Taken Hostage

He stepped down from the rear of the ambulance and walked back to the scene of the crash. Something was going on here—something bad that involved this doctor. His gut was tossing up so many red flags that all he could see was red. The maneuver to push her off the road, in the middle of rush-hour traffic no less, cried of either desperation or determination. Both of which could have proved deadly. He found his cell phone among the shattered glass of his windshield on the floor of his passenger seat and dialed his mother.

“Colby? Are you all right? Where are you?”

Not even a hello. Ever since Sam’s cancer, his mother had been a prickly ball of hypersensitive worries, as if at any moment she knew the other shoe was going to drop. Actually, he had himself to blame. His military career had precipitously aged her even before Sam’s diagnosis.

Even though his mother was strong in her faith, she seemingly didn’t get a dose of the whole “not worrying” thing when God had made her. Maybe worry was an inherited gene as Colby struggled to let God control things, as well.

“I’m fine.”

“As in uninjured?” she pressed.

“Yes, not injured, but I’ve been involved in a little dustup on the highway driving in for Sam’s meeting.”

“Sam’s still in the ICU. These seizures just won’t relent. Her doctor’s not here yet.”

“I know. I’m with her,” Colby said.

“With Dr. Lockhart?”

“Yes...it’s hard to explain. We were involved in...an accident.”

“You hit her? Is she all right? Is she alive?”

The shrill tone of his mother’s voice caused him to ease the phone away from his ear. “Mom—”

“Colby, I’d never forgive you. We’ve been waiting to hear her final decision for weeks.”

He got it. He’d never forgive himself if he’d been the one to take away Sam’s only hope at living a full life.

“Mom, Sam’s doctor is fine, but it’s going to be a few hours before we can be at the hospital.”

“You’re staying with her?” his mother asked, her voice maintaining the same high pitch.

“It’s complicated. I’m going to make sure she gets to the hospital okay. Will you tell Sam’s nurse, so she can tell whoever else needs to know, that Dr. Lockhart is going to be delayed?”

Colby neared Regan’s SUV.

“She can’t call herself?”

Colby reached across the driver’s seat and found Regan’s purse, its contents strewed across the passenger’s floor mat. “She doesn’t have her phone at the moment. Please, Mom? I need to go.”

“All right. Be safe.”

Her classic sign-off. It was her habit never to say goodbye. Too much finality, he guessed. She’d once told him she’d only say it if she was sure he was never coming back. Maybe that was what military life did to families. Another reason why she rarely said, “I love you.” Even though she did fiercely.

His next call was to his associate, Daniel Green.

“Aren’t you at the hospital?”

“I should be. Listen, I need you to bring me your truck. And then stay behind and take care of two vehicles that need to be towed.”

“Wow, sounds exactly like how I hoped to be spending my morning. Is this what you meant by ‘other jobs as determined by the president’ when you hired me?”

“Exactly.”

Colby gave him the necessary information and disconnected the call. Colby’s office wasn’t far from there. If Dan hurried, it shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes. If he came down the other side of the highway, he wouldn’t get stuck in the mass of cars on this side of the road.

Officers were on the highway taking measurements. Orange-and-white-striped cones had been set up, and two traffic cops directed the stream of angry morning commuters to the two lanes on the right side of the road.

Colby brushed the glass off and then sat in Regan’s driver’s seat. His knees didn’t immediately hit his chest like every other car he sat in after a woman had driven it, meaning she was likely just a few inches shorter than he was.

He reached down and began to gather up the items that had spilled from her purse. This was partly to be helpful but also an investigation. Those thugs wanted something from this doctor. Could anything in this car give him a clue as to what that might be?

He reached for her wallet that laid splayed open. The first picture he saw was of a young girl, perhaps ten years old. Her hair the same color as her mother’s, but her eyes were blue. He flipped through the photos. No photos with a male presence. He hadn’t remembered a wedding ring on the doctor’s left hand.

A child meant leverage, and all Colby could think was that he needed Regan to call her daughter to make sure she was okay.

He grabbed her black purse, snapped the wallet closed and put it inside. Under the passenger seat, he found her phone. When his thumb brushed the screen it displayed her most recent messages. Nothing questionable that would explain this predicament. He threw that in the purse, as well.

After that, he snagged the few items scattered about that were foreign to his hands ever since his wife had died from the same cursed disease that now ravaged his sister. A tube of lipstick. A compact with mirror. A nail file.

He brushed his finger against the fine sandpaper and thought about how chemo had taken away from his wife even the little things she’d enjoyed—like doing her nails. They’d become so brittle, her fingers numb from the chemo, that she hadn’t liked them to be touched. Her death had been his entry ticket into the military. It was easier to run away than face a lonely life without her.

Colby clutched the purse in his hand, stepped away from the SUV and then opened up the back passenger-side door. The seat was littered with several medical journals that had likely been tucked in a neat pile. He stood in the empty traffic lane and glanced up the highway, a smattering of cars ahead of him.

What did these events mean? Was Regan truly in danger? And if she was, what did that mean for Sam?

* * *

The tension in Regan’s chest eased when Colby stepped up into the back of the ambulance, her purse clutched in one of his hands. Her shaking had stopped and the chill was replaced with warmth from his gentle inquisitive smile.

“Everything okay?” he asked, his eyes only engaging hers.

“I keep telling the officer that I really didn’t see anything.”

“What about you, sir?” The officer turned in his direction. “What did you see?”

“I’ll tell you briefly what I know, but is there any reason to delay her medical care?”

The officer raised his chin at Colby in defiance to his testiness. “Aren’t you a bounty hunter?”

“Fugitive recovery officer.”

“Same thing, right?”

“We just prefer not to be called bounty hunters.”

Regan rustled through her purse and found her phone, pulling up a quick screen to text her daughter, Olivia.

Colby nudged the officer to one side. “Are you checking on your daughter?”

Regan’s finger froze against the cool surface of her phone screen. “How did you know I had a daughter?” she asked, her voice slightly off-kilter. What did she know about this man, really? Could he be involved with the people who had run her off the road? Simply offering her assistance as a ruse to gain her trust?

“I saw her picture in your wallet.”

“You looked through it?” Regan asked, wondering what he might have seen that she didn’t want him to.

“No. It had popped open. Everything spilled out of your purse, but I will say I didn’t find any clues.”

“Clues for what?”

“For why those men might have been after you.”

The officer turned Colby’s way. “So you don’t think this was an accident?”

“Not in the least. They used a specific maneuver to get her off the road. The only person they seemed to be shooting at was me. As soon as I picked her up to get her to a safer place, they fired less directly. They wore ski masks to cover their faces. I didn’t get a look at their license plate.”

“There are thousands of those black GMCs in the city.” The officer zeroed in on Regan. “Ma’am, do you have any idea why these men would be after you?”

Something broke inside Regan’s mind at that point. It was all becoming too much to comprehend. The accident. A handsome stranger saving her and continuing to provide assistance. It was the stuff of fairy tales and couldn’t be part of her trajectory, which was either men hurting her or them being professionally threatened by her success. Regan led the most boring life of anyone she knew outside of her groundbreaking research. Her life consisted of going to the hospital, seeing patients, going home and trying to give Olivia the last shreds of her energy. She’d never been involved in anything illegal—ever.

Unless...

Her phone pinged in her hand, causing her to jump and her thoughts to scatter. “My daughter’s okay,” she said to no one in particular.

“Good,” both the officer and Colby said.

Regan couldn’t help but roll her eyes. It was a contest of the most concerned male in the back of the ambulance. “Listen, I don’t know why these men would have been after me. If I had to guess, I’d say they had the wrong person. Is there anything else all of you need?”

The officer shook his head. “We just need to get your SUV towed off the road.”

“I’ve taken care of that,” Colby said.

“I’ll file an accident report,” the officer responded. “This case will be reviewed by a detective to see if assault with a deadly weapon charges should be filed, as well.”

Regan sat up. “That’s if you can even find these creeps, right?”

“We’ll take you to the hospital,” Leonard said.

Regan stood. Her vision blurred and she reached out blindly to hold on to something to steady herself when she felt Colby’s arm around her shoulders. She was surprised at how she liked the strength he offered.

“Steady now,” he cautioned.

“I’m not paying for an ambulance ride to get some stitches.” Regan opened her eyes and found Colby’s blue eyes searching hers.

“We’re both going to the same place. I’ll give you a ride,” Colby said.

“In your truck? The one that no longer has a windshield?”

“An associate of mine is bringing another vehicle.”

“Great.” She turned to the paramedic. “Looks like I’ve got a cheaper invitation.”

Even when she thought she should have hesitated, she didn’t. Given the slim chance Colby could be part of what happened, the police had his identifying information and he’d put himself in harm’s way for her. Likely the only reason he wanted to help was to ensure she stayed alive long enough to perform his sister’s operation.

The police officer handed her his card. “In case you think of anything. I’ll call you later today to update you.”

She plucked the card from his fingertips. “Great.”

Colby jumped from the back of the ambulance and reached his hand up to her.

The rain had stopped and she could see the sun trying to break through the gray in the distance. Colby waved to a man on the other side of the highway who stood near a white truck the same make and model as Colby’s.

“I forgot one thing.” He raced a few steps ahead of her and scrounged around in his car until he came up with a set of dog tags. “Now, we need to get to the other side of the road.”

Colby helped her climb over the cement median and waited for a lull in traffic before he pulled her, running, across the highway. Her pounding footsteps only intensified her headache.

Colby and the other man exchanged a few words before the man crossed the highway toward the ruined wreckage that remained of their vehicles. Regan climbed into the white truck and slid over to the passenger seat. Colby hung the dog tags from the rearview mirror.

She clipped the seat belt and fingered the metal rectangles. “A friend?”

Colby nodded and pressed his lips together, moving the truck into the river of cars.

“You were in the military?”

He glanced her way. A sad smile mirrored the grief in his eyes.

Regan hugged her purse. It really was the curse of every medical professional. It was her job to sit and ask those questions that no one else would ask—intimate details of a person’s life laid out in front of her so she could make the best medical decision. Sometimes it was just hard to know when to dial it back.

As if to cut her some slack, he answered her question. “Delta Force.”

“Are those tags from a friend of yours?”

“Mark. An old friend. I can’t risk losing them at some body shop when my truck gets fixed.” Pain etched his words.

“How many years did you serve?”

“Too many. Not enough.”

Great. Just what she needed. The strong, silent type. Of course, her ex-husband had been a violent, verbally abusive monster, so perhaps this was a move in the right direction.

What am I thinking? He’s dealing with a sister who has cancer. I’m a single mom. I have enough on my plate. He has enough on his. Lord, help me to focus on the right things here.

“Why did you leave the military?” Regan asked.

“Sam.”

His eyes glistened as he turned away from her, and her throat thickened at his quick emotional response. Clinically, she knew a lot about Samantha Waterson. Age twenty-eight. Grade four glioblastoma—the worst kind of brain tumor, resistant to surgery and aggressive chemotherapy. These patients sought Regan out when conventional medicine failed to destroy the malicious cells that replaced healthy tissue with dysfunctional ones.

Interacting with Colby personalized his sister to her in a way that was sometimes hard as a doctor to cross over—seeing the person instead of just the brain MRI.

“Had you decided whether or not you were going to take Sam’s case?” he asked without taking his eyes off the road.

“I never set up a face-to-face meeting until I know the patient is a candidate. A strong candidate. I actually have her on the surgery schedule for tomorrow morning.”

That was true. Regan had developed the policy after meeting with too many patients who weren’t an appropriate fit for the study. She’d pray, relentlessly, for help in making the right decision. Was giving false hope better than dealing with death? Regan wasn’t strong enough to decline treatment when families sobbed in front of her. What human could? It was the part of medicine she hated—her inability to defeat death.

“Good.” Colby nodded and wiped away a quick tear, sniffing hard as if to urge the other potential droplets of his fear to stay in their place. “I guess my one and only job is to get you to the hospital safely. Get you all fixed up and then on to save Sam’s life.”

His statement was like a knife to her heart. There was so much expectation in those few words and she didn’t want to disappoint him.

Because, like Colby, she wasn’t sure she’d seen the last of those men. Could he be a man she could trust if they came back?

She glanced back at her SUV as they merged into traffic—the passenger side completely mashed up against the concrete and all of the windows shattered. Now that most of her adrenaline had dissipated, she was becoming cognizant of the mild aches and pains that would bloom into full-body soreness and immobility in the next few days, and she didn’t know if she’d feel safe operating on someone’s brain tomorrow.

Her cure couldn’t work if the patient died on the operating room table.

THREE

Olivia wasn’t answering her texts.

It was nearly midnight before Regan left the hospital. First the car accident. Could it be called that? Was potential vehicular homicide a more accurate term? Followed by stitches in the ER and then patient appointments the rest of the day. Above all else, she didn’t want her personal circumstances to affect the care of her patients. So many patients were desperate to participate in her research protocol, which showed true promise in curing the most aggressive type of brain tumor.

And she was using a polio virus to do it.

The cost of that decision was getting home way past Olivia’s bedtime, and the last thing she needed was to worry about her eleven-year-old daughter and the growing distance between them.

Sadly, medicine taught doctors to assume the worst-case scenario first and then settle on the more realistic diagnosis once the life-threatening possibilities were ruled out. Simply, an unanswered text first meant someone had died—plain and simple. Or they were stranded in a ditch and near death. No other possibility was acceptable until that one was ruled out.

Adding to this certainty was that her nanny, Polina, didn’t answer her texts or phone calls, either.

Lord, just let them be safe.

Regan fingered the front of her phone to call up the screen and smoothed her thumb over the picture of Olivia. Regan hadn’t thought eleven would be a hard age to deal with, but it was turning into exactly that. Her usually joyful and optimistic child had turned surly and ambivalent. Were the hormones changing more than her body? Or was it something more, something that Regan couldn’t change, like being away from home so much? The clinical trial consumed nearly every extra moment she could spare. Scraps of her attention. That was what Olivia got. She wanted to change this, but also needed to provide for Olivia—for all that she thought she deserved.

Why hadn’t Olivia called? Regan’s routine with Olivia when she was at the hospital was to talk every night if she didn’t make it home by dinner. If Regan couldn’t take the time to chat, she would send a quick text. But her call went to voice mail—her text with a multitude of heart and flower emojis unanswered, like silent witnesses to the distance between them.

Regan tapped her fingers on the front of her phone, trying to disperse the anxious tingling of her fingertips. She was breathing too fast. It was making her headache come back in full force.

Slow it down, Regan, slow it down. Stop thinking like this.

It wasn’t the first time an evening call went unanswered—but it was rare.

As the garage door rose, Polina’s battered navy blue Chevy Cavalier was where it should be. Regan parked her rental car, grabbed her purse and exited the vehicle, but froze when she saw the door that led into her kitchen. It stood open—all the way. The interior of the house was as dark and deep as a water well. The garage light flickered off and Regan’s heartbeat raced as blackness and fear enveloped her.

It was quiet—too quiet.

“Olivia? Polina?”

A stillness like no human presence remained. Regan pulled out her phone and activated the flashlight, approaching the wooden steps that led into the house with measured caution. Her heart galloped in her chest.

As the light traveled up the door frame, a smudge of blood jumped out in deep contrast to the white. When Regan crested the top step, heavy black marks and chipped paint gave the door a distressed look that had not been present before. As Regan entered the mudroom and eased the door closed behind her, she nearly tripped on bottles of laundry supplies that sat scattered on the marble tile. The box of laundry detergent had turned over and spilled. Soapy white crystals spread out like a blizzard had raced through the room. On the backside of the door, dusty footprints marred the white paint in several areas, almost as if someone had planted feet there to prevent the door from being opened. They were too large to be Olivia’s. The tread marks seemed characteristic of the athletic shoes Polina often wore.

Regan stepped farther into the house, throwing on every light switch as she briskly walked by, flooding the darkness to keep her evil thoughts at bay. The desk in her kitchen had been ransacked. Her papers, bills and notes were scattered all across the floor. A few more steps and she crossed broken glass from strewed dinner dishes. She wasn’t sure at first glance if the red liquid splashed against her refrigerator was spaghetti sauce or blood.

Rushing up the tan-carpeted stairs, Regan headed straight into Olivia’s room.

And there was the bed, perfectly made.

“Olivia!” she screamed, her sobs the only answer.

She rushed across to hall to Polina’s room and was met by another neatly made bed. Regan crossed to the center of the room, looking for any clue that would explain their disappearances, her briefcase still clutched in her hand, her breath strangled by invisible pythons wrapping and tightening themselves around her chest.

Regan’s phone pinged—an incoming text. Her vision blurred from the onslaught of tears. She brought her phone to her face.

Whatever you do—don’t call the police. Go downstairs. You’ll find what you’re looking for.

Regan’s hands shook and she tumbled to her knees. Whoever had Olivia was watching her. Had they followed her home? Were there cameras? Or were they merely watching her shadow travel through the windows to determine her position in the house? Did they sickly observe and relish the fact that her life was changing forever? Were they here? Inside her home? She didn’t want to go downstairs. Had she missed them? Were Olivia and Polina’s bodies lying somewhere downstairs and she had run past them, hoping to find them sleeping peacefully in their beds?

Terror crystallized every functioning cell in a wintry ice Regan didn’t believe she’d ever be free from. Should she call 9-1-1? Was the text instructing her not to because the assailants were waiting downstairs? Her heartbeat echoed in her ears like a scream in a canyon. Who could she reach out to? Her career caused isolation. Her parents believed her ex-husband’s stories that Regan’s study of medicine had caused the demise of her marriage, and so they didn’t stay in touch, not even for Olivia’s sake. Sadly, Regan didn’t know much about Polina’s family, or if they could help her grope through this shock to find help.

Regan took several deep breaths to abate the tremor stealing the strength from her legs. She stood, shaky, and took the stairs back down, leaning heavily against the banister to stay upright.

As her feet hit the landing, she almost dropped to her knees again—the terror quickly leaching the strength from her muscles. Retracing her steps, she entered the kitchen, seemingly Olivia and Polina’s last stand, and found a card lying on her granite island—the bawdy fluorescent green almost mocking.

It was Olivia’s handwriting on the back of the envelope. Mommy.

Regan crumpled against the counter, pulling the envelope toward her. She slid her blood-drained finger under the envelope’s flap, ripped through the paper and removed the card.

A ransom note.

We have your daughter. In order to get her back alive, we need you to do the following...

* * *

Colby stood on the sidewalk in front of Regan Lockhart’s home. A mix of emotions hazed his thoughts. One, he was angry she hadn’t showed up for Sam’s surgery this morning. Two, he was disappointed because he had been looking forward to seeing her again. But, overwhelmingly, he was worried. Did the events of yesterday have anything to do with today? Had they been a precursor to a bigger event? A crime even?

In hunting fugitives, starting at home base was often the first step. Then Colby would check friends and criminal cohorts. There was always a place to start.

Time to find out what the doctor was hiding.

It hadn’t taken long to find Regan’s house. It was not as he’d expected it to be...a smallish, refurbished Craftsman home, not five minutes from the hospital. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. Above all else, she had to open the door—even if it took a ruse to do it. He jogged up the steps and pounded three times on the black door.

“Dr. Lockhart!”

Colby quickly stepped back from the door. His plan was to put his foot in the crack as soon as she opened it, and if she didn’t quickly agree to return to the hospital, he was going to throw her over his shoulder and carry her there himself.

But as soon as the door opened and he began to advance, two metallic barbed instruments of torture hit Colby square in the chest and every muscle in his body contracted.