CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Three days later and it felt like a prison at Tommy and Grace’s house.
Outside were policemen and FBI agents guarding the gate right alongside Tommy’s massive grounds security, and the press was standing around making a circus out of it with wall-to-wall coverage even though they knew TJ hadn’t shot anybody and was cleared by the police.
But because he was a Gabrini, they were riding that horse for ratings anyway.
Outside was lively and festive. But inside was like a morgue.
Because of the strangeness of the situation, and their inability to figure any of it out, all of the Gabrini and Sinatra families came to Seattle to shelter in place together.
The only exceptions were that Oz Drakos kept his wife, who was Mick’s daughter Gloria, along with their baby, under his protection in Florida.
Mob boss Frankie “The Monk” Paletti kept his wife, who was Big Daddy’s daughter Ashley, under his protection in Jersey.
And businessman and government assassin Trevor Reese, Hammer’s younger brother, kept his wife, who was Big Daddy’s other daughter Carly, along with their baby, under his watchful eye in Boston.
But even in the game room and the family room where the younger people were hanging out, and where Teddy and Nikki were in charge, you could hear a pin drop.
And although Mick and Hammer were on the phone nonstop trying to find out whatever they could, it was just as solemn in the living room.
Grace, Gemma and Trina, and Roz, Amelia and Charles “Big Daddy” Sinatra and his wife Jenay, along with TJ and GG, were all sitting around in stunned silence.
Tommy, Reno, and Sal were also in the living room.
The same day TJ’s device was disabled, and when none of the kidnappers were reaching out to Grace nor Tommy, the threesome had flown to the Bahamas to try and find Destiny and her baby themselves.
They met up with Sal’s capos and Big Daddy, who were already there, along with a huge contingent of local private detectives Big Daddy had already hired.
They searched wherever they could search, but turned up no clues whatsoever.
Then they flew to Jamaica, all in the hope of finding Destiny and the baby or at least some clue to where they were or what happened to them but they found nothing there either.
She was no longer answering those phone calls she had answered every time before TJ’s implant was disabled, and none of her friends had heard from her for days. They assumed she was just having that much fun. Just as Tommy and Grace had assumed. They could not believe how wrong they were.
They spent two full days in the Bahamas and Jamaica searching and searching, but they turned up blanks. Nobody knew anything.
When they returned to Seattle, it felt as if they had wasted their time.
From all the information that was finally gathered, it appeared as if Destiny and the baby never made it to the Caribbean at all.
There was just no proof of their arrival anywhere.
Now they were back to square one, sitting in that living room too, feeling as helpless as lambs.
They knew no more than they knew the moment that implant was disabled.
“All these damn cops,” Reno said as he stood at the window. “Hanging at that gate laughing and talking but doing no kind of investigations. Just hanging around collecting a paycheck. They just gum up the works, that’s all they do. Just get in the way.”
“I know that’s right,” agreed Roz. “Why haven’t they told us anything? We’ve been waiting here for three days straight and nobody knows anything? It’s crazy.”
But Tommy and Grace, and TJ and GG, couldn’t even speak.
It was ten a.m. on the third day, and not one of them had slept for more than half-an-hour all three days.
All four sat on one sofa together, with Tommy in between Grace and TJ and both hugged up against him, while GG sat on his lap dozing in and out.
Any time one of her nannies tried to put her to bed, she’d wake up crying and asking for Destiny. Tommy told them to let her stay.
And once again Grace tried to phone Destiny.
“She doesn’t have possession of her phone, Grace,” Hammer said to her.
He had just ended his latest phone call.
Everybody looked at him. “They undoubtedly took her phone early on, hooked it up to their remote system, and whenever a call came in, they instructed her on what to say and what not to say. We tried location pinging on her phone and other methods to at least get some geographical data on her whereabouts, but we got nothing. They know what they’re doing. ”
“But why don’t they make a demand?” asked a still-distressed Grace. “We’ll pay them anything.”
They all knew Grace was assuming Destiny and the baby were still alive.
Which, to all them, looked extremely doubtful.
But whenever somebody even attempted to bring it up, Grace shot it down.
“No way,” she said. “I would know if my child left this earth. I would know it. I’d feel something deep inside somewhere.
But I’m not feeling that. I tell you I’m not.
My child and grandchild are not dead. They’re not! ”
Tommy pulled Grace tighter against him. His heart was breaking for her and their children.
What was happening, and why was it happening was still an unexplained mystery to him.
TJ was saved by disabling that implant, and he was grateful to Hammer for that.
But in saving his son, they might have lost their daughter and grandchild.
It was a devastating situation no matter how they sliced it.
And although he couldn’t figure out what it could be, Tommy couldn’t shake the feeling that it all had something to do with him.
The only good news in any of it was that the few students that were hiding in that cafeteria and videoed the massacre on their phones, showed clearly that Jaden told the truth: TJ didn’t shoot anybody.
Those phone videos showed that it wasn’t until after the three gunmen had shot up the place did they grab TJ, gave him a gun, and then ordered him to follow them.
He followed them because he was told, when they implanted that device, that his family would be killed, and he would too, if he didn’t do exactly what he was told.
And he did. But he never once shot anybody.
“What about those three gunmen?” asked Trina. “Have they been found?”
“No,” said Hammer. “They did their dirt and left the school. The plan was to leave TJ holding the bag.”
“But why?” asked Tommy.
Hammer shook his head. “Hell if I know.”
Then Tommy’s phone rang. Everybody jumped.
He removed his hand from around TJ, pulled it out, and looked at the Caller ID. “It’s an unknown number,” he said, and everybody paid attention. You could hear a feather drop in that room.
Tommy placed the call on Speaker and answered quickly. “Hello?”
“Tommy Gabrini?”
It was a disguised male voice. “Yes, this is he.”
“You won. Happy now?”
“Who is this?” Tommy asked, but then the call ended. “Hello?” He was panicking. “Who is this? Don’t hang up dammit!”
“You won?” Grace asked. “He calls this winning when we don’t even know where our own child--”
Grace was interrupted by the sound of their front door flying open and Robby Yale running up the foyer into the living room. He was yelling something wildly, but nobody could understand him. Everybody was on their feet by the time he made it to the living room.
“What is it, Robby? What are you saying?” Sal asked him.
“They’re at the gate!” he cried. “They’re at the gate! They’re at the gate!”
“Who’s at the gate?” Amelia was asking, but Tommy, with GG in his arms, and Grace and TJ, and everybody in that room was running for the front door. Amelia was running too, although she was still asking her question.
But Robby was leading the pack outside. He didn’t have time to answer. And when everybody got outside and looked and saw that the gate had opened and there was Destiny with her baby boy in her arms running their way, they cried out just like Robby had done and raced to get to her first.
Even with GG in his arms, Tommy won the race.
He sat GG down and pulled his daughter and grandson into his arms and could not stop crying.
When Destiny saw Grace, she fell into her mother’s arms crying too. “I thought I’d never see you again, Mommy,” she kept saying. “I thought I’d never see any of you again!”
Everybody were touching her and hugging her and TJ and GG couldn’t stop crying either. There wasn’t a dry eye out there. Even the cops were affected.
“Let’s get her inside,” Hammer said as he looked around to make sure there was no sneak attacks on the horizon. And they all went inside.
The Feds wanted entry, but Hammer wouldn’t allow it. “She’ll come down to the station tomorrow and give a statement,” he said. “But right now she’s going to be with her family.”
The cops and the FBI knew they had to step back. There was nobody who was going to tell Hammer Reese that he was out of line and overstepping his bounds, although they all knew he was. But law enforcement left the Gabrini house.
Once inside, and after all of the emotions had been poured out, Tommy and Grace had Destiny sandwiched between them, with TJ and GG on the floor between their parents’ legs. The baby was in Grace’s arms.
And Destiny was telling them what happened to her and her child.
“We never left Seattle,” she said.
“What happened to Owen?” Tommy asked. Owen was the young man, her latest rich boyfriend, that she was going to the Bahamas with. “We couldn’t find him anywhere.”
“We boarded his small plane expecting him to be onboard, but the next thing I know the doors were shut and I was taken to the back of the plane and that’s when I saw him.
” She looked at her father. “Before I got onboard, they had shot him in the head. He was dead,” she said with a broken voice, and Tommy held her closer against him.
“Then they flew me and Danny to some location. I knew it wasn’t far because it took only a few minutes, as if we were going from one side of town to the next.”
“Or more likely from one airport to a private airfield,” said Mick.
“I’ll see if my people can find some video,” said Hammer as he began texting his assistant.
“Did they mistreat you?” TJ asked.
“No. They just kept me blindfolded and tied up the entire time. They kept Danny beside me, in a bassinet, and left bottles for me to feed him.”
“Why did you say Jamaica and not the Bahamas when I called you?” Grace asked.
“Whenever I got a phone call, somebody was speaking in my ear telling me what to say. The reason I said Jamaica the last time you called me was because they thought that was where me and Owen were heading. They got the location wrong. But I thought that could help me, so I didn’t correct them.”
“It did help you,” said Tommy. “It made your mother realize something was wrong.”
“What happened next?” Big Daddy asked.
“They took me and the baby off the plane, put us in an SUV, and then we drove something like maybe half an hour to another location. And that’s where we were the whole time ya’ll thought we were on vacation. But we wasn’t,” she said and the tears returned.
Tommy leaned her against him. “It’s alright, baby,” he said. “It’s alright.”
Destiny sat back upright. “When I got that first phone call from Mommy, after we’d been locked up for some hours, I thought I was going to lose it. But they told me if I didn’t say everything they told me to say, they were going to kill Ma and you too Daddy, and TJ and GG too.”
“That’s what they told me,” said TJ. “So I knew I had to toughen up and do whatever they said.”
“Did they ever mention TJ and what he was doing?” asked Hammer.
She shook her head. “No sir. What happened to TJ?”
“They implanted me,” he said, and she looked at him. “It’s a long story. But I saw the men that implanted me. They didn’t try to hide their faces. I worked with a sketch artist to try to identify them, but I’m not sure if I remember right.”
“What about you, Des?” asked Sal. “Did you hear any music or any private conversations or anything like that?”
“I didn’t hear anything, Uncle Sal. I believed I was in that place by myself for the entire time. I think they put me in that building and left. And never came back.”
“Just like you said, Hammer,” said Reno. “We’re dealing with remote control assholes.”
“Go on, baby,” Grace said. “How did they set y’all free?”
“It was crazy because it was like just after I hung up from you. Only I never had my phone. They took that too. I was talking over some intercom system or something like that. They had my phone hooked up to their system apparently because when you called my phone, Mommy, it rang over the intercom. But they were never there with me.”
“But how did you get free?” Mick asked her.
“They had some type of electronic handcuffs on my wrists and my ankles and just after I hung up from you that last time, they all opened up and I was free.”
“That had to be after they realized TJ’s device had been disabled,” said Tommy.
“Right,” said Hammer.
“After I was no longer in cuffs, two men came into the room. They kept me blindfolded so I couldn’t see their faces.
They never said a word to me, but they took me and the baby to a van, threw me in the back, handed me my baby, and then the van drove off.
I knew it was a van by the way the doors closed me in.
And then they let us out right around the corner from our house.
By the time I was able to remove the blindfold, the van was gone.
They were gone. And I held Danny as tight as I could and ran home. ”
She fell against Grace crying again. And TJ sat on his mother’s lap along with Danny and did the same. GG got on Tommy’s lap and was crying too.
But Tommy was angry. Reno and Sal were too. It was as if they put their family through all of this hell, and with all those students dead, as if they were toying with them. But why? What was the point? And why on earth did that guy insist that Tommy had won?
Tommy looked at Hammer and Mick. “You ever seen anything like this?” he asked them as his face couldn’t hide his anguish.
Hammer was quick to respond. “Never,” he said. “And I thought I saw it all.”
And even Mick, who’d seen it all too, shook his head.