25. Chapter 25
Chapter twenty-five
Charles
I awake to the ringing phone. Kate slumbers beside me, nearly falling off the couch. She has one arm flung over me and one knee draped over my good leg. She is warm, alive, and so precious to me.
I close my eyes and pull her to me, my sleepy body reacting to her presence. I hate to disturb her but I’m not sure I can get up without waking her.
The phone’s annoying buzz escalates into a high-pitched Star Trek alarm ring, then goes to voice mail. “Play that,” I direct the automatic answering service.
The recorded message cuts in. “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry. They came in so fast”.
It is Grace’s voice, thick with sobbing. “Call back,” I direct the phone, giving one of its voice commands.
Kate awakes, deliberately sliding off me to kneel on the floor beside the couch. She pulls her robe close around her, and I sit up as we both listen to the phone ringing on the other end.
When it is answered, a different voice is on the line. “Mr. Emory? This is Larry. I’ve got bad news, so I’ll get straight to it. Grace took Cece to the ladies’ room. When she didn’t come back in a reasonable amount of time, Mr. Bailey went to check on her, and someone coshed him on the back of the head. A guy coming back from the men’s head saw him lying on the floor and called security. He thought he was a drunk who had passed out.”
“Cece? Grace?” Kate asks. Her face is bloodless, her fingers bunched in my robe where it draped over my knee.
“Grace was just coming to in the ladies’ room and making a phone call as security entered. She’s upset, and she’s got a heck of a lump over one ear, but otherwise probably ok. The EMTs on staff are checking her for concussion right now.”
“Cece?” I ask, my heart in my throat. I know what is coming, or think I do. It is why I had built the penthouse, why there is a security team with my daughter at all times.
“She, two of Santa’s elves, and one of the emergency life rafts are missing. How the heck they managed to get off the showboat without anyone noticing . . .
“Where was the security team?” I snarl.
“That’s the really bad part,” Larry says. “One of them was stabbed with a hunting knife, and the other two are missing. I was helping a woman whose kid tried to ride the reindeer. The kid is a brawny ten-year-old who was putting up a fight to get away from his mother.”
“What happened to the kid and his mother?” I ask, my frontal brain kicking into gear and putting a hold on my panicking rear brain.
“The mother swears she didn’t know anything about it, but the kid says ‘some guy’ gave him ten dollars and bet him he couldn’t ride the reindeer.”
Kate is up and moving. I don’t pay attention to what she is doing. “What action is being taken?” I ask.
Larry swears a colorful blue streak of creative expressions. “ Nothing,” he ends off saying. “They say that Cece probably talked the helpers into taking her for a boat ride. They aren’t even reporting it!”
I force my body upright, just as Kate comes to me with a stack of clothing. “Dress where you are,” she says. “I’ve called Gregory Jones. He’s part of a fire and rescue team, and a member of the reserves. He’s on his way to us as fast as the reserve chopper can bring him, but it is still going to be nearly an hour before he gets here.”
“Who is Gregory Jones?” I ask, while pulling on my pants.
Kate blushes a fiery crimson. “A guy I had a crush on when I was in high school, and part of the genius behind the straw bale houses. Don’t worry…he’s married now. But more importantly, he has contacts and can cut through the red tape. I also called Manuela, and she’s calling out the rest of your security forces.”
“Good thinking,” I say. Then, “Larry?”
“I’m still here, boss. But they are hauling me over to City Hall for questioning. I’m not going to be allowed to do anything.”
“It’s all right,” I say. “Tell them everything, anything. Maybe it will get them moving. Meanwhile, help is coming.”
“Good to know. Gotta go, boss. And they are taking my phone and Miss Grace’s so we won’t be able to call anyone.”
The connection dies, and I grind my teeth. I long for my SEAL strike force. No doubt the local authorities are following procedure, but it makes me crazy just to think of my Cece in the hands of terrorists with some sort of axe to grind.
“It’s only five blocks from here to the police station,” Kate says. “We can get there faster by walking than if I call a car.”
“Got it,” I say, buttoning my shirt. I stuff my tie in my pocket. Time enough for that when we get into the waiting part of this dangerous game .
Kate hands me my coat, and we hurry to the elevators.
We collect the other five members of my security team from the hotel lobby and set out toward the police station, walking at a good clip.
It has started to snow, and the wind whips Kate’s hair against me as we power-walk — the best gait I can manage.
One of my team zips away and reappears in a minute or two, pushing a wheelchair.
“Here, sir,” he says. “I commandeered it from the hospital. Let’s put wheels under you.”
It galls my pride, but he is right. I sit, and what had been a six to ten minute walk now becomes a three minute sprint. A pair of orderlies bolt out of the hospital and run after us, but neither of them are in sufficient shape to catch up before we entered the police office lobby.
We all burst in at about the same time. The security guard who was pushing the wheelchair, me in the chair, Kate, my other four guards, and the orderlies bringing up the rear.
“What the hell!” a portly police officer at the front desk bellows. “You can’t come in here like that!”
“Where is my daughter?” I bellow. “Where is her sitter, my agent, and my security team? What are you doing about finding her?”
I have to give the guy credit for balls. He smirks at me and says, “If you’ll just fill out this form . . .”
I reach across the counter and grab him by his tie. When that comes off in my hand (lousy, cheap clip-on), I shift my grip and got the guy by his shirt-front.
“Hey! What the hell!” the desk sergeant yelps. “That’s assaulting an officer! You can’t do that.”
Kate runs up beside me and lays a hand on the arm that is gripping the officer’s shirt front. “Charles, he probably doesn’t have any idea what has happened. Officer, please forgive Mr. Emory, his daughter has been kidnapped. He’s a little distraught.”
A splash of cold water couldn’t have done more to bring me to my senses. The desk sergeant steps back, brushing his hand over the bell-curve of his front. “Why the . . .heck didn’t he say so?” the fellow fumes. “I didn’t hear nothin’ about it. Fill out that form and I’ll put out an Amber alert right now.”
My hand is shaking so badly, I can hardly hold the pen. Somehow, I manage to fill in my identity, relationship to the child, and tick a bunch of meaningless boxes, while Kate calmly described Cece, the cute outfit she was wearing — pink jeans, a t-shirt with a candy-cane on the front, and a puffy pink jacket — her height, her soft brown curls, bright blue eyes, and her recent haircut and style. Every word is both a balm and a blow to my heart.
It is not until I have the last box filled in, and we have both settled into uncomfortable plastic chairs along one wall, that Kate leans forward and buries her face in her hands.
“My fault, my fault, my fault,” she sobs. “Selfish, selfish, selfish . . .”
“No, Katie, no,” I sooth. “I’ve been getting threats for months — ever since the Agri-Oil tower was damaged. Even though we did everything we could to relocate people, get them set up with convenient housing, and prevention maintenance on the building, I’ve had lawsuits coming out my ears.”
“Why didn’t you say?” she asks, sitting up and turning her face toward me.
“I didn’t want to worry you,” I say. “And I wanted Cece to have as normal a life as we could manage for her. James knew, but he didn’t tell Grace. But I thought she would be an added layer of safety for you and Cece.”
“Instead, we just put her in danger,” Kate whispers, tears streaming down her face. “I put them both in danger. I could have just told Cece she had to wait, and you wouldn’t have divided your security force.”
“You couldn’t know that,” I say, “We couldn’t know that.” I stroke her hair, damp from melting snowflakes back from her face which was wet with tears, while my own conscience thunders a counterpoint chorus of accusation at me.
I put my arm around Kate, and we wait.
Grace emerges from the back of the police station first and rushes over to us. “I’m so, so sorry,” she says, her round, pink face splotchy from crying. “We used separate stalls in the ladies’ room, and when I came out, there were two young women. One of them had Cece, and the other one shot me with pepper spray, then hit me on the head.”
Kate soothes her friend as best she can. I couldn’t believe my ears. Courtesy, simple courtesy, had actually endangered my little girl.
James is the next to show up, pushed in a wheelchair, with a bandage wrapped around his head, looking dazed. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I was there waiting, then next thing I know I’m in an ambulance. What happened? Is everyone all right?”
While Kate explains to him, I listen to the scratchy voices and the crackle pop of the police scanner.
After a much longer wait, Larry comes in with a tall, athletic black man wearing a fire and rescue overall.
“Boss,” he says, “This here is Gregory Jones. He heads up the Four-State Valiant Fire and Rescue. He’s flown down here from Olathe to see if he can help.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Mr. Jones says, in a deep velvet voice that could have jellied knees as a midnight radio announcer or audio book reader.
I can’t help but feel a flash of jealousy. This is Kate’s high school crush? The man is lean, athletic, and obviously fit. His bearing says he had military training, and his confidence says ‘ Leader.’ Worse yet, he is probably half my age. My lizard brain does a quick step-back when I see the glint of a wedding ring on his left hand. Not competition. Probably not competition.
“I’m here to help,” he says. “I brought a team of my rescuers down. This is a bad area for a child to be lost. Lots of hills, hollers, caves, and illegal merchandise for sale.”
“Moonshiners?” I quip, trying to show a little gallows humor to cover up my gnawing anxiety.
Gregory Jones turns a soft, pitying gaze on me. “Moonshine is just a word for spirits brewed up in an illegal still, and plenty of the farms up in these hills have a hidden patch of hemp. No, I’m talking about the meth labs and the designer drugs the college kids are learning to cook up.”
“College kids?” Grace packs a world of resentment into the words, possibly because if the dorms had not closed, she would still be a ‘college kid.’
“I got my degree in jurisprudence,” Mr. Jones says. “I’m for education. But some of these kids take their extra-curricular activities more seriously than their academics. It only takes one bad apple to spoil a barrel.”
Grace nods. “I know the type. Party, party, party, then demand tutors because they just don’t understand what the professor is trying to teach – especially since they skipped as many classes as they could get away with.”
“Exactly,” Gregory says.
We all sit silently for what seems like a hundred years, while the lobby clock ticks maddeningly, and the police scanner crackles with useless news.
Then, the door opens, and a tiny pink cannonball speeds through it and lands against me. “Daddy!” she exclaims. She is followed by three men wearing fire and rescue armbands.
“Cece?” Kate gasps.
“Is this the girl?” Gregory Jones asks .
“Yes,” I cry, tears running down my face. “This is Cece!”
“Who saved you?” Kate inquires.
“Nobody!” Cece says, excitedly. “I saved myself. I Ransom of Red Chief’d them, Miss Kate. I Red Chief’d them good! Although,” she adds with an air of giving credit where credit was due, “these guys helped a little.”
“Where did you find her?” I ask, opening my arms to my baby girl.
“Climbing a twenty-foot rockface like she was born to it. We’ve got the teens in custody. I think they might have viewed it as a rescue. She reached a ledge they couldn’t get to because they were too heavy to use her handholds, and they were arguing about what to do. She had gotten herself up onto a ledge where they couldn’t get to her. We had to rappel down to get her. And to get those young hoodlums, too.”
“I climbed just like Daddy and I practiced on the climbing wall,” Cece says excitedly. “I did just like Miss Kate said. I was as much trouble as I could be without getting hurt, and I got away as quick as I could. I was a little glad to get rescued, though. I think I was stuck.”