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Nikole
I couldn’t imagine my mother carted off in some white van to god knows where. If I did, I would be lying in a fetal position right now. But I had to keep it together, find her, and then I could break down.
Jake drove us to her apartment, where Will and Jager met us. Jake, Will, and I searched the rooms with latex gloves, mindful not to touch anything before the police arrived. We looked inside every closet and every drawer. Jager sat at the dining room table typing furiously on his laptop.
“What’s he doing?” I asked Jake.
“He’s looking through Christian’s files for your mother’s itinerary and contacts. Someone in her office might know where they are.”
I nodded and looked around the apartment.
There was nothing; not one shred of evidence that we could see that pointed to where my mother and Christian had gone.
Jake’s phone rang. “Hello?... Yes, we’ll be right down.” He turned to Will. “The building’s security has the footage ready for us. Nikole and I will take a look. I’ll call you if there’s anything worth looking at.”
Will nodded and resumed searching.
Jake grabbed my hand, and we raced to the elevator. Each floor down to the security office felt like an eternity. My stomach shriveled into a lump of coal and my hands shook, despite Jake’s hold.
“She’s going to be alright.”
He didn’t know that. He couldn’t be sure of it. My leg started to bounce and when the elevator doors opened, I ran out, but Jake maneuvered himself quickly to overtake my steps, protecting me with his body. I’d grown so used to it now that our footsteps were nearly in sync.
“Mr. Devereux, in here, sir.” Down the narrow, carpeted hallway, a man in uniform stood in front of an office door.
Jake followed me into the room and motioned for me to sit in the chair in front of the computer screen. “Is it cued up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, start it.”
The man hit a button and the black-and-white video played. Two men, average size, entered my mother’s floor through the stairwell. Since it was the sixteenth floor, it was quite a climb up.
They stood in front of her door and looked both ways before using a key card to get inside.
“Where did they get the key from?” asked Jake.
“I don’t know,” replied the baffled guard.
I didn’t take my eyes off the screen. A few minutes later, one of the men walked out carrying my mother over his shoulder and left through the stairwell door.
“Oh god,” I whispered as I saw her lifeless body.
“She’s not hurt. Only drugged,” Jake said, his hand on my shoulder.
How could he know that? He was only trying to make me feel better.
I couldn’t erase the image from my mind. I’d never seen my mother so defenseless. She was the strongest person I knew.
After exiting through the stairwell, the hallway was empty.
“That’s it,” said the guard. “There’s nothing else after this.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jake. “Where’s her bodyguard? They must have carried him out, too. He’s not in the room.”
The man’s face grew confused. He shook his head and moved the video forward. “As you can see, there’s nothing else until the other two bodyguards arrive hours later.”
What the hell?
