Chapter 23 Voss
VOSS
Statistics say that recovering an abducted person alive after the first twenty-four hours of their disappearance isn’t good. The probability of them being alive becomes less and less as the hours tick by.
We’re closing in on ten hours by the time I get back home with Jessica from scouring the trees around where we found Brek’s phone.
I have to admit, Jessica is surprisingly good in times of stress.
Which is fortunate because I’m not. If she’d have become panicking or annoying, I’d have lost my fucking cool.
“What do we do?” Jessica asks as she follows me inside.
I parked at the office building on Van Doren Estate instead of going home. I need my computers.
“I’m going to mirror his phone on my computer and watch his last hour before he turned off the path home,” I say.
“You can do that?”
“Yes.”
She remains on my heels all the way into my office. I flick on the lights and turn the computer on before stopping in the back room to grab a tablet. When I get back, I turn one of my computer screens vertically.
I shove the stool away and grab the bar braces to drag them toward my desk.
Pressing the bars into place and locking the structure to the desk, I grab the rope swing and hook it up before taking a seat on it.
It’s reminiscent of a rope swing with a disk at the end, like you’d find outside hanging from a tree branch.
This is safer. There’s no chance my rig will break in a storm.
“What is that?” Jessica asks.
I glance at her, finding that she’s looking at all the seating options lined against the wall.
Turning back to the computer and plugging Brek’s phone in, I say, “I have ADHD. These are sensory chairs. There are sensory fidget toys all over, too. Take your pick, but be careful of the seating you choose, or you’ll end up on your ass. ”
“I didn’t realize you have ADHD,” she says.
My interface pops up and disappears as I tap rapidly through the commands. While I don’t necessarily hack into phones often, it’s second nature. I can do this in my sleep. So, holding a conversation with Jessica isn’t difficult.
“My mother wanted perfect children. Unfortunately for her, she only got one. When I was young, she tried to have me fixed so I would sit still and shut up. I learned quickly how to mimic the behavior she wanted from me so she’d leave me alone, and I didn’t have to keep going to the doctors.”
“That’s shit,” Jessica says.
I shrug one shoulder. “The world is a shit place filled with shit people.”
“He’s not perfect.”
My fingers stop for a minute as I try to figure out what she’s on about. Did I say an inside thought out loud? I twist to meet her eyes. “What?”
“Myro isn’t perfect. He struggles every day to live up to that title.”
I tilt my head and turn back to my computer. “I’d love to discuss this with you, but we’re running out of time on a bigger problem right now.”
“I know. Sorry. What can I do to help?”
“Start talking about Brek. Tell me everything you know, whether you think it’s helpful or not.”
“That’s going to help?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know whether this is targeted or happenstance, and until I figure that out, I’m checking both avenues. I’m listening, even if it doesn’t appear that I am.” I glance at her again. “It may look like you’re talking to a wall, but I promise, I hear you.”
Jessica nods. “Okay.” She takes a breath and begins talking about Brek’s job. His sales. The man he works closest with, Zaiden.
While she talks, I command my computer to access the app I managed to install just months ago. I’m so fucking relieved I was able to. I don’t know how I’d find him otherwise. What if he’d continued to elude me and I hadn’t gotten my hands on his phone?
After several minutes, I turn to the vertical monitor and watch. “Keep talking,” I tell Jessica when there’s a break in her rambling.
“Is that his phone?” she asks, coming closer.
I rock in my swing, leaning heavily against the rope. My hands tap on my knees as I stare at the background of Brek’s phone. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I’m about to think that the app isn’t playing when the screen brightens, signifying that Brek has just unlocked it.
The screen we’re looking at swipes sideways. The messaging app opens, and we watch as he texts a reminder to himself. The screen goes dark on that screen. He didn’t close out of the messaging app before shutting down his screen.
We wait again. When minutes go by, I hit the forward button on my phone. One minute jump. One minute jump. I end up hitting it twenty times before the app brightens again. The messenger app closes, and the screen swipes up to bring up the apps not on his home screens.
Swipe right. Right. Right. Shuttled. While he’s ordering, I pull up the map on my phone, where I’d been tracking the movement of his phone, so I can match timestamps.
Shuttled is ordered, and he swipes out long enough to text me. My heart skips a little. I’m the first and only one he messaged. Then he’s back at the Shuttled app. I presume watching.
I flip a second monitor sideways and plug my phone into it, making it project what I’m seeing on my small screen onto the big monitor.
As soon as Brek is presumably in the Shuttled, I sync the timestamps and watch as his Shuttled app tracks his progress in time with what my phone is showing with his GPS.
Brek moves out of the Shuttled app to scroll. I lower the replay to split the big screen and pull up the Shuttled app on his phone so we can watch the progress as well as what he’s looking at. It’s only a few minutes before the half of the screen showing his phone goes dark.
“He gets carsick,” Jessica says quietly.
That means we’re left watching the two tracking devices. As the car approaches the intersection of routes 17 and 40, the Shuttled app reflects a notification that Brek canceled the drive, and the driver receives partial payment.
Shuttled is no longer tracking where Brek is headed, but the GPS on my phone that’s tracking the location of Brek’s phone continues to play. Instead of turning left toward home, it turns right and heads east.
“Watch this screen,” I tell Jessica, nodding toward the GPS tracking. “If he moves off the road before the truck stops and I don’t see it, tell me. I’m going to see what I can find out about his Shuttled driver.”
It doesn’t take me long to pull up the driver in Brek’s phone and grab the plate number, make and model of the Shuttled car, and the driver’s name and photo.
Then I’m moving toward my single screen left on my computer and running the identifier program that’ll tell me everything about this guy, including his fucking blood type.
“I think they stopped,” Jessica says.
I turn toward the screen, and sure enough, the dot isn’t on the highway.
I click back over and tap until I can zoom in and turn on satellite view instead of looking at the cartoonized, featureless GPS model.
Gas station. It’d be nice if I could rewind the satellite and see the man fueling. Or maybe changing out drivers?
It’s less than ten minutes later that the car gets back on the road. In broad daylight, they have a person in the back of their car, and they stop to get gas? No one notices? That means Brek wasn’t conscious. There’s no way he’d be sitting in the back quietly while being kidnapped, right?
Once the car is driving again, I move back to my task. My apps say that this driver is active right now on the app.
I leave Jessica for a minute and grab another phone so I don’t have to interrupt Jessica watching Brek’s progress. I’m dialing before I retake my seat and glance at the clock. We’re nearing midnight.
“Hello?” Avory answers.
“I need a retrieval.”
“Now?”
“Ten hours ago.”
There’s a pause. “Okay. Send me the information. We’re on our way.”
“Don’t be gentle,” I tell him, and hang up before texting his phone a photo, car details, Shuttled details, and ping his phone to track the car.
“Who did you call?” Jessica asks.
“How much do you know about what we do here?” I counter.
“I mean, you do a little bit of everything, don’t you?”
Instead of beating around the bush, I call Myro. “You’re back? Everything okay?” he answers.
I look at Jessica, wondering why she didn’t tell him what was going on. “How much does she know?”
“Let’s call it three percent.”
“Can she handle the full load?”
“Why? What’s going on, Voss?”
“I don’t have time for small talk. Brek has been abducted. Jessica was with me when I realized something was wrong. I have his phone, but he’s still missing.”
“Fuck. Go to fifty percent. Leave the blood out for now, but I think she’ll be okay with it when she realizes how many people we’ve killed to protect several of her friends and Briar’s son. Where are you?”
“Office.” I hang up and turn to look at Jessica. “I called the triplets. Actually, two/thirds of them. They’re going to bring the driver who picked up Brek… to a location for questioning.”
She stares at me. I can’t tell what she’s thinking, and honestly, I don’t have time to figure it out.
“Listen. If you can’t handle a little bit of darkness and some bloody truths revealed about us, I suggest that you stop asking questions and… maybe go home. I’ll find Brek. Promise.”
“Tell me,” she says.
“I don’t have anything to tell right now. Once we have the driver in our hands, we’ll find some more information. Right now, I’m going to hack into any surveillance cameras that the truck stop has while you go back to watching the dot move.”
Jessica swallows. She gives me a curt nod and turns her attention back to the screen. Minutes tick by in silence before she says, “I didn’t tell them. Levis has been asking if anyone has heard from Brek for the past several hours.”
I close my eyes. There’s no time to deal with freakouts and emotions. I look down at my hands lying flat on my desk. I can’t ignore her friends. Brek’s friends. But I don’t have the patience to deal with them right now.
My office door opens, and we turn to look at it. Dad and Myro step inside, shutting the door behind them.
“Good. You deal with your friends,” I say and turn back to my computer.
Myro offers his hand to Jessica. She gets up from her seat to take it, but she digs her heels in when he tries to pull her from the office. “No. I want to know what’s going on. I want to help. I don’t care what you do as long as you bring Brek home.”
Alive. That’s the word she leaves off. It’s been eleven hours now.
“What do we know right now?” Dad asks, his hand resting on my shoulder.
I hold my breath for a minute, trying to slow down the sudden dread that threatens to overtake me. His strength, his comfort, promises a safe place for me to break down. But there’s no time for that.
“Nothing. His car wouldn’t start. He called a Shuttled.
According to the app, Brek canceled it at the routes 17 and 40 intersection, and the app stopped tracking him.
I continued to track him, and he headed east on 40.
Jessica and I followed when he’d already been driving in that direction for an hour.
We found his phone in the woods behind a truck stop.
I tracked the driver and have the two/thirds triplets picking him up for a conversation.
I’m going to break into the cameras at the truck stop now to see what I can see.
Jessica says their friends are asking about him.
I imagine it won’t be long before they send out an alarm. I can’t deal with that right now.”
“Good. Are you thinking clearly?” Dad asks.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. That’s debatable.
What he’s asking is if I’m clear-minded enough to call the shots.
I’m not sure if I am. Besides Lor being kidnapped by the fucking Dranghetta family when she was a few months pregnant with Axl, I’ve never had someone close to me involved in something like this.
Discounting the time three of my brothers walked into a megachurch cult island colony unarmed. That was fun.
“Maybe,” I admit.
“May I make a suggestion?” Dad asks. I nod. “Myro and Jessica, talk to the rest of the family and Brek's friends. Tell them what we know. Try to keep them calm. We’ll bring back any updates as we have them.”
“I’m going to offer them a place in the big house,” Myro says. “Do you want to stay here with Voss and do what you can or come with me?” he asks Jessica.
She doesn’t answer right away. I’m only partially paying attention as I attack the security system of the truck stop.
“I want to stay here,” Jessica says. “Is that okay?”
“Yes,” Dad answers.
“Voss?” I glance up, meeting her eyes. “Is it okay with you?”
I look at Myro. There’s an unlikely probability that I’ll remember to curb my information output, which means she’s going to get a dose of truth about the skeletons we hide. I don’t know her well enough to know if she’s going to be able to handle that truth.
Myro inclines his head, indicating that she can handle it. My eyes meet Jessica’s again. “Yes, fine.” I turn back to the computer. Dad squeezes my shoulder.
“Do me a favor and ask your friends to meet me in the gray parlor,” Myro tells Jessica as she stretches up to give him a kiss. “I got my brothers.”
Jessica joins me at my desk again, already tapping away on her phone. “On it.” Myro leaves. Dad stays. When Jessica is finished, she sets her phone down and looks at me. “What can I do? I’m decent with computers, but not as good as you.”
I don’t answer for a minute. Dad disappears into the back room and returns with a laptop. He sits at the large table in my office and does whatever it is Dad does. Probably sending out the alarm and putting all of Van Doren on the lookout for Brek.
Once I’m in the truck stop’s system, I stand and tug her to where I was sitting. The screens are covered with almost two dozen camera images, looking at different sections of the truck stop. I show her briefly how to call up specific feeds, playback, and move forward.
“Watch for them,” I tell her. “The Shuttled is a gray sedan with Arizona plates, 87 YTF 9.”
Jessica nods. I unplug Brek’s phone and start poking around, hoping to find something else useful while we wait for the man who abducted Brek to be delivered.