“Well, I need to use the bathroom,” Mary said, “but I’m not looking forward to asking for that either.”
“Not only that,” Shelly said, “they were here with me for a long time, and then they got up and left.” She checked the clock up on the wall. “It’s almost time.”
“Time for what?”
“For my friend to arrive. They said forty minutes at first, but he was still stuck at the airport.”
“You can’t get anywhere in forty minutes if you’re still at the airport,” she said. “Have you seen the traffic there lately?”
“I know,” she said. “So Shane said no way, but that he’d be here in two hours, and we’re coming up on that. So I suspect that, when they come back here again, it’ll be to haul me out.”
“Oh, my gosh, aren’t you terrified?”
“I don’t know about terrified,” she admitted, trying to hide how nervous she really was inside, “but I’m certainly not looking forward to this next step of whatever nightmare is going on here.”
“No,” Mary said, “me either. I just want to go home.”
Just then the door opened. Both women were momentarily startled and stared at the man who stood there. It was the one they had called Joe. He looked at Mary, then looked at Shelly and pointed. “You, come on.”
She hopped to her feet and said, “Mary here has to go to the bathroom,” she murmured.
He looked at Mary, then shrugged and said, “That’s nice.”
“Well, it won’t be nice if there’s an accident,” Shelly said. “The least you can do is take her to the washroom.” He hesitated for a moment. She shrugged and said, “I’ll sit here and wait.”
He looked at Mary and said, “You have to go, huh?”
She immediately nodded. “Yes, please.”
He nodded. “Come on then. You first.”
Then Mary stood, shot Shelly a grateful look, and said, “Thank you.”
At that, the older man sighed and said, “Hurry up. Let’s go.”
Mary moved out the door ahead of him, and the door swung shut immediately, leaving Shelly all alone.
Geared up in a pair of overalls, Shane was already down in the sewer tunnels, standing just underneath the office building. “What the hell are we doing from here?” He studied the great big circular doorways that connected sewer tunnel to sewer tunnel, wondering how he was supposed to get through this next one because it wasn’t opening. He had C-4 in his backpack but didn’t want to take the chance of alerting any kidnapper that somebody was in the tunnels. He pulled his phone out and sent Gavin a message. Can’t open the last door.
Give it a minute. We’re working with the city right now.
He groaned and looked at Diesel. “They’re working on it, but we’re running out of time.”
Diesel nodded. “Maybe it’s just stuck. There’s two of us,” he said, “let’s give it a try. See if we can put our weight together and get this done. Otherwise we’ll have to blast the damn thing open because the kidnappers are expecting us at any moment.”
“I know,” Shane replied. With the two of them on the wheel, they worked at it until it finally gave. With that seal snapped open, they pushed their way into the center area of the telecom building. After that, they climbed up one level into a basement that let them into the utility area of the huge office building above. They quickly stripped down out of their protective gear and stashed it out of sight, then got their weapons ready and headed for the stairs. They had a map of the building and hoped to get up as high as they could undetected.
“You sure you want to trust that she’s on the seventh floor?”
“Yes,” he said. “We both attended Smithville for only the seventh grade. That is one thing I do trust.”
“Okay,” he said, “but you’re putting an awful lot on her memory.”
“No. She’s just the kind of person who would think of something like that,” he said. “Besides, we need something to go by, so I’ll go by that.” Diesel frowned but didn’t say anything. Shane understood his hesitancy. Diesel didn’t know Shelly the way Shane did. By the time they neared the fifth floor, there had been no sign of anyone. “Did the police clear out the rest of the building?” Shane asked.
“They did.”
“Great,” he said. “I want to go as far as the sixth, then take the elevator up.”
“And what will you do when that door opens?”
“Well, I won’t be there,” he said, and he walked to the bank of elevators and quickly set each one for the seventh floor. When all six were on the way, he moved down the hall to the service elevator and from there he headed up to the seventh floor, on his own with Diesel. As soon as it opened, they came out with guns front and ready. But nobody was there. Frowning, he moved to the next hallway.
It was a huge building that looked to have at least forty different offices up here, and they were on the far side. At least they were on the same floor now as Shelly, but they had to get into the room where Shelly was held. As soon as they headed down one of the hallways, they knew they were going the right direction when they came across two bodies in the hallway—men who had been shot and killed for probably no other reason than the fact that they were heading for the elevator.
Shane took a photo, sent it to Gavin, shook his head, and kept on going. With semiautomatic rifles in hand, they moved slowly from hallway to hallway.
“What are you thinking about how best to get into the actual office?” Diesel whispered.
“Well, they’ll let us in if we show ourselves,” he said, “but there is another service elevator. I’d like to go up one floor and then come down.”
“Which means that you’ll be very late.”
“Maybe, unless Gavin’s doing his job.”
“I guess it depends on if they can get a hold of him, huh?” Diesel said.
“Well, the kidnappers will be waiting because it’s me they want after all.” Finding another service elevator, he and Diesel quickly hopped up one floor and, once on the eighth floor, headed to the spot where Shane figured they’d been standing, just one floor below. “Now we have the offices at this end of the building,” he said. “So what we need is that schematic to show us just which area we can go through into the washroom.” Once they got a look, they realized the plumbing was stacked from floor to floor. “That’s convenient.”
“Well, it is for the plumbers,” Diesel said. “It’s also normal construction.”
They quickly made their way into the bathroom, and, looking at the floor and the ceiling, Shane said, “Let’s get through the vents.” They quickly cut open one of the walls and found one of the big metal HVAC ducts. But they would have to cut into that as well. And that wouldn’t be quite so easy. They had brought the tools, but it would take time.
When they finished that and had moved inside the men’s bathroom, one floor below, their target floor, they had used up all the free time they could possibly have. They looked at each other and left the semiautomatics behind, stashed in the vents they came out of. With just handguns, they stepped out of the restroom into the hallway. With Diesel going left, Shane took a right. Just as he headed around the corner, he heard a woman speaking.