Girl Undercover 10 & 11: The Abduction & Dante's Inferno (13 page)

“It’s done now and it’s installing. Should be done shortly.”

Tim motioned for Javier to get the laptop and told him to open Skype. Having placed the laptop on the front desk, Javier had it up and running within a minute.

Tim glanced over at Dante. “What’s your Skype username?”

“Danteeldueno.”

Tim scowled at him. “Danteel…what the fuck? How the hell do you spell
that?”

Dante spelled it out for Tim, who took down each letter on a notepad beside the laptop.

“It’s finished installing now,” the mayor said, “and I have opened it. I’ve also created a username. What do you want me to do next?”

“Do you see where it says Add Contacts?” Tim asked.

“Yes.”

“Add the following word to your contacts.” He read out Dante’s username clearly and slowly. “Got that? Great. Call that username and then you’ll get to see what I’ve got going on here at
Cuerpos,
okay?”

“Okay,” the mayor muttered and there was the sound of a phone being put down on a hard surface.

A beeping sound came from the computer in front of Tim, signaling that the mayor must be calling. Tim had turned Dante’s laptop so that it was facing all the hostages on the floor, giving most of us a good view of the screen. He pressed the Talk button. The laptop screen was filled with the mayor’s ruddy face and he did not look happy.

Sticking his head in front of the camera, Tim grinned at the face. “Well, nice to have this chat in person, isn’t it, Mr. Mayor?”

The mayor grumbled something unintelligible in response.

“Are you ready to see what I’m keeping here?”

“Go ahead,” Bottini responded.

Tim removed his face from the screen and went around the laptop, lifting it up from behind. He moved it from one side of the studio to the other so that it filmed everything inside it. He paused for several seconds when he reached a terrified Lindsey Dash and then Morgan Stanley, giving the mayor a good look of both celebrities. He also took his time when he got to the three corpses, moving the camera part of the laptop slowly up and down the bodies. One of the hostages, a pimply youngster with a shock of curly brown hair, suddenly yelled, “Just give them the ten mill or my father will see to it that you’re
done,
Bottini! You can afford it.”

Tim seemed to like this reaction from the pizza-faced college kid because he moved the laptop so that it ended up in front of him, then told him to repeat and expand on his message.

The kid’s bulging eyes got so big with excitement they looked like they might pop out of their sockets. Sitting taller, he stared into the laptop screen. “My name’s Logan Shapiro and my dad knows all of Malibu and most of Los Angeles, all very influential people like yourself, Bottini. I’m sure you’ve heard the name Shapiro. David Shapiro. If you don’t get all of us out of here alive, you can forget about getting reelected. You’re already polling poorly, so make it
happen!”

“You done?” Tim asked the yelling guy.

“Yes, thank you.” He gave Tim an ingratiating smile.

Tim turned the computer so that it was facing him instead, but only from the chin and below now. “You got that, didn’t you? Lots of influential people in the bunch I have here. Both Morgan and Lindsey are popular actors—well, I don’t know about Lindsey after that piece-of-shit movie she did last year, but Morgan’s still an A-lister. If I have to off them because you’re too cheap to give me and my friend our money, all their fans are gonna hate you. And many of them live in L.A., it being the second largest city in the country. If you don’t deliver the money, you’re not only done as mayor of Malibu, but you can kiss your entire political career goodbye, you hear? It’ll be
over!”

“Loud and clear,” the mayor responded calmly. “I’m having people getting the money together right as we speak.”

Tim smiled. “I always knew you were a man of reason. Now I want you to listen up carefully because the following instructions are crucial. If I see that you haven’t followed them, I swear I’ll blow the head off
two
hostages instantly.”

“I’m all ears,” the mayor said.

“You might need a pen and paper to write it all down because I won’t allow for any mistakes, and I’m about to give you a lot of detailed info.”

The mayor disappeared from the screen, then returned. “Okay, I have a pen and paper to write on. Go on.”

“Number one: You’re going to need two 60-gallon garbage bags. Get the kind that doesn’t break easily. At the same time, the material can’t be too thick. You’ll understand why soon. Number two: you must give us hundred-dollar bills only. Unmarked, of course, though I’m pretty sure that goes without saying. Put the bills in stacks of a hundred and wrap them with thick rubber bands. With me so far?”

“Yes. Please continue.”

“Great. Number three: When you’ve stacked all the hundred-dollar bills and wrapped them with rubber bands, I’ll need you to put five million in each of the trash bags. Number four: Get two plastic juice containers with wide bottle openings that have airtight screw caps. Tropicana is a good brand. Empty the containers and cut them in half and save the top parts only. Number five: When you’ve filled both trash bags, you’ll gather the top of each bag and stick it through the mouth of the juice containers. Fold the top of the bag down around the container opening, then screw the cap back onto the container to keep the garbage bag in place. It needs to be screwed on so tightly that no water can get into the bags. Is all of this clear to you, Mr. Mayor?”

“Crystal.”

“You understand now why the thickness of the garbage bags is crucial? If it’s too thick, you can’t screw the caps on. If it’s too thin, it’ll break.”

“Yes, I understand that,” the mayor said.

Why does he need the bags to be sealed so tightly no water can slip through?
I wondered.
Were they planning on moving them through the ocean?

I turned toward the row of windows that ran along one wall. The Pacific Ocean filled my line of vision, the surface still. The sun was nearing the horizon, its strong light making it hard to see if there were any boats out there. But I didn’t think there was.

“Fantastic,” Tim said. “Number six: Get two sturdy backpacks and stick one bag of money in each. When that’s done, just have someone get over here and deliver the money. You have one hour starting from now to get it in our hands, okay?”

“One hour?”
For the first time, the mayor revealed some emotion. “How am I supposed to make this happen in an hour? It’s not enough time.”

“Not enough time?” Tim looked incredulous. “Oh, I believe a great man like yourself can make it happen in even
less
than an hour. You’re an effective man. A resourceful man. A very, very
wealthy
man. You wouldn’t ever have become the mayor of Malibu if you weren’t. Where are you right now?”

“In City Hall,” the mayor responded. “That’s on 23587 Stuart Ranch Road.”

“Hell, you’re close! We’re only a couple miles away from Santa Monica.”

“But I don’t have access to that kind of money in my office. It’s going to have to come from my bank in Downtown L.A. And it’s seven in the evening now. It’s closed.”

Tim chuckled softly. “I’m sure you can get the money out of your account if you pull the right strings. As I said, I know you’re a resourceful man. This is the time to use your resources.”

“Fine. I can get the money fast, but what if there’s traffic? There’s nothing I can do about traffic.”

“While you get the money ready, I’ll call the LAPD and make sure they clear up the roads so you can get the money here. Feel free to have some of your people calling the cops, too, to really get them cracking. Without traffic, it’s shouldn’t take your delivery guys more than twenty minutes to get the cash over here. That’s plenty of time. And just to show you how benevolent I am, I’ve decided to give you a little more time. You have one hour from now”—Tim consulted his watch again—“which makes the deadline five minutes past eight. You got that, Mayor?”

“I did. Five minutes past eight instead of one minute past the hour. That’s very generous of you.”

“I’m nothing but not generous, my man. Alrighty then, I’ve gotta go. Just call me at this number if you need me, okay?”

“Okay.”

Tim hung up the landline and signed off on Skype, then dialed another number on the phone. It didn’t take long before someone picked up because he said, “Good evening. I’d like to speak to the person in charge.” He paused, listening into the phone, then, “It’s regarding a hostage situation. My friend and I have taken twenty people hostage at the
Cuerpos
Fitness Studio in Malibu. Well, twenty-three really, but three of those are already dead, so I don’t think they count. I just got off the phone with Michael Bottini. Do you know who that is?”

Tim nodded. “Exactly, that’s the mayor of Malibu, aspiring mayor of Los Angeles, presidential hopeful. He has agreed to deliver ten million dollars in cash to us within an hour in exchange for the lives of the hostages. And I want to be sure that his deliverymen aren’t caught up in traffic. He needs to pick up the money in Downtown L.A. and that’s not exactly next door to Malibu. Have I made the urgency of the situation clear enough?”

A brief pause followed, then Tim’s smile twisted into a grimace, turning him ugly. “Then put the person in charge on the damn phone already!”

He sighed and rolled his eyes like he didn’t understand all these simpletons he had to deal with. Suddenly the smile was back again and he said, “Well, hello, Sergeant Jackson. Good evening to you, too.” He explained the same things he had just explained to the operator. “So can you please be a darling and make sure the roads are clear so I don’t have to start shooting people here? I really don’t want to have do that unless absolutely necessary.”

As his charming smile grew wider, his dimples became more defined and he nodded. “That sounds perfect. It’s so nice to speak to someone competent at last.”

As I watched Tim speak, I became more and more convinced that he was gay. I knew it was a stereotype and a cliché, but some of his mannerisms and the way he spoke together with his fawning over Morgan Stanley all strongly suggested this. And so did the very colorful headband Javier wore, it struck me now. As he’d passed me, I saw that it actually glittered.

I had yet to figure out why they were doing this in the first place. As detailed as their plan was, it was clear that they’d been planning it for a while. It was also clear that they were both determined for it to succeed. If they were in fact gay, they couldn’t be hybrids, however. I refused to believe that a man like Stenger would be okay with openly gay hybrids, or even closet gays. Given that all younger hybrids had microchips in their systems, it wasn’t like they could just escape Stenger’s wrath. These two were most definitely on the younger side. Javier seemed like he was no more than twenty-three, Tim only slightly older.

I decided that they simply had to be regular humans.

“Okay, I’ve gotta go,” Tim said to the person on the phone after having exchanged a few more words. “I’m sure you’ll have your hands full from now on. You have my number here, right? Great.” He checked his wrist watch. “The time is now seven seventeen, which means you have forty-eight minutes to make sure we get the money. Any later than that and people will begin to die.”

Chapter 3

I could hear the sounds of sirens outside the fitness studio finally, getting louder and louder as the patrol cars must be getting closer.

That isn’t a minute too soon,
I thought, grinding my teeth. The time was now seven twenty-four, which meant we had forty-one minutes to go before reaching the deadline. Our two abductors had let me sit next to Dante to make sure he wasn’t losing too much blood. As I pressed my hands against his gunshot wound, Dante informed me that the two men lying dead on the floor were both trainers who had tried to intervene as Javier was suddenly armed with a machine gun and telling everyone inside the fitness studio to gather in a corner. The first one made his attempt right after Javier had shot Dante in the leg to debilitate him. The second tried to disarm Javier shortly before Tim and I appeared. When he told me, I recalled the firecracker going off right as I had approached the entrance. That was all Dante managed to tell me before Tim ordered us to be quiet.

I couldn’t help but think how ironic it was that this very morning I had been in Tim’s shoes, a captor, not a captive. A dry chuckle escaped from between my lips. Well, now I was actually both. Funny how life could change so dramatically in a matter of hours.

Tim was back on the phone with the mayor, whom he had demanded to talk to instead of the hostage negotiator the LAPD had wanted him to deal with. The mayor must have the LAPD on some other line because he was giving Tim constant updates in regards to how the money delivery was going. So far, things were proceeding according to plan. The money had been packed up the way Tim had instructed and were about to be placed in two big, sturdy backpacks with comfortable shoulder straps.

The other hostages were sitting quietly in their places, staring at Tim as he walked back and forth while talking to the mayor over speaker phone again. Javier was also watching all the seated people, patrolling the studio like a very alert cop. I was relieved no one was trying to do anything stupid or reckless in an attempt to play hero, as it surely would result in another death. These guys meant business.

Without my gun and no cell phone, there was little
I
could do despite being trained to get out of these kinds of sticky situations.

Even so, I kept looking for an in, a vulnerable moment that I could use to overpower either of these two, but so far no opportunity I deemed advantageous enough had presented itself.

Javier approached the corner where Dante and I sat, several feet away from the others. He threw us a casual glance, his hands firmly attached to his machine gun.

“How are you holding up, boss?” he asked Dante in a surprisingly kind voice. “You hanging in there?”