Chapter Four
"Danny!" Danny could hear the hushed voice of Ed Deline from somewhere nearby. He was sure that few days had passed since what he started to refer to as "the Voice" had taken away his food and water privileges. Opening his eyes, the brown-haired man was stunned to see his mentor standing by his bedside in the darkness. "Come on, kid! It's time to go home!"
"Ed!" an excited Danny exclaimed, sitting up in his bed. However, a frown reappeared upon his features as his mentor faded into the darkness like a ghost. No, Danny corrected himself, more like a hallucination.
Sighing heavily, McCoy fell back against the bed once more and stared up at the ceiling, trying to ignore the constant gnawing in his stomach or the dull pain in his head brought on by not having drank or eaten anything in the past couple of days. He was so desperate for nourishment that drinking the water out of his toilet had seemed like a good idea until he remembered how grungy the object in question had looked. His mouth was so dry that he could hardly speak and he hardly had the energy to do anything by lay on the cot, hoping that time was going by much faster than it seemed to be doing.
Hearing a sudden creak in the room, Danny turned his head to the doorway, which was slowly opening. However, McCoy couldn't see who was coming into the room as the lights suddenly blazed on at full power.
"AGH!" a pained Danny groaned, immediately squeezed his eyes shut and covering them with his hands. "Damn!"
POUND! POUND! POUND!
"What the..." Ed slowly muttered to himself as he opened his eyes that same day. It was the first sleep the graying man had gotten in days, but only because Jillian and Delinda had begged him to come home and get some rest. The deal had also been cinched by Mary overhearing the argument and pointing out to Ed that, no matter how bad the situation was, Danny wouldn't want him killing himself to find him.
POUND! POUND! POUND! POUND!
"All right! All right!" Ed called out to the mysterious person apparently trying to break down his door. Grumbling something profane about door to door salesmen, Deline slowly got up out of bed, tied a robe around his pajama-clad form and headed downstairs. He yanked the front door open. "Mike, what..."
"I found them." a breathless Mike said, not waiting for Ed to finish. He thrust a newspaper into the older man's hands. "Both Henderson and Leo escaped from federal custody a few weeks ago and are still MIA."
"Henderson." Ed growled, grabbing a nearby vase and throwing it against the wall. There was now no longer any doubt in his mind as to who had kidnapped Danny. "That son of a bitch! How come we're only finding out about this now?"
"I don't know that for sure." Mike admitted, "I'm assuming that Henderson was somehow able to keep it quiet."
"Damn it!" an enraged Ed replied, punching the nearby wall. Trying to get his anger under control, he turned towards Mike, who nervously backed up. "Please tell me that you've had luck tracking down that website."
"That'd be a negative, Mr. D." Mike shook his head, "Whoever created it is good. I can't even figure out how to trace it, but I've got some calls in to some people I know from M.I.T. and they're working on it."
"Tell them to hurry, Mike." was Ed's only reply.
"Son of a..." Danny muttered, closing his eyes again after only opening them for a brief moment as he heard someone approaching him. All he had been able to tell, however, was that it was in fact a person approaching him and it appeared to be a man. Feeling his ankle being handcuffed once again to the bedpost, McCoy wished more than anything that he could see, but the few days without light had taken their toll.
"Well, this won't do." a man's voice said in a Southern accent from somewhere nearby. Danny could feel his anger rise as he recognized the voice as that of Bill Henderson. "Turn down the lights so the poor boy can see, will you?" As the lights dimmed, Danny was slowly able to open one eye. An older man with short, curly, blond hair stood near by, watching his every movement. "There we go! That's much better! Isn't it, Danny Boy?"
"Don't call me that." Danny spat, managing to get to an elbow. He wanted nothing more than to tear the other man apart for kidnapping him and hurting Mary, but he also knew that it would be a futile effort right now due to his lack of energy and the fact that his ankle was shackled to the bedpost.
"Don't be so defensive." Henderson chuckled, extending a bottle of water towards Danny. "I'm just trying to hospitable."
Not bothering to reply, Danny just shook his head before tearing the cap off of the water bottle. The thought of it being poisoned or tampered with in someway didn't even cross McCoy's mind as he gulped it down, relishing how good it felt on his dry lips and throat.
"Now, don't drink it too fast there, kid." Henderson warned, watching his captive carefully before reaching to take the water bottle away from him. "You don't want to make yourself sick."
"Like I'm supposed to believe that you give a damn." Danny rolled his eyes, stopping midway through consuming the entire bottle. He knew that Henderson had a point, but he didn't care.
"Not about you personally." Henderson admitted, crossing his arms across his chest. "But if I'm going lure Ed here, I'm going to need live bait."
"God damn it." Ed muttered as the screen saver on his P.C. at the Montecito slowly changed into the still image of Danny sitting on his bed that had been up for the past few days. Considering that Henderson was no longer sending him live video, the gray-haired man couldn't help but imagine the worst happening to his protégé, the man who had become like a son to him.
"Ed, I heard that..." an excited Mary said as she entered the office. However, the red-haired woman's voice immediately trailed away as she caught sight of the image of Danny. "Danny?"
"The monster who's got him is apparently considerate enough to show us that he's okay for now." Ed remarked, getting up and embracing the younger woman as she walked over, still staring at the picture. "We've gotten video of him too, but I didn't want to tell you or Delinda about it." He shrugged his shoulders. "Just in case there was something you shouldn't see."
"It's all right, Ed." Mary reassured, knowing that that was the older man's way of apologizing for not sharing that information. However, her eyes remained on the computer screen. "God! He looks so miserable!"
"He'll be all right." it was Ed's turn to reassure as he moved from hugging Mary to standing beside her, keeping one of his arms wrapped around her. "You know Danny better than anyone. You know that he'll come through this all right." He smiled slightly. "Remember when that temple imploded in Ecuador, and you thought Danny and I were goners?"
"Yeah." Mary closed her eyes, remembering that horrific moment. She smiled slightly at the memory of an injured Danny standing amongst the rubble, almost looking like nothing had happened. She opened her eyes once more. "You're right, Ed. This is going to be just like that."
"Yeah." Ed smiled, trying to shove his own worries aside. "I promise you, Mary, that I will get him back and he'll walk through the front door with that goofy-ass grin on his face and wonder what the hell we were all so worried about."
"Yeah." Mary nodded as Mike ran into the room.
"We've had a break-through." the breathless African American man announced, looking squarely at Ed. "Someone at the Anchorage airport spotted a man that looked like Henderson coming in from a private flight a couple of weeks ago."
"Henderson?" Mary repeated, looking from Ed to Mike. "That's that creepy senator, right?"
"Exactly." Mike nodded, keeping his eyes on the silent Ed.
"And you guys think that he might have Danny." Mary assumed, turning back to Ed.
"Call Jillian, Mikey." Ed replied, ignoring Mary's assumption. Instead, the older man's eyes fixated on the image of Danny in his cell. "Tell her to bring me my winter coat"
"Whoa!" Henderson exclaimed, just managing to miss Danny's arm, which had swung out at him. "Calm down, Danny Boy! If you don't behave, then I can't guarantee your personal safety."
"You should be worried about your own personal safety." Danny replied, glaring at the older man. "After all, I'm not the one with a pissed off Ed Deline gunning for me."
"Shut up!" Henderson ordered, backhanding Danny across the face. Stunned, the Marine lost his elbow from under him, falling back against the bed once more. Slowly, he raised a hand to his nose and mouth to check for blood.
"See?" another man's irate voice growled as a dark-haired man Danny's age entered the room, apparently witness to what had just transpired. Danny recognized the man as Leo Broder, a former Montecito employee and Henderson's own protégé. "This is why I suggested that we kill him before Deline gets here." Pulling a gun out of his back pocket, Broder aimed it square at Danny's heart. "Say goodbye, G.I. Joe."
"Ed!" Sam shouted as she entered the office, carrying the older man's winter coat a few moments later. "Please remind Jillian that I'm not your personal delivery service!"
"Daddy," Delinda asked, following Sam in. "Why did Mom bring..." Like Mary's had before her, the blonde-haired woman's voice trailed off as she caught sight of the picture of Danny. "Oh, my God! DANNY!"
"It's just a picture, sweetheart." Ed replied as his daughter rushed forward and held on to the screen, staring solely at the picture of her boyfriend. "Something his captors were nice enough to send along."
"Well, where did it come from?" Sam demanded as Mary went to Delinda's side. The raven-haired woman turned to Mike, the resident technical genius. "You were able to trace it, right?"
"We haven't been able to nail it down yet." Mike replied, looking at all of the three girls in turn. "But we believe that Danny's being held somewhere near Anchorage, Alaska."
"Okay." Sam nodded, "So, when do we launch Operation: Get Danny?"
"What do you mean?" Ed asked, looking at Sam.
"Don't play stupid, Daddy." Delinda answered for her friend, "We all know that you're planning some big mission to save Danny." She turned her head away from the picture of McCoy and looked at her father. "So, when do we leave?"
"Well, sweetheart," Ed replied, pretending to think. "You, Mary, and Sam aren't going anywhere."
"What?" a stunned Delinda exclaimed, exchanging glances with Mary, whose mouth had dropped open in shock.
"What kind of macho crap is that?" Sam demanded to know.
"Ladies!" Mike exclaimed, putting his hands up in the air to get their attention. "I'm sure that Mr. D. senses how you all feel about Danny and he knows that you would love nothing more than to help us..."
"Actually, there is no us." Ed interrupted, causing Mike's smile to fade. "I'm going solo on this one, Mikey." Seeing that nearly everyone around him was about to protest, the gray-haired man continued. "The bastard who's got Danny only kidnapped him to get at me, and I'll be damned if I'm going to put any of you in danger because of it."
"But Daddy," Delinda tried to reason, "whoever this monster is, he's bound to have back-up."
"Yeah." Sam agreed, nodding her head. "And it's not like we can't handle it, Ed. Remember what happened in Ecuador?" The raven-haired woman tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "You would have been dead meat if we hadn't shown up to help out."
"I don't remember that." Ed replied, wishing that his employees could just accept his decision. "What I remember is you guys not staying put like I asked you to, and putting yourselves needlessly in danger when I had a handle on the situation." Looking around at the angry faces of his employees, the older man sighed. "Don't get me wrong, all right? I do appreciate the fact that you guys want to help, but I'm just not going to let you this time." His gaze turned specifically to Delinda and Mary. "And I'm sure that if Danny knew the circumstances, he wouldn't want you guys putting yourselves in danger either. He would want the Montecito to run as normally as possible, all right?"
"All right." Sam, Mike and Delinda sighed in a defeated unison.
"Thanks, guys." Ed smiled, "I promise that I'll find someway to make it all up to you."
"Just bring Danny home, Mr. D." Mike replied for the group.
"And give whoever did this hell." Sam chimed in.
"And come home safe and sound yourself." a tearful Delinda added, hugging her father tightly. The thought of her boyfriend and, now, her father both in mortal peril terrified the blonde-haired woman.
"I'll be fine, sweetheart." Ed promised, hugging his daughter back. He wondered why Mary hadn't yet contributed anything to the conversation, but quickly dismissed it as nothing. His blue eyes focused on Mike. "Mikey, of course, you're going to be in charge while I'm gone. It should only take me a few days to find Danny and bring him home, but still."
"I'll do my best, Ed." Mike nodded as Ed headed for the door. "Godspeed."
With a final wave to his most trusted employees, Ed headed out the door and, presumably, on his way to the airport to catch a private flight to Anchorage to start his search. What he didn't see when his back was turned was Mary fingering the lone item in her pocket: the spare key to Danny's Camaro.
To be continued...