Page 5 of Under His Heel: A Kidnapping

Tracht leaned against the railing and waited.

[Chapter 2]

Security arrived along with a very harried looking Vasilis. A smartly dressed woman followed behind.

“Johan was with us when Chryssy’s presentation started. I think that was around 15:30?” Anna looked at Tracht for confirmation, and he nodded. He’d pulled up his outbox to see the time stamp on the messages he’d sent, and they were from around 15:40.

He’d also gone through the collar’s readings. It had pinged mild distress from Alex around the same time, but Tracht had turned off the collar’s alerts long ago. He would have been receiving an endless string of messages otherwise.

The last reading was from 15:52.

He gave all of that information to the security personnel and noted that the smartly-dressed woman was taking notes.

“You said you turned off the alerts? Is there any reason to that?” she asked. “You would have been made aware much sooner that something was amiss.”

“I realize the irony in that now, Ms.—?”

“Sofia Koteas. I’m a hostage investigator. And why is it ironic?”

“Because, Ms. Koteas, I turned it off so I wouldn’t get annoyed by messages about Alex’s distress, thus missing the one time I would have liked to know about it.” Tracht realized that towards the end he had raised his voice. It echoed through the stairwell, and everybody stared at him.

“Apologies. The situation is a tad… distressing.”

Koteas nodded. “No worry. We’ll find your nephew soon.”

Did she fail to mention Alex because he simply wasn’t a priority, or because she thought he’d been involved? Tracht decided it didn’t matter. Evidence pointed to Alex’s whereabouts being tied to Johan’s, so as long as the investigation proceeded it would get him somewhere closer to finding Alex.

One of the security staff shuffled closer. “We’ve collected everything we need.”

“All right. Let’s all head back to your home, Mr. Lysander, and see what we can do with the information we have.”

==

Koteas rode with them in the car back to Vasilis and Anna’s manor. It was one of the few free-standing houses on the station, taking up prime real estate that could have held an apartment complex or two. There were enough rooms to house at least three families – at times, it did, when Vasilis’s extended family came to visit. Anna had tried to convince Tracht to use it as his home while on station, but the thought of having to be around three insufferable children and Anna’s constant nagging for more than three days straight had been enough to drive him to stay in space longer.

Koteas and her team set up in the dining room, while the other two children were sent to their rooms accompanied by guards.

“The best case scenario is that the kidnappers call and demand a ransom,” Koteas told Vasilis and Anna. “But we won’t wait for that. The first few hours are crucial. My team will be looking over all of the security tapes, and we’ll be analyzing all the biological evidence we found at the scene.” She looked carefully between the two of them. “Can you think of anybody who might have wanted to do this?”

“Yes! Johannes’s blasted bondservant!” Anna shouted. “He used to be a conman, and he’s indebted to the Nilsens. And he’s a complete thug!”

Impossible to remain calm when he was already so agitated. Tracht sneered at her. “Anna, if you don’t shut up right now—”

“You have this massive blindspot when it comes to him! You dismiss every respectable man who crosses your path but suddenly you have a thing for ugly, ill-mannered brutes?”

“I think—” Vasilis placed his hands on Anna’s shoulders, “I think both of you need to calm down. We don’t know what happened yet.”

“Believe what you want,” Tracht said, “but you’re wasting time and toying with Johan’s life if you assume Alex is the culprit.”

Koteas tapped on her tablet loudly. “You are very sure your bondservant wasn’t involved. Is there a reason for that?”

Tracht resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Alex is completely devoted to me. I trust him with my life; he has, in fact, saved me both from death and professional scandal. More to the point, Alex does not have the technical skill to have disconnected the alarm on the door, and he probably would have forgotten to ditch Johan’s tablet.”

He couldn’t tell them that he’d forced that loyalty on Alex, that he’d molded Alex in such a way as to cultivate a trust between them that nobody could ever understand. He knew that Anna understood the basic theory of training a servant, but she didn’t use it to the same extent that Tracht had with Alex. In fact, if she knew exactly what he’d done to Alex, she might even decide to cut ties with Tracht.

Alex would never call it rape and brainwashing, but everybody else in the world would.

The argument might have continued if not for the way Anna’s tablet lit up.

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