Chapter 5 #3
She sighed and continued. “The next thing I knew, I was bundled up and tossed into the back of a vehicle.” She rubbed her arms, trying to lessen the cold that had crept up on her. “I believe we were drugged. I had a sore arm after that for a while. It was such a nightmare.”
“So, then you traveled?”
“I don’t know where, when, or how, not even a time frame,” she noted, “but yes. We seemed to be on the move forever.”
“I didn’t see anything on your arm,” Rubin shared, getting up and walking over to her. She pointed out the spot, and he nodded. “A tiny spot is there.”
“I’m not lying,” she declared, looking up at him.
“No, of course not,” he said, smiling at her. “I’m not accusing you. I’m just upset at myself for missing it.”
She gave a few more details and then ran out of steam. She sipped her coffee, wishing that the memories would not keep haunting her.
Rubin patted her hand. “It will get easier.”
She glanced over at him, a wry smile on her face, and asked, “Will it though?”
“Yeah, it will,” he said.
“Good,” she whispered, “because I really don’t want to keep remembering all this.” She glanced at him and asked, “Were the other women definitely not involved?”
“We haven’t found any connection between Sam and Shirley and the kidnappers, nor motives for them to be targeted, but we can’t necessarily be sure yet. We need more information. We’re all on the lookout for more intel. The two other women would likely have been grabbed just to make you cooperate.”
She winced and sighed. “Yes,” she muttered. “That would have been a good strategy. I would be coerced by that, so that was a good guess on their part.”
Hayden looked at her, a smile on his face. “Not really a guess, since most women tend to be the same in that regard,” he shared. “It’s just something these guys tend to count on.”
“That’s really shitty,” she said. “I know that everybody considers us the weaker sex, but we aren’t weaker in terms of our disposition.”
“No, but you’re softer, … gentler,” Hayden clarified, and, seeing her expression, he rolled his eyes.
“Let’s face it. If it comes to seeing one of your friends tortured or even a random woman beaten badly—even if you don’t have a clue who she is—most women will give their attacker whatever they want. ”
She felt all the heat leaving her face as the thought alone rattled her. She nodded. “Absolutely,” she whispered.
“Which is also interesting why they still were focused on harming Sam and Shirley,” Hayden shared, studying her, “because they obviously knew that they had the right person when they kidnapped you, Tricia.”
“But I didn’t have anything to offer,” she pointed out. “Double Chin, the asshole who kept me in his little hut, had absolutely no compunction about beating me, making my life miserable.”
Rubin put a hand on hers, and it calmed her a bit.
“That doubled-chinned bastard gave me barely enough food and water to stay alive, no way to keep warm, and just the filthy clothes I was wearing when they grabbed me.”
“Did he, … at any point in time, did he try to force …” Rubin hesitated, not sure if he should ask this question.
She turned to Rubin and shook her head. “No, he didn’t appear to be sexually interested, and believe me, that was something I worried about.”
“Of course,” he agreed, “and the good news is that we don’t have to worry about him anymore. He’s not coming back.”
“I guess,” she muttered, “but honestly, the whole thing is just too much, but, hey, we can now have another outcome to that damn vote.” She tried but couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.
“Even thinking they went after me because of my father’s vote is just, … it’s just wrong,” she cried out.
The men agreed with her, but she also knew that this was the world her father lived in, and, like it or not, it was the life he had chosen.
She hadn’t, but apparently she had no choice in the matter.
She looked at the others and asked, “So, if this is literally just a case of sit tight and wait for the paperwork to be processed, what are we looking at timewise? Two or three days?”
“Three days for us to drive across Kazakhstan, hopefully without any delays, and for the vote to be over too,” Rubin clarified.
She groaned. “Fine, three days it is then, and are we safe here?”
He hesitated, as all of them turned to Rubin.
She frowned. “Why are they looking at you like that? What’s going on?”
“Because, just before you got up, we were voting as to whether we should stay here or continue to be on the move.”
She shook her head. “I vote we stay.”
“Of course you do,” Hayden noted, “but that doesn’t mean it’s the right decision. You’re looking for comfort and a chance to de-stress, to unwind, and to find a center of gravity again. We’re looking at safety for you and for us, and that must be dictated by circumstances, not preferences.”
Tricia groaned. “So, what you really mean to say is, I get to follow orders, and you guys get to make all the decisions. I have no choice but to follow you guys?”
“Somewhat,” Hayden conceded, with a chuckle. “Yep, that’s pretty well it.”
She glared at him, then turned to Rubin, and asked, “Is that it?”
“Yes,” he conceded, “but look at it from a different point of view. Our job, first and foremost, is to keep you safe.”
She snorted. “But it’s to keep me safe so nobody can pressure my father to influence his decision on this vote?”
“Yes, it seems so,” he agreed.
“But that could also mean that I wasn’t necessarily kidnapped by people wanting him to make the wrong vote but possibly by people who wanted to ensure the wrong vote didn’t happen.
So, in that case, I could have been kidnapped by the people working for the right vote.
” She shook her head. “Did anybody ever think about it that way?”
The men studied her, and she nodded. “I didn’t think so.” She got up, poured herself another cup of coffee, then turned back to them. “I’ll go back and lie down.”
“Are you feeling okay?” Rubin asked her.
“Yeah. This crap always pisses me off.”
“Does your father know how you feel about politics?”
“Absolutely, but he always told me that my opinion didn’t matter and that it was his life, not mine. He was never the touchy-feely type.”
“Do you think he’ll still feel that way now that you’ve been kidnapped because of his work?”
“I’m pretty sure it won’t matter,” she replied, turning to him.
“At the end of the day, my father would say that his voice is the one that counts, and I don’t get a say in anything.
So, if you’re looking for him to understand my position, you’ll be barking up the wrong tree. That has never been my father.”
“Sounds rough.”
“I learned to live with it. I was taught from a very young age that it was a dog-eat-dog world, and, if you weren’t leading the pack, you would be sucked into the food chain, devoured, and left for dead.
So, it doesn’t matter how much I don’t like his philosophy and methodologies.
Even when I was stuck in that hut with a madman, I kept hearing my father’s voice, telling me about how to survive, how to get through life when things were less than optimal. ”
She shrugged. “So I owe him thanks for that, at least.” She shook her head. “Yet I absolutely hate this world that they gave birth to me in. Because this is absolutely no way for a child to live.”
And, with that, she turned and walked back to her bedroom.
*
Rubin noted hours had passed since Tricia had gone back to her bedroom. It had been interesting listening to Hayden’s and Trent’s opinions, since neither had considered her point. Yet it was valid, since the other side could be playing games here.
That was a possibility that Rubin too had missed completely. It could be people were making sure that Senator Forman followed the rules either way. But Tricia, as a pawn, was pissed off about all of it, and he couldn’t blame her.
She’d been to hell and back over this, and a college friend of hers, or at least an acquaintance, had been killed and another severely injured. If those were the consequences of being related to a US senator, as it appeared to be, it was a sad world for everybody.
He looked over at the rest of the team. “We’ll need someone to man the stove too. We need food, and we need it fast.”
“I brought some groceries with me,” Hayden shared, “but it won’t be enough for the duration.”
Rubin added, “Hopefully it’ll be enough for a few days.”
“Yet, if we’re on the move again,” Hayden noted, glancing toward the hallway where Tricia’s bedroom was, “I’m leaning toward getting out of here sooner than later.”
“Me too,” Trent agreed.
“I’m not sure why,” Oakley admitted, “but my instincts are clamoring to move.”
“That’s three of us,” Hayden stated. “I’m absolutely on board with that.”
Rubin repeated, “We still need a good meal to get out of here today and to move on to the next place.”
“We have to find a place first,” Trent pointed out.
Oakley replied, “I just got a message in from Mason.”
“And?” Trent asked.
“We have another location, a safe house, and we need to get going,” Oakley confirmed. “We’re just waiting for the address.”
“Get it then,” Rubin said and walked out of the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” Trent asked.
“To wake her up.”
Rubin stepped into her bedroom, hating to wake her, but, after the last conversation they had had with Tricia, with the instincts they were all feeling, plus that last message from Mason, they were moving now.
He gave her a gentle shake on the shoulder, but she didn’t respond. He gave her a harder shake and then called her name. As soon as he did, her eyes flew open, and she bolted backward, scrambling up against the wall into the corner.
He reached out a hand, trying to calm her down. “Easy, it’s just me. … It’s Rubin.”
She took a deep breath, then released it slowly and muttered, “Jesus, you scared the crap out of me. My heart is pounding so hard.”
“I’m sorry, but we have to go, right now.”
“Now?”
“Yeah, we’re moving. So get up, gather the little bit you have, which I know is nothing,” he said, “but we can’t leave anything behind, and we must be out of here in five.
” With that, he walked toward the door and turned to confirm that she was moving.
She was already scrambling out of bed, tossing the duvet out of her way, and racing to the bathroom. At least she took him seriously.
And she seemed to understand. It was unnerving to realize that she trusted him enough to jump out of bed like that, following his orders without a word, despite her earlier statements against it.
Shrugging it off, he headed to the kitchen and helped to gather the food they had. By the time he made it to the front door with Hayden, she was there, waiting. Trent and Oakley were already outside.
“How are we doing this?” she asked.
He quickly grabbed her arm and explained, “We’re going out single file. Don’t say a word. It’s really dark out there, and we must get in the vehicle and out of here as quietly as possible.”
She nodded mutely and didn’t ask any questions.
Hayden was the first to slip out.
As soon as he was gone, Rubin turned to her and whispered, “Your turn. … Let’s go.” He closed the door and locked it behind him. Then, with a quick gesture, motioned for her to go ahead of him.
It was pitch-black outside, and Hayden had melted into it quickly.
Rubin looked out into the darkness, his gaze quickly adjusting, and he followed her, keeping Tricia an arm’s distance away.
When she veered off to one side slightly, he nudged her gently, guiding her to the vehicle, off to the side in the dark.
She scrambled toward it, and he quickly opened the back door.
She got in, and he slid into the front passenger seat.
Hayden was already in the driver’s seat and put the car into Reverse.
Without any lights on, he slowly let it roll down the hill, turning onto the road without ever using the brakes, so the brake lights wouldn’t come on and alert anybody.
Once he was on the main highway, he immediately picked up speed.
It was a straight run now. After a few minutes on the road, he turned on the headlights and hit the gas, tearing off into the night.
When Rubin turned to look into the back seat, Tricia was curled up against her door, with Oakley on the other side. “All good?”
“All good.” Her knees were pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her knees. She had her seat belt on and her hoodie pulled down around her face.
It was Rubin’s hoodie, one that he had left in the vehicle earlier. He smiled at the way she looked. “If you can go back to sleep, go for it,” he suggested.
Her head jerked his way, her eyes currently huge wells of fear and uncertainty. “Why are we moving?”
“We got a message that our position might have been compromised, so we’re doing what we need to do.”
She just nodded, didn’t say anything, and slowly sank back into her seat. He watched her take deep breaths, calming herself down. Soon she relaxed and muttered, “I hope the intel was good.”
He laughed. “We always react as if the intel is good. That keeps us safely moving forward in the right direction.”
She nodded, laid her head against her knees, and appeared to go to sleep.
When Hayden’s phone rang, she jerked up, then realizing it was simply a ringtone, sat back, watching warily. Rubin just nodded at her, and she relaxed a bit.
Hayden pulled out his phone and handed it to Rubin.
He confirmed they were out safely. There had been no sign of anybody around them in any direction, or Trent would have called otherwise. Right now they were the only lights on the highway. Still, it wasn’t necessarily a solid indication that they had gotten away safely. He returned Hayden’s phone.
“Something just occurred to me,” Oakley noted, his voice barely a whisper.
“What’s that?”
“Bug.”
“Didn’t get a chance to”—Hayden gave a quick glance in his direction—“check the vehicle for a bug.”
Rubin frowned as he thought about it. He shook his head. “In theory that should not be possible.” Yet the concept still made him uneasy.
“We can pull off up here and take a quick look.” When a pullout presented itself, Hayden quickly pulled in.
Oakley exited the car and pulled out a small kit. He searched all around and underneath the vehicle, also checking under the hood and in the trunk. He returned and handed the detector to Rubin, declaring, “The outside’s clear.”
Rubin did a quick check on the inside, on the front seat, and then, without trying to upset Tricia, he crawled into the back seat and did a quick sweep, including Tricia again.
As soon as he was done, he got back in the front seat, nodding to Hayden. “Seems we’re clear.”
“For now,” Hayden muttered, returning his attention to driving, and they were on their way.