Chapter 13 #2
Andrea continued. “We already know that students of this institution, … your students, were kidnapped and beaten or killed or trafficked because of Arlene Cuddy. One is still recovering in a hospital, not to mention Dean Jameson, who was attacked while someone kidnapped Tricia Forman, a US senator’s daughter.
Then the kidnappers came after me. This includes a worldwide human trafficking ring as well, with Arlene Cuddy as a curator of these women from your rosters. ”
“I haven’t had that update,” President Keating declared, looking bewildered yet displeased that he didn’t have the latest information himself.
“President Keating, I was kidnapped myself. Then they came after me in my own home and later last night … into a safe house, where I was staying.”
“Attempted murder as far as I’m concerned,” Hayden supplied. “That is also only a brief statement of what’s she been through.”
“Good God,” muttered one of the men accompanying the university’s president.
The first man who arrived to throw them out grinned widely and declared, “You’re just full of BS, aren’t you?”
Hayden gave him a calculated look because his response was odd and cold.
But Andrea stiffened in outrage. “Say that one more time to me, while I record it,” she snapped in a clear and concise tone, “but, if you say it a third time, you will probably not have a job here any longer—or at any university.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but the president yelled, “Stop, Salinsky. You don’t know all the details of what is going on.”
Salinsky paled. “So, what she is saying—”
“Unfortunately it’s true, and she has also been one of the victims of this nightmare,” the president confirmed, “as have Sam Hicks, Shirley Boston, plus Tricia Forman.”
Salinsky stared at him in shock. “And somehow admin staff was involved? Arlene?”
“Yes. Arlene Cuddy,” the president snapped. “She has apparently been spearheading a campaign through universities all across the world to kidnap and traffic students.”
Andrea pointed out curtly, “She operated with absolutely no regard for the human lives involved.”
“Sadly,” the president added, “Arlene was picking choice victims to extort money from their families, and, because she was in a university setting, she had access to a tremendous amount of personal information.” He turned to his short and ill-informed coworker. “It’s bad, Henry. It’s really bad.”
Henry Salinsky paled even more as he turned to Andrea.
She glared at him, her hands on her hips. “Yes, Henry,” she snapped. “It’s bad.”
President Keating winced. “However, we still need to confirm that all the files are safe.”
Hayden nodded. “And you are more than welcome to have everything back at this point in time,” he informed them.
“This is already huge-lawsuit territory, as in lifetime medical treatment for the one student in particular who was severely beaten and witnessed Shirley Boston’s murder, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.
The investigation into other particular victims has begun.
Interpol, FBI, CIA, and MI6 are, of course, all interested as this is now a global investigation.
The real question is how many women have been taken from this campus and the London campus over the last three and a half years that Arlene Cuddy has worked for this university, although I understand some male students have been taken as well. ”
“That’s preposterous,” Henry snapped. “No way something like that would have gone unnoticed.”
“Right,” Andrea snapped right back. “Because of course you noticed the most recent kidnappings on the London campus, involving your students abroad for a semester, didn’t you?”
He stared at her as she repeated their names, and he turned all shades of red.
“I don’t … We don’t know any of them.”
“Of course you don’t. Which proves you have absolutely no idea what’s going on,” she snapped at him.
“And because you have no idea what’s going on, you don’t even care what’s going on, not until your cushy little position here is threatened.
And I can assure you that it is absolutely threatened right now. ”
Henry’s jaw worked, and he turned to look at the president. “George, we’ve known each other for a long time.”
“We have, indeed,” he spat. “And I can tell you that this is bad. It’s as bad as it gets, and she’s quite correct. There have been incredible breaches of data that I don’t know how we’ll recover from, … and it’s only a matter of time until the media finds out.”
Henry noted, “The media doesn’t need to find out.”
“I disagree,” Andrea declared. “Apparently the media needs to find out because nobody is looking after these women. As you just noted, it’s all about you.
It’s not about the poor women who were kidnapped and held for money or influence.
Some were severely injured and in one case even murdered.
” Henry shifted at that detail. “Not to mention all the families who thought that their loved ones would be safe here. I understand the families of two such victims have already filed a lawsuit against this university. So, Henry, this is about to get very public, very visible.”
She continued. “But as it turns out, the opposite is also true.” She glared at Henry. “So don’t worry, Henry, your words will definitely be remembered.” She held up her phone, the red light steady, confirming that her recording was still working.
“And who are you to be doing that?” he snapped.
“Oh, it’s not me that you should be worried about. It’s my father.” He stared at her, and she nodded. “Yeah, I understand. You don’t know who he is. That’s the way he likes it. It’s the way I prefer it too.” But then she mentioned his name, and Henry’s face went blood-red.
President Keating failed to hold his tongue. “Oh, crap.”
“Yes, oh crap is right,” she confirmed. “My father has donated millions, tens of millions to this institution, and you can bet you’ve seen the last of that.”
If Hayden could have laughed out loud, he would have. The looks on their faces were absolutely priceless. He walked over and shared, “We’ll leave you gentlemen to your private little secrets—at least private for now.”
President Keating appeared to be at a complete loss as to what to say. And Henry was rooted to the spot, watching Hayden sideways.
Andrea just smiled sweetly at both men and added, “I’ve already spoken to the authorities here in the States. And then we’ll talk about civil lawsuits, since Arlene, your employee, utilized information in my university file to get me kidnapped.” And, with her head held high, she walked out.
Hayden followed her, a big grin on his face. “You might just be your father’s daughter after all, even more than you may realize.”
She groaned. “That was probably a really bitchy thing to do, wasn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t say that.” He chuckled. “Seems to me they deserved it.”
“I don’t know about President Keating. He was trying hard to be cooperative.”
“Sure, humor me for a second, but I rather imagine that was—”
“What? Because of Mason?”
He smiled and shrugged. “Not Mason so much but Tesla. She’s the one with academic connections—really big ones, for helping out with things like that too.”
“I’m not surprised,” Andrea noted. “Tesla is pretty amazing, no matter what she does.”
He laughed. “She has a knack for getting herself in trouble too,” he added.
“Not recently, I hope. She’s got children, doesn’t she?”
“She has two now,” he said, with a laugh. “As Mason says, it was supposed to calm her down, but she’s still got a hand in everything, as well as being a great mom.”
“Goodness,” she murmured. “That would be a fun story to hear one day.”
As they reached their vehicle, she stopped, looked around, and shared, “It is kind of pissy that we’re finally here, and yet in a way it feels very … anticlimactic.”
“We got all kinds of information though,” he reminded her. “Let’s hang on to that and not get depressed about anything else.” But her expression gave her away. “Okay, what’s bothering you?”
“I just … kept thinking how much I wanted to get back here so I could finish my studies and then walk away.”
“Would that help?”
“Maybe. It just seemed as if walking away would resolve so much.”
“It would resolve a lot,” he agreed, “if that’s the closure you need.”
“I don’t know what I want to do now,” she muttered, frustrated.
“It all just feels … unfinished.” She raised both hands, then turned to him.
“What are we doing now? We’ve been here.
We got information. We found a bunch of stuff.
Yet we don’t really know anything about all the stuff—the emails in the second account, the strange language.
It just feels as if we’re taking one step forward and twelve back. ”
“Which is life,” he stated, “and particularly the life that we’re working with here.
We’ve been provided another huge lead with all that info dump, which Mason and Tesla and their research staff will cull through and will share as needed to tie the rest of this up.
Meanwhile, the university has been well and truly put on notice that business as usual won’t cut it,” he pointed out.
“So, that’s a good thing. Now we have to figure out what’s next for us because we can’t count on any of this being simple, organized, or … finished, not yet anyway.”
“It’s not finished,” she declared, “because, if you’re right, then at least the European boss has been playing games and potentially looking to take me out. And that’s a horrible thought. I’d hoped that this shit could be over.”
“I agree.” Standing outside their vehicle, he looked around and asked, “Did you need to do anything while we’re here on campus?”
“No. A lot of my courses were online anyway.”
Surprised, he glanced back over at her as they took their seats in the truck. Then he turned on the engine. He had thought that she had attended full-time, at least here in New York City. “Are you okay with that, the online part instead of full immersion into the college life?”
“Sure. I was at the end of my course load anyway,” she noted, with a shrug. “After the whole distance-learning revolution, so much is done online. I did attend a few classes on campus once or twice a week.”
“Good or bad?”
“Good in a sense that I can at least get the work done, but it’s not pretty. So, yeah, of course I’m okay with the online classes.” He frowned at that, and she asked, “You don’t like that?”
“It’s not that I don’t like that,” he clarified. “It just seems to be an odd way to attend college. It’s not the way I would have imagined it.”
She nodded. “However, since COVID, things have changed. Like it or not, that’s just the way things are.”
“I can see that,” he acknowledged. “I just think that I’m a more social person in some ways.
I probably would have preferred to be in class with hundreds of other students, to live on campus, to eat at the student cafeteria, to study in the library.
Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer the classroom experience, the debates, the whole campus integration and human interactions. ”
“I miss that too, but, at this point, I just wanted to get my degree—or I did.”
“So you won’t get your degree?” he asked.
“I have no idea right now. Still, if I do, I would take online classes. However, you’re right, for some people, the traditional classroom setup is absolutely what they prefer.”
“But not you,” he said, a smile breaking free.
She frowned. “I think I’ve outgrown my college dreams. I think that challenge is in the past now. Yet I don’t know where I’m going from here. So, from my perspective, it was just one of those What are you doing next kind of moments.”
“Interesting,” he muttered. “Can’t say that’s anything I’ve ever had to deal with.”
“It’s definitely been different for me,” she shared, with a smile.
“Different can be okay,” he said.
As they drove out onto the street, she added, “I suspect that my dad is probably well on his way.”
“I suspect he is, but that doesn’t mean …” Then he stopped, as it clicked in the back of his mind. “If he is coming, he would go to your apartment, wouldn’t he?”
She looked at him, aghast. “Oh my gosh, that’s exactly where he would go.”
Hayden immediately pulled off to the side of the road, phone in hand. When Mason answered, he asked right off the bat, “What are the chances that her father is on the way?”
“He’s definitely on the way,” he muttered ruefully. “However, I haven’t heard when he’s landing. We did ask him to stay away, but apparently that request has been ignored.”
“Of course it’s been ignored,” Andrea interrupted. “That’s what he does best.”
Mason, his voice calm but a little bit perturbed, added, “We told him it’s not safe at your place.”
“But, at this point in time,” she stated, “I don’t think anyone can stop him. You need to let him know the danger of appearing at my apartment—and fast.”
“He’s not answering my calls or texts,” Mason shared, his voice calm. “So, if you hear from your father, it would be better coming from you. Have him stay at a hotel.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t stay with me, but he would definitely show up at my place unannounced. I’m afraid I won’t hear from him soon enough.”
“We do not need him getting involved in this,” Mason stated.
“Oh, he’s already involved,” she argued. “You just wait.” Then she laughed. “Oh God, listen to me. I’m apologizing ahead of time.”
Mason sighed. “That’s just the way fathers are,” he stated, “and I have to admit to having a whole new perspective on it myself now. So wait for him to contact you because he should be there anytime now.”
“Right,” she muttered.