"Where on Earth is Lauren Ridgemount?"
Story Written by Freedom Fighter
Okay, so after more than a month, here's the second chapter! I hope writing the third chapter won't take as long.
That being said, due to lack of interest, I am aiming to shorten this story a lot more than originally planned. By how much, I'm not sure yet, but this will probably top out at four or five chapters total.
Disclaimer: The characters of 'Stoked' belong to Fresh TV, Inc., Teletoon, and Cartoon Network.
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Chapter Two - This Wasn't a Date, Was It? (10.28.10)
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The sun was already starting to set as the private jet being piloted by Jack landed at one of the smaller runways at JFK International Airport. Ten minutes later he was out of the plane, as was his passenger, Lo, as a couple private contractors were towing the jet to a nearby hanger.
"Thank you, my good man," Jack said as he paid one of the contractors a fee for the service.
"Wow!" gasped Lo. "You have your own private hanger here?"
"No, but I made them THINK I do. Knowing the right people can have its advantages, my dear."
"I know what you mean. Daddy gets them all the time."
The two of them walked over to the gates denoting the entrance to the hangars behind the airport, with Jack walking behind Lo and covering her eyes, with her willingly playing along.
"Okay," Lo giggled, "where are you taking me?"
"That's a surprise, my dear!"
He led her over to the parking lot, where, in an open section all by itself, was a silver Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren.
"But first things first..."
Jack removed his hands, and Lo squealed in delight upon seeing Jack's car.
"EEEE! Your car! It's..."
"Provided to me by the company. No use being the best if you can't flaunt it, you know."
"Well... that's my kind of company! Maybe I should think about having Daddy invest in it..."
Jack led Lo over to the passenger side of the car, and opened the door for her. Once he was sure she was comfortably seated, he closed the door and made his way over to the driver's side.
As he slid in, he already had his keys in, ready to place them in the ignition slot. Seconds later, the engine roared to life. Jack then proceeded to drive out of the lot and onto the street.
"So..." Lo began, "this company of yours. What would you say if I could get my dad to invest in some stock?"
"Stock?"
"Yeah! He's a mogul in the resort industry. He could drum up some business for you. And in return, all your company would have to do is promise to recommend our hotel to your friends and family."
"Well..." Jack hesitated.
"It's a great deal, trust me! Plus, you've seen our resort first-hand! You know how fab it is! The partnership would be SO worth it! And, who knows? Maybe I could convince him to swing you a deal..."
"That's nice, but..."
"What?" Lo eyed him. "What's wrong?"
"Well, we're a private company. We don't trade stocks."
"Oh."
Lo looked a little bummed out by the revelation, so Jack quickly tried to cheer her back up.
"But... I'm sure if I talk to my superiors, we could find some other way to get your dad to invest in the company. If he's that interested."
"You could do that?"
Lo's face brightened up.
"Sure! Anything for my little buttercup!"
"Aww," cooed Lo. "You're so sweet!"
"In fact, let me ask them right now."
Lo clapped with glee as Jack made sure he had one wheel on steering wheel as he patted his tuxedo pockets, looking for his cell phone with his free hand. But it only took him a few seconds to realize the obvious...
"My cell phone! I don't... have it!"
"What?"
"I... I must've left it back at the hotel, hours ago!"
"It's back at the resort? Don't worry!"
Lo unzipped the opening into her mini-purse, and was about to ruffle through its contents to find her cell phone.
"I'll just call Fin. She's in housekeeping too. I'm sure she'd tell me if..."
Lo's left hand was already in the mini-purse when Jack reached over and grabbed it by the wrist.
"If your friend has it, then I'm sure it's fine."
Lo quickly agreed and slowly pulled her hand back out, just as Jack released his grip on her wrist.
"You're probably right. It's probably lying safely on the desk in your room."
"Yeah," Jack agreed, chuckling lightly. "That's where I left it."
They sat quietly for a few seconds. Then, out of the blue...
"I think we'd better pull over for a second..."
Jack pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store and put his vehicle in park. He then hopped out and ran over to the pay phone, while Lo waited patiently in the car.
"Where have you been?" an irate voice asked him from the other end of the line.
"That doesn't matter," responded Jack. "I think we have a more pressing problem.
"No duh!" the male exclaimed. "Just when I was beginning to believe you were beginning to turn the corner. Then you go and lose your phone, oh-six-seven!"
"Oh, don't act like you've never forgotten yours ever, three-two-one!"
"Well, yeah, but not while on a job! Do you know someone tried to use your phone to call the organization already?"
"They must've found it already," deduced Jack. "But, don't worry! They're just kids. Even if they knew where the package and I were, there's no way they could follow us without help."
On a commercial airliner, somewhere above Calgary...
"Bummer and Mr. Ridgemount took the news a little better than I thought they would," Johnny noted aloud.
"I'll say," added Emma, sitting to his left, in a window seat. "Oh, I hope Lo's alright..."
"She better be!" Fin exclaimed, sitting across the aisle, "because if she's not..."
Fin clenched her left fist in anger, signifying her intent to slug Jack the next time she saw him. She then turned around, hoping to get a matching affirmative from Reef. But he was too busy trying to stick straws in Broseph's nose without waking him from his slumber.
"Will you knock it off?" she scolded, grabbing one from Reef's hand.
"Hey! Do you mind?"
"Ugh!" she threw her hands up in frustration. "Why do I even bother with you?"
"Because you can't get enough of the Reefster!"
Fin crossed her arms over her chest and rolled her eyes.
"As if!"
Johnny and Emma made some observations as Reef and Fin started a small argument between the two of them.
"They're SO right for each other," cooed Emma.
"Yeah. If I didn't know any better, they act like a married couple."
"Speaking of couples," Johnny changed the subject, as he began to stare into Emma's beautiful, blue eyes.
Suddenly, Johnny's gaze was interrupted by the voice of the captain coming out over the PA system.
"Attention, passengers, but if you look out your window, you can see the lovely city of Calgary below!"
Emma squealed as she turned around and glanced out the window, as Johnny sighed after fate had denied him another lost opportunity.
"I wonder if I can see my house from up here?" she asked aloud, to no one in particular.
"Okay," Jack said as he was being relayed directions. "I should be there in 20 minutes."
He then hung up and made his way back to his car.
"What was that all about?" Lo asked.
"Well, I just remembered there were some top secret documents stored on my phone. I had to call my carrier to lock and deactivate it."
"Really? Top secret documents?"
"You know... the company's always on the cutting edge of technology. We have some pretty big ideas that are still in various stages of development, and we'd be screwed if one of our competitors got a hold of 'em."
"Right," Lo nodded.
Jack started the car, and shortly thereafter, they were back on the road.
"But why did you have to stop and use a pay phone? You could've used my phone."
"Yeah, but I have a very finicky carrier. The service desk refuses calls unless they're from a land line."
"Oh, I see. Or, maybe, just maybe..."
It was then that Jack noticed, for the first time, that all of the contents of Lo's purse had been spilled out and either were in her lap or on the floor mat beneath her feet.
"You didn't ask to use my phone because YOU THREW IT OUT!"
"Me? Preposterous! I don't know what you're talking about!"
"Really? Hmmm..."
Lo recalled something that happened a couple hours ago, back at the resort driveway...
Jack was waiting in a blue Nissan 370Z Coupe as Lo walked up, holding her purse. But just as she was about to open the passenger side door, Wipeout, the resort's mascot, appeared behind her.
"Cool ride!" he said. "Where you off to?"
"Uh," Lo turned to him to respond, "a date?"
Wipeout whistled.
"Must be loaded to have a car like that. Does Mr. Ridgemount know?"
Lo wasn't too pleased with that question.
"Why would Dad have to know about this?"
Suddenly, the passenger side window was lowered, and Jack stuck his head to see what was holding Lo up.
"Is there a problem?"
"No problem," Lo quickly answered. "Could... you give us a minute, sweetie?"
Without thinking, Lo handed her purse over to Jack, who reached out and took it. Jack then pulled his head back in, with the purse in tow, while Lo went back to chatting with Wipeout and convincing him to keep quiet.
A little while later, on the road to where Jack had parked his private jet, they passed by the island's lone airport. He drove right by the terminal entrance, tossing the phone out without even stopping. He didn't even see it drop directly into the trash can.
"What was that?" Lo asked, having caught Jack throwing something out of the corner of her eye.
"Box of cigarettes," Jack quickly lied. "One of your valets must've left it behind when they parked my car."
Satisfied with the answer, Lo leaned back in her seat and relaxed.
"That wasn't a box of cigarettes!" Lo looked at him. "That was my phone you were throwing away, you jerk!"
Jack slowed the car to a stop at a red traffic light. He took the moment to turn to look at Lo, who was glaring at him.
"Look, I can explain."
"Really? Well, let's hear it!"
"Sure. And... you will! When we get to our destination."
He had hoped that would quell her, but he gasped when he saw Lo already unbuckling her seatbelt and reaching for the door handle.
"Wait, what are you..."
"What does it look like?"
Lo opened the door and stepped out of the car and was about to walk away when she realized she was holding her purse and it was empty. She had forgotten to put her stuff back in it, even as it fell to the floor while she was getting out of her seat.
"Keep it all," she suddenly decided, "as a reminder of your betrayal!"
Lo turned and started to stomp off. Jack cursed under his breath and began a sequence to exit the car as well.
"Wait!" he shouted.
"I'm not listening!" Lo shouted back, covering her ears with her own hands.
"You don't understand!"
Lo definitely didn't, but she quickly would, when an nondescript white van skidded to a stop to her left. The rear side door slid open, and two pairs of burly arms reached out and grabbed her.
"HEY!" she yelled in a panic, as she was easily pulled in.
"LAUREN!" Jack yelled.
The van's tires screeched as it speedily pulled away, the side door being slid closed as it moved. Jack turned around and ran back to his car.
"No way I'm letting them take her!" he said aloud.
Inside the van, Lo was screaming and struggling with all her might as she was forced face-down onto the floor in the back of the van. One big guy was holding her legs down by the ankles while a second knelt down over her back, as he tried to hold her arms in place while a third tied them together with a thick rope.
"EEK! Let me go, let me go, LET ME GO!"
"Can someone PLEASE shut the brat up?" the driver yelled from the front.
The guy who had finished knotting the rope tying Lo's arms together pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and motioned to use it as a gag to quiet their prisoner...
The van made its way through traffic and managed to reach the highway, on its way to the borough of Manhattan. Jack was giving chase in his high-priced vehicle, trying to make sure not to lose sight of it in the somewhat-dense night traffic.
"I'll never forgive myself if something were to happen to her now," Jack said aloud, before slapping himself to knock some sense into him. "No! I can't act like that! It's my job to get her back!"
He continued the chase, but with no weapons on him, he had no way to stop the van other than forcing it off the road with his own vehicle. And that would be tough to do at the moment without involving innocent bystanders. He had no choice but to follow until an opportunity could present itself.
But the opportunity never came, as the van carrying Lo pulled off the highway and right into the New York Botanical Garden. Jack stopped the car at a safe distance, then hopped out and stayed out of sight as he watched the van pull up to the front entrance. Since it was already night, the gardens were closed, which meant there was no one around as four men emerged from the van, along with Lo, who was being coaxed inside.
Jack tried to follow them inside, but stopped short when he saw one of them stop and turn around to guard the gate.
"Looks like I'm gonna have to pull out some tools for this one," Jack thought to himself.
Lo was led by the three to the conservatory. Inside, she was coaxed to walk to the exact center, where a wooden chair awaited her, with a heat lamp positioned right above it. There were no other sources of light other than the moonlight beaming through the mostly glass domed roof, but the group managed to stay on the man-made paths.
"Sit."
Coming into the light, Lo stepped forward, away from the man that had been following right behind her, with a handgun pointed into her back. She calmly took a seat on the chair, her hands still tied together and her mouth still gagged. She was unhappy about how she was being treated, but at the same time, she was also fearful for her life.
The gun-wielder kept his weapon fixed on Lo as he stepped slightly to her left. The other big man adjusted the heat lamp so the light was focused directly on her face. The driver then walked up to the light and stared Lo right in the eyes.
"If we remove the handkerchief, you promise not to yell?"
Lo thought about it for a second, noted the guy still with his gun pointed at her, and nodded affirmatively. The driver nodded at the guy to Lo's right, who reached over and undid the knot holding the handkerchief gagging her in place. It was removed, and true to her word, she didn't yell.
She did complain, however.
"What's going on? What do you want with me?"
She then turned to look at the man holding the handkerchief.
"And when was the last time you washed that thing? Yuck! I swear I tasted snot!"
"You know what we want," the driver stared at her.
"I do? Like, I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Oh, isn't it obvious? Cabbage! Potatoes! Bones! Clams! Plaster! Bullets! Dead presidents!"
"Do I LOOK like a Wal-Mart to you? And the last one... eew!"
"MONEY!" he yelled at her. "I WANT MONEY!"
"Oh. Well..."
Lo held out the mini-purse she somehow was still clutching in her hands despite being tied up, then turned it upside down to show nothing was in it.
"I would give you some, but I seem to have left all of my cash behind in the car of that dumb jerk of a guy I thought was my boyfriend!"
"Fine! Grab her cell phone! We'll ask her father for a healthy ransom!"
But before the two burly men could get grabby...
"Not on me. Jerk got a hold of it and threw it in a trash can when I wasn't looking."
The three kidnappers looked at each other strangely, then back at Lo.
"The tabloids are right," the one holding the gun said aloud. "Hotel heiresses really DO attract jerks for boyfriends."
Back at the front gate, the one guy that had been left behind to keep an eye out for wandering eyes was now fast asleep on the ground. His butt was sticking up in the air, and sticking out of it was a tranquilizer dart.
Jack was running away, staying low and keeping in the shadows, as he made his way to the conservatory.
A few minutes later, he was inside, and slowly approaching the center, where Lo and her three kidnappers were gathered. The two big guys had their eyes trained on their captive, while the smaller one had whipped out a cell phone and seemed to be trying to get in touch with someone as he took a few steps away from the others.
Jack sneaked in closer, until he could begin to overhear part of the smaller one's conversation...
"...yeah. We have her. Daddy's little angel. And do I mean little... does he not feed her? She's... thin as a stick!"
Jack then turned his attention to the two men keeping an eye on Lo. Particularly the one who had the heat lamp treated on her and was paying close attention to her as sweat started to run down her forehead.
"I love a tan as much as the next surfer girl," Lo panted, "but can you turn that thing down?"
"No way!" he exclaimed. "I've never seen a heiress sweat before!"
"Seriously?" Lo raised an eyebrow. "Where did they find you? The orphanage for the young and brainless?"
"Hey!" the guy with the gun shouted. "That's my sister's cousin you're insultin'!"
"Gee, sor-RY! I thought I was the sensitive one here!"
Suddenly, a dart came flying out of some nearby fauna, and it hit the one drooling over Lo's sweat. He was knocked out instantly, falling to the floor right in front of her.
"Who's there?" the other asked.
He turned in the direction he thought the dart had come from. His instincts were wrong, as he was hit by a dart from a different direction. He, too, fainted before he could call out for help.
"What?" Lo gasped in shock. "What's going on?"
She got her answer when the heat lamp was moved away from her face and Jack appeared in its place.
"Jack!"
"Look who's happy to see me," Jack said with a smile.
Lo stood up, and Jack went to work trying to undo the ropes tying her hands together.
"You know," he continued, "you would've never gotten in this mess if you would've stayed in the car."
"I wouldn't have left the car if you hadn't lied to me!" she fired back.
"Look, Lauren. About that..."
"And the part about you falling head-over-heels for me? That was a lie too, wasn't it?"
"Well, actually..."
The two heard somebody gasp deeply from nearby. They turned and saw the driver looking there way, stunned into silence, still holding his phone up to his ear. Jack quickly reacted, charging straight for him. The guy dropped his phone and tried to reach into his pocket to pull out a firearm, but Jack got around him and wrapped his left arm around his neck, effectively putting him in a sleeper hold. The man tried to fight it, but slowly, he dropped to his knees, then onto his butt, and finally, he lost consciousness.
Jack lied the man carefully on the ground, then reached into his pocket and pulled out the loaded firearm inside. He slipped it into the left inner breast pocket just as Lo walked over, having managed to slip out of the loosened rope around her wrists.
"Well," Jack chuckled, "I bet you've never had a first date like that!"
Lo growled angrily.
"Right... not in a joke-y mood. So... explanation?"
Lo put her hands on her hips, anxious to hear his 'excuse' for lying. Jack sighed, and began...
"The truth is..."
About a minute later, Lo could be heard yelling from as far away as the other side of the gardens.
"WHAT?"
To be continued...
Author's Notes:
So now the truth comes out...
It wouldn't be fair to keep Jack's secret from Lo for a prolonged period of time. It just so happened that he didn't exactly do it the right way, and Lo can show flashes of intelligence. Particularly when it comes to the ins-and-outs of dating.
Also, fun fact... the rest of the gang was originally not to appear together again until the end of the story, but everyone was supposed to make a cameo appearance at some point in-between. That got changed when the storyline got retooled into a shorter version.
If you like, please review! Next chapter coming soon!