded again.
Kim tried not to smile. She knew what was coming. Any second now, he’d go for the whole dramatic “pull back the hammer” bit to show how dangerous and deadly serious he was.
She held her breath. Wait for it…
The man pulled back the hammer with an ominous click. "I said, get in the damned van!"
Kim opened the door and stepped inside.
Amateurs.
Chapter Fifty-Two
The van was a later model, designed for cargo rather than comfort. It had two seats, allowing two to sit comfortably in the front and up to four uncomfortably in the back, which was nothing more than an open area. The vehicle itself was clean enough, well maintained despite its age. The carpeting had a few bare spots which looked like battery acid spills to Kim, suggesting the van’s primary use involved the transportation of spare parts. Certainly not people.
The shorter minion staggered into the van. He slumped against the van’s wall opposite Kim and slid down it, glaring slightly to the right of Kim’s actual location. The taller one climbed into the driver’s seat, and placed the camera in a worn cardboard box at the passenger’s side floorboards.
Neither bad guy had a gun on her, now. Kim didn’t know if it was arrogance on their part, or stupidity, thinking that they had her sufficiently cowed into submission. Her hands weren’t bound, and neither goon asked about the memory card. Kim wondered if they even noticed it was missing. They also didn’t bother checking her identification or looking at her car’s registration for her address. Her car was left running in the parking lot.
In the movies, such blatant disregard for details suggested a second team which would “clean up” and gather this relevant, useful information at their leisure. Looking at these two men, one nursing a head wound and the other impatient to drive away, Kim was guessing it simply hadn’t occurred to them.
Kim was prepared to lie, to weave a clever work of fiction that couldn’t be doubted, but neither one seemed interested in finding out more about her.
Perhaps they were clinging to their “security guard” personas?
Kim could see it now. Their boss only wanted to talk to Kim, and so sent a couple of goons to pick her up and arrange the meeting. Nothing sinister about that. Two friendly security guards just offering a ride. Their plan might've worked, too, except for the part where the tall one pulled a gun on her.
"What's your name?" asked the short one in the back.
"Kim Rowland," Kim said, then winced. Damn it!
"Is Rowland spelled with a W?"
"I'm not going to spell it for you!"
"Probably a fake name," muttered the driver.
"Now, why would I do that?” Kim asked, loud enough for him to hear. “It's not as if you pulled a gun on me or anything."
After that, conversation ceased.
Kim couldn't see much out the front window from her position in the back, but she still recognized enough of the passing landscape to get a good estimation of where they were. They never left the city.
They passed businesses and office buildings, the larger ones isolated by distance rather than fences. It was enough for her to keep her bearings. While it was true she’d never visited any of them, she still felt that, given time, she could retrace her steps without too much trouble.
The driver braked to a stop at an automated security checkpoint and flashed a card. The gate swung open, and he continued down a relatively short, winding road to the back of an office building. He stopped at a retractable, interlocking chain door. Another card swipe, and the door ascended. The van entered an underground parking garage.
The two men escorted Kim out, one minion on each side. Kim counted nineteen cars in the underground garage before they arrived at an elevator. Four of the cars took up six of the reserved spaces up front. Each looked brand new and expensive, far beyond her price range.
The interior of the complex itself was white, clean, and very sterile-looking. Kim and her escorts walked for nearly ten minutes, making twists and turns and getting her thoroughly lost. Security was much tighter here, she noticed. They passed two checkpoints with two armed guards each. Badges were scanned, but no one made her sign in or even said a word to her.
The underlying message was clear. Kim was a prisoner and everyone involved knew it. None of them were even pretending she was a guest, anymore.
The tall one stopped at a door with a keypad. He typed in a code, which Kim memorized and promptly forgot ten seconds later. The door slid aside. The two men waited patiently at the entrance until Kim took the hint and stepped inside.
Kim found herself in what appeared to be a conference room that could have seated at least fifty people comfortably. It was dominated by an elongated rectangular table that must have been assembled piecemeal inside the room itself. Expensive-looking swivel chairs surrounded the table on all sides. A giant-sized screen was set inside the far wall, nearly the size of her kitchen.