I guess I was incorrect about there being seven chapters. I started writing the conclusion to this, and I was pushing 6,000 words without even being halfway done. Just to sort of reset my mind and organize my thoughts for the finale, I decided to split it up into two chapters. On the good side, I'll try to have the last chapter up towards the end of next week. It has to be better than watching my bracket get slaughtered in the NCAA Tournament.
This chapter also cleaned up a few loose ends I was told I left in the prior chapter. The timeline jumps a bit backwards, so I hope you are ready for that.
I have to admit this has been one of the tougher stories to write. What I'm discovering is that you have to have a solid beginning, middle, and end in mind when you start your story. Things can change while you're writing, but you have to have a plan in mind for how the story should generally go.
As always, please leave a review. Authors love to hear what you have to say. In a weird way, we're like shock jocks and those idiots on TV like Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann. (I covered both sides of the political spectrum, so no complaining.) We'd rather hear we can't write than hear nothing at all.
Enjoy!
MI-5 Headquarters, London
October 11, 2033
12:50 PM GMT
Tyler Cook waded through the crowd outside the doors of MI-5, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. He knew setting off the halon systems in the computer lab would activate the fire alarms in the building, but that couldn't be helped. If the fire safety system didn't activate the alarms, there were two dozen people who would have been alerted the system had been activated and would have set the alarm off themselves.
But he could call Mr. Lightman in peace. Or at least without anybody caring about it.
"Mr. Lightman, it's done," Tyler said over the phone. "But Gerald and the other person were talking to someone on the phone while they were in the computer lab."
"Yes, I know," Mr. Lightman replied. "I just checked with my contact in the Metropolitan Police. Someone has tapped into the surveillance system around London. I suspect they were working together. Not to worry. I'll take care of them quickly. Report back to me if anything changes there."
"I will."
Mr. Lightman disconnected and looked at the time. Arthur Pollard would be picking up Samantha Collins in a few hours. By the time that happened, he figured to have everything in place, and Samantha would have no other outlet but to work for him. In doing his research, there were rumors that her mother, Carina, may have worked for either the British or American government at some point in the past but that couldn't be verified. If so, perhaps she was familiar with either Alex Forrest or Roger Murdock. It was a link that had to be broken, no matter how tenuous it might be.
He made two more calls: one to green-light the team watching Roger Murdock and one to Natasha Herbert, ordering her up to Cambridge. He wanted to make sure he had a back-up plan in place.
-/^\-
"Come on, Bartowski," Casey all but growled into his gComm. "Answer the goddamn phone, you stupid nerd."
"Anything?" Gertrude Verbanski asked.
Casey redialed. "Nothing on his GPS tracker. Maybe it got damaged."
Verbanski shook her head in frustration. "The closest street camera I can get is two blocks away. There are people milling around outside the building. The fire alarms must have gone off. No sign of Bartowski or Cooper."
"Dammit," Casey spat as he redialed Chuck's emergency phone for the fifth time in the past few minutes, hoping it wouldn't say once again that his number was not active.
It didn't. "Casey, is that you?"
Casey sat back in his chair and breathed a sigh of relief. "About time you picked up. What the hell is going on over there?"
"We're not sure. We think it was some sort of EMP device. It shorted out all of the computers in the basement and started a fire, and Cook disabled the fire doors on us so we couldn't get out. We made our way through the duct work to escape."
"Cooper with you?"
"He's OK. At least now we know who planted the files."
"I doubt some computer jockey was doing this alone," Casey replied. "He has to be working with others. That device you gave Carina to give to her daughter? It activated a while ago from inside the prison, so someone must have visited her. We told Scotland Yard to send us all the video they have."
"Good. That will be a big help. I just wish we had a way of contacting her directly."
"Not to worry, Bartowski. We're getting close."
"John," Verbanski interrupted. "I think we have company."
"Call you right back, Bartowski." Casey walked over to Verbanski's desk as she pointed at the monitors. "What's going on?"
"They just pulled up. Two males. I'm running them through the facial recognition software now."
Casey continued to look at the monitor, his hand tensing around the grip of his Sig Sauer R458. The two men walked to the trunk of the car and opened it, obscuring their faces from the view of Casey and Verbanski, who rose from her chair and reached for her gun as well.
The trunk slammed shut, and they saw both men wearing headphones.
"RUN!" Casey screamed, and the pair bolted for the opposite end of the building. One of the men shouldered the launcher in his hands and fired towards the building. Casey and Verbanski dove through a pair of windows and fell two stories into a pair of dumpsters as the projectile landed inside the structure, releasing its electronic wave. The two men quickly put the launcher back in the trunk of the car and sped away.
Casey and Verbanski got up slowly and tried to get their shaking legs under control, having landed on the outer edge of the weapon's range. They climbed out of the dumpsters and held on to them until their legs could support themselves.
"Now I'm pissed," Casey rasped.
"Svoloch'," Verbanski spat out. "Sons of bitches must have fried all of our data in there."
They walked around to the opposite end of the building with their guns drawn, but the two men responsible were long gone. They walked back to their setup. Sure enough, all of the monitors were showing nothing but static.
Verbanski picked up the projectile that almost ended their lives. "Skullbuster. Very powerful one. We were at least fifty yards away and we still felt it."
Casey nodded. "Now I know how Grimes felt when we were in Iran."
"See if you can get through to everybody. I'll get the backup computers from the car and start searching for area traffic cams, see if I can get a license plate."
"Yeah," Casey replied as he tried to call Chuck.
Kennington Police Station, Lambeth, London, UK
October 11, 2033
1:30 PM GMT
Jimmy breathed a sigh of relief. "Jesus, Case. I was starting to worry. What happened? We kept getting your voicemail."
"Looks like the bad guys are turning up the heat. They attacked Chuck, and they went after Verbanski and me."
"And us, too."
"What happened with you?"
"Bunch of hired punks tried to take Alex and me out. They're in custody with the Met."
"You get anything on them?"
"Nothing. Paid with a numbered account, no direct contact with whoever hired them."
"No, I mean with the Intersect. Anything in there?"
"That was the first thing I tried, Case. I got hits on two of them having links to crime families in England and Ireland. That's it. Nothing related to the NSA or SIS."
"Verbanski came up empty on the two who went after us. So we have only the one lead. The computer programmer you found who tried to kill Bartowski and Cooper."
"We should also get John. Clearly the gloves are off now. We better make sure he's safe."
"I'll send Walker and Miller to pick him up. You two find Chuck and find that computer programmer."
"Will do." Jimmy disconnected his gComm. "We have to find Chuck," he told Alex.
Hughes Hall, Cambridge, UK
October 11, 2033
3:10 PM GMT
Sarah and Carina exited Hughes Hall and looked around the tree-lined sidewalks. They hadn't been able to raise John on his iComm, but he may have set it to not disturb him during classes, which only ended for him ten minutes ago. They had gone to his apartment first to find his schedule. Although they couldn't be certain, Sarah knew John would have to walk through this area to get back to his flat. She hoped he would do that before going to any after-class activities he might have planned. Chuck and she gave thought to telling him to stay at his flat while not attending classes, but they were worried that could also tip off the bad guys.
She suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. She craned her neck and inhaled deeply.
"You got something, Sarah?" Carina asked. "At the risk of sounding like your nerdy husband, are your Spidey senses tingling?"
"Do you smell that?" Sarah asked.
Carina couldn't miss the look of panic in her eyes. She focused on the air around them. "Tell me that's not…" She stepped over to a nearby tree and examined the leaves. A group of leaves near the bottom of the tree…roughly six feet from the ground…had spotted discolorations the other leaves didn't. "Carfentanil," she replied, her fear matching Sarah's. "God knows how many times I've been hit with the stuff. I'd say it was sprayed here within the last ten to twenty minutes."
Sarah clutched her chest, her breathing becoming more and more rapid. "Hey, Sarah," Carina said forcefully as she guided her longtime best friend to a nearby bench. "Sarah!"
Sarah's began to hyperventilate, and tears began to form in her eyes. "John…oh God…John…"
"AGENT WALKER!" Carina bellowed as she grabbed Sarah's face to get her attention. "Come on, Sarah. I know it hurts, but you have to put Mom away for the moment. We need that nasty bitch inside of you right now. The one who made up part of the best spy team in American history. We think this through, we get the entire crew involved, and we will get John back."
Sarah was having trouble keeping her focus. Carina took her friend's hands. "Hey. Förstår du?"
Sarah looked up at her friend. Despite the terror she was feeling, she managed to nod and even gave a little smile. "Rozumiem."
Carina immediately got on her gComm. "Casey, they took John. Sarah and I will check with the security office here to see if they have any video surveillance of him being kidnapped."
There was a long pause on the other end. "Do whatever you can, Hansen. Keep an eye on her for us, OK?"
Carina nodded. "Promise. Did Chuck and Jimmy have any luck tracking down their guy?"
"Negative. He fell off the grid. But the good news is we'll have the video of the two people who visited your daughter this morning any minute, and the Met told me she plans to escape in about an hour. She might have some information on who contacted her."
"Maybe the Intersect has something on her visitors."
"Bartowski and Slade will head this way soon and we'll go through the video. They're briefing C on the latest information."
"OK, we'll be back there in a few hours."
"You got it."
Carina disconnected and turned to Sarah, who was still in a bit of a daze, although Carina could see a few telltale signs of the woman who used to be Langston Graham's wildcard enforcer in her eyes. It was a look Carina hadn't seen since Sarah met Chuck. She always prided herself on knowing her best friend better than she knew herself. She knew Sarah had fallen for Chuck. And now she knew all of them would get John back and take out the people responsible.
"Sarah?" Carina prodded her gently. "Are you ready?"
Sarah stood and nodded quietly. Carina led the way as the two went to the campus security office.
A40 Roadway, London
October 11, 2033
4:30 PM GMT
"So, Miss Collins. It's them…or him. What is your choice?"
Samantha stared at the image in front of her. She cursed herself inwardly for John being kidnapped. She knew there wasn't anything she could have done to prevent it, but that didn't stop her from feeling guilt over it. However, she had to pull it together quickly and hope everyone else had a plan in mind.
She exhaled slowly. "Nolan can burn in hell for all I care, but I've never killed innocent people before. What did they do wrong?"
"Consider it a reassurance of your commitment to us," Arthur Pollard replied. "Forrest and Murdock are hardly innocent. They're working for the same government that betrayed you, remember? And they are a threat to our plans."
Samantha sat in silence for a moment. She needed an excuse to get away from Pollard and contact the group for advice. "If you want me to kill them before tomorrow, you're going to have to give me some time to plan. It's not like I can walk into the Thames House and pull a gun on them. I need the chance to scout some possible locations to kill them."
"Very well. But we have no intention of letting you out of our sight." Pollard pulled the black cab into a supermarket parking lot and stopped next to another car. There were two people sitting in the front seat. "You will go with them. They will be with you at every turn, just in case you have a sudden desire to deviate from our plans. One call from them, and your boyfriend dies a very painful death."
Samantha could feel her entire being shiver as she exited the cab and got into the back seat of the other car. Killing Alex, Jimmy, and Chancellor Nolan was out of the question. But at the same time, she feared any attempt to contact the team would result in John being killed. She slumped back on the seat in the car as it drove to a nearby hotel. Suddenly she felt an object in the back of her pocket. Her eyes widened slightly at remembering she brought the device her mother gave her that morning to boost the surveillance signal at the prison.
Maybe I can contact them, she thought.
The car pulled up to a rundown hotel. The two men exited the front of the car and held the door open for Samantha. She exited the car and noticed the guns each man carried, aimed low so they wouldn't be noticed, although Samantha was certain they would not hesitate to use them. They walked inside the hotel, bypassed the registration desk, and went into a room that looked like it hadn't been updated in this century.
"Do you have a computer in that car?" she asked her two chaperones. "I'll need time to do some research."
One of the men wordlessly left the hotel room while the other kept watch on her. She walked towards the bathroom. The remaining man started walking in that direction. Samantha glared at the man.
"Unless you have some weird, kinky fetish, you stay here," she barked, closing the door in his face. She quickly retrieved the device Chuck made for her and studied it. She pulled the two sections apart to reveal the wiring and microchips inside the device. She stripped the wire leading to the battery. She began tapping the wire against the lead.
Fortunately for her, she knew someone who had spent several years in the military.
Plaza on the River, Westminster, London
October 11, 2033
4:40 PM GMT
Chuck, Jimmy, and Alex arrived at the residence where Alex and Jimmy were staying near MI-5 headquarters in as somber of a mood as Casey and Verbanski. What each of them feared in the backs of their minds but didn't dare say had happened. Casey wasted no time in calling them the minute it happened because Chuck deserved to know the truth about his son. Finding out sent Chuck into a state of panic, but Jimmy and Alex were able to get him to refocus. Being the optimist of their family, he realized it was simply a matter of when they would get John back, not if.
Given the friends who were with him, 'when' was a very short period of time in his mind.
"Anything?" Alex asked as they entered the room. Casey and Verbanski had already set up their equipment in the small office in the suite.
"Not so far," Verbanski replied quietly. "Carina called twenty minutes ago. The security office had a few shots of a car with four passengers, but the plates were registered to a dummy corporation. She should have Sarah back here in twenty or thirty minutes."
"Nolan's put a high-priority tasker on surveillance throughout London and is having the system reprogrammed to find Tyler Cook," Jimmy said. "If he sticks his head out, they'll find him."
Casey looked at the time. "Samantha should have broken out of prison by now. She would have contacted us by now if she could. I think we have to assume her visitors are watching her like a hawk."
"The good news is, we have the surveillance video from the prison," Verbanski continued. "Slade, could you have a look at the video?"
"Sure," Jimmy replied. He put on his Intersect glasses and activated the IntComm. He began to look through the video surveillance of Samantha's meeting with Arthur Pollard and Natasha Herbert. It took him a lot of time to look through the footage, which didn't ebb the tension in the room one bit.
"Dammit. Neither of them look at the cameras. Let me try the sound." He connected the IntComm to the computer so it would receive audio. "Still nothing."
"Well, it was worth a shot," Alex said. "We're not dealing with amateurs here. They knew to bring a scrambler to block the surveillance signal. They just didn't realize we'd beat them to it."
"Wait," Jimmy suddenly said. "Do we have the video from the camera over Samantha's left shoulder?"
"Sure," Verbanski replied as she switched files. "Did you catch something?"
"Maybe. A guard walked by, and the woman glanced at him for a split second. Let me see if that was enough."
The camera's display appeared on the monitor, and Jimmy forwarded the footage to the correct timestamp. He then ran the video at one-quarter speed. It worked. The Intersect gave the information to Jimmy.
"Well, she's in pretty good shape for a corpse," he said as he pointed to the woman who visited Samantha. "That's Natasha Herbert, a former SIS agent. Well, supposedly former agent. She disappeared off the grid, and MI-6 never found her. I guess we just did."
"Anything on the man with Herbert?" Casey asked.
"Nothing. Maybe Sam will be able to tell us something. Chuck, do you think she could use that thing you gave her to signal us? If she hasn't called by now, she must be…"
Casey suddenly snapped to attention at his computer as it beeped. "She is," he said curtly. "I'm getting an intermittent signal from the device. Three short, three long, three short. Morse code."
Jimmy nodded. "S.O.S. She knew you would pick up on it immediately."
Casey took out his gComm and programmed it to triangulate the signal. "Forrest, Slade, and I will go find her. Gertrude, stay here with Bartowski. Walker and Miller will be back any minute."
"I'm going with you," Chuck said, his voice more reminiscent of Casey's than his own.
"Not a good idea, Bartowski. You're needed here. You can look through the rest of the footage for clues."
"We're talking about my son," Chuck protested angrily.
Casey put a firm hand on Chuck's shoulder. "Chuck, you remember we told you how out of her mind Sarah went when the Belgian kidnapped you? Imagine what she's going through right now. She's going to need her husband."
Chuck looked at Casey. Instead of seeing the gruff, sarcastic former NSA agent, he saw a softer Casey, no doubt the Casey who was a father to two girls. In a way, he had only himself to blame. He was as much responsible for cracking Casey's armor as anyone else. He helped Casey regain his family and friends, two things Casey gave up to serve his country. Chuck wanted to think like an agent for the first time in a long while, but Casey knew Chuck needed to be a husband and father first.
"You're right," Chuck said quietly. "I'd be stopping you if our roles were reversed. Sorry, I just really want to…"
"Don't be sorry," Casey replied as he clapped Chuck's shoulder. "I know how you feel. I'd be off the reservation if something happened to my girls. But this is a simple rescue. We can handle it easily. Believe me, you will be involved in getting your son back."
Casey turned to Alex and Jimmy, who had a bag of equipment at the ready. "Let's go," he ordered. The three went to the door. Casey opened it to find Sarah and Carina about to knock.
"We have a lead on Samantha," Casey said. "We'll find her and bring her back."
Sarah nodded and pushed past them as she went to Chuck, who wrapped his arms around her. Casey, Jimmy, and Alex quickly left. Carina and Gertrude walked into the bedroom to give John's parents some alone time.
"Are you OK, baby?" Chuck gently whispered in her ear.
Sarah gripped him tightly as her eyes welled up. "I'm trying to be. Dammit, we should have seen this coming…"
"Sarah," Chuck said gently while he cradled her face. "We can't afford to talk about what we should or shouldn't have done. We need to get John back. And we will. I promise you that."
He wiped a tear from her face with his thumb. "I recall us being kidnapped not too long ago. And we have those same people helping us now."
Sarah smiled as she looked into those calming brown eyes of her husband's. "It's funny how I used to be the confident one who had to protect you. I guess those days are long gone."
Chuck shook his head. "You're still an excellent spy and protector. You just happen to be an even more wonderful wife and mother."
Sarah caressed his cheek and pulled him down for a kiss. "That's because I found the perfect guy with whom I could be in love and live my life."
"Is he taller than me?"
Sarah laughed when Chuck gave her his patented eyebrow dance. She grabbed his face and gave him an even harder kiss.
-/^\-
Casey, Jimmy, and Alex arrived at the run-down hotel from where Samantha's signal originated. They walked up to the registration desk, where a clerk who couldn't be less interested in his job stood.
"We were wondering if you could help us," Alex began. "A friend of ours invited us over and she forgot to tell us what room she was in. Tall redhead, about 20 years old?"
The clerk eyed Alex and up and down with a few salacious thoughts going through his head. "And what's in it for me?"
Alex raised an eyebrow. "Well, you can have this 100€ note if you're nice to us…" The clerk's eyes widened when he felt the barrel of a gun against his crotch. "…or my husband can solve that little problem you have of leering at me."
"She's in room 107," the clerk quickly replied.
"Anybody with her?" Casey asked.
"Two guys. At least, that's all I saw. They got here forty minutes ago."
Jimmy handed his gun to Alex. He then grabbed the keys to room 207. "Back in a minute, gorgeous," he said to Alex and gave her a kiss.
Casey moved down the hallway while Jimmy ascended the stairs to the next floor. He entered room 207 as Casey stood just outside of room 107.
"Ready to go, Case," Jimmy said quietly over their comms.
Casey reached over to knock on the door. "Pizza delivery."
Inside the room, one of the men trained his gun on Samantha as the other went to the door, firing away until his clip was empty. He then opened the door slowly.
And was greeted by Casey's fist.
At the same time, a loud crash was heard from the room above, followed by a large figure crashing through the window into their room. Samantha ducked and rolled out of the way as Jimmy took out his tranq gun and fired at the second man. He fell to the floor unconscious.
Casey stared across the room at Jimmy. "Twenty years and you still have to do things the hard way," he said with ample condescension.
"Oh, please," Jimmy replied with equal disdain. "Any idiot can punch someone. At least I put a little style into my rescues."
Samantha looked back and forth between the two of them. "Has it always been like this? You two bickering like an old married couple?"
"Don't get me started," both Casey and Jimmy huffed at the same time.
Casey pulled the body of the first man to lie next to the second one as Alex entered the room. "Are you OK, Samantha?" she asked.
She shook her head. "They took John."
"We know. Everyone else is trying to piece together what happened."
"If I don't kill Chancellor Nolan, Jimmy, and you, they'll kill John."
"Who are these people who visited you this morning?" Casey asked.
"I'm not sure, but it sounds like they're some rogue group within MI-6. A lot like that Ring group we studied in training that you guys took down. They said Nolan was to blame for ordering the hit on Michelle and I played along, acting like I wanted revenge. I didn't know about John until after I escaped, I swear."
"Easy, Sam," Jimmy replied. "Nobody's mad at you. In fact, we've identified the woman. Her name is Natasha Herbert. Ex-agent, supposed to have died several years ago. She makes Casey's first years look like he was a schoolteacher."
Samantha's blood went ice cold. "It was her," she said quietly, the hatred rising quickly within her as she put the pieces together. "She was the one who murdered Michelle. I'm going to kill that bitch."
"Hang on, Samantha," Alex gently replied. "Don't lose your focus. That's how a good agent turns into a dead agent. That's why we came to get you instead of Chuck and Sarah. You can't go off on some vendetta and lose the bigger picture. We're here to stop this group, not seek revenge. We do this together, OK?"
Samantha took a long breath and nodded. "What can I do to help?"
Casey took a look over the room. "Forrest, pull the car around to the window. Slade, contact the Chancellor and give him an update. I think we'll have to go old school on breaking these clowns."
Samantha looked at Casey in confusion as he made a few calls.
Canary Wharf, East London, UK
October 11, 2033
6:30 PM GMT
Jimmy took a water bottle and sprayed the faces of the two men who were assigned to watch Samantha. It had been over three hours since John was kidnapped, and Sarah, who was standing behind the two men, was neither a patient spy nor mother. However, Carina had given Chuck and her a similar speech to the one Alex gave Samantha. She had to concede she would have done the same thing if Samantha or Casey's daughters or Alex's nieces were the ones to have been kidnapped. As long as she got to be involved, she would let the others run the show.
"Wake up," Jimmy taunted the two men, smacking each in the face.
"What do you want, old man?" one of the men said, attempting some bravado despite being handcuffed and bound to his chair.
Jimmy laughed. "Tough talk coming from a couple of low-life punks whom a couple of senior citizens got the drop on. Now you boys are in big, big trouble. You've been mixed up with extortion, murder, and treason. That's bad enough. But then you decided to piss off Mama Bear. The lady behind you? You kidnapped her son."
Both men turned their heads to see Sarah, who looked ready to take them alive. "Yeah, so what?" the second man said.
"You're going to tell us where her son is," Jimmy said calmly. "And if you cooperate with us, maybe you only get five to ten behind bars."
The two men laughed. Jimmy shrugged in indifference. "Or, I can just walk out of here and leave you Mama Bear's capable hands. Who, by the way, was trained in over 200 ways to kill someone."
"250," Sarah replied matter-of-factly.
Jimmy turned to her in shock and walked out of earshot of the two men. "250? They only taught me 200. You mean you learned 50 more AFTER you left the CIA?"
Sarah shrugged. "Sometimes, Chuck was away on business trips. I got lonely."
Now Jimmy was even more surprised. "You know, most people settle for phone sex. Or stuff they put in the top drawer of their nightstand."
"I do NOT have anything in the top drawer of my nightstand," Sarah snarled in offense.
"Oh come on. You're friends with Carina all those years and you have NOTHING in the top drawer of your nightstand? Hell, the top drawer in Alex's nightstand is an entire closet."
"Focus, Jimmy!" Sarah growled.
Jimmy put his hands up in surrender. "Sorry, sorry. Look, I know how much you want to do the dirty work, but we have to stick to the plan, OK? It'll get these guys to talk. Casey's done it before, and Chuck agreed to it."
"He saw it on a TV show," Sarah replied scornfully.
"I know; I saw the same episode of Burn Notice all those years ago. But it's just like any other form of interrogation; 90% is in selling it, right? So let me do this."
Sarah glared at him for a moment before her features softened. "OK, Jimmy. But this better work."
He gave her a smile. "It will, kiddo. Promise."
Sarah rolled her eyes. "Do you ever plan to stop calling me kiddo? I'm 53, for God's sake. I could be a grandmother in a couple of years."
"Do you ever plan to stop smacking me upside the head whenever I make a crack about myself?"
"No," Sarah said firmly.
"Well, you have your answer," Jimmy replied with a grin as he walked back to the two men.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," Jimmy said as he pushed each of their chairs towards a floor-to-ceiling window. "Here's what we're going to do. One of you will tell us everything we want to know. The other one of you will go from the 20th floor of this building to the first floor in the shortest time possible. Through that window right in front of you. Now who wants to do what?"
Jimmy took out a gun and fired a dozen shots in to the window. The glass fractured from floor to ceiling. He then took an axe and started knocking the glass out of the frame, leaving a large opening directly in front of the two chairs.
"Last chance, boys," Jimmy said as he put a blindfold on each man. He then grabbed the back of each chair and tipped them forward, leaning them out of the window. Both men started screaming.
"Anybody feel like talking?" Both men continued to scream incoherently. "Eenie," Jimmy started, shaking one of the chairs. "Meenie…" He shook the other chair. "Miney…" He shook the first chair again. "Who's my favorite Stooge? Moe!"
Jimmy shoved the chair of the second man out the window, whose screams faded as he fell.
"We don't know where he's being kept!" the first man screamed. "I swear! I just know the guy who's holding him!"
"Keep talking," Jimmy said.
"We were all hired from the same gang. They separated us, gave us different roles. We were supposed to keep an eye on the girl while she planned to kill some people. There are four people watching her son."
"Do you have a way of contacting your buddy?"
The man nodded as Jimmy pulled his chair away from the window. Jimmy then took out his gComm. "What's the number?"
-/^\-
The man continued to scream in terror as he felt himself fall to the ground. Suddenly, he stopped moving. Before he could react, he felt a piece of tape being put over his mouth. The chair was dragged upward. His blindfold was removed as he felt the chair land on solid ground. The man looked behind him to see a heavy-duty cable attached to the back of his chair, and two men were dragging him back into the building. The man who was talking to them upstairs must have attached it after he put the blindfold on.
"You better be in a talking mood now, or we'll throw you out for real this time. No rope attached to your chair," Casey said to the man as he ripped the tape off of his mouth. "Where is the person you kidnapped?"
"We were just hired by this group, OK?" the man said. "We don't know where that woman's son is; we just know the guys holding onto him."
"He's telling the truth, Case," Chuck replied with the Intersect glasses on. "He must be part of the same group who attacked everybody today. No ties to MI-6 or any other spy agency."
"What about me?" Samantha asked the man. "Did you plan to kill me once I carried out my assignment?"
"No, but someone else will. He's supposed to watch you murder the Chancellor and then I guess he kills you. None of us are part of that."
Samantha grabbed Gertrude's computer and showed the prison footage to the man. "Is this the person?"
"Yes," the man replied with a vigorous nod. "He's the one who gave us our assignments. But someone else is in charge."
"Who?"
"We don't know. We never saw him; we just heard his voice. It's like it was straight out of a movie. He told us what the punishment would be if we screwed up. Then she put a knife to one of the guy's throats to demonstrate."
"She?"
"The lady in that footage. Same woman. Kind of hard to forget her."
Alex's gComm beeped. "Hello?" she asked. "OK, hang on to him. We're getting the rest of the information now." Alex disconnected and turned to Casey. "James said he has the phone number of one of the people holding John. One call to the man's phone, and we'll have John pinpointed."
"Thank God," Chuck said. "Let's bring him home."
"Chuck, if we just rescue John, we'll be doing this again in six months, if not sooner," Casey replied. "We have to put an end to this organization right now. If we do this right, we can kill two birds with one stone."
"How?"
Casey turned to Samantha. "They want you to kill Forrest, Slade, and the Chancellor. I think that's what you should do."