Chapter 1 #2
They all knew what would happen to a young woman in these circumstances.
In this case, there was a chance Tricia could get out of it unscathed, if Rubin and his team could get to her fast enough.
Otherwise she would pay the penalty of her father’s actions, at a higher price than anybody even wanted to contemplate.
It didn’t matter that she hadn’t done anything except be born to a man who would grow up to be a US senator.
For her kidnappers, that was enough to make her life a living hell.
Their crew was handpicked by Mason. Trent was the munitions expert, and, if you need anything from the black market, he was the man for that.
Oakley handled communications, and his world was online.
He was a hacker in olden times, before he joined the military.
The newest member of the team was Hayden, an expert marksman.
Hayden was an oddity they were stuck with because Mason trusted him to watch their backs.
Rubin, a tracker with a good head for logistics, had the lead on this mission, and it was his job to bring Tricia Forman home, alive and well.
So far, her chances of coming home in one piece were not good, to say the least.
“We need their location. Anyone find anything?” Rubin asked.
“Yeah, we’ve got one lead,” Trent replied, as he walked closer, holding up something in his hand.
“What’s that?” Rubin asked.
“One of them left behind a train ticket. It’s crumpled, and it’s got a name on it.”
“What’s the name?” Oakley asked, as he pulled a laptop from his backpack.
He was given the name, and everyone let him be.
Oakley liked to work in silence, and everyone knew that.
He had already input the coordinates for the train station, which was three hours away.
Much to his dismay, Oakley came up empty on the name.
“The ticket was bought under an alias, which, by the looks of it, is a new one.”
“Anything that can help us?” Rubin asked, trying hard to keep the sarcasm out of his tone. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that they had no information on any of the kidnappers.
“Glad you asked,” Oakley quipped, and, right about then, each of their phones pinged. “I just sent you all the picture from the ID he presented.”
The rest of the way to the train station, they all kept to themselves. Rubin drove, keeping an eye out. Oakley continued to work on his laptop, while Trent cleaned his guns, and Hayden slept the whole way.
“How can he even sleep in this situation?” Trent murmured for the umpteenth time.
“It’s not his fault that you are a light sleeper,” Rubin pointed out. “Leave him be. At least someone’s getting their beauty sleep.”
Trent muttered under his breath, but nothing was audible. By the time the night fell, they were well on their way to the station.
Now they were checking for faces, Tricia’s and the guy with the alias.
They asked for info from the Ticketmaster, checking for anything unusual, and then asked everybody around the station if they had seen Tricia.
They all had a picture of her on their phones, and they split up to cover more ground, still connected through their comms.
They knew that she was with at least two men but, apart from that, nothing else. Rubin got lucky when one of the waitresses at the nearby coffee shop did a double take.
“Hey, let me see that.” She grabbed the phone from his hands and then nodded and muttered in broken English, “She was here … this morning.”
“Are you sure it was her?”
“I’m sure, but she looked really rough, as if beat-up, dirty,” she added, zooming in on the picture once more.
“She has beautiful eyes, and she was wearing the same pendant.” She pointed to the cross on her neck.
“It’s the patron saint of lost causes.” She looked up from the phone, right at Rubin.
“It’s her.” She looked around, and someone waved her over.
Rubin took out a twenty, handing it to her. “I would appreciate more information. What can you tell me about how she looked and how she acted?”
“It didn’t seem she was very happy to be here. I even asked her if she was okay, and one of the men shoved her away.”
“Where did they go?”
“The guy took her into the train station. I didn’t see her after that, but I kept checking to see if she was around. I wanted to know that she was all right, yet it was obvious that she wasn’t. I did notify one of the security guards, but they couldn’t find them.”
“Can you describe the men with her? Was there anything to identify them?”
“Nothing much. One wore a ball cap, had a thick beard, and I saw a scar on his right hand.” She glanced at the men with Rubin. “What’s going on? Is she in trouble?”
“She’s been kidnapped,” Rubin replied, handing her his card. “If you do see them again, please contact me.”
She took it and nodded. “I can do that.” She looked around, checking behind the counter and then back at him. “I would say she looked down but certainly not defeated.”
“How so?”
“The way she carried herself,” she explained, with a headshake. “If anything, she was well and truly pissed off, as if somebody had killed her favorite dog or something, and now she was looking for payback.”
He smiled at that description and nodded. “I hope that’s true because she’ll need it over the next little while, until we find her. It could be rough.”
“You’ll find her,” she stated confidently. “You’re the kind of guy who always does.”
He raised his eyebrows, but she was already heading off to another table. He turned to Trent, who was smirking at him. “What?” Rubin asked.
“You’re the kind of guy,” he teased, with a half laugh. “What about the rest of us?”
“Hey, I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth,” he said, with a chuckle. “Did somebody grab coffee?”
“Yep, Oakley’s on it, and we’re loading up now. What’s the plan then?” Trent asked.
“We’re heading to the airport because that’s the fastest way to get ahead of the train.”
Trent nodded.
Rubin sighed. “We know the train could have stopped at any point, but the kidnappers will eventually switch to a vehicle after that. So we must do anything we can to shave off a few minutes.” Trent agreed.
Rubin glanced at the man approaching, Oakley now joining the party. “We need somebody on that damn train.”
“You mean the next train because that one’s long gone,” Oakley stated.
“I know,” Rubin snapped, followed by a grunt. The chase was pissing him off now. “We have to keep an eye on happenings there.”
Oakley shrugged. “I don’t mind. I can take a train ride, if you think it’s that important.”
“I’ll take the train,” Hayden offered over the comms.
The others turned to Rubin.
Trent added, “You know you’re cutting us short if you do that.”
“I know. I do know that,” Rubin muttered. “Damn it.” He turned to Oakley. “As much as I want to, following another train doesn’t make sense. For now, we split up in teams of two, one on foot and the other by air.”
Oakley shrugged good-naturedly and added, “Hey, I’m up for train rides anytime. So, if you get a second thought about it, let me know.”
“You like trains, huh?”
“I do,” he confirmed cheerfully. “I also know how to navigate them quite well, not to mention keeping people out of them, if needed. Trains offer all kinds of possibilities.”
“What do you mean by that?” Rubin asked, curious now.
“All kinds of places exist on trains as ways to keep people away from prying eyes,” Oakley shared, with a grin. “So, just because they say they got off at one spot, or the ticket says they’re getting off at a particular station, it doesn’t mean they really did.”
Rubin pondered that for a moment.
Oakley continued. “So, we know where their tickets say they’re headed,” he began, glancing from Rubin to Trent.
“Yeah, I get that,” Rubin replied, his tone hard, “but that doesn’t mean shit, as we all know. If they get to that location per their tickets, it’s one thing, but, if they go off someplace else, some unexpected place, we can’t track them somewhere in between.”
“He’s right,” Trent agreed. “If they don’t make it to their stated destination, then we’ll know for sure they got off someplace in between, and we’ll have to backtrack.”
Rubin groaned. “We don’t have time to backtrack because, if they go to ground now, they’ll get her out of the country next, and that could be in any direction.
” Rubin shook his head. “Once Tricia takes the next flight or the next train, we’ll be lost trying to track her down.
We’re hours behind them, when we need to be hours ahead. ”
“Okay, so what do you want to do now?” Trent asked.
Rubin turned and stared at him. “What do you mean, what do I want to do? I want to go on that damn train,” he declared, staring at the latest one in the station.
“But it’s not this train that they’re on,” Trent declared.
“I know. I know that.” Rubin swore, something nagging him in the back of his mind, even before Oakley had mentioned it. Now it was tugging at him hard. “It just feels as if we need to check into something.”
Trent held up a hand. “If you want to and if you think that’s where you need to go, then you go,” Trent conceded. “I’ll back you on that, but I’m telling you that they went ahead. We should be going to the airport.”
“Fine,” Rubin snapped, his tone hard. “We’ll split up. I’ll go with Oakley on the train. You and Hayden get to the airport.”
“I would prefer to be on the train too,” Hayden added, joining them.
“Noted,” Rubin replied, “but I need you to stick with Trent. I want you to call me as soon as you get there. You guys can confirm if they made it to their stated destination and then backtrack if needed. Otherwise, we’ll be there in a couple hours.”
That’s what they did. While they were waiting to get their tickets, Oakley stared at Rubin and admitted, “I didn’t really think you would go for that.”