Obligatory disclaimer - I do not own any of the Characters or plotlines of Phantom of the Opera, they of course are from the genius of Leroux.
A/N I have found the most amazing Beta! Thank you so much Terpsichore314, you have truly made this story so much richer with your amazing talents.
Author – KatieKay90
Beta – Terpsichore314
Title – Unforgiven
Chapter 2 – The Hunt
Nine hours later
John Corbin stood back and surveyed his work of the last several hours. The large conference room on the sixty-third floor of the skyscraper that housed the home offices of Mansart Technologies had been literally transformed into a fully equipped forensics lab. Unfortunately, the kidnappers had provided little information with which to perform any forensics which left John feeling more than a little concerned that they would ever find Mrs. Mansart alive. The meager information he had been able to gather so far was that Mrs. Mansart was abducted from in front of her apartment building at seven twenty-one yesterday evening; they had caught a break that the entire event was recorded on the building's surveillance camera. He felt himself go cold as he recalled Mr. Mansart's reaction to the tape, for he had never seen such a wide range of emotions cross one persons face in such a short span of time. The thing that really got under John's skin was the look of intense longing Mr. Mansart exhibited when they froze the tape frame by frame so that they could take in all available evidence. From that look, John concluded that the office gossip was so far off from the mark on this one particular area, for Mr. Mansart did not hate his wife on the contrary, he loved her with an unquenchable passion that would follow him to the grave.
John's FBI training told him that the average kidnapper would hold their victim for three days and the timeline was falling right into place. Knowing that the next contact would take place within the hour, John mentally reviewed his team's readiness for any eventuality.
Nadir sat on Erik's office sofa and watched with concern as his friend of thirteen years paced the length of his office. He had seen Erik at his best and worst over those years, and through it all he could honestly say that he had never seen Erik as unfocused as he was now. Erik's iron-hard control had not even slipped when Christine's adultery was discovered and he systematically set out to punish her for her betrayal. Erik and Christine had an intense inexplicable attraction for each other from the very beginning, and the heat of their passion could be felt as though it were a tangible entity. Nadir looked at his watch and saw that the contact time indicated in the first note was approaching. As John stated earlier, this contact would more than likely contain the ransom information that the kidnapper would demand. Nadir already had over fifty million in cash tucked securely away in Erik's office safe. Now there was only waiting, just the endless waiting.
Christine squinted against the bright lights shining in her eyes. As she took in the main room of the tiny cabin for the first time, she saw that it was equipped with a small, serviceable kitchen. Well at least her kidnappers were eating, she thought to herself sardonically, not that she could keep anything down should they deem to offer. The large man with the black ski-mask was standing directly behind her as the other woman kidnapper began to ready a video recorder.
"We're running out of time, let's get this moving," the beefy man behind her called out to his accomplice.
"Okay," the woman replied in annoyance. "I'm recording," she said in a muffled voice.
The man held out a white piece of paper with a typed note. "Read," he commanded tersely.
Christine peered at the note through her swollen black eyes. As she quickly read the short note, she began to laugh at the absurdity of her situation. Unable to control herself, she dissolved into hysterical laughter that only served to incite her kidnapper's anger to the boiling point.
"Why are you laughing?" the man demanded from behind her, yanking viciously on her hair.
Gasping in pain, Christine ceased her laughter as she blinked back the tears that threatened. "You really haven't done your homework if you think that Erik will pay any amount of money to have me returned. Sorry, but you really chose the wrong person on this one. If fact, you might do better to have him send you money to kill me," she said with a short humorless laugh. "That way you will be doing him a favor; he won't have to put up with a lying, cheating bitch of a wife anymore," she said self-loathingly. Turning to the camera, she addressed it as though it were Erik "Isn't that right, Erik? This could be your lucky day. Who knows? By the end of the night you may be finally free of me." Christine replied with a knowing smile.
"Shut up!" her captor yelled, hitting her in the head from behind.
Stars danced before Christine's eyes as she teetered on the edge of consciousness.
"Fucking shit Carl, why didn't you know about this?" the woman yelled.
"Don't fucking say my name!" Carl responded as he grabbed Christine's shoulders roughly to prevent her from falling from her chair.
"Why? Do you think she is going to tell someone once she's dead?" the woman responded with sharp sarcasm.
Carl was thoughtful for a moment as he considered his wife's words. "I guess you're right, it really doesn't matter if she hears our names, Lela," he said compliantly.
Moaning painfully, Christine was beginning to shake off the effects of Carl's latest blow.
"Let's finish this," Carl called out. "Just read the paper. No laughing!" he ordered Christine.
"Hold on I need to reset the camera," Lela stated as she pushed several buttons to record over the previous recording. "Okay, go ahead," she commanded.
Taking a couple of deep breaths, Christine began to read the paper word for word in a calm voice that attested to her resignation to her coming plight.
Renee knocked softly on Erik's door before she entered. "This just arrived by private messenger," Renee said as she handed over the small package to Nadir.
Nadir took the package and saw that it again had no return address. Looking over at Erik, he saw that he had yet to turn around and acknowledge any of the happenings within the room. "Get John," Nadir called out to Renee softly.
Closing his eyes against the orange glow of the setting sun, Erik braced himself to hear the new information. This was all his fault, he thought to himself as he clenched his cut hand into a tight fist. The stinging pain was a welcome release from the oppressive weight that had settled around him nine hours earlier. He silently cursed himself for his unforgivable negligence in his failure to protect Christine. His stupid, foolish pride was alone responsible for all that had so callously befallen her, placing her very life in unimaginable danger.
"Erik," Nadir called out to garner Erik's attention.
With a heavy sigh, Erik turned and crossed the room to where Nadir stood with the package that held the key to Christine's very survival.
"Rob is interviewing the messenger that delivered the package," John announced as he entered the room. As he approached Nadir and Erik, he prepared himself for the next few telling minutes. Holding out his hand, he accepted the package from Nadir. "Ready?" he questioned as he looked up at both men.
"Yes," Erik responded in a tortured voice.
Nadir merely nodded as he watched his boss continue to suffer through the worst day of his life.
John carefully opened the small package, which revealed an unmarked video cassette. "Do we have a VHS player?" John inquired without looking up.
"In the conference room," Nadir said as he motioned for Erik to precede him out of the office.
Once John had cleared the room, he inserted the tape and pushed play.
Erik's heart jumped into his throat as he watched his battered wife read the demands of her kidnappers.
"I am to deliver this message to you as written. You are not to contact the police or the FBI. You are to wire twenty-five million dollars to the International Bank of Switzerland; the account number is 675-AC432-MM2. You are to have this transaction completed by noon tomorrow. Failure to adhere to these instructions will result in my immediate death. Erik, if you do as they request they will let me go."
"Hold up the paper," a disembodied female voice called out on the tape.
Christine held up the edition of this morning's New York Post, with an abject look of resignation that tore at Erik's already volatile emotions. As the screen faded into fuzzy white static, Erik let his head fall into his hands. She didn't believe that he was going to save her, she had already given up all hope of survival, Erik's mind cried out silently in agony. He didn't know which caused him more pain, the fact that at any minute Christine's life could be extinguished, or her utter lack of confidence in him that he would move heaven and earth to see her returned to safety.
"It may be time to call in the authorities," John said in a carefully controlled voice. "I still have some contacts at the FBI. I think that we need their expertise with this, Mr. Mansart," John suggested to his employer.
"Nadir?" Erik solicited his friend's opinion without lifting his head.
"I think that John is right. We need some expert help," Nadir said reasonably.
"What if they find out, what if the FBI slip up and let on that we called them?" he asked in an agonized tone that testified to the true extent of his fear.
John didn't want to voice his real opinion that regardless of the content of the message, they were going to kill Christine whether the ransom was received or not. As of noon tomorrow, he feared that Mrs. Mansart would lose her life at the hands of her captors. "It's more of a question of what can we do to find her, Mr. Mansart," John said gently.
Erik felt a rage building up within him as he contemplated the best thing for Christine. "All right, call them," he said decisively and with those words, set into action an irrevocable chain of events.
"Damn," John said as he leaned back heavily against his chair. "I suspected that they never intended to release her. So what do we do now?" he asked his former partner.
FBI Agent Mike Crepinski rubbed his jaw tiredly as he pushed the stop button on the digitally altered tape. "We follow the leads that we do have. First we begin to search for a couple with the first names of Carl and Lela," Mike responded in a matter-of-fact tone. "Cain, see what you can find on these two names. Start with the state of New York and New Jersey," he instructed his second-in-charge. "John, lets work on the surveillance tape that you got from her apartment building. Hopefully we can catch a partial plate on the van."
John nodded his head and looking at his watch, saw that it was closing in on five in the morning, and they only had seven more hours in which to find Christine, seven short hours in which to save her life.
"Any news?" Erik queried as he emerged from his private bathroom freshly showered and changed.
"As a matter of fact, they want to see us in the conference room," Nadir responded as he rose to stretch his tired muscles.
Erik anticipated the staff's arrival for another business day, and even though he would like nothing more than to dismiss them for the rest of the week so that he could concentrate on Christine's rescue, he felt that it would arouse too much suspicion.
As he made his way to the busy conference room, his intuition told him that there was something that John and the FBI agents weren't telling him. Something that he was determined to rectify as he would insist that they fully disclose all information pertaining to his wife.
John looked up from his seated position to see the half-masked Mr. Mansart enter the room in a simmering rage held in check only by the force of his will.
"Mike, this is Erik Mansart and Nadir Khan," John said by way of introduction.
The three men exchanged greeting handshakes and then settled down to the dire business at hand. "What have you learned?" Erik asked, taking immediate control of the conversation.
Mike, even though he had been forewarned of the strange appearance of the eccentric billionaire, found to his surprise that he was a little shocked. "Mr. Mansart, first let me tell you that we have hundreds of agents working on this case even as we speak. Now let's get down to what we know. Mrs. Mansart was abducted in front of her building at seven twenty-one last evening. When we reviewed the tape, we were able to pick up the first three numbers on the van's license plate. I have my men working on that lead now. Also we were able to lift another voice log off of the video tape that you received yesterday evening."
Nadir frowned at this bit of information. "I don't understand what voice log," he asked the question with a sinking feeling.
"When someone records over a previously recorded tape, it doesn't always cleanly erase the first recording. We were able to separate the two voice recordings," Mike explained.
"I want to hear it," Erik demanded abruptly.
"Mr. Mansart, I don't think that it is necessary," Mike began trying to spare the victim's husband any further pain.
"I didn't ask you what you thought was necessary, I asked you to play the tape," Erik said through his tightly clenched teeth.
Mike, a veteran agent of over twenty years, felt a chill race down his spine at the coldness reflected him Mr. Mansart's grey eyes.
"All right, Sam," he called out to his assistant to play the voice recording.
Erik's expression remained unmoved as he listened to his wife taunt her kidnappers. His only reaction was a slight jump at the sound of her captor's blow. After several minutes of uncomfortable silence, Erik turned his attention to the seasoned FBI agent. "It was never their intention to release her," he said in a hollow voice that attested to the validity of his ominous prediction.
Mike, who would normally tell the family members of kidnapped victims to keep hopeful, knew that the man before him would brook no such platitude. "No, it wasn't."
His worst fears confirmed Erik found his new purpose in life. He found the one thing that would keep him from literally going insane over the loss of his Christine. He would make it his mission in life to hunt down the people responsible for harming his wife. He would kill them just as ruthlessly as they would surely kill her. Turning to Nadir, he ordered his next plan of action. "I want a press release to go out immediately, one hundred million dollars for any information leading to the capture and conviction of Christine's kidnappers. I want it out now Nadir," Erik said in a deadly tone.
Nadir knew that there would be no going back now; Erik was on a personal vendetta of revenge, one that would not accept any form of failure.
Three days later
Erik felt an emptiness that would remain unfilled for the rest of his days as the helicopter began its descent. The large reward had finally paid off and he, along with Nadir, John and a large group of FBI agents were en route to the deserted cabin where Carl and Lela Myers had held Christine captive. It was a forgone conclusion that her captors would have left her body in the cabin as they tried to escape the countrywide manhunt. So far, there had been no sighting of the renegade couple. Something that money and time would surely rectify, and those thankfully were two things that Erik had in abundance. What he would not give if he could turn back the clock to a year and a half ago, when Christine was the one thing that brought him joy in his miserable life. Now it had all come to a tragic end. Now there was only revenge.
Nadir had watched Erik closely over the course of the last five days, and knew that his friend's control was about to shatter. It was one thing to expect to find Christine's body, but when the actuality occurred, he did not think that Erik would be able to hold on to his closely guarded feelings.
Mike turned to the three men seated in front of him. "When we land, my men will storm the cabin to ensure that no one is inside. Once they give me the all clear signal, I will go in and assess the scene. Remember you all agreed not to leave the helicopter I can't have you compromising the crime scene," Mike yelled over the roar of the helicopter's whirring blades.
John nodded in agreement for all three of them. As the helicopter touched down, several heavily armed men sprang from the open door and raced towards the small cabin.
Mike climbed down to the wooded ground and awaited his men's report.
Agent Sims cautiously held his .45 automatic out in front of his all-seeing eyes. In his flashlight beam he saw no one was inside the cabin save the motionless body on the floor. "All clear," he said into his headset as he approached the body of Mrs. Mansart. Reaching down he was surprised to feel that she was still quite warm to the touch. Quickly placing his fingers on her neck, he found a very faint and thready pulse. "Jesus! She's alive!"
Mike felt his heart hit his stomach hearing the unexpected news over his radio. Having been trained to plan and prepare for all aspects of any given situation, he jumped up into the helicopter to summon his paramedic crew. "She's alive," he said simply. Two words that gave back the promise of the world to the half-masked man, who at long last allowed the held-back tears of the last five days to fill his eyes.