CHAPTER 2
"Well, I looked around up there and a few things stood out to me," Phoenix said.
"Like Apollo said there's no signs of forced entry and I don't think there's anyway someone could have opened the window from the outside. So her attacker came in through the front door. Most likely she let them in."
"Why would she do that, Daddy? Vera's not dumb. She keeps the little chain lock thing on the door. Why would she open the door in the middle of the night to a stranger?" Trucy contemplated.
"Maybe she did know her kidnapper- maybe we're thinking about this wrong again. She always checks whose at the door."
SHIT!! "Vera thought it was me. She opens the door for me without looking."
Trucy was scandalized. "Polly, you shouldn't be encouraging her to answer the door in the middle of the night."
"Truce, for the last time you are not my mother and you don't understand. Normally she knows if it's me. I knock a special way and she just let's me in." Now I felt like shit. They got in because she thought it was me sneaking upstairs to spend the night with her. It didn't even occur to me that I was also now admitting to all our friends that I snuck up to Vera's at night on a routine basis. When the thought hit me I blushed and sunk down in my seat a little. So much for secrets.
"OK, so Vera answers the door thinking it's Polly. The attacker knocks her out somehow and takes her out the bedroom window."
"I'm guessing it took a team," said Maya.
"An organized team. They've been watching Vera and Polly and waited till he was down here and they imitated his knock so she'd open the door. Meanwhile they used a ladder to reach her window and passed her out. Someone else was probably out front with a getaway car," proposed Phoenix.
"Make that a getaway van- it had to be something big to fit a stepladder in." I said.
"Ladder," Trucy corrected my mistake automatically out of habit.
"Yeah, whatever," I mumbled.
Phoenix was grumbling, "How could nobody at the Gatewater Hotel see anything? It's just crazy to me."
"They must have been super stealthy," Maya narrowed her eyes as she tried to imagine the scene.
"Great. Vera's been kidnapped by ninjas." I said sarcastically and sadly the truth was she might as well have been taken by masked martial artists for all we knew. The team that had taken Vera had done it quickly and competently leaving us virtually no clues.
It was agonizing thinking of all the things that could be happening to her. Facing the reality that she could already be dead was the worst, but I had to believe that if they had put so much work into stealing her away from us that they needed her and I desperately hoped her kidnappers would remember that. If they kept her alive to create a forgery it would buy us time to get her back.