Disclaimer: Jess, Rob and the motorcycle belong to Meg Cabot and various publishers around the world.
Chapter six
"Accidentally released?" echoed Agent Smith.
"I'm afraid so," replied Krantz, "and it gets worse – it seems he attracted a few supporters among the guards. Some of them have gone AWOL."
"Weapons?" asked another agent.
"I'm afraid so," said the woman who had given Krantz the message. "A couple of semi-automatic rifles and three or four handguns."
"You mean they're not sure?" asked someone else.
The woman, in the resigned way of someone who knew she was going to spend the rest of the afternoon answering questions like this, replied "unfortunately the officer in charge of weaponry is among those missing. It's not yet clear whether he was kidnapped or chose to throw his lot in with Henderson."
"Do we have any information on why he has chosen this path?" This was yet another agent, perched in the corner.
"Because he's a psychopath" replied one of her colleagues, before the messenger glared pointedly and said "actually, that's the million dollar question. It seems that Henderson felt that his imprisonment was Jess's fault and vowed to take revenge on her. It seems his resentment intensified after an incident with another cellmate who, shall we say disagreed with Mr Henderson's ideas and slashed his face with a razor. From that point on he began to actively plot his return to kidnap Jess and punish her in some way, or possibly use her talents for his own nefarious purposes. We know this much thanks to his cell mate, who has cooperated completely with us, possibly in the hopes of it affecting his chances of parole next month."
Throughout the whole exchange the three civilians had remained silent but after the last speech Mary Wilikins clearly found it necessary to query a point. "Just Jess?" she asked, "what about Rob?"
The agent looked at her and explained gently, "Henderson is mentally unstable. For some reason he considers Rob to be innocent of all wrong doing. However, if Henderson is following his predicted modus operandi we would not be considering Rob's inclusion in the kidnapping to be an accident. Indeed, the care with which the 'accident' was staged suggests that Rob was, although the secondary target, definitely required. If anything was likely to go wrong with the plan it would be the likelihood that Rob would do his utmost to protect Jess – the simplest way of capturing her would have been a simple snatch-and-grab."
"So why take him then?" This time it was Mrs Mastriani that asked what Mary would probably have considered an impossible question given the circumstances.
The agent's mouth twisted and awkwardly said "leverage. Jess is a very stubborn young lady and if, as we suspect, he is going to use her to find people, she would be likely to refuse. So they made sure she would not. How better to persuade a teenage girl to do what you want than to threaten the boyfriend she adores?"
A/N: so there you have it: chapter 6 at last! Yes, I know it's been what, three four months since the last one, but the instant I published we got in to mock exams and then I screwed up all of them and had to work my butt off to get my grades up. I have finally had a chance to do some writing about a subject other than Othello or The Great Gatsby and oh boy am I relieved! Exams actually finished several weeks ago, but most of those weeks have been spent trying to dig my laptop out of the pit that is my bedroom!
A/N 2: A/N 1 was written 6 weeks ago, just after I finished it. Unfortunately this was three days before I went away and was refusing to upload. I've just (lucky me) got back from 6 weeks holiday so … tadaa!
A/N 3: this should have been up a month ago, but I couldn't log on to