Me And Mr. I.T. (Kupid's Cove Book 2) (23 page)

“To do what?” I asked angrily. “At least out there I can help them!”

“We’re experts on hostage recovery. We need to wait and see if they call in a demand, or ask for some kind of passage off the island in exchange for the girls.”

“They don’t need passage off the island, we aren’t in Neverland! All they need is a boat. They could be anywhere, and the longer we stand here, the farther away they get.” Gideon was shaking with anger, though I knew some of it was fear, because I felt the same way.

I put my hand on his shoulder. “She’s going to be okay, Boss.”

“She just had surgery,” he ground out through clenched teeth. “If she goes into an arrhythmia her defibrillator will discharge. If that happens, she needs a hospital because it won’t recharge and give her a second. She’s in danger every second we stand here.”

“I know you’re scared, so am I, but Ellie and Lei are with her. Ellie will take care of her. You have to trust that my wife will protect yours, because I know in here,” I said pounding my chest, “that she will. We don’t have anything to go on, he’s right. Let’s give the cops twenty minutes, then we can reassess,” I said, waiting for him to answer. Instead, he sank into a chair and put his head in his hands.

“This is my fault. I never should have brought her here or agreed to this party. I can’t lose her. She’s all I have.”

I knelt next to his chair and tried to keep a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault, you had no idea that Marcus was the one stealing from you, or that he would take the girls. Obviously, for some unknown reason, he thinks they will give him leverage. Maybe he is going to ask for a ransom and then return the girls when he gets the money. Maybe he really only wants passage off the island, but needs the cash before he can leave.”

He looked up at me with shock written all over his face. “You mean Marcus is the one stealing from me?”

Clearly he hadn’t put two and two together yet. “I’m afraid that’s what all of this implies, Gideon. It would make sense. As the GM he has more in depth knowledge of the financial information than a regular employee.”

“But wouldn’t you know if he was the one funneling the money. Wouldn’t you be able to see his IP address?”

“I would, if he was using his work computer, but he wasn’t. Remember, he always used the old business center computers and Wi-Fi, which is why I couldn’t pin it down. Since we didn’t know it was him, we never thought to track his activities on surveillance.”

An officer approached us and Gideon stood. “We’ve located the van. They found it abandoned on Highway 3. We’re putting together a search and rescue team now.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Gideon said, his voice as petrified as I felt.

“I would expect that they just changed vehicles there, but I don’t think they want the girls with them, they’re extra baggage. They took them for a reason. I would guess they’ll be in touch shortly.”

“What can we do in the meantime?” I asked, the fear for a woman I was planning to make my wife, for real, making my stomach roll.

His lips were in a grim line when he answered. “Make sure your phones are on and pray.”

Ellie

The center of the room glowed from the small battery operated camping lantern on the table. The outer reaches of the small room were in the shadows. I had to bite back the constant fear that the boogeyman was going to jump from those shadows and attack us any minute.

The three of us sat on one bed, listening for footsteps or voices. I knew at least one guy was guarding the room, but didn’t know where the other two had gone. They left the gags off, as long as we promised not to yell, but we never promised not to talk amongst ourselves.

Katie was shivering next to me and that made me worried. I had to keep her calm so her defibrillator didn’t discharge. I took her hand, still wrapped in the zip-ties and rubbed it.

“Stay calm, Katie. Gideon and Mr. I.T. know we’re gone and they’re going to be looking for us.”

“How do you know that?” she whisper asked into the dark, her voice quaking with a vibrato that wasn’t naturally there.

“I could hear my phone ringing nonstop during the ride in the van. I assigned Mr. Roboto as Mr. I.T.’s ringtone, so I know it was him,” I explained and she snorted. “He was calling me because he knows something is wrong. By now Gideon does too and they’ve alerted authorities.”

“I can’t believe Marcus was the one behind all this,” Lei whispered angrily.

I turned to her. “One of them was Marcus?”

She nodded. “The driver. I recognized his voice. You didn’t know him well, so you would never guess.”

“Do you know the other two men?” Katie asked, but Lei shook her head.

“My guess is they’re friends of his. I figure when their last withdrawal didn’t go through because Gideon changed accounts, they got desperate.”

“Desperate enough to kidnap us? What good is that going to do?” Katie asked.

“Ransom, my dear lady,” Lei whispered. “Gideon would give up his entire fortune for one more day with you. Marcus knows that. He’s banking on the fact that he now has three people Gideon loves, and a few million will be enough to buy us back. He was probably hoping to draw only you out of the room and didn’t figure he would get three for the price of one. It doesn’t matter; he’s not going to hurt us. Those guns they’re flashing around are airsoft guns.”

I shook my head. “I would love to believe that, but they looked real to me.”

“Oh they look real, but I know Marcus was big into the airsoft gun wars they hold on the island. I can pick one out a mile away. I used to date a guy who was into it, too. I wouldn’t aggravate him; they still hurt, but they won’t kill you with them.”

I felt Katie let out a shuddering breath. “Well, that’s a little bit of hope at least.”

I looked between the two women I had come to trust as confidents and knew I had to tell them truth, before something worse happened.

“I have to tell you both something,” I whispered and they stopped fidgeting with their zip ties to look at me. “It’s been eating me alive and in case, you know,” I motioned at the door, “I want you both to know, so I can apologize.”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” Lei said. The expression on her face bounced between confused, shocked, scared, and angry.

“Actually, I do, or rather I didn’t. Mr. I.T. and I aren’t married. I’m sorry for lying and saying we were.” I turned to Katie and took her hands in mine as best I could. “But when he said that in my office I didn’t know what to do, and then when you were so excited I…”

“You didn’t want to tell me the truth because I haven’t been excited about a lot of things lately,” Katie finished. I nodded and looked down at the ugly floral bedspread we sat on.

“I’m sorry. I tried to talk him out of it, but he thought it was a good cover to find the thief.”

“I know,” Katie said and my head snapped up.

“You know?”

She nodded. “Maltrand came clean about it the night you were in the emergency room. When you were sleeping, he called us. He was scared to death we were going to hold him responsible for you getting hurt. The whole story tumbled out while we were on speakerphone. We agreed that you should stick with the story and not change anything midstream.”

I dropped her hands and rubbed my face awkwardly as the ties bit into my wrist. “I’m sorry for lying to you both. Mr. I.T. didn’t want to be in the fashion show, and neither did I because of my birthmarks, but I’ll do anything to make it up to you, even being in the show for you.”

Katie patted my shoulder and smiled at me, while Lei took my hands, and gave them a reassuring squeeze. “I like the idea of you and Mr. I.T. being the MCs and that’s how I’ve advertised, so that is how it will stay. Besides, he asked us that night if he could continue the ruse because he was in love with you and wanted to know if you felt the same. We already knew the answer, so it was easy for us to decide, of course we told him yes.”

“He did? You did? I was?” I stuttered and both girls chuckled under their breath.

Katie tried to keep a straight face, but she couldn’t. “Why do you think I was so excited when you told me you got married? I thought you had both finally seen what the rest of us see. There’s that look in his eye whenever he sees you that tells me he wants nothing more than to hold you. It’s the same look Gideon has on his face quite often. I knew eventually you would figure it out, once you quit being so stubborn.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been hurt in the past. I have ongoing medical issues that won’t always be sunshine and roses. It’s hard to open your heart again when you’ve just moved on after the last destruction.”

“Yet, here you are, worrying about how worried he must be, right?” she asked and I nodded. “I’m not angry, Ellie. I’m thrilled. Over the moon, in fact, that you’ve finally given him a chance. I know he’s the man for you, and not just because he can fix any computer you drop, drown, or destroy.”

Lei and I snorted with laughter at her words. It was true. I have done all three.

Lei leaned forward. “I’m not upset either. I kind of knew something was amiss the night you came running in from the beach and he followed a short time later. He was unsure of himself and asked me how to figure out why you were upset. I sort of figured at that point things weren’t as they seemed, but I couldn’t be sure.”

“What did you tell him?” I asked and she cocked her head in question. “When he asked how to figure out why I was upset.”

She tried to scoot a little closer and leaned in. “Oh, that one was easy. I told him that sometimes in order to look to the future you have to erase something from the past. Women store things up in their memory bank and they often rear their ugly heads when they’re sad or confused. I told him the best way to figure out how to move on was to talk to you about the past. Also, I told him you were concussed and he had to cut you some slack because your brain wasn’t functioning at normal capacity after only twenty-four hours.”

I nodded. “It took me a few days to feel normal again. Funny, but I always imagined a concussion from something like falling off a bike or ramming heads on a field. I had no idea you could get a concussion from a Frisbee.”

Kate snickered. “You might be the only one who can get a concussion from a Frisbee.”

I shoulder bumped her. “The doctor in the ER said it happens more than people think. I didn’t believe it at first, but by the time they discharged me, I was in full acceptance of it. Hey, speaking of being discharged, did I ever tell you about Hope?”

She shook her head. “Hope?”

“The baby girl I met at the hospital the other day?” I asked, but she shook her head again. “After they released me I was waiting for Mr. I.T. to bring the van around to pick me up. There was a lady in the waiting room with a baby in a stroller who was crying up a storm, and the woman looked exhausted.”

“So you took the time to talk to her, of course, because that’s what you do.”

“Hey, I had time to kill,” I laughed, “but yes, I wheeled over and peeked into the stroller. The little peanut wasn’t even a week old.”

“Was she sick?” Katie asked, a frown marring her face.

“Her foster mom didn’t know what was wrong with her. I asked if I could hold her, and even looking like I went ten rounds with Mike Tyson, she agreed, handing me the little girl she called Hope.”

“I love that name. It’s the perfect name for a little girl.” She smiled wistfully as Lei rubbed her back awkwardly, still tied with the zip handcuffs.

“Since she’s a foster baby she doesn’t have a name. The woman, Marcy, told me they were calling her Hope because her son kept saying, ‘I hope she sleeps soon’.”

Katie chuckled, and it sounded almost normal, which spurred me to keep talking. The longer I kept her calm, the less chance her heart would go into an arrhythmia. “I guess a newborn crying would get hard to listen to for a kid.”

“It does, but Marcy was concerned because Hope wasn’t sleeping except in short bursts, and when she was awake she was crying, a lot. So she brought her in to be checked.”

“I hope they found out what was wrong with her,” Katie sighed. “Poor babies don’t know why they feel bad and all they can do is cry.”

“That’s how I felt, too, but when she laid her on my lap I noticed something different about Hope.”