Chapter
8
When
Josh got to the door of Nick’s room, he realized no one had told him the
code. He considered just going back and
waiting for them to come out, but then he decided that he had to tell them now. Something told him that if he didn’t, they
really would be kidnapped too, just like his own girlfriend, as well as Brian
and Heidi. He couldn’t let that happen
to AJ, Kevin, and Howie too. He had only
known them for those few days, but they were nice guys, and he had grown quite
friendly with them.
Hesitantly,
Josh knocked on the heavy metal door, softly at first, then louder, when he
received no answer. Finally, the door
swung open, and AJ stepped out. “Hey,
Josh,” he said.
“AJ,
we’ve got to get out of here,” Josh said.
“Some dude just called Julie’s cell phone and said that you guys need to
get out of here because the guys that kidnapped Julie, Heidi, and Brian are
coming back this afternoon for you!”
“What?”
AJ cried. “Who was this guy? How do you know he’s telling the truth?”
“I
don’t know,” Josh said. “He wouldn’t
tell me his name or anything, but I think he has something to do with those
guys. And I just have this gut feeling
that he meant what he said. We’ve got
to go somewhere where we’ll be safe, and soon.”
“How
about a hotel somewhere?” AJ suggested.
“Not the one you and Julie were staying at, but a different one?”
“Yeah,
that sounds good,” Josh said. “Hey, how
about the Ramada? Wasn’t that where
Sonny was going to stay?”
“Yeah,
I think so. Let’s go call him and ask if
we can hang with him for awhile,” AJ said.
He and Josh walked back to the waiting room. Josh grabbed his cell phone and a piece of
paper on which Sonny had written down his hotel room phone number in case they
needed to call him.
Josh
dialed the number, and after Sonny picked up, he explained the situation. Of course, Sonny agreed to let them stay in
his room for awhile.
“He
said yes,” Josh told AJ after he had hung up.
“Ok,”
AJ said. “Let’s go tell the other guys,
and then we’ll go.”
“Shouldn’t
we call Kessler or James and tell them too?” Josh asked. “Maybe they could get some guys to come here
and be waiting for those guys. Then they
can catch them.”
“Yeah,
good idea,” AJ replied. “We’ll call them
after we tell the guys.”
“Ok,”
Josh said, and they headed back down the hall to Nick’s room. Once at the door, AJ punched the code in, and
it opened.
“Come
on in, dude,” AJ said, as Josh hesitated at the door. Josh nodded and followed him into the
room. He saw Howie and Kevin sitting on
either side of Nick’s bed. Josh nearly
gasped when he got a good look at Nick.
If he hadn’t have known it was Nick in the bed, Josh was not sure he
would have recognized him, despite all the pictures he had seen of Nick through
Julie.
Nick’s
skin was literally colorless. His head
was bandaged so that you couldn’t see his hair.
He was in a neck brace and was strapped to a backboard. He was hooked up to a respirator, two IV’s,
and a heart monitor, as well as some other machines that monitored his other
vital signs. The sight of him lying
there so vulnerable and lifeless sent chills through Josh. He had known that Nick had been badly hurt,
but now, seeing him, the whole situation became more real to him. It was uncertain if Nick would ever wake up,
and Josh knew that if he did, he could be so brain damaged that he would have
to have around the clock nursing care for the rest of his life. Even if he did come out of it with only minor
brain damage, the damage to his spinal cord could be so bad that he would be
paralyzed, be stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Josh knew that for a person like Nick, who,
like himself, was so active, that could be almost worse than death.
As
Josh stood there in shock, AJ quickly explained the whole situation to Kevin
and Howie, who were shocked and horrified.
“Sonny
should be here soon,” AJ said. “We’d
better go get ready.” The four of them
walked back to the waiting room and collected their backpacks and everything
else they’d brought.
“Hey,
we need to call Kessler and James too,” Howie said suddenly.
“Yeah,
we do,” AJ agreed. “I’ll call.” He grabbed his cell phone out of his backpack
and dialed Kessler’s number. He briefly
explained what had happened and hung up.
Then he turned back to the others.
“Kessler said he and his crew will be here in a few minutes. He said we better go as soon as Sonny gets
here.”
A
few minutes later, Sonny came to the waiting room. “You guys ready to go?” he asked.
“Yeah,”
Kevin said. “Thanks for taking us to
your hotel room.”
“No
problem,” Sonny replied, offering a small smile.
Security
escorted the five of them out to Sonny’s red Pontiac Grand Am. “Nice car,” Kevin remarked.
“Thanks,”
Sonny said. “It’s Heidi’s and mine.”
“What’s
the license plate supposed to mean?” AJ asked, studying Sonny’s license
plate. It read HOKIE 3.
“Oh,
Heidi and I went to Virginia Tech. Their
mascot is a hokie,” Sonny explained.
“What’s
a hokie?” AJ asked, chuckling.
“Some
kind of bird,” Sonny replied, grinning.
“Cool,”
AJ said, returning his smile. They all
climbed into the car.
“So,
did you and Heidi meet in college?” Howie asked Sonny.
“No,
actually, we met in high school. I
transferred to her school in junior year, so we didn’t know each other. This one night, after a basketball game, I
think, I was driving home, and a saw a car that had stalled on the side of the
road. It turns out it was Heidi. It had been really cold and snowy that night,
and her engine had stalled. We were on
some back roads, so there weren’t any stores or anything nearby. I went and let her use my cell phone to call
for a tow truck, and then I waited with her for the truck to come, and I gave
her ride home. After that, we eventually
became really great friends, and then we started dating sophomore year of
college and have been ever since,” Sonny said.
“That’s
cool,” Josh said, smiling at Sonny.
Sonny smiled back through the rearview mirror as he drove.
“So,
Josh, how did you and Julie meet?” he asked.
Josh
grinned. “Well, Julie and I have known
each other since middle school. She’s a
year younger than me, and when I was in eighth grade, I think, she got this
crush on me. She never asked me out
though, because I had a girlfriend at the time.
Then the next year, I went off to high school, and I never saw her much
anyway. I dated all these ditzy
cheerleaders during my freshman and sophomore years, and I didn’t think she
even liked me anymore. But then, during
my junior year, one of her friends told me that she still liked me, and I
thought she was cute, so I asked her out.
We’ve been dating ever since.”
“That’s
cute,” Howie remarked.
Josh
smiled, a little sadly. “I just love her
so much,” he said. “I hope she’s
okay. I don’t know how I could live
without her.”
“That’s
how I feel about Heidi too,” Sonny said glumly.
The
three other guys just looked at each other sadly. “Well, Brian’s like our brother. I don’t know how we could go on without him,”
Howie said.
“Yeah,
and he’s my cousin too,” Kevin added.
“I
hope they’re all okay,” AJ said. “You
should have asked that dude that called where they were and if they were okay,
Josh.”
“Yeah,”
Josh said thoughtfully, “but I doubt he would have told me. He was anxious to get off the phone. I’m sure he was afraid he would get caught
ratting his crew out.”
“Probably
so,” Kevin agreed.
“Well,
at least he called and warned you guys,” Sonny said. “Now we don’t have to worry about you being
kidnapped too.”
They
all nodded, thinking what could have happened to them if they had stayed at the
hospital and hoping that their three friends would make it out of this all
right.
***
I
lay on the blankets, tired and weak. My
stomach growled. It was the middle of
the afternoon, and we had been there for a full day now, without food. Brian sat up against the wall, staring into
space. We had made another bed for Heidi
across the room so that we wouldn’t disturb her, and she lay there now, still
asleep. I was getting worried about
her. Usually people were mostly fine not
long after they had had a seizure. But
Heidi’s seizure had been that morning, and she had not woken up all day. I only hoped it was because she had hit her
head and suffered a concussion, which would mean she would wake up soon. I prayed that it wasn’t something more
serious that had made her stay unconscious like that.
***
Kessler
sat in the gift shop, peering out the window with his binoculars. He had three of his men with him, and the
other cops were positioned all around the hospital, ready for the kidnappers to
strike again.
His
eyes narrowed as he saw a small black semi driving slowly down the highway,
towards the entrance to the hospital.
The strange thing was that the semi had no words painted on the side, no
company name. It was just plain black,
and it was suspicious looking. His eyes
widened as the truck pulled into the entrance.
Kessler
whipped out his walkie talkie. “James,
come in. Over,” he said sharply into the
walkie talkie.
“James
here. Over,” came James’ voice.
“Suspicious
looking black semi just pulled into the lot on the west side of the
building. Over,” Kessler said.
“My
men are on the way. Over,” James
replied.
Kessler
watched as the semi pulled around and parked close to the side doors, right by
the vending machines outside the gift shop, where the others had supposedly
been abducted. He loaded his gun. His eyes widened even more as the doors of
the truck opened, and three men hopped out, dressed all in black, including
black face masks.
“Three
suspects at west entrance. Over,” he
said quickly into his walkie talkie.
“Come on, boys,” he called to the three cops with him. Then he hurried out of the gift shop and
stood against the wall, peeking around the corner into the hall where the west
entrance and the vending machines were.
There were cops positioned strategically all around, he knew, just
waiting. The three with him stood armed
and ready against the walls.
Kessler
drew in a breath as the door opened. He
leaped around the corner, his gun aimed.
“Freeze!” he shouted to the three men that had entered the
building. One of them was fairly tall
and slender. Another was big and fat,
and he held a big, burlap bag. The third
was average sized, and Kessler could see a glint of a gun in his hand. Kessler’s men stood around their leader,
their guns pointed as well. “Lay your
weapons on the ground and put your hands in the air, now!” Kessler
ordered. The first man immediately
pulled a sheathed knife out of his pocket and dropped it to the ground. Then he held his hands in the air. The other two didn’t move. “We have you surrounded. Drop your weapons now!” Kessler yelled.
The
fat man dropped his bag, as well as a gun and a knife he had on him. Then he, too, put his hands in the air.
But
the third whipped out his gun and shot, hitting one of the other cops in the
shoulder. Kessler, his reflexes quick, immediately fired back, hitting the man
in his leg. The man cried out in pain
and crumpled to the ground in a heap, his gun clattering to the ground. The other two men gasped, but remained
standing with their hands in the air.
Suddenly,
the doors burst open and in came a small army of cops. With Kessler in control, the three men were
immediately handcuffed, including the wounded one. The wounded one was placed on a stretcher and
taken into the emergency room, while the other two were loaded into a police
car and sped off to the police station.
***
