Broken Storm Part One Page 7

  He wrapped his arms around her middle, pulling off her feet. She let out the beginning of a screech, but he slammed one of his massive hands over her mouth, and it was cut short.

  She struggled against his grip, kicking out with her legs, but the guy was huge.

  Chase ran from his car, barely having the time to yank up the park break, lest it roll away.

  He launched himself at the guy, but whoever he was, he was quick on his feet, and he darted back, pulling an arm out, dropping it to his jacket, and then grabbing out a gun.

  'Don't you dare,’ he said as he pointed it at Chase.

  He pulled his hand from Keiko's mouth to readjusted his grip, and she began to scream again, but the guy rammed his gun against the side of her head hissing at her to shut up or he would shoot.

  Her face crumpled down in shock and disbelief, tears starting to streak down her cheeks.

  Chase slowly brought his hands up.

  He’d been in his fair share of confrontations with the Sect. If indeed, that was who this guy belonged to.

  Usually they weren’t this desperate. Violent, yes, but secretive. If they wanted Keiko, they could have stolen into her apartment in the middle of the night and kidnapped her in quiet. For them to Chase her down in the street in the middle of the day, and risk having the police called, meant they were desperate. Unusually desperate.

  Keiko kept on whimpering, softly, her arms shaking, more tears falling down her cheeks.

  'I could just shoot you, but I won't if you're a good girl,' the guy said.

  His words sickened Chase. From the particular tone of his voice to what he'd said; it was derogatory, sharp, and sleazy.

  He tried to catch Keiko’s eyes, tried to reassure her, but she’d closed them against the tears and the onslaught.

  'That's a good girl,' the guy said condescendingly, still not moving his gun from her head.

  ‘Now Mister Chase Harlow is going to get out of my way, step away from his car, and turn a blind eye,’ the guy said as he turned Chase's way, nodding at the car behind him. ‘It looks nice, I’ll be sure not to dent it, too much,’ the guy added with a loud laugh.

  Chase, every single muscle in his body tensed, slowly stood to the side.

  Because there was nothing he could do.

  He couldn't tell the guy there was no way he was going to steal Chase's car. He couldn't rush forward, somehow pry the gun from his grip, and stop him from hurting Keiko.

  'You know, we only keep you alive because you're dumb enough to bring us clues like this,' the guy admitted as he made it to the car, opened the back door, and got ready to shove Keiko inside.

  Then Chase watched in sickened horror as the man pulled a syringe from his pocket as he somehow still had his arm locked around Keiko while his gun was pointed at Chase, and then he injected her in the neck in a swift but fumbled move.

  She somehow managed to stifle a scream, and fortunately she didn't fidget too much; the needle going in smoothly without breaking in her neck.

  Then she collapsed.

  Seconds later, her body drawing limp, it was one of the most harrowing sights Chase had ever seen.

  Not nearly as harrowing as watching the guy pile her into the back, get into the front seat of Chase’s car, offer him a low nod, close the door, and then drive off in a screech of tires.

  Chase Harlow had only met Keiko Teshi about a week ago.

  Before that, according to the information his secretary had managed to dig up on her, she had been a normal, if awkward, university student working for a catering company. Her grades were unremarkable, her ambitions apparently non-existent, she had been miles and miles away from Chase’s usual world.

  Well now he had dragged her into it. And now her life would never be the same.

  She’d just been kidnapped by the Sect.

  And Chase was responsible.

  Chapter 11

  When she woke up it was to the intrusive view of light flickering in her eyes.

  Somebody had their fingers pressed into her eyelids, and they were shining a torch at her.

  She struggled, mumbling, trying to blink against the onslaught.

  She could hardly move though.

  Her body felt heavy, and it throbbed with a special kind of fatigue she had never felt before.

  'Where am I?' she asked through a croak that shook through her neck and throat.

  Nobody answered.

  ‘She is awake,’ somebody snapped.

  As the torch was pulled back, Keiko managed to close her eyes for a moment, the afterglow of the strong light dancing over her retinas.

  When she managed to open her eyes again, it took a long time to adjust to the illumination in the room.

  It was dim, low, and as she flicked her eyes up to the ceiling above her, she could see it was all coming from a single dangling light.

  All the other lights in the room were broken.

  ‘Where am I?' she asked again, her voice stuttering through a plea.

  It was then that Keiko realized she was sitting up, not lying down.

  She tried to bring her arms around, wanting to pat at her face, wanting to rub her eyes to get rid of the final glow from that torch.

  She couldn't move them though.

  Because they were tied behind her. Tightly, expertly, she could hardly even move her wrists, let alone get them free.

  Desperation spiked through her, sending with it a surge of adrenaline that made her heartbeat practically double. 'Who are you, what's going on, where am I?' she pleaded, the swelling fatigue she had woken up to being chased away by her fear.

  There were two men standing in front of her. One with a torch in his hand, the other with a gun.

  It brought it back.

  Keiko had been kidnapped in plain sight, in the middle of the day.

  Someone had shoved a gun to her head and injected her in the neck.

  Shaking, shivering so violently she practically caused the chair to fall over, she wanted to bring a hand up and clutch it just below her ear, exactly where the man had shoved the needle.

  She had to be dreaming, right? This couldn’t be happening to her. She was so ordinary, so unremarkable. She led a particularly boring life. There would be no reason for anyone ever to go to the trouble of kidnapping her. She wasn't worth anything, her family weren’t rich, and she had no specialized knowledge or expertise.

  And yet Keiko was still tied to the chair, still facing off against two men before her, the two men with scarred faces, large muscled bodies, and expressions that made her shake with fright.

  'Get the camera,' one of them growled.

  The other one disappeared behind Keiko, his footsteps echoing through the large room.

  There was a concrete floor below her, bare and scratched, and around her was junk, stacked up against the walls, no furniture to speak of, nothing but her rickety little chair.

  She stared with an open mouth at the man in front of her. 'What do you want?' she forced the words out, though her voice was little more than a silent, desperate whisper.

  He didn't answer, he did sneer though, then he nodded at the other man as he came into view, snatching the camera from him. 'To take your picture, love,' the man finally replied.

  His words and the way he’d said them made Keiko want to throw up. In fact she twitched forward in a dry retch, squeezing her eyes closed as she did.

  'This won't hurt a bit,' he assured her as he bought the camera up. Confusingly, it was a Polaroid. It wasn't a digital camera, he wasn't even using his phone, and in a second he snapped his finger over the button, the click of the camera taking the photo reverberating around the room.

  Then he brought his hand around and grabbed the photo as it was processed.

  Shaking it in one hand, he grinned her way.

  'Why are you doing this?’ she asked, her voice wavering so pathetically she really did sound like a frightened mouse.

  Except she had every reason to be scared.

  She wa
s in some kind of abandoned room, full of junk, tied to a chair, facing a man with a gun who had just taken a photo of her.

  This was beyond serious. This was a level of danger Keiko would be lucky to live through.

  As the man waited for the photo to develop, he finally brought it up, and as he did, his unkind features crumpled into an even unkinder smile.

  'We'll see what happens to this,' he said cryptically.

  Keiko started to cry. The tears, hot and fast, dribbled down her cheeks, collected over her chin, rushed down her neck, and soaked through her collar.

  She shook forward as she did, sobbing, whimpering. But no matter how much she cried, it didn't change the fact of what was happening to her.

  After the man took the photo, he nodded her way one final time, said he’d be back for her, and then the two of them left.

  She heard their footfall echo, then a door closed somewhere from behind her.

  As they left, they turned the light off.

  Keiko screamed, and her voice echoed around the room.

  The tears continued to fall, and she shook back and forth in her chair, overcome.

  She did not know what would happen next. But they would be back. And no doubt they would bring their guns with them.

  In the dark she sat there, tied to the chair, and Keiko fell apart.

  Chapter 12

  Chase Harlow

  No more stuffing around, no more keeping this to himself.

  It had turned ugly and serious fast, and though Chase was a lot of things, he was not above the law.

  He called the police, specifically one of his friends from high school.

  Hell, in the mood Chase was in right now, he could have called the Army, called the President herself, a personal friend.

  Because he was ready to move earth and heaven to get her back.

  He’d dragged her into this, and now Keiko Teshi was facing a danger she couldn't comprehend.

  'It'll be a small unit,' Frank said as he stalked around in front of Chase’s desk.

  Frank was a detective, the best the city had, and he was also Chase’s long-standing friend.

  'I didn't recognize the guy,' Chase pointed out for the umpteenth time.

  'That means nothing. He could have been a mercenary or a local hired gun. Though I doubt the last one; we are dealing with professionals, after all,’ Frank snapped.

  Chase nodded slowly. He felt sick.

  He had a reason to feel sick. He couldn't stop thinking about her, and more to the point, what they would be doing to her.

  She didn't seem to be the kind of girl that could live through something like that. She seemed to be the kind of girl that would fall apart at the first sign of trouble.

  Well now she was in trouble, more trouble than most people could imagine.

  The guilt crashing into him in another thick and powerful wave, Chase pushed himself backwards in his chair.

  'They would be keeping her locally; they're not stupid enough to drive across the border with a body in the back,' Frank pointed out.

  These were already facts Chase had thought of.

  He didn't need any more brainstorming; he needed someone to do something. He needed somebody on the ground to find out where they were keeping her, and he needed them to send in their best team to get her back.

  'Chase, we’re doing everything we can,' Frank paused, looking directly at his friend, his expression reassuring.

  There was nothing that could reassure Chase right now though. Nothing save for Keiko walking back through that door.

  Though in that moment the door did open, Chase did not snap his glance up to see her face.

  Instead Victor leaned in.

  He was aware of the situation, and aware of the fact Chase had specifically asked not to be disturbed. But the expression on Victor's face was a crumpled, confused, strange one, and it got Chase’s attention.

  'You really need to see this,' he said in a careful voice, giving a light cough at the end.

  Chase was about to sell him to close the door and go away, but something about the way Victor looked at him made Chase pause.

  He got to his feet, mumbled at Frank that he would be right back, and walked out into the corridor, closing the door.

  Maybe Chase needed to be distracted right now, because if he sat in that chair, staring at Frank and listening to every single suggestion the competent Detective could make, he would probably go insane.

  'What is it?' Chase said through a clenched jaw.

  'I've pulled up the security footage on her,' Victor said.

  Chase ground his teeth together. 'Victor, let it go, she doesn't work for them. They just kidnapped her,' he snapped, the guilt plucking at his spine again.

  Victor put up his hands quickly. 'Come and have a look at it, that's the only thing I'm asking.'

  There was a very strange quality to his tone, and his expression was one Chase rarely saw.

  Victor was a hard man to surprise. The perfect man to track down a mystery like the one that surrounded the wind goddess Aiko.

  But right now he looked shocked, confused, and rattled.

  So Chase walked with him, down the corridor, into another office, and sat there as Victor manipulated the keyboard, running forward through footage Chase suddenly realized showed the area just outside his office door.

  The footage ran forward, and nothing much happened until suddenly the door burst open and Victor leaned out, a clearly angry expression on his face. Then the footage showed him shouting at somebody, presumably off screen, before he grumbled, went back into the office, and closed the door.

  Victor paused the replay.

  He looked up at Chase meaningfully.

  Chase stared back.

  ‘What the hell is this? Victor? Did you just pull me out of my office for this? It shows nothing.’

  'What it shows, is me shouting at your friend Keiko,' Victor said mysteriously.

  Chase got up from his chair. ‘Did you really drag me out to see this? She is obviously off screen.’

  ‘She is not off screen. She was standing right in front of me,' he pointed out carefully.

  ‘Victor, I'm looking at the footage now, there's nobody there,’ Chase said through an exasperated breath.

  ‘But there was somebody there, that's what I'm trying to tell you, she was clearly in shot, she is just not... on the footage,’ he managed. Then Victor, a man fiendishly hard to rattle, looked up at Chase with a shaky expression.

  Was this some kind of game? Was Victor trying to distract Chase away from his guilt?

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, Victor?'

  'I don't know. All I know is that she was standing right in front of me. She was in line of the cameras. She should be on the footage. But she’s not.’ He looked up sharply.

  Silence spread between them.

  Chase could hear the wind outside, however mutely, as they were protected from it by thick, reinforced windows.

  It caught his attention.

  Did it blow harder and faster in that moment?

  Chase was not a suspicious man. He was a man of science. He'd wanted to devote his life to being a doctor, after all.

  He was not religious, and he always wanted something to be proven before he tried it.

  Nonetheless, Chase had gotten stuck up in this world. The mystery of Aiko.

  And despite the fact he kept on telling himself, trying to prove to himself that he certainly was not superstitious, the wind outside clearly blew louder, buffeting against the windows despite their strength.

  There was no such thing as a goddesses of the elements or spirits of nature.

  They were relics from histories long past, myths no longer needed in the modern age.

  Yet Chase Harlow, 15 years ago, had been sitting in his father's office when a statue of Aiko had exploded.

  Some things could not be explained, and right now as Victor looked up at him, his expression certainly not one of jest, Chase realized this was
another one of those things.

  Swallowing hard, he tried to comprehend what he was being told.

  She was in view, she couldn't be seen.

  What the hell did that mean?

  Chase knew that there were certain technologies being developed by the military that would allow the wearer to scramble footage taken of them. But they wouldn’t disappear. The footage itself would simply become filled with static. It was interference, not this, whatever this was meant to be.

  ‘I'm telling you, she was in view,' Victor assured him again.

  Chase shivered. His whole body felt cold, from his skin to his very bones.

  He didn't know what to do with this fact, because he had no idea what it meant, and no idea whether it was true. Perhaps Victor was mistaken. Perhaps she hadn’t been in view or perhaps he had brought up the wrong footage, some other moment of Victor tugging open the door to shout at some unfortunate person along the corridor. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all, that Victor Woolworth had let loose with his trademark bluster.

  But no matter how hard Chase tried to convince himself that this was nothing, a strange feeling niggled at his gut.

  He backed off, heading towards the door. 'I don't know what this means,' he said very honestly and candidly.

  'Neither do I,' Victor confirmed.

  'Just make sure...' Chase trailed off as he latched a hand onto the door and opened it.

  Make sure of what? That Victor wasn't mistaken?

  How could he do that? Chase only had his friend’s word here, and though Victor was trustworthy, what he was suggesting seemed ridiculously fantastic, beyond the realms of science, into an area Chase was not and would never be comfortable with.

  'Are they any closer to finding her?' Victor asked in a low, respectful voice.

  Chase shook his head and finally walked out.

  No they weren't.

  But he knew enough to realize that the longer this drew on, the more time would run out for Keiko.

  The Sect were not forgiving. They were not incompetent, and they would get exactly what they wanted, no matter what they had to do to obtain it.

  Chapter 13

  Keiko had no idea what time it was, and she had no idea how long she’d been sitting in this dark room, tied to the chair.