Red Rock Island (Damian Green Book 1) (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

There was one source inside the house and it was in motion in what was probably the kitchen. Hannah had drawn a floor plan of the house for him with directions of where he would find the pictures that she wanted. Since most security cameras worked by the concept of infrared waves, he had a different scanner that showed where all the active cameras in the house were located. There were a lot, and Damian wondered how men had ever creeped into the house without advance warning to Hannah parents. They must have used a blocking device that also cut off the alarm or maybe there was a ten to twenty second delay to account for power failures that would be supplemented by a back-up generator after a short time. That short time would be enough for fast moving men to get into the house and up to the bedroom to take on the parents. Hannah had been awake and reading not awakened by a house alarm. She would have the added seconds to make it into her safe room and she was the secondary target after her parents. So what tools should he use to enter the home now?

He’d wait until complete darkness betting that the lights would be out in the rooms on the street side of the house. He’d take another drive through the neighborhood to see how illuminated it was, then he’d return and park his truck where it was, gathering his supplies to safely enter Hannah’s house. He still wasn’t sure what he would do with the man in the house. He had the means to incapacitate him, but how did he cut the alarms off?

Dah! He’d just use the code Hannah had given him and turn off the cameras that way. Sometimes he tried to over solve a problem by using technology when the answer was right there in front of his face. He watched the guy for a while longer and then drove away to a large retail store to use their restroom. It wouldn’t do for him to pee his pants when he got surprised or scared during this operation. It was interesting acknowledging that he was going to be scared. Perhaps that would sharpen his senses or reflexes; he hoped so.

He drove past Hannah’s house, this time in the dark of night. As he thought, the front was dark, he’d have little trouble being invisible in the darkness when he was ready to go in. He parked again on the empty block and gathered his stuff. He wanted to avoid dropping any DNA in the house, so he’d brought paper booties for his shoes, a balaclava for his face and a knitted beanie cap for his head, long pants and a turtleneck, and latex gloves. All items recently purchased at the department store, that way his DNA had less time to get on the clothing and he had no residue from his cats or the island. Over all that he put on a black cloth disposable suit. Thankfully, the temperature dropped into the fifties at night in this part of California or he’d drop his sweat all over the house. Someday, some police force would collect evidence at the crime scene of Hannah’s house, and he wanted to be damn sure that his DNA wasn’t there. He’d debated sealing up his clothing with clear spray shellac or flat paint, but he might die from the fumes before the night was out. 

He brought a huge bag to collect anything for Hannah that he thought she might want beyond the family photos. He had his cell phone jammer, the infrared heat sensor, his water gun with special pepper spray, and the halothane home bomb to put whomever was in the kitchen asleep. The gas was odorless and colorless and he just needed to put the container near the heat source that he had viewed on his infrared detector. He hoped there were no squeaky boards that would give his presence away to the heat source. After gingerly moving through front yards in all black with the bulletproof fabric around him, he was soon on Hannah’s doorstep disabling the alarm system. He also jammed cell phone reception to block the intruder from calling for help. He unscrewed the lightbulb illuminating the front porch and soon entered the house.

This was the first time in his life that he’d acted like a cat-burglar, and he could tell he wasn’t cut out for this occupation as it felt wrong to break in and his heart was pounding and his body sweating with anxiety that the heat source might kill him before Damian was able to release the gas and make him go to sleep. It was why he carried the water gun in his hand and he knew he would be trigger-happy if anything didn’t go as planned.

It was surprisingly easy to reach the kitchen. He heard no alarm bells go off anywhere in the house. The heat source hadn’t moved but seemed to be sitting at a table and either asleep or doing something with a cell phone in front of his face. The stupid man was sitting with his back to the door and so Damian slipped on a gas mask, while he let the halothane disperse into the room. The man was soon snoring with his chin nearly resting on his chest. Damian bent down and picked up the homemade bomb and set it on the kitchen island next to the man. The substance might kill him if he had a heart arrhythmia or liver failure, but otherwise with any luck Damian would be well gone by the time he woke up from his evening nap. Damian moved quickly through the house grabbing pictures that Hannah had specified. He also opened her closets and chest of drawers and dumped as many items as he could into trash bags. Rather than carry three large bags back to his truck through the community, he would put the items at the curb and quickly fetch his truck and come back and load the items in the bed. He went into Hannah’s safe room which appeared to be untouched and retrieved a hard drive that he hoped would have the footage of her parents attack. Fifteen minutes later he had all that he thought was important in the bags. Putting his gas mask back on, he closed up the halothane smoke bomb and put it in to one of the bags and quickly departed the house. He put the bags at the curb and nearly sprinted for his truck. There’d been no action on the street during this entire entry into Hannah’s house. Less than five minutes later, he discarded everything but the turtleneck and slacks into his truck and he was tossing the bags in the back and heading down the street without anyone noticing his movement. For the job he’d rented a dark blue truck and taken the plates off before he parked this last time. That way if anyone caught sight of the truck disappearing down the street, there were no identifying marks about the truck. He returned to the retail center parking lot and took another look at his infrared scanner. His heat source in the kitchen was likely starting to wake up since he could see the head bobbing on occasion, while the body was still seated. He changed back into his own clothing and parked the rental truck in the hotel parking lot next to the car rental agency and his own truck. He moved over his equipment and the bags of stuff he’d retrieved from the house. He would let Hannah go through her bags when she visited the next day. He’d been faster than he thought and could likely get a ride from Mike back to his island.

An hour later, he examined the tracker bug out of the phone having made sure that he drained the battery of the device back in the retail center parking lot. Last thing he wanted to do was give anyone a path to his island. He decided to start by asking Hannah if her parents ever mentioned that they had a tracking bug in her phone. A few texts later after he explained, she replied not to her knowledge. So either her parents had done it and not told her or someone else had got to her phone and planted the device. It wasn’t that important at the moment and he might question her further later.

He moved on to the technology that he had pulled out of Hannah’s safe room. Surely these criminals were not dumb enough to let themselves be photographed on camera? But that was assuming they knew of the second safe room or that they knew that any motion inside the house was recorded. He wouldn’t know until he looked at what was stored on the tape. Looking at the tape he determined that it was only for the past thirty days. Even though the system only recorded motion, it ended up with a lot of data from security cameras. He checked the hard drive for software for the tracker bug but didn’t find any. That didn’t necessarily indicate that her parents hadn’t put the tracker there, it just meant that the software wasn’t on Hannah’s unit. 

Looking at the clock, he debated what to do next. He was very curious to look at the video, but he was tired and afraid that he lacked the focus to look at a lot of dull footage. He also wanted to know the date of her parent’s abduction and it was too late to text the child at this hour. So he packed it in and started upstairs to his bedroom, then he thought of one more thing. He better do a quick search of all of the stuff that he’d brought from Hannah’s house, he needed to make sure there were no other trackers in any of that stuff. If there was, he had to get his jet ski out and take the item s over to the Berkeley marina and drop them on a boat there. He hated to do that to some poor bloke that owned the boat, but he needed it off his island. Most cheap trackers just emitted a signal, but they didn’t record where they’d been just where they were in real time unless they were being actively watched. He was an hour later getting to bed after he found a tracker in each purse of Hannah’s, a hoodie that said UC Berkeley, and in the drive that he brought over. He gathered them up and took them over to the marina in his little dinghy. It was quieter than the jet ski and would take longer, but this was about stealth. He found the perfect vessel, a large fishing boat that advertised Salmon fishing in the ocean on its side and would surely be out on the water the next day, since it would be Saturday. He could have sent the devices to the bottom of the bay, but they might have mercury or lead in them which was bad for the bay’s fish. So he brought duck-tape and taped them underneath a large pile of ropes and nets. Once he’d returned and had his island locked up tight he dropped into bed exhausted by the amount of adrenaline that he’d used up that day.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Damian awoke a little later than usual when Bailey and Bella pounced on his bed. It was their stares that brought him to wakefulness.

“Okay guys you want some scratch time and then some of my breakfast, I suppose,” and although they didn’t understand humans they acknowledged his words by each coming closer to a hand. Three minutes of ear scratching and they had their fill for the time and released him to shower. Normally he’d get some exercise in the morning, but his schedule was so full with Trevor and Haley arriving in three hours and then Ariana and Hannah after that and he still had a hard drive to decode.

He was showered and shaved and dressed in blue jeans and a Golden State Warriors Black polo shirt with their logo on it. Haley and Trevor were going to watch the game with him later as it was game two of the best of seven against the Portland Trailblazers and the Dubs were up by one game. He’d invited Natalie and Eddie, but they declined. He fixed eggs and bacon for himself and sardines for the cats. He was amazed they still wanted human food after all the other fish they caught, but then this was no work for them and it had a little seasoning. The island had no snakes or mice as neither could swim across the bay, but there were lots of birds which were off limits to the cats, and fish and crabs. So far the crabs were winning against the cats, as they spent so much time dancing away from the crab’s claws that they couldn’t kill or even harm them, but it was fun to watch.

With the kitchen and the rest of the house cleaned, supplies ready for snacks for his guests as well as beer and wine that he picked up yesterday along with his spy clothing, he finally went down to his lab setting his alarm as he went. He knew that he would forget about the time and leave Trevor and Haley to get blasted by the water spray alarm when he forgot to turn it off in anticipation of their visit. After spending years alone, he wasn’t used to scheduling his day around other people and all of a sudden since the seventh anniversary of his family’s death, his schedule was bustling such that he would have to plan an entire Saturday around other people’s schedules.

Before he went down to his lab, he called Hannah to ask her more questions. While the phone rang, he tried to think of a polite way to converse with the teenager before getting to his questions. He’d have to ask Ariana how she communicated with her teenage niece; maybe you could get right to the heart of the question with this texting generation.

“Hi Damian, what’s up?” Hannah asked.

“Today is Saturday. Can you tell me which date your parents were abducted?”

There was silence on the other end of the phone, he wished he could see her face to see if she was thinking, or perhaps trying to swallow around tears, or perhaps silently crying over the terror of watching her parents abducted and maybe murdered.

“Monday; my mom always liked to play this song called ‘Manic Monday’ on Monday, and so she played it earlier that day before she dropped me off at school.”

“Thanks, Hannah, I have the hard drive from your safe room and it will go much faster if I can look at a specific date. When you visit later today, I’ll give you all the stuff I grabbed from your closet and chest of drawers in case you want any of it.”

“Thank you, Damian,” and then the kid didn’t say anything more. Damian wasn’t sure how to end the conversation or even what was going on in the kid’s head. So instead he asked, “Is Ariana near you?”

“Yes.”

“Would you ask her to give me a call? I’ll see you this evening for dinner,” and they ended the call. He wished he wasn’t so awkward dealing with this teenager. He knew so little about her other than the fact that she was smart and had a core of strength about her. He would have gladly mentioned the Warriors’ game, but he didn’t even know if she followed basketball or indeed any sports.

Seconds later his phone rang and he saw it was Ariana.

“I need lessons talking to a teenager. I don’t know if I’m supposed to immediately say what’s on my mind or if I’m supposed to ease into the conversation. I don’t know if I’m making her cry or she’s thinking or she’s sullen like so many other teenagers. You’re going to have to help me, Ariana.”

He heard bubbling laughter on her end of the phone and then she replied, “Ha, I don’t know a single adult that has that magic formula. You’re on your own, Damian. I’m fighting for my own survival first. What time should we head over to your island?”

Damian had to unstick his grinding teeth before he could reply, “How about 4 o’clock? I have company here from about 12 to 3. That detective I mentioned has a son that’s a friend and he’s bringing his fiancée to my home for an introduction and to watch the Warriors game. He’s an attorney and he could enumerate all of the illegal things we’re doing to take care of Hannah, so it’s better if your paths don’t cross.”

“You have a full schedule today! Tell you what, I’ll bring dinner with me, and maybe we can eat down in your lab while we work on Hannah’s identity,” Ariana suggested.

“You’re a woman after my own heart, I love being able to do two things at the same time.”

“Three things, Damian.”

“Three?”

“Yeah, you’ll be getting to know Hannah at the same time.”

That gave him pause and then he asked, “Is she being a good kid for you?”

“Too good, I’m wishing she would relax and give me a little teenage rebellion.”

“Be careful what you wish for and I’ll see you later,” and so he settled into working on the camera footage.

Focusing on the date of Monday, Damian reviewed the footage. About 11 o’clock at night he saw the masked men enter Hannah’s house in a very systematic fashion. They wore gloves and their faces were by no means identifiable. He assumed they were men, but he admitted to himself that was just a guess; he could be looking at a group of female ninjas that pulled this off. He saw Hannah’s parents leap out of bed and make a run for their safe room, but they were caught by the masked men before they reached the room. Damian watched as each parent thrashed wildly until they went limp. Damian had to replay the footage several times before he realized the parents had each been injected with something. They were soon zipped up inside of bags and taken out of the house. The cameras had not shown where they were taken to or what kind of vehicle. Nor could he tell if they were dead or alive. Poor Hannah, watching this in terror, and then seeing what clearly was the men or women searching for her. They’d entered her bedroom, perhaps a minute after that of her parents, but it was enough time for Hannah to reach the hidey hole and lock the mechanism into place.

They searched the house for perhaps an hour looking for Hannah, but then they left leaving one person behind. It appeared as though Hannah had waited and watched the lone man for about thirty-six hours. She waited for him to fall asleep and then Damian saw her exit the house. He also went back and studied the interaction between law enforcement and the moving company. He didn’t have sound for the recording, but he could guess what was being said and he had to agree with Hannah, that someone from law enforcement was involved with her parent’s kidnapping.

He leaned back in his chair and thought about what to do with the footage. Certainly he’d save it, but should he say something to Natalie or Trevor? He had no good answers and decided that no immediate decision was necessary. Having watched the abduction of her parents several times as well as the footage of the man left behind, he saw no opportunity for them to have left DNA in the house, so if he did say something to Natalie, the only evidence he had was the video recording to prove that it happened; but neither the people, their fingerprints, nor their DNA appeared to be left in the house from his amateur point of view. He decided he would share the footage later with Ariana since she was a smart woman and was implicated in their less than legal guardianship of Hannah to see if she agreed with his decision-making. He looked at his watch and realized that Trevor and Haley should be at the marina about to board the boat to his island. He put everything having to do with Hannah in a locked closet off of his laboratory. It wouldn’t do to leave anything accidentally sitting around that Trevor might see.