Page 45 of Misunderstood Hacker

19

Brock

The conference room was full.Mia was in her regular spot at the end of the table next to John. They were looking over surveillance video. Neal had flown back in as soon as I called to let him know Jessica was missing. Eric was talking to Sam on a laptop.

“What have we found?”

I took a quick look at the clock. It was seven p.m. The sun was setting, and Jessica had been kidnapped a few hours ago.

John leaned back in his chair. “I followed Jessica when she left here. She went to the airport, which confirms what Patty said. The plane I saw leave wasn’t Jessica’s family’s, nor was it ours. It was another plane.”

I picked up the photos from the airport. “So they want us to assume Jessica was on the family jet and it crashed. Sam, I think the family should come out and act like Jessica died in a plane crash. You need to plan a funeral.”

Sam ran his hand through his hair in frustration.“I think that might be too hard on Patty.She’s due any day now, and I don’t—”

Patty’s head popped into the video feed. “I will plan this stupid funeral as long as you promise to get my sister back. This little one will stay put until I get my sister here. I won’t have this baby without Jessica.” She sat down on Sam’s lap, and he wrapped his arms around her body, resting his hands on her stomach. “Get her back soon. I don’t know how many days I can keep this baby inside me.”

“Okay, team. We are going to announce publicly that Jessica died in a plane crash off the Atlantic coast on her way to Shialia.”

Neal jumped up and paced back and forth. “If she would have let us put another tracker inside her arm, we wouldn’t have this problem. And you!” Neal turned toward me. “If you hadn’t fucked up like an idiot, she would still have her GPS on.”

“I know I fucked up. But nevertheless, we need to locate Jessica. Stop pointing fingers, and let’s find her.”

Eric leaned forward and grabbed a donut from the middle of the table. “If I were them, I would take her back to where it all began.”

I looked at the big screen. Sam was shaking his head. “Not possible. The place was demolished a few years ago.”

I needed proof it was in shambles. “We need to take a closer look. Someone pull up the satellite imagery of where Jessica was originally held.”

Eric looked up. “Regarding Axmed, there’s not much information. No siblings. Parents dead. Spent his teenage years bouncing around group homes.”

“That doesn’t help us. Why did he originally kidnap Jessica?” I paced the room. It helped keep my mind running. “Was he after money, or was it something else?”

Mia grabbed a report from the conference room table. “From what it says in Sam’s report, at first, Axmed thought he had Patty. Then it seemed he developed an attraction to Jessica.”

I grabbed a piece of licorice off the table. “He has a funny way of showing attraction,” I grumbled.

“Jessica’s dad didn’t pay the ransom the last time she was kidnapped.Why would these men kidnap her again?”John asked.

Deep down in my bones, I didn’t believe there would be any ransom demand. “He wants Jessica for himself. Her being rescued screwed up some plan he’d hatched.”

I sat back down in my chair, rubbing the space between my eyes to relieve the tension.

“Sam, what reason were you given for not killing Axmed?”

Patty pushed Sam out of the way and appeared on the screen. “In the early years, Dad said he was trying to get information out of him. Over time, we forgot about him, and I stopped asking. Jessica has never been keen on having someone killed. I wanted his head on a stake. Anyway, when we came back, I tried again, but Dad keeps changing the subject every time I ask.”

Patty was a shark when it came to her sister. She would do anything to protect her. “Have you asked since Axmed escaped and Jessica was kidnapped?”

A frown formed on Sam’s face. “William went on vacation about an hour after Axmed escaped, and he is not answering his phone.” Sam had dark circles under his eyes from stress.

“Do we need to worry about him?”

Patty and Sam both replied, “No.”

Sam continued on. “He knows something. I think the information is damning to his image, and he isn’t sure how to tell us. We haven’t been able to tell him Jessica was taken. When we announce the funeral tomorrow, I hope he contacts us.”

The door to the conference room swooshed open. Sophie came storming in with a red-faced Daisy on her heels.

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