Taken (15 page)

The last scene Victoria filmed was the Robinson speeding away to the southeast, to its rendezvous with us.

At the same moment, our ambulance was speeding down a bumpy road with lots of turns. I dared to say to Albert, “So we’re heading toward Deep Lake?”

He looked startled. “How did you know that?”

“I heard you tell my father. On the phone.”

“I said ‘Deep Lake’?”

“No. You said ‘the bass lake,’ but I knew where you meant. We stopped there on Kid-to-Kid Day. It’s the one with the killer fish, right?”

“Right.” He snapped, “What else did you hear?”

I suddenly got scared. “Just my father’s voice.”

“Nothing else?”

“No. Nothing.”

“That’s a good answer.”

I stole a look back at the screen. Victoria was now back inside and sitting next to the fireplace. She was fingering a white rosary and praying. Mickie was sitting to her left. For the first time in her life, and probably the last, she looked better than Victoria.

We drove along silently for another five minutes; then the ambulance came to a stop. Albert handed the vidscreen to me with a warning. “Pay very close attention to what is happening. And do exactly what we tell you to do.”

I nodded. Albert opened the back door, jumped out, and closed it quietly. Immediately after, I heard the cab door open and close, too. Then the ambulance started to roll again, but not for long. I felt us bumping over ruts, like we had gone off-road. Then I felt us backing up.

As we came to a stop, the red light blinked on. Victoria could see me now! And Mickie. What was I supposed to do? Wave? I figured I wasn’t supposed to do anything, and I didn’t. After a few seconds, the full image of Victoria and Mickie shrank and moved to the right side of the vidscreen, and a new image appeared on the left side. It was a view of an open field taken by a vidcamera placed somewhere behind the ambulance.

Dessi entered from the front cab and sat next to me on the stretcher. He leaned over so that he, too, could see the screen. He said, “If you look at the left side, you can see Albert there, waiting. You’ll be able to hear his communications, too.”

I followed Dessi’s finger and saw Albert’s silhouette in the field. Every few seconds, he became illuminated by a flash of distant lightning. The wind was whipping his shirt and pants. He was looking to the north and holding something out in his left hand, perpendicular to his body.

I pointed to his hand. “What is that?”

Dessi squinted. “I don’t know. It looks like some wire, maybe. Maybe to secure the bag of currency.”

I stared harder at his hand. Then it hit me. “No. That’s orthodontic wire.”

“What?”

“Those are my braces!”

“They are?”

“Yes. That’s kind of disgusting. I thought you said they threw them away.”

Dessi sounded embarrassed. “That’s what they told me. But I guess not. I guess I didn’t need to know that part.” A few seconds later, he added, “But it makes sense. You know? That’s how they’ll zero the helicopter in.”

“Right. Albert told my father, ‘I’ll have the GTD with me.’ That’s how they’re going to do it. My father has the tracker with him. When he’s right over the GTD, he’ll lower the money.”

A brilliant flash of lightning lit the field. It was followed by a thunderclap close by. Then fat raindrops started to fall on the metal roof of the ambulance. At 23:59, the helicopter appeared in the distance. It grew larger on the vidscreen until it was hovering directly over Albert, whipping the rain and wind around him even more.

My father seemed to be having trouble steadying the helicopter. After about thirty seconds, though, a wire rope did appear, dropping down in jerks from above. It had a trash bag attached to it. But then the wind whipped up mightily. The chopper lurched upward and backed away, and the bag jerked upward with it.

I heard Dr. Reyes’s voice growling angrily: “What is he doing? Is he drunk?”

The helicopter, trailing the long rope and bag, managed to ease its way back to the clearing. In the distance, a bolt of lightning cracked to the ground.

Albert’s wind-whipped voice replied, “He’s struggling with the downdraft.”

“I can see that! Can he do it?”

“Yes. He just has to adjust. He can do it. Any pilot can.”

Dr. Reyes shouted, “This one is a fool! I can’t watch this. I’m going back.” I could see him leap into view on the vidscreen and start scrambling over the dirt field quickly, like an ape. Then he slipped out of our view as he reached the front cab, opened the door, and climbed in, cursing the weather.

The Robinson hovered above Albert again, and the bag started to lower again. Dessi and I both leaned in to stare at the screen. The wind was howling outside. This time we watched the helicopter jerk to the left, far to the left. It seemed to get caught up in the wind and to be carried away like a toy, all the way to the metal towers.

Suddenly the helicopter’s dangling rope began to rise on its own, like it was being drawn by a magnet. Before I could even shout out a futile warning, the rope got too close, and a bolt of electricity arced out from the high-tension wires.

My mouth fell open as I watched the horrible sequence of events that followed: The electricity ran up the wire like a squirrel up a branch. When it reached the top, the whole helicopter glowed briefly with a pulsing metallic blue. All I could think of was a Mrs. Veck science lesson. I could hear her describe a ship struck by lightning as having “the glow called Saint Elmo’s fire.”

Two seconds later, the helicopter exploded.

Dessi shouted, “Oh my God!”

He jumped up and started toward the back door.

I jumped off the stretcher, too, ready to follow; ready to do anything to help my father.

But Dr. Reyes shrieked at us from the front, “No! Stay where you are! Both of you!”

Still standing, we turned our faces back toward the stretcher and watched the screen. The red light remained on, recording my look of horror as, in one long and agonizing shot, my father’s helicopter flew away like a flaming bird. It started to spiral crazily out of the sky, losing altitude rapidly in a diagonal path. Then it crashed headlong into the center of Deep Lake.

I looked to the right of the screen, at Victoria’s face. She was totally stunned. She was making the sign of the cross rapidly and praying in breathless Spanish. Mickie’s face was just frozen.

I was too shocked to do anything but keep breathing in and out.

Dessi sat down heavily on his bench. He told me, in a broken voice, “It…it was an accident. You saw it. He got too close to the wires. What was he doing? He shouldn’t have been anywhere near those wires.”

I found my voice quickly. I answered, “What was he doing? He was doing what you
told
him to do. Because if he didn’t, you would kill me!”

“No. No. You saw it. It was an accident. It wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Dessi fell to his knees and banged his head and shoulder against the door. Hard. “Oh my God! Forgive me. Oh my God.”

Dr. Reyes entered from the front cab, moving slowly and heavily, with his back turned toward us. He picked up my vidscreen and stared directly into the red light. Then he delivered a short, somber message to Mickie and Victoria: “Listen to me. Look at your instructions. Plan B is in the envelope. Read Plan B very carefully. We are now following Plan B.”

Albert

B
y 00:10, I was supposed to have been freed by my captors. I was supposed to have been on my way back to The Highlands. And to Victoria. And to my life. Instead, I remained trapped inside a white metal cave, living a nightmare as bad as any night terror I’d ever had.

The sight of my father’s death kept coming back to me, rerunning in my head, and it got worse every time. At what point did he die? Did he die in agony, burned, electrocuted? Could he have still been alive when the helicopter crashed? And then did he die in the cold, black water of the lake? It was all too horrible. Too horrible.

I lay on the stretcher and agonized over these questions as we drove out of the field and sped off back to the kidnappers’ lair. Once the ambulance stopped, Dr. Reyes, snarling and cursing in Spanish, jumped out immediately. Albert waited a minute, perhaps trying to work up the courage to face me, but he never did. He, too, exited without so much as a glance into the back.

I was left with Dessi, who at least had the decency to be crushed by the night’s events. He was still on his knees, half leaning against the door, when his two-way rang, startling him. He managed to open it and croak “Yes?”

I could hear Albert’s voice giving him instructions. That bastard. He was talking like nothing had happened. Dessi whispered, “I will, Monnonk,” and hung up.

Dessi took a deep breath. He placed his hands flat on the floor and pushed himself to a standing position. He folded down the bench and flopped onto it. Then he turned in my direction and muttered, with his eyes downcast, “You are to drink a bottle of Smart Water and go to sleep. If you need something to help you sleep, Dr. Reyes will give it to you.”

I told him, “Go to hell.”

“No. No.” He shook his head. “Don’t cross Dr. Reyes. He will force you to do what he says.”

“He can go to hell, too. In fact, I’m sure he will. You all will.”

“Please. Please.” Dessi’s voice dropped to a whisper. “We were never going to hurt you. Or anyone. That was just talk.”

“How do you know?” I shouted. “What if you didn’t know about that part, either? What if you didn’t need to know what your leader, that murdering doctor creep, had planned?”

“I know…that I would never have let him hurt you.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t? Let me tell you something. You don’t know crap, Mr. I Speak French, Mr. I’m Too Good to Speak Creole. You’re not too good for anything. You’re nothing but a low-life criminal. You’d do whatever you were told.”

Dessi shook his head miserably. He finally whispered, “You had better keep your voice down.”

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“Nothing. It’s Dr. Reyes. He’ll do something, believe me.”

“You’re afraid of him?”

“Yes.” He inclined his head toward the outside. “I need to call him and say that you are asleep. Otherwise he’s going to come in here and—” He lifted one finger and pointed at the cabinet door and the oxygen gauge. “You don’t want that, do you?”

I exhaled angrily. “No.”

“Then drink some of that.” He pointed to a bottle of Smart Water on the ledge. “And lie down and pretend to sleep so I can call.”

“Right. Your drugged water? Sure, I’ll drink some of that. I’ll drink it all. Anything to get away from you.” I unscrewed the bottletop and drank the colorless, tasteless liquid down in two big gulps. I didn’t want to lie down, because I knew the images of my father’s crash would come back to me, fiercer than ever. But I couldn’t bear the thought of that plastic mask being forced down on me, either, so I did lie back.

Dessi flipped open his two-way. Before he spoke, he told me, “You and I have one more thing in common now. We have both lost a father to violence.”

“Right,” I said. Then I reminded him, “But I had no part in your father’s death.”

He answered miserably, “Right.” Then he called Dr. Reyes and lied for me.

I fell asleep shortly after that, due to the water or to sheer exhaustion. I had no night terrors. Maybe when your real life becomes the terror, there’s just nothing left to dream about.

I awoke to a gentle rocking motion and a scratching sound, like a tree branch brushing against metal. I listened to the noise for a long time, waiting for my head to clear. I looked over at Dessi’s chair. He was still in it, tilted backward, snoring quietly with his mouth open. Without thinking too much about it, I slid off the stretcher and crept past him. I slowly turned the door handle, eased it open, and slipped outside.

I saw why the ambulance had been rocking. Someone, probably Albert, had painted over the
MARTIN COUNTY REGIONAL HOSPITAL
design and stenciled the words
ALL-NATURAL ORGANIC FERTILIZERS—BELLE GLADE, FLORIDA
in their place. Was this part of Plan B?

I stretched out my arms and legs, grateful to be out of the white cube of the ambulance. Judging by the sun, it was about noon on a clear and cold day. My mind was still aching with the thoughts of my father’s death. But behind those thoughts, and pushing to the foreground, were new thoughts. Thoughts of survival. Should I just take off and run? But run where? I didn’t even know where I was. Should I take a chance that someone, some stranger, might help me? According to my training, that would be risky. I could wind up dead, or taken again, and the cycle would start all over. I couldn’t bear that.

No. As bad as it might be, Plan B was still better than no plan. I decided to cast my fate with Plan B. And with Albert.

I looked around. I was on a muddy driveway, between the ambulance and a house. The house was made of concrete blocks painted yellow. It had rust stains all along its bottom edge. An old car was parked in front of the house. It was a German car, I think, although it was so beat-up-looking and dirty that I couldn’t really tell.

There were two other houses across the way, set about twenty meters back from the street—one white and one green. They, too, had rust stains down by the grass line. No one seemed to be stirring in them, or anywhere else on the street.

After screwing up my courage, I opened the screen door of the yellow house and walked into the kitchen. Everything looked surprisingly neat, considering that this was the kidnappers’ lair. A row of spice jars sat in a rack on the right wall, above a dark brown boiler/freezer. On the left wall were a sink, a water purifier, and a dishwasher. All of it seemed color-coordinated, perhaps with a woman’s touch.

I crept across the tile floor until I was standing in the archway to a living room. Unlike the kitchen, this room was a total mess. It was filled with tubes, circuit boards, wires, scanners. I knew enough about doctors’ offices to recognize what all the objects had in common—they were parts from medical equipment.

At the far end of the room, in front of its only window, was a sleeping figure in a black recliner.

Albert.

As if he sensed my presence, his eyes snapped open. He looked confused at first; then angry. He hissed, “What are you doing here?” His eyes shot to a hallway entrance along the right wall.

I pointed toward the same spot. “Who’s in there? Dr. Reyes?”

Albert leaned forward in the recliner until he was sitting upright. “Yes. He’s just gone to sleep. So keep your voice down. Now tell me immediately, what are you doing here?”

I stepped over some wires until I was in the middle of the room. “Dessi is still asleep.”

“Asleep!”

“So I came to talk to you.”

“That’s very dangerous.”

“This is all very dangerous. Isn’t it?”

Albert looked me in the eyes. Then he got up and cleared some wires from an ottoman. “All right. You can sit here if you like, and we can talk quietly.” I sat down on the edge of the ottoman and waited. Albert finally said, “What did you want to talk to me about?”

I looked into his eyes and told him, with barely controlled rage, “What do you
think
I want to talk about, Albert? You killed a man last night. You killed my father.”

His hand shot upward and turned on its edge, like he was trying to deflect my words with a sword. “What happened last night was an accident.”

“The ‘accident’ happened because you kidnapped me. You started a chain of events that resulted in my father’s death. You don’t need to watch the Justice Channel to know the rest, Albert. A death that occurs during a kidnapping is considered a murder. Period. You committed a murder. All three of you.

“The only thing you can hope for now is mercy. And the only way you’re going to
get
mercy is to
show
it, to let me go. You could say you did not mean to cause the first death, and you saw the error of your ways, and you refused to cause a second death.”

Albert shook the sword-hand at me. “First of all, there’s not going to be any second death. And as to the first one, your father bears some of the responsibility for it.”

“No. He does not.”

“He does. He does, and that’s all we’re going to say about it.”

I kept staring at him, challenging him, waiting him out until he spoke again. He finally lowered his hand and continued, in a sinking voice, “Charity, I am sorry. If I could let you walk out right now, I would. But that would mean that this was all for nothing, including your father’s death. The only way out is Plan B. We’ll get another bag of currency; you’ll be set free; we’ll disappear.”

Neither one of us spoke for another minute. I let my eyes wander over the array of machine parts. I finally asked, “Why, Albert? Why did you…betray me like this?”

His eyes flickered toward the hallway again. He asked me, “Has Dessi told you anything about his parents?”

“Yes. Some. He said his father was murdered in New York. His mother died down here.”

“That’s right. Did he tell you that his mother was my half sister?”

“He said she was your sister.”

“That’s right. We had different fathers, but to us there was no ‘half’ about it. Our mother died when I was eight. She was eighteen, so she took care of me. Later, when her husband died, she had no place to go. I had this house, so I took her in. Her and Dessi. I knew as soon as I saw her again that she was sick. She called it a sore throat, but there was no way a sore throat would go on for that long.”

Albert paused for a moment and looked away, perhaps thinking of his sister. When he turned back to me, though, his voice was crisp. “Did he tell you what happened next?”

“He told me you tried to get her covered by your RDS health-care plan, but you couldn’t.”

“Did he tell you I lied to them?”

“Yes.”

“That’s right. I did. To RDS, and to the doctors, and to the voices on the other end of the health-care lines; to all of them. I lied through my teeth, trying to save her life. So they kicked me out of my plan, and they tagged my file at RDS.” He explained, “That meant that my current job would be my last job; they wouldn’t reassign me. They also notified my employer.” He paused for emphasis. “But nothing came of that. I guess Dr. Meyers had more important things on his mind.

“With no health-care plan, we had to go to clinic doctors. We spent three months making the rounds from one incompetent fool to another.” He pointed toward the hallway. “Then I heard about one in Miami named Dr. Reyes. I heard he had an operational DBS. Do you know what that is?”

“No.”

“A digital body scanner. Dr. Reyes, using that DBS, was able to diagnose my sister in just one visit. She had lymphoma, cancer of the lymph nodes. That was no surprise to me. I suspected it, but I couldn’t prove it.

“She should have had that diagnosis six months earlier, back in New York, back when the doctors could have done something about it. There are treatments that would have kept her alive, possibly cured her altogether. But by then it was too late. She was dead one month later. It wasn’t peaceful, and it wasn’t pretty.

“Dessi took it very hard. So did I. I wanted to do something about it, and I don’t mean a crime or a murder or anything like that. I wanted to do something positive. I wanted to make good come out of bad.

“So I went back to Miami. I started talking to this Dr. Reyes. He had a working DBS. Why didn’t other clinic doctors? We came up with an idea. He had access to medical equipment. It was mostly used, broken medical equipment, but it was the real stuff. And it was fixable. All we needed was some technical knowledge and the currency to buy parts. We started talking about where we could find that currency.”

He paused significantly, as if he had just explained everything away. I wasn’t buying it. I answered, “So you figured you could just kill the family you’ve lived with for three years, and take their currency to buy your spare parts, and that would be a positive thing?”

“No, of course not! No one was supposed to get killed.”

“What about Plan B? Does anyone get killed in that?”

He hesitated for a fraction of a second. “No. No one else is going to die.”

I feared that hesitation, but I pressed ahead. I asked the most practical question I could think of: “Where will the second bag of currency come from?”

“From the sale of your house. From what I hear, it’s coming from Mr. Patterson’s vault.”

“I see. So does Patience know about this?”

“She shouldn’t. Not if Ms. Meyers follows her orders; not if Mr. Patterson can keep his mouth shut.”

“Those are big ifs.”

“It doesn’t really matter. The payoff will be tonight, at nineteen hundred. You’ll be free by nineteen-ten.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“You will be.”

“There’s no Plan C?”

“No.”

“Then you will take your currency, disappear, and enter the health-care field?”

“That’s right.”

It all sounded too simple to me. After another minute, I asked him, “So what about Dessi? What’ll he do?”

“I don’t know. That will be up to him. He is very independent.” He pointed outside. “Young men and women around here basically have two options—be a servant or be a soldier. One is degrading; the other is deadly.”

“Which do you think he’ll pick?”

He answered right away: “Soldier.”

“Why?”

“Because someone will
ask
him to pick that.”