Chapter 1 #3
“It stops at every floor, but it also goes down to the laundry area.” With that, the manager led Wallace down to the laundry room, part of the basement.
Wallace sent a text to update Riff and harbored a faint hope that Amy might still be unconscious in a laundry hamper somewhere nearby.
However, a thorough search of the area didn’t reveal such a simple answer.
Riff showed up and joined them now that they were done searching.
A grim expression on his face, Wallace looked over at his partner.
Riff nodded in concern. “Nothing is here, absolutely no sign of where she’s gone or when.
We’ll head out to the parking lot, check street cameras, any hotel cams,” he added, turning to look at the manager, who shook his head.
Riff turned to Wallace. “We’ll have to check anything around that 11:15 p.m. time. ”
Taking their leave, they returned to their vehicle and phoned Jonas, wanting access to local street cams, hoping to use Jonas’s supercomputer.
Jonas sighed. “Sure, I can get you access, but the kidnappers may have avoided being seen on any of them already. Considering Amy had appointments this morning with MI6, we would know to worry when she didn’t show up.
Still, taking her at 11:15 p.m. gave them at least a nine-hour head start, which was probably planned. ”
“Do we get access or not?” Riff asked.
Jonas groaned. “Yes. I’m just telling you that it’ll end up being a waste of your time. Still, give me some time to set up a secure spot for you to work from, where no one will bother you or will know what you’re doing either. I’m sure you’ll find something useful to do in the meantime.”
“Definitely something is going on here that we aren’t seeing,” Wallace declared, “and we need to. Otherwise there’s a chance Amy won’t see the light of day again.”
With that, he ended the call.
*
Wallace and Riff remained in the MI6 rig, in the hotel parking lot, planning out their next move. “I presume Terk has been in contact with her,” Wallace shared with Riff.
Riff quickly dialed Terk and asked him, putting him on Speakerphone.
“Amy has no idea what happened, no idea where she is, even wondering if this wasn’t some twisted job interview to see what she could do.” Terk’s tone was hardened with disbelief.
At that, Riff’s eyebrows shot up, and he stared at Wallace. “I might have thought that myself, if I was locked up as she’s apparently been.”
Terk agreed. “Especially when she was picked up from her room, doesn’t know who took her, doesn’t know anything about it. So far, she’s met one captor, and they are feeding her, but she’s lost time, so they’re obviously drugging her,” Terk shared.
Wallace sighed. “That makes sense, and it also keeps her compliant, dulls her gifts.” Wallace hated the idea, but what if she was right about a twisted job interview? The thought pissed him off, but it was all too possible.
Terk added, “She’s waiting for somebody to arrive but doesn’t know who or what to expect.
For the moment, they’re treating her okay.
She believes she’s in London—or at least that’s what she was told.
I’ll stay in touch with her for as long as I can and will keep you updated. ” Then Terk ended the call.
“If they’re not lying to her and if she really is in London, that would be a very good thing,” Riff replied, with a nod. “Terk does have a locator on his staff, so I bet he’s getting Langdon in on this.”
“If a locator does just that, then I would imagine so,” Wallace said. “Yet you never really know because not everybody can turn it on and off all the time. Plus, certain buildings can block our energy.”
Riff nodded. “In addition to your two points, in this case, where we have so much added pressure as one of our own was taken, our energy work doesn’t always hold up to the stress factor.”
Wallace faced Riff. “How come nobody from the government has gotten back to us on the street cams? That seems a bit dodgy.”
“Because we asked for their help,” Riff replied, with a wry look. “Also because somebody in-house may be involved in Amy’s kidnapping.… You do know this would go a lot faster without them, right?”
“In that case, let’s do it without them,” Wallace stated.
“Good.” Riff snorted. “Let’s jump in and do this. I do better without any of them looking over my shoulder.”
Wallace glared at him. “If you had a better idea right from the beginning, why didn’t you say so?”
“I did, but you were still thinking this wasn’t necessarily a big deal.”
“Wait. I’ve always considered it a big deal,” he declared, staring at Riff. “Amy’s not here, and I assume it wasn’t her choice to leave, but I was hardly expecting a drugged kidnapping of a potential MI6 hire. That’s pretty brazen.”
“That’s the thing about government work,” Riff noted. “You can’t ever really count on anything. So you never know what to expect. I wouldn’t put it past MI6 to be putting her through a test. If that is not enough for you, look at the job you guys were being asked to do.”
Wallace nodded. “Not a bad theory,” he admitted. “I sure hope Amy’s wrong about that though because if we can’t trust Jonas…”
“Yeah, well, in a way, I would hope that she’s right because then, chances are, we’ll get her out of this in one piece.
However, if it’s a private contract, and somebody else is looking at her skills, wondering what she can or can’t do, that’s a whole different story.
If she fails,… who says she’ll get a free pass to just walk out. ”
“No, they won’t take that kindly, will they?”
“They never do,” Riff said, his tone hard. “These people, if not MI6, will have a very different take on this scenario.”
“So, how do we find out if it is or is not an MI6 trial run?” Wallace asked, staring at Riff.
“I don’t generally deal with governments. I avoid them like the plague,” he shared cheerfully. “Mostly because of shit like this.”
“You think her theory has merit?”
“Of course it has merit,” he stated, frowning at Wallace. “Didn’t we just say that?”
“I guess it just feels wrong to think that the British government would do that.”
“Wrong maybe, but when it comes to Special Ops, Black Ops?… Hell no. They pull this shit all the time.”
Such vehemence filled Riff’s tone that Wallace had absolutely no doubt that, as far as Riff was concerned, it was totally possible. Still, it was a little unnerving to consider. Wallace wasn’t at all sure he was ready to jump on the same hating of governments bandwagon that Riff was on.
Riff grabbed his duffel bag from the back seat and pulled out his laptop. “Let’s hack into MI6’s street cams.”
Wallace nodded, grabbing his laptop too. Two hours later, he shook his head. “Jonas may be right. They avoided all the street cams.”
“ And ,” Riff added, “Jonas has still not called us back.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Wallace asked.
“Damn straight. Let’s go have a face-to-face chat with Jonas.”
Riff and Wallace left the hotel parking lot and shortly pulled into the parking lot below MI6 headquarters, parked, and headed upstairs.
As it was, they stumbled on to Jonas, ripping into somebody in the hallway.
As he turned and saw them, Jonas’s glare widened to encompass the two of them.
“What the hell is going on here?” he roared.
Wallace’s eyebrows shot up. “I’m not sure what this is and what you think we’re up to, but we’re trying to find Amy.”
“Where is she?” Jonas asked.
Wallace shook his head. “It appears she’s been kidnapped. We’re not sure whether you guys had a hand in it or that was just a coincidence.”
From the look of complete shock on Jonas’s face, it was obvious that he’d never once considered such a thing.
At that, Wallace nodded. “I’m really glad to see it wasn’t you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jonas roared.
“Thinking of the job she was brought in to do,” he explained, “we couldn’t help but wonder if somebody in your office decided some test was in order.”
Jonas blinked several times, and then he slowly sagged onto the closest wall. “Good God,” he muttered, with a headshake. “That would be just beyond everything.”
“Sure, but it’s also not out of the realm of possibility,” Riff declared. “And we all know it.”
At that, Jonas shot him a hard look. “I sure didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean the British government didn’t.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he murmured, rubbing his hands through his hair.
“Good Christ, I need to make some calls and see what I can come up with. You guys keep trying to find her.” Then he turned to face Wallace.
“If you know she’s been kidnapped, where the hell is she?
Did they ask for ransom? Is that what this is about? ”
“No, as far as we’re concerned, we’re still looking at you guys,” Riff interjected smoothly, not letting Jonas off the hook. “Other than that, we don’t know where she is. For now we’re presuming London.”
Jonas looked confused for a moment. “So how do you know she didn’t just walk away? Decided the job wasn’t for her and just packed up and left?”
“I’m sure plenty of people may wonder if she did exactly that, particularly if she’d been picked up as some MI6 test. If she fails, what’s to stop somebody from just deep-sixing her?”
At that, Jonas swore again. “We’re a government agency here, not the mafia.”
“Not all that easy to tell the difference sometimes,” Riff noted, with a wry grin directed at Wallace, apparently unable to avoid pushing Jonas’s buttons at every turn. “Also Terk’s been in contact with her.”
Wallace frowned at his partner, trying to slow down Riff’s attacks on Jonas.
Riff shrugged back at Wallace. “I’m still not convinced that one of Jonas’s bosses isn’t involved in this. Governments being what they are and all,” he added, with a hard look at Jonas.