Page 44 of Kidnapping of a Myth

“South. The cliffs here aren’t tall enough. A fall wouldn’t kill him.”

“Thank you.” She shoved the cell into her pocket and jogged for the sheriff, where she repeated Eamon’s words.

Griffin turned around and stared at the hiking trails that rose into the mountains. “Are you sure? They look pretty tall to me.”

“Pann doesn’t operate in possibilities,” she answered. “He wants John dead, and a drop from this height might be survivable in that cage.”

“So where is he?” Griffin glanced at her, realizing her words weren’t just a theory.

“South.”

“How far?”

“I don’t know, but I suspect he’s close. Pann probably found the boys being within sight of each other this entire time amusing.”

Griffin cursed and took off running, skidding to a stop beside Agent Barry with wild gestures. After thirty seconds, Barry turned, studied their surroundings, and then started shouting orders. Agents and officers systematically began traveling south, carefully picking their way through the darkness to avoid any traps, and after fifteen minutes and another snapped cable, an agent shouted into the night.

“There!” He aimed his flashlight high above his head at the sheer and rocky cliff face. It was the type of scenery that would be beautifully dramatic in the daylight, its majesty obviously why the Darling family had left the mountains wild and free, but everyone immediately understood why the cage hung from a braid of metal cables from this specific cliff. Any fall would be fatal, but this? Bel felt sick. This wouldn’t just kill John. This height would obliterate him.

Griffin stood beside Bel,watching the scene unfold with ever-increasing doubt as the FBI formed a perimeter around the cage. It was anchored to the sheer cliff face high enough to kill John upon impact, but too far below the peak to be easily reached. The Tinker had built a massive support into the mountain to hold the small cage’s weight, the top hanging from a thick braid of metal cables… cables that were snapping at an alarmingly fast rate. Time was an ugly enemy, and they only had one shot at a rescue. If they failed… He stopped his thoughts from falling to those depths. Failure was not an option. No child would die on his watch.

Griffin studied the swinging cage as the FBI aimed their lights and manpower at it, wondering how one man hadmanaged to build such a monstrosity unnoticed. He didn’t understand how Pann had pulled this off, how he’d trapped a teenager inside such a contraption, but then again, he couldn’t fathom how someone could harm children. How they could plant explosives in the ground and then draw humans into their blast radius to be ripped apart.

Another cable snapped, the cage dropping a few inches, and Bel’s soft yelp beside him felt like a knife hacking through his chest. He understood her more than he liked to admit at this moment. He hated being helpless. He hated standing idly by while others dove into the fray, but both he and the Bajka Police Department were woefully under-equipped for this rescue.

The helicopters arrived in record time, and the entire field watched, refusing to breathe as the thumping blades carried the crafts high. Agent Barry had hastily outlined a plan before the aircraft launched. They didn’t have the luxury of detailed and safe organization. They were flying by the seat of their pants in a race against death’s timeline. The helicopters planned to lower harnessed agents down to the cage where they would attach cables of their own, so that when the last of Pann’s wires snapped, the aircraft would bear its weight, lowering it gently to the ground. It was a simple yet effective rescue attempt, but by the way Bel kept glancing toward the distant shadows, Griffin feared the outcome would be their worst nightmare. He knew what she was searching the darkness for… or rather, who. She didn’t believe these traps were survivable, and as another detaching cable shattered the silence, Griffin found he agreed with her. This seemed too easy. They were missing something. They had to be.

The helicopters climbed ever higher, and Griffin had the sudden urge to stop them. They were moving too quickly, too recklessly. More than just John’s life was at stake. He felt it in his bones, his very marrow. He should force them to rethinktheir strategy, but he never got the chance. Before he could take a single step, an explosion ripped through the night.

Shots rang out, the cliff side beside the cage bursting with firepower, and bullets tore through both helicopters with alarming violence. The rightmost aircraft pitched out of control, and Bel screamed as the craft slammed into the mountain in a vivid display of orange flames. The explosion lit up the night sky, instantly killing the agents and pilots onboard, and horror rippled through the task force as flaming debris littered the earth.

Griffin instinctively grabbed Bel’s shoulders and dragged her backward toward the tree line to save her from the burning shrapnel. The remains of the helicopter cluttered the ground, a shattered rotor blade impaling an agent who stood too close, and Bel flinched in his arms as yet another man fell victim to The Tinker’s traps. She’d been right. This wasn’t a rescue. This was an execution, and anyone who tried to interfere with Pann’s plans would die horribly alongside John.

The second helicopter avoided the cliff but spun out of control as it plummeted. As it lost altitude, the team launched themselves out onto the grass. Some undoubtedly broke their limbs from the fall, but Griffin breathed a sigh of relief at their survival until he realized the pilot didn’t make it out before it crashed into the dirt. There was no way he survived that impact, survived the shrapnel and flames. Another life had been brutally stolen, along with their hope of saving John. As if to confirm his despair, another cable snapped, the metallic break ringing out over the cacophony, and both his and Bel’s eyes shot to the thinning braid.

“There aren’t many cables left,” she panicked. “He’s going to fall, and we… we have nothing. It’s too late to attempt a second rescue.”

Griffin heard the tears in her words. Heard their failure. She’d fought so hard to save this child. Battled her own demons to face a kidnapping case so soon after her own, and now she’d have to watch as not only agents died in fire and pain but also a cage baring a teenager fell. Agent Barry was screaming orders. The FBI was scrambling to make last-minute plans, but Griffin recognized their inadequacy. There was no recovering from this. There was no salvation for John. They’d failed him, just like Pann had intended.

Griffin reached up and pulled off his bulletproof police vest as his eyes turned toward the shadows Bel was staring at. He knew who hid in the darkness, and he understood what he needed to do. It went against everything he stood for as an officer of the law. He was supposed to serve and protect not throw civilians to the wolves, but the devil you know was better than the devil you don’t. He didn’t care how Eamon did it. He didn’t want to know what Eamon was. Those were truths he could never learn, truths he refused to learn, but while he didn’t trust Eamon Stone, Bel did. The man might be evil, but he was a necessary one, and Griffin strode through the agony and death toward the towering millionaire.

“They’ll never reach John in time.” He shoved his police vest at Eamon as Bel settled beside them, her own vest wrapped around her chest. Griffin realized Mr. Stone probably didn’t need a bulletproof vest, but if anyone saw him, at least the giant white letters would make it easier to lie about the man’s presence.

“That boy is going to die,” Griffin continued. “Get him down.”

Griffin raced for the trees,and a confused Bel chased after him, sick at the sounds of death plaguing the night air. Why was he fleeing the scene? Did he have a plan? Had he decided he couldn’t watch John die and chose to leave the burning field? Her boss never shied away from horrors, so she didn’t understand why he would retreat now until she saw Eamon step out of the shadows. She picked up her pace as Griffin shoved his police vest at Stone, and while she couldn’t hear his first words, his last command rang out loud and clear.

“Get him down.” Griffin glanced at her as Eamon slipped the slightly too-small vest around his broad torso, and without another word, her boss returned to the chaos, clearly understanding what she’d suspected all along. These trapsweren’t meant to be survived. No human could undo Pann’s plan. If you wanted to defeat a monster, you needed the devil himself.

Eamon captured her biceps and pulled her through the darkness to his truck, hoisting her into the cab through the driver’s side door since Ewan sat in the passenger seat. She settled in the middle of the bench as Eamon climbed in after her, realizing both men had been waiting to see if the helicopter rescue ended successfully before exposing their true natures, and Bel offered a mental‘thank you’to her boss as the pickup accelerated. With Griffin’s blessing, they just might pull this off without everyone learning Bajka was home to beasts born of myths.

The trees sped by as Eamon expertly guided the truck through the mountain trails. He drove without hesitation, and Bel had to close her eyes to keep the dizziness at bay. The vehicle moved too fast for her human senses to comprehend, so she clenched her eyes shut and prayed they weren’t too late. The echo of another cable snapping sounded in the distance, and while Eamon’s driving delivered them to the dark ridge in minutes, the journey felt as if it had taken years.

“I’m going to climb down and pull John out of the cage,” Eamon said, leaping out of the vehicle as he threw it into park, and Bel scrambled after him. He pulled cables and harnesses out of the truck bed, the supplies a prop to ensure his feats of strength were believable to any onlookers with excellent night vision, and he slipped the harness on before attaching the line to the truck’s tow hitch.

“From the way those shots ripped through the helicopters, I suspect Pann installed motion sensors to trigger the cage’s defenses. My guess is he’s using some sort of armor-piercing rounds, so if I get hit, you need to go after the kid.” He looked at Ewan, purposely avoiding Bel’s gaze, and that simple exchangetold her the true meaning of his statement. Eamon Stone might be nearly indestructible, but armor-piercing rounds would kill the beast if the bullets struck the right organs.

“Eamon!” She grabbed his forearm as he headed for the cliff. She couldn’t watch him get shot. Not if it meant he would leave her alone in this world.

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