CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Nate
“I just got a call from Mason De Luca, saying that an insurance company used by the Adler Kandinski hotel in Berlin was in touch about a claim. You’ve been in Berlin for one day! What the hell’s going on?” Roz demanded.
“Oh, eh…hi Roz, yeah,” I rubbed my free hand over my brow. “I didn’t know the insurance company would contact Maritime immediately. Shit...sorry. This is a mess,” I sent a worried look at Jack then warned, “I’m putting you on speaker.”
“Hi Roz,” Jack called. “It’s been a trip!”
I glared at Jack, that comment was not helpful at all. “Something happened to us last night,” I admitted, feeling like I was talking to my school principal.
“Well, out with it!” Roz prompted.
“When we left a club last night we were, um, abducted.”
“Oy gevalt!” she exclaimed, “Are you guys okay? What the hell?”
“Yeah, we escaped, it’s all good, but when we got back to the hotel our suite was trashed. Whoever abducted us stole the hotel keycard.”
“Did you contact the police?”
“No, no, I wanted to speak to you first. We don’t know what to do for the best.”
“Are you injured? Do you need medical attention?”
“We got roofied and we’re a little bashed up. They locked us in a cabin on a river boat.”
“I didn’t get a ransom demand,” Roz stated.
“We got out before they could do anything like that…but we’re gonna need a make-up artist to cover our bruises.”
“Feh! First the attempted stabbing in Paris, and now an abduction? Do you have another stalker?”
“No, I don’t think I have another stalker. No idea who did this,” I insisted.
“Jack, have you spoken to Lucy?” Roz enquired.
“Not yet. We’ve just had breakfast and we need a nap first, we’re exhausted,” he said meekly.
“Damn it, Jack. This is serious, you need to call her. I’ll give you ten minutes to fill her in, and then I need to get Freiberg and Maritime on a conference call to decide what we should do. I don’t want you or Nate to leave your hotel rooms, you hear?”
“We’re together. The manager put us in the penthouse suite,” I informed
“Good. Jack, call Lucy, and then get some rest. I’ll be in touch as soon as we have a plan.” Roz hung up and I slumped down into the couch. I was overtaken by a wave of exhaustion that made my need to go to bed stronger.
“Rain check on the fucking?” I suggested sluggishly as I leaned over and kissed Jack on the lips.
“Yeah,” he said, sounding as dog tired as me.
I made my way to the enticing huge bed, and pulled back the light summer duvet.
I dropped my bathrobe to the bedroom floor and climbed naked onto the cool sheet, laying my head back against the soft buoyant pillows.
I faintly heard Jack on the phone, speaking with Lucy I supposed, but I was asleep in seconds.
“Hey, hey, time to wake!” A rough male Asian voice said. The words were followed by a sharp slap to my cheek. What the hell? That hurt! My head felt swimmy and my limbs heavy, like a dream where you can’t move or escape. I hated dreams like that.
“Come on, come on, I know you faking.” The slaps became rougher and my tooth caught on my lip.
I winced, tasting copper on my tongue. My mouth was an arid desert and it wouldn’t work properly to tell the man to fuck off and let me sleep.
Was I drunk? I tried to open my eyes to find out what the hell was going on?
Open, close, open, close.
Each time the blurry vision before me was of a grinning Chinese man, way too close to my face for comfort and his breath smelled awful.
There was a bright, blinding light around him like a halo and he wore the malevolent grin of a fairy-tale villain.
Was I being assaulted by that evil dude from The Smurfs, what was his name… Gargamel?
“Jun Hie, we don’t have time to wait for this prick to wake up himself, try this,” another voice said.
This one had an East Coast American accent with a brutish, military edge to it.
The splash of cold water over my head made me startle, and then my chin was gripped and water was forcibly poured into my mouth.
Reflexively I swallowed it. I knew I was sitting, my legs were tied to a chair, my hands bound behind it.
To my left there was a gargling, then coughing sound.
“Don’t give too much or he choke. He a fucking movie star. Do you know how much he worth in ransom?” another man scolded.
“What the fuck?” Then I heard a scuffling sound, “Hey, what the hell is this? Untie me fuckers! This isn’t’ funny!
” a terrified British voice said. Jack…Jack was with me, he was tied up too, and he was scared.
That woke me up; I didn’t want Jack to feel scared.
I opened my eyes to see construction lamps surrounded us and the bright light stabbed at my eyes.
There were four men, the ugly one, and further back, outside of the ring of light was the silhouette of American one, while two thuggish men stood over Jack.
I considered them for a moment, raking my eyes over them all, committing what I could see of their faces to my memory for when we escaped and we went to the authorities.
Then it hit me…something I’d learned from interrogation training.
If a criminal lets you see their face, they don’t care that you can ID them because they plan to kill you.
I hoped that wasn’t true because my life had just started to get really interesting again.
I wanted us to survive and finally make good on our sexy promise to one another.
“Did…did you drug us? That’s just so…fuckin’ unnecessary, man!” I slurred petulantly as I wriggled, trying to break the cable ties on my ankles and wrists. It had been way easier during training, but I guess then we weren’t recovering from sedation.
“Ah, there he is, a cheeky little shit, just like papa!” a man said. What the hell did he mean I was just like papa? My dad passed away a long, long time ago so how did he know anything about him? I tried to sit straighter and pin the man with an angry stare.
“Looks just like him too,” he laughed. “All bark, no bite,” he lurched for me, “ARF, ARF, ARF,” he barked like a rabid mutt and I reared my head back.
“The movie posters all over the city…what a gift they were!” the American said amusedly. “We knew he would find a way to get in touch.”
What the hell were these guys talking about? The American stood far back and I couldn’t see his face clearly, but his form was a little lopsided.
“Hey, Jack, Jack, you okay?” I called.
“Uggghh…What’sss okay even mean?” he moaned. “My head feels like it’s been dipped in toffee,”
“Where is he?” The Chinese brute roared.
“Fhuuuck sake,” Jack slurred. “Can you keep the volume down? Have a little consideration…headache!” he huffed.
The brute stalked over and stood in front of Jack; his feral stare pinned on the man I wanted to be my boyfriend…
even thinking the word felt strange…but that thought was a revelation!
I wanted to date Jack Boyd, not just have a short fling.
Jack looked up, glaring at his captor. “You’re not very good at this intimidation thingy, are you?
” he said unfazed. I wasn’t sure if he was being brave or stupid.
“Look, we’re not psychic, tell us who you’re looking for and if we can help, we’ll tell you where to find them.
It’s quite simple,” he suggested matter-of-factly.
“He goes by many names. John Drake, Christopher Hurst, Matthew Prince, Curtis Hale,” the brute barked.
“Nope! Sorry, not a clue, never heard any of those names before. You can let us go now,” Jack deadpanned.
I met Jack’s dark eyes, sending him an urgent glare.
I noticed that his smart mouth had gotten him smacked around worse than me and seeing the welt on his cheek, below his eye lit a fire inside me.
How dare they touch him, how fucking dare they harm a hair on his head.
I hoped to communicate with my eyes that he needed to shut the fuck up.
If these men were really looking for my dad, they were twelve years too late.
I’d tell them exactly where they could find him.
“If I tell you, you’ll let us go?” I bargained.
“Sure, sure,” Jun Hie said. “Where is sneaky-thief papa hiding?”
“Papa?” Jack said in confusion but I ignored him. I’d explain later.
“You’ll need a pen and paper.”
“I use phone notes,” Jun Hie said, drawing a device from his back pocket. “Go”
I took a long, dramatic pause before saying, “You’ll find a grave marker at…River View cemetery, Portland, Oregon, in the USA. Now, you can let us go?”
The two goons looked at one another and there was a beat of tense silence, creaking of timbers in an old house, and wind lashing against windows. Then all four men burst out into peals of laughter, laughing so hard that the American doubled up.
“What the fuck?” Jack looked horrified. “I thought your dad was dead?”
“He is,” I ground out as I struggled in my restraints.
The Asian man staggered to a chair to sit down.
I was appalled and confused by the callous reaction.
Losing my dad destroyed me. It left a hole in my entire family.
Clearly, someone had stolen my late-father’s identity to use for something criminal, and these…
these ghouls were mocking our family’s pain. I was outraged.
“You believed all that shit the US government told you?” the American snickered.
“What are you talking about?”
“The CIA spins a great yarn when it suits them,” he said.
“What was it, an accident?” he said mockingly.
“No remains left to identify, but here’s a tin of ashes,” he grinned.
“Please accept our thoughts and prayers, oh, here, this suitcase of cash is a gift from the government. Wha, wha, wha!” he said in a derisive tone while miming rubbing tears from his eyes.
A shiver ran through me. That was exactly what we’d been told. There’d been an accident at a petroleum refinery in Saudi Arabia, no remains left to identify.
“Last time I see your old man was three weeks ago at Shanghai Pudong airport,” Jun Hie stated. “He very alive. He stole something that belong to my government. Where is Curtis Hale?”
****
I woke, my panicky breaths coming fast and deep, as if I’d been running.
Sweat prickled my skin and I’d kicked the covers off me.
Holy shit! Was that a dream or a memory?
I was in a huge soft bed. I reached out to caress silken, warm skin.
“Jack,” I sighed. Jack was here, sleeping beside me, unharmed.
The relief was palpable. In the nightmare I was restrained, and questioned.
I was told in a mocking sneer that my father was alive and was involved in something…
criminal. There must be some kind of mistake, my father wasn’t alive…
if he was that would mean he’d abandoned us and stayed away for twelve years.
He’d lived for our family, and when I was growing up, he worked hard to provide a good life for us.
He wouldn’t abandon us like that! Someone had stolen his identity, they must have!
I recalled a storyline on Cracksman where my character searched public records to get the names of dead people to use for his new identities.
That must be it…someone stole my dad’s identity. Maybe they’d stolen our boat too?
I sat up, grabbed for a bottle of water on the nightstand, and rested my head back against the padded headboard. As I glugged the whole bottle of water I listened to Jack’s gentle snores. Within a few minutes the anxiety of the dream subsided but I still felt off balance.
Sprawled on his belly, Jack slept in a starfish position.
I lifted the crisp white sheet that covered his lower half to see, yep, from his head to the tips of his toes, he was a dripping dream.
I wanted to wake him, to kiss down his spine, and then slowly finger and eat out his ass.
Then I’d replace my fingers with my rigid dick.
Hmm, that was a lovely though, but I didn’t act on it.
As long as we had the stolen chips in our possession we were in danger.
It was then that I made a decision. I couldn’t stay here and wonder if my memories were a dream or reality.
I needed to know for sure if my dad’s identity was stolen by criminals, or if he was miraculously alive, and he put me, and my lover in danger.
****