Thanks! This may be a ludicrous stretch, but what the Hell.
Chapter Fifty-Six
The next morning Ormes and Juno sat in her office in silence.
"How did you get here?" Ormes asked.
"A friend dropped me off," she said. "She's an ER doctor, she gets the crazy hours and the frustration."
"This isn't your fault."
Juno wouldn't look at her.
"I should have kept my mouth shut," she said. "I was the one who came up with Womack. I just wanted to help him."
"The team walked into several traps," Ormes said. "Half of his team and associates are in the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries."
"I don't get why he is such a huge target. He is smart and kind, but a lot of people are smart and kind. Why do people want to hurt him?"
"I wish I knew."
"How are his friends?"
"Reid spent the last hours here writing. He left letters for everyone he was in frequent contact with, including his students and the care providers."
"Us included?"
Ormes nodded and handed her a neatly folded piece of paper with her name on it.
"Did you read yours?"
"Yes."
Juno opened it. Tears dripped down her face.
"What are we going to do?"
"Selzer is going to cover for you. Iris is quiet and I have her on B protocols. Bruce is reading. There is no guidance for what to do in this situation. I suggest you take it easy for at least a couple of days."
"What of the search for Reid?"
"Try to focus on yourself as much as possible."
Juno stood up.
"I feel like going to a classroom. My mom was a sixth-grade teacher. The smell of chalk dust soothed me as a kid. Maybe I'll draw some triangles as my mom loved teaching math."
"That sounds like good self-care."
"Take care of yourself too, Shelby."
She nodded. Juno left her office.
Juno took the elevator up a floor and was grateful to see no one. She inserted a passkey into a door and walked in.
"What the Hell?" she said as she looked at what was in front of her.
Iris, Bruce, and several other friends and students of Reid were in the room huddled around a set of computers.
"I told you we should have used the dance studio," Bruce said.
"This classroom is rarely used," Iris snapped. "How was I supposed to know Dr. Juno would just randomly pop in?"
"Would someone care to tell me what is going on?" Juno asked.
"We're trying to find Reid," Ally, an anorexic girl said.
"Oh god," Juno said as she sighed. "I need page your doctors."
"We may have found him," Bruce said.
"How?" Juno asked as she approached the group.
"So obviously the island in the Caribbean is a trap/false lead etc." another student of Reid's said. "All Concord jets have been grounded so Reid isn't in Europe yet."
"We thought about how obsessed this guy is with Vikings," Iris said. "So, everyone with sense knows the Vikings settled in Canada first.
"There's tons of new evidence of Vikings, how could you have found a location?" Juno asked.
A girl with red hair who had tried to commit suicide raised her hand.
"I'm a massive gaming nerd like Womack. He like Norse names for his characters, not just 'Thor-Norse' nitty-gritty shit."
"What Leticia is trying to say is we found his favorite character's name associated with a landholding in Newfoundland."
"That could be a coincidence," Juno said. "Why aren't we letting the authorities handle this?"
"Look how good a job they've done so far," Bruce said. "Anyone who isn't hurt is worried for their families being threatened, can't be trusted."
"Guy's he's entering!" another student said.
"What—"
"We'll explain later," Iris said.
Juno got behind a computer and looked at what was going on. It was body-cam footage of what looked like the storming of a mansion.
"Dr. Reid!" the agent was shouting with a heavy French accent. A man in a three-piece appeared.
"You're not allowed here!"
"Take it up with someone who cares," he said bluntly and busted doors down.
"Did someone hire private security to break in?" Juno asked.
"I once bought a yacht using numbers I memorized from Daddy's cards. This card only has forty G American on it."
Eve was a kleptomaniac put here by her father to teach her a lesson and attended Reid's classes.
They approached a vault.
"Open this," he said to the man in the suit.
"I'm not paid enough to deal with this," the man in the suit said.
He opened the vault.
The air was chilly according to the mist in the air. The man looked around and found saw a figure huddled by a display of jewels.
Reid was only wearing a pair of green shorts.
"Dr. Reid?" he said.
He nodded, even as there was fear in his eyes.
"Your friends at the Mercer Institute have hired me to retrieve you."
"Part of me isn't surprised," he said as the corners of his mouth lifted.
"Let's get you home."
There was lots of cheering and hugging. Juno dashed out to call the real authorities. There were tears of joy in her eyes.