SEVEN: Threats and Schemes

Van's plan, such as it was, was to wander aimlessly around Harbor Parade, keeping his ear to the ground and his eyes peeled, in the hope that he'd learn something about the woman who was trying to steal his armor. If that didn't work, he would probably have to go to the police station to ask if they'd learned anything more. Perhaps he could find out more about this "Cesar Montana" for whom the goons were said to work.

He spent an hour or two scoping out areas where he thought armor riders might congregate. He learned nothing, except that Cesar Montana was Tony's younger brother, and it was rumored that he was going to be the head of the family when Tony passed away. No one had seen a woman with dark hair and blue eyes wearing a red dress. Of course, Van realized halfway through the morning, she might have changed her dress by now, which meant he had no way of identifying her.

Just as he was starting to think about giving up and going to the police, he decided to take a swing through the park along the north beach. He very much doubted that he was going to find his target lingering in the park, no matter how beautiful the day was, but this gave him an excuse to stop by the hotdog vender. (True, he had already had breakfast, and he was hoping to have lunch with Wendy, but there was nothing wrong with a mid-morning snack, was there?)

To his surprise, the park was full of police officers, and civilians had been blocked out of the park. They stood in large clumps, gossiping and watching the police work. The regular hotdog stand had closed—but the vender had set up a cart just outside the park. He was doing a brisk business selling food and drink to those watching the police.

"What happened here?" Van asked the vender as he paid for his hotdog.

"A kidnapping," the vender explained. "Some poor lady took her baby for a walk in the park, and the minute her back was turned, someone snatched the baby out of the stroller."

"That's terrible," Van commented. There didn't seem to be much else to say. He watched the police for a moment, thinking that if they were busy here, they would not likely have the time to help him track down Red Dress. Then he frowned, having see a familiar blond head. Was that Joshua? What on earth was he doing here? He stared, still holding his hotdog, until he was certain that it was, in fact, Joshua Lundgren. He took a bite of his hotdog and ducked under the police tape to head in Joshua's direction.

"Hey you," one of the policemen said. "You can't come in here."

"I'm with him," Van said, pointing at Joshua. The policeman didn't look satisfied with this answer, but Van didn't care. He marched past him and headed towards Joshua, still eating as he walked. His previous experience of Harbor Parade had involved a succession of dinners he hadn't been able to eat, and he wasn't willing to take chances.

"VAN!" Joshua yelled as soon as he saw him. He came running towards Van; Van prepared to duck, just in case, but Joshua came to abrupt halt just before crashing into him. "How did you hear?"

"I didn't," Van explained. "I just walked past the park and saw you here. What's going on?"

"Someone kidnapped Ray."

"Really? Why would they do that?" Who on earth would want to steal someone else's baby? Particularly a baby like Ray? The kid didn't even have much hair yet.

"We don't know!" Joshua exclaimed. "They haven't left a ransom note or contacted the police or ANYTHING. Maybe they're going to sell him on the blackmarket."

"There's a market for babies?" Van was momentarily curious, but decided that he really didn't want to know. He had just thought of something more important. "Are the police investigating the mafia?" he suggested. "They seem to be behind everything in this town."

"Why would the mafia want my baby?" That was a darn good question, as far as Van was concerned. Ray was a biter. Anyone with sense would have picked a different baby, unless . . . unless it wasn't about Ray at all.

"Dunno," Van said, "but it might have something to do with those idiots trying to steal my armor."

"Didn't you catch them yesterday?" Joshua asked, surprised.

"I caught the two goons, but not their ringleader. She gave me the slip." Joshua looked thoughtful for a moment.

"Yukiko said there was a woman involved in the kidnapping," he said slowly. "Could it be the same one?"

"Who knows?" There were a lot of women in Harbor Parade. Apparently, there were a lot of criminals, too. Van found himself briefly wishing that he were back in Evergreen, where it was much easier to keep track of who was who and what was what. "We can't assume that they're the same person." Though, even if it wasn't the same woman, they might all be working together. What were the odds that little Ray had been kidnapped by someone not connected to the Montana family?

"I don't see how kidnapping Ray would help them get your armor," Joshua was babbling. Van did, though. Anyone who had seen the Lundgrens at his wedding would rightly assume that they were close friends, and therefore important to him. He couldn't very well sit back and watch them mourn a missing child, not if there was something he could do about it.

"Look . . ." Van decided he might as well interrupt Joshua's frenzied and irrelevant babbling about Ray's feeding schedule and how he was missing his naptime."I need to go check on something. See ya." He pivoted around on one heel and began walking back the way he'd come.

"But where are you going? Where can I find you again?"

"Check at the hotel desk for any messages," he called back over his shoulder. Then he thought of something. "Don't worry, we'll find Ray!" He was not as confident about that as he sounded, but he could see that Joshua was falling apart.

Once he got out of the park, he walked quickly towards the hotel, ignoring the people who sometimes bumped against him. It was a beautiful autumn day and it seemed like everyone in Harbor Parade had decided to take a walk or go shopping. He fiercely wished that they would all go away.

As he had hoped (or feared?), there was a message waiting for him at the front desk of the hotel. The front desk clerk handed him a piece of plan white paper, folded over, and addressed to Pretty Boy Van of the Garbage Dump. He opened it up. The message inside was short was short and to the point. "Give us your armor or the baby gets it."

"Well, that's not very original," Van muttered. And how was he supposed to hand over his armor? There were no further instructions. "That's all there is?" he asked the clerk.

"That, and a verbal message. The man dropping it off said that he'd see you at the South Pier at sunset. He said you would know where." Van frowned. It surprised him a little that they wanted him to go back to the scene of their failed attempt to capture Dann. Then again, Red Dress had been able to give him the slip there. Maybe she was confident about her ability to do it again, if necessary.

"Thanks," Van said to the clerk. He walked out of the hotel lobby, found a bench, and sat down to think for a minute. This was going to be more complicated than most of his battles.


There wasn't really much that Wendy could do at the empty campsite. She rolled up the bedding and tucked it out of the way, then cleared away the breakfast mess. After that, she took a walk around the little lake, enjoying the weather. Van had promised to be back by lunch, but she was not all that surprised when he didn't show up. Finding one person in a place as large as Harbor Parade was not going to be easy. It wouldn't surprise her if it ended up taking him more than a couple of days to track down the woman with the red dress who had wanted his armor.

Wendy was expecting to spend a rather boring afternoon reading and waiting for Van to come back. She wasn't expecting to be disturbed by a knock on the cabin door. She nearly dropped her book in surprise. Van wouldn't have knocked. This must be someone else, then. It was hard to imagine who would know that she was here. Her heart began to beat more quickly, and she looked around the room for a possible weapon. The only knives in the kitchen were the rather dull camping knives she'd bought in town, and she hadn't thought to ask Yukiko to pack her gun.

Just as she was wondering whether it would be overkill to pick up a chair, she heard a familiar voice on the doorstep: "Wendy? Are you there?"

"Yukiko?" She ran to the door, feeling very silly. Of course: the only people who knew she was here were her friends! "What on earth are you doing here?" Instead of answering, Yukiko rushed up to Wendy and hugged her. Wendy hugged her back, not at all sure of what was going on.

"Thank goodness you're all right, at least," Yukiko said with a sniff.

"Yukiko . . . are you crying?" Wendy asked. "What's wrong?"

"It's Ray," her friend whispered. "They took Ray." Oh. There was nothing that Wendy could do or say that would make that better.

"I'm so sorry," she said. Then she confidently added:"Van will get him back." He'd better, or he'd have her to answer to about it.

"I know . . . but there's so much that could go wrong . . . You see, Joshua's going to try to help him!"

Once again, Wendy was dumbfounded. "Oh." And Van was okay with that? Joshua was a brilliant scientist, a good friend, and a devoted husband and father, but he had never been all that useful in combat, so far as Wendy could remember. Like her, he had tended to help behind the scenes.

"He's tougher than he looks," Yukiko said, sounding a little defensive. "He rescued me from a guard at the Claw's base all those years ago, you know. That was when I knew I was in love with him." That was interesting, and another time Wendy would have loved to hear more about it, but there were more important things to discuss right now.

"Well, there's no need to keep standing in the doorway, is there? Why don't you come inside and take a seat?" Wendy suggested. Yukiko nodded and stepped back, wiping her eyes. It was disturbing to Wendy to see her like this. Her friend was usually calm and competent, even in the middle of a disaster.

"Oh, right, I brought your luggage." Yukiko glanced over her shoulder as she spoke, and Wendy looked, too.

"All of it?" Wendy stared. Until now she had not noticed that Yukiko had been dragging an enormous luggage cart, the type you sometimes saw in large train stations. It was heavily laden with an assortment of suitcases and duffel bags. "You brought that all the way from town?" Yukiko nodded.

"Joshua didn't think it would be safe for me to stay in the hotel," she explained. "So I checked out and brought everything with me. Including this." She reached into her handbag and pulled out Wendy's revolver. "I hope you didn't mind that I took it out of your suitcase," she said. "I was a little worried that I'd be followed, and I wanted to have it close at hand."

"Of course I don't mind," Wendy said. All the same, it was a comfort to have the gun back in her hands again. She had been all too aware of how vulnerable she was without it. "Now, come inside and tell me what's going on."

She and Yukiko sat down at the table, and Yukiko began to talk. Halfway through, Wendy stopped her in order to rummage through her luggage, looking for the notebook that she knew she had packed on a whim. Once she found it, she flipped it open to a clean page. "I want to take notes," she said, feeling a little silly. It wasn't as if she was trying to play detective, but she did want to sort out all the details.

"I'm probably leaving out some details," Yukiko admitted. "I gave the police a statement, but I'm sure by now I've forgotten some things." She closed her eyes, then took a breath, and opened them. "Over and over again, I keep seeing the moment when I reached the stroller and saw that he was gone."

"But you didn't see anyone carrying him away," Wendy mused. That struck her as odd, especially as Ray didn't particularly like being held by anyone other than his parents. He ought to have been raising a fuss. You would think he would have been easy to see, unless he was hidden or restrained somehow.

"I suppose someone could have put him in a bag." Yukiko didn't seem too happy about that prospect.

"Or hidden him underneath a loose coat?" Wendy suggested. "Would people have been wearing coats today?"

"Sweaters, maybe." Yukiko rested her chin on one hand as she thought about it. "There were a few people in the park with coats," she said at last. "It's possible." Wendy put a question mark next to "coat," though she wasn't sure how likely the idea was. Surely someone wearing a long, loose, heavy coat would have been very noticeable on a sunny morning in a tropical town?

"Now," she said, once Yukiko had told her story, "What exactly are Van and Joshua doing? What's their plan?"

"That's the problem! I don't think they have a plan. They're going to just show up at the meeting place and see what they can do to get Ray back." Wendy sighed. That sounded all too much like the way Van would approach such a problem. He was good at improvising his tactics in the middle of a battle. He was not so good at planning his strategy out ahead of time.

"Maybe there's something we can do to help," she suggested.

"What?" It was a good question.

"I don't know. Let's figure out all the facts first and then see if there's anything we all might have overlooked." It was probably a pointless endeavor, but at least she felt like she was doing something useful. She was sick and tired of sitting around waiting for other people to act.

As she and Yukiko talked, Wendy jotted down any questions she could think of that they might explore. She also kept an eye on the window. She had not forgotten her agreement with Van. If he wasn't back by sunset, she had his permission to go into town after him.


At sunset, Van stood on the South pier again, waiting for his enemies. He stood near the end of the pier. Joshua was nearby, hiding in an empty shipping crate on one of the docked boats. He wanted to be within earshot in case Van needed help. Van did not think it was remotely likely that he would need him, but he could see that Joshua needed to be doing something to help. At least, he needed to believe that he was helping.

Van wasn't at all sure how this was going to go down. He couldn't count on Red Dress being stupid enough to make the same mistakes she had made yesterday. He also couldn't afford to take any risks. If he were injured, he would heal. Young Ray, on the other hand, was fragile and defenseless. Protecting him had to be Van's top priority now, even if that meant some temporary setback. After all, even if the mafiosi took Dann, they wouldn't know how to ride him. It ought to be easy enough for Van to steal his armor back once the Lundgren baby was safe.

Van knew that the mafiosi would likely take a different approach today than they had yesterday. He just hadn't counted on how different it would be. He wasn't prepared for someone from a passing boat to lob an object onto the end of the pier. Van whirled around at the sound, but all he could see was something the approximate size and shape of a softball. He turned back to scan the surroundings thoroughly. Because he was looking away, he didn't see the cloud of gas that began spilling from the object. . . not until he breathed in and drew a lungful of something that smelled sickly sweet.

He began coughing. At first, he thought that that was all that was going to happen. When he took a step away from the gas, he discovered that whatever this was, it was more than just a lung irritant. His legs wobbled underneath him, almost as if he were tipsy. And then he collapsed as suddenly as if he'd had a shot of tequila. He was out cold before his head hit the pavement.