Logan looked at his watch. It was ten thirty. It wasn't like Veronica to be running this late and not call or atleast answer her phone he began to worry. Veronica didn't show up later on that night either. Finally, he decided to call her friend Mac, who apparently hadn't seen her all day. Thanks for absolutely no help. He tried Wallace. He, on the other hand, was some help. He had seen her right before she went to class and was supposed to help him out with a paper afterward but she knew showed up and, he too, just kept getting her voicemail when he tried calling her. In Logan's mind all of the terrible possibilities started to play themselves out. He worried, so many people hated Veronica for one reason or another, usually pertaining to her investigative work, that it was very easy to picture someone trying to hurt her. What should he do?
The next thing Veronica knew she was being roughly carried down a flight of stairs by someone she didn't recognize. She had woke up once while she was in a car, but someone hit her and she fell out again. But not before taking note of her surroundings. She felt the man quite roughly drop her on the hard floor and kick her once with his metal toed boots hard enough to make her bleed before jerking off the blindfold. He never said one word to her, just grinned and left her laying on a the cold concrete floor of a basement. Ok, Veronica, you need to pull yourself together and figure out how to get out of this. She tried to stand up but the pain at her side was too much and she fell back down to the floor. Frustrated, she looked around from where she sat. It was a medium sized basement with concrete walls and floors and had nothing in it at all except her and the blood she'd spilled on the floor. There were no doors or windows except the door her attacker had come from. The only thing she saw at all really was the large air vent toward the top of the wall behind her. As far as she could think, there was no way to get up to the vent or un screw it if she did, and even if she could crawl through it, she had no guaranty it would get her out before they came back and saw she was gone. It was freezing down there. She put her hands into the pocket of her sweatshirt and, to her surprise, felt the wire paperclip from earlier, when they had jerked the report papers she had been taking to her car earlier from her, the clip must have fallen off. She tried to stand up this time and finally succeeded, although the pain was breath taking.
She finally found a loose step and pulled it up, propping up vertically against the wall and somehow, after hours of trying she managed to somehow get on top of the end and balance on it against the wall, using the paperclip to slowly and painfully unscrew the vent and then tried to climb through only to fall down, hurting herself more several times and cutting her hand on the sharp edge that she had to pull herself up on before finally getting into it. I better make this fast, as soon as they come back it won't take them a second to know how I got out. Trying not to make much noise, she crawled through the vent until it stopped in front of her and went straight up for a good ten feet. She leaned her back up one side and tried to push up with her feet using the other. It barely worked. After another twenty minutes of crawling and maneuvering, she finally came to a vent that must have been over the laundry room. She dropped down carefully from it unto a drier and crawled inside it when she heard footsteps nearby. They didn't come in the room and, when they went away, she came back out and tried the only small window that led to a yard. It was painted shut. She went to the door and listened for a few minutes and heard nothing so she opened it just barely very slowly. No one was in the room, but there was a cell phone laying on a chair close by, she tiptoed to it grabbed it and tiptoed back to the laundry room, closing and locking the door behind her. She text messaged her dad. dad, trace this call, hurry!!!! Somewhere near beach on Tolso street. Red Cherokee.
Two men walked toward the room she was hiding in. She could hear their heavy steps and conversation and decided to replace the vent and hide under the huge pile of laundry inside the basket just incase they should come inside while listening to what they were saying. Being petite had its advantages.
"I don't know. It would have been easier to just waste her myself instead of having to kidnap her, but the boss wanted to personally do it."
"He must really have something against her. When's he coming?"
"He's gonna call tonight to tell me when and where. You know, I almost felt bad for the girl."
"Yeah, tiny thing…and pretty. You think he'd mind if I uh.."
"As much as he wants her dead, nawh. Go ahead."
The second man walked loudly away. He'll see that I'm gone any minute… She listened for footsteps. Nothing. She had no idea where the first man was. She waited another minute and then, knowing that at any second that man would find her missing and ransack every room to find her, she decided to run. Not a good move. The man was still in the room beside where she had been hiding quietly sitting on a couch reading. He looked up and saw her just as she started to run and the other man yelled that she was gone from the basement.
She ran outside with her attacker just a step behind her, she saw Logan's truck pull up at the end of the driveway just as she was tackled down to the concrete. Logan ran to them and pulled him off her just as the cops showed up and pulled their guns on him. He ran through the yard and they all ran after him. Logan stared at Veronica in shocked silence at what a mess she was in. She clung to him as if she was drowning and he was a floatie. But he didn't waste any time in getting her to his truck and sitting her in the front seat when the door opened as her dad pulled up. They both stood near the open door, frantically asking if she were ok.
The other cops that arrived insisted that she be taken to the hospital despite her protestations. She didn't have anything major wrong with her, just a bunch of cuts and bruises, one which required several stitches though. They let her go home after staying one night. Both her dad and Logan slept on the uncomfortable chairs in the room the night she was there. They were both afraid of whoever hired the guy that kidnapped her. As much as both of them loved Veronica, she did have a way of making enemies and if they were gonna have to sit down and make a list of everyone who had a motive to kill her it would take hours just to get half the names written down. Who were they gonna be able to keep her safe?