Me And Mr. I.T. (Kupid's Cove Book 2) (24 page)

“What?” Lei asked, trying to get more comfortable without anything to lean her back on.

“She had a port wine stain on her face, just like I used to have.” I motioned to my right eye. “I had mine treated with a laser, so it isn't as conspicuous now, but since she was a newborn it was very bright. Of course, since she was crying it was even more noticeable.”

“So the birthmark made her cry?” Katie asked confused.

“Not that one,” I explained, “I opened up her gown and found a second one on her leg, just like mine.”

“Wow, that’s sort of freaky,” she whispered.

“It’s more common than you think. Usually, if you have one on your face, you have one on a limb somewhere. Not everyone gets all the other conditions that turn it into a syndrome the way I do, but the port wine stain can be hard to deal with as a parent. It’s unsightly, and sometimes deforms the face or the limb, if it isn’t treated and watched closely.”

“What did you do? Explain that to Marcy?” Katie asked with rapt attention.

“No, when I saw the birthmark I asked her to get some gauze from the nurse then showed her how to wrap it to lessen the pounding in the leg from the blood vessels.”

She looked down at the bed where my leg lay straight out. “Does yours do that, too?”

I lifted my dress up and showed her the stocking. “It does, but I can deal with it because I’m an adult. Babies have very low tolerance to being over stimulated. I wear this compression stocking on my leg to keep the pounding to a minimum though, because it does become overpowering by the end of the day if I don’t.”

“So what happened?” Lei asked.

“She fell asleep,” I answered, laughing a little at their faces. “I showed Marcy how to wrap it and by the time I got Hope dressed again and wrapped in a blanket she had dropped off to sleep. I don’t know what happened after that because Marcy took Hope home and I left with Mr. I.T.”

“That’s a great story, Ellie. You always seem to be in the right place at the right time,” Katie whispered.

I was about to answer when the door opened and one of the three men in black came in, closing the door behind him. He had our phones in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.

“It’s time to get this show on the road,” he said, attempting to disguise his voice, but it didn’t seem to work, because Katie’s chin went up a notch before she spoke.

“Marcus, you don’t have to do this. If you need money, we’ll give it to you.”

“I don’t need the money, Katie. I want the money, and you have more than you need. Think of me as Robin Hood.”

“Are you giving to the poor?” she asked, trying to keep the sarcasm from her voice.

“Sure am, me, the working poor. I’m tired of working for peanuts, so you and Gideon are going to fund my departure from Hawaii, and my new lifestyle,” he spat.

Katie laughed angrily. “We pay you over three figures a year, Marcus. How does that make you the working poor?”

“Shut up, I’m the one running this show, not you. All you’re going to do is call your husband and give him directions for a money drop. When we get the money he will get you.”

“How do we know that’s true?” I asked. “They’ll want some kind of reassurance.”

“His reassurance will be that the last thing I want is the three of you along for the ride. I have nothing against you ladies, but I’m not sharing my millions. I may be a thief, but I ain’t a killer.”

He held the phone out to Katie and she looked at me with one brow up. He may not be a killer, but he’s also not very smart. If she uses her phone to call Gideon, the cops will find us long before Gideon can get the money together. Katie reached out and took the phone in her hands, while he held the paper.

“When he answers, read this,” Marcus ordered nodding to the phone.

Katie hit Gideon’s number and held it to her ear, her face lighting up when she heard his voice.

We couldn’t hear what he said, but she answered him, eyeing the paper held in front of her. “We’re all okay, honey. Tell Maltrand, Ellie loves him. I have to read this paper now before Robin Hood takes the phone.” She took a breath and then broke into a pretend coughing fit eating up precious seconds and giving the police time to trace the call, if they were tracing it. She cleared her throat finally and said, “Sorry about that, must be my allergies.” She glanced up and saw Marcus was getting agitated. “I’m going to start the instructions now. If you want to see your wife and friends again, I’ll need one million dollars in unmarked bills.” She paused for affect and I rolled my eyes. This guy is worse at this than Johnny Rocco in
Key Largo
. “You have two hours and we will call with further instructions on where to drop the money and pick up your wife.”

Katie looked up at Marcus and held up a finger. “He says he can’t get that kind of money until morning and he will have to liquidate some holdings.

He grabbed the phone out of her hands, fury lining his face. “If you think I don’t know what your exact net worth is, you’re wrong. You have that much in petty cash. If you want to play hardball, I’ll ask for more. Get me the money and you get your wife, simple as that.”

He punched the button to close the call and stormed from the room, slamming the door behind him. We all took a deep breath.

“Do you think he realizes that if the phone is on they can trace it?” Lei whispered.

I put my hands in the middle and they joined mine. “I don’t know, but we’re not going to sit here and do nothing.”

“What do you propose we do?” Katie asked, her voice getting breathy.

“Katie, are you okay?” I asked, holding her chin in my hands.

She nodded. “Sorry, my pacemaker must be regulating my heart rate. Sometimes I get short of breath if I’m scared or upset because my heart wants to pound, but the pacer won’t let it.”

I glanced at Lei and I could tell she was as scared as I felt. We had to get her out of this and we had to do it soon before the defibrillator kicked in.

I tried to reach around to the pocket inside my skirt, but having both hands in the way kept me from getting to what I wanted. I looked to Lei. “Inside my skirt pocket is a small box cutter. I was using it earlier and slipped it into my pocket right before you came to tell me about the liquor. I’m going to need you to get it. If you can carefully cut through my zip ties with it, I can free both of you,” I explained.

Lei looked toward the door and back to me. “First, why didn’t you say something before? And second, what are we going to do once we’re free?”

I leaned in closer so no one would overhear us. “First, I knew he would be back looking for us to be his ransom delivery system. Now that we’ve done that, and we know we have two hours until he’ll be back, we can free ourselves and hopefully find a way out of here.”

Katie shook her head a little bit. “What if he comes back, or we can’t escape and he comes in, and finds us without these,” she fretted holding up her arms.

“We’re going to slice them down the middle,” I explained showing her. “As long as we leave the ties on our hands, if he comes back in, we can pretend like they’re still tied. I don’t plan to be here that long though, are you in?”

Lei didn’t answer, just scooted forward on her butt and dug in my pocket like a starved woman looking for food.

Chapter Nineteen

Mr. I.T.

Gideon handed the phone back to Captain Buckley, his anger barely controlled.

“What did he say?” I asked, anxiously waiting for any news about the girls.

Captain Buckley motioned to his man who was working on a computer. “Did you get anything?” he asked, his voice gruff in the quiet room.

“I’ve pinpointed the location to one cell tower. I’m trying to get closer than that,” he said, turning back to the screen.

“He wants a million dollars in unmarked bills,” Gideon said. “He made Katie read the note, so I know she’s okay. She told me to tell Maltrand that Ellie loves him, so we can be somewhat assured they are okay, for now.”

Captain Buckley nodded agreement. “Where do we make the drop?”

Gideon ran his hands through his hair. “He said we had two hours and he would call back to give us drop instructions and how to pick up the girls. He seemed agitated because Katie had a coughing spell during the call. He probably knows we would try to trace it.”

“The phone is still on,” the cop at the computer said. “It’s moving back toward Honolulu.”

We all stood and gravitated toward him, watching the screen as the red dot moved closer to Waikiki. “Why would they be coming back toward us instead of driving to the other coast?” I asked.

Captain Buckley stood. “They want to do the drop where there are plenty of people around, so we’re at a disadvantage and can’t deploy any weapons that could hurt innocent bystanders.”

“Do you think they have the girls with them?” I asked, but he shook his head.

“No, that would be a good way to get caught. It’s one person, my guess is it’s the ringleader while the other flunkies stayed back to guard the girls.”

“Why do you think that?” Gideon asked as we watched the little red dot move slowly.

“There’s only one phone on. You said Lei had two phones and Ellie had hers as well?” We both nodded in unison. “Those phones are still off. We’re trying to trace them, but can’t get a signal. He’s using Katie’s phone only. We’re lucky he’s as dumb as a rock and hasn’t figured out we can trace the phone and watch every move he makes.”

“Or he has and he doesn’t care,” I said. “He’s holding all the cards. He can walk right up and pick up the bag of cash because he still has the girls hidden. If we don’t give him the cash, he won’t give us the girls.”

“I can’t get a million dollars together in two hours,” Gideon said frustrated. “While I do have that much in petty cash, it’s not like it’s sitting around for me to take out of a metal box. The banks are closed. There’s just no way.”

I put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it gently. “We’ll get them back, boss.”

Captain Buckley pointed toward the cop at another computer in what had become an impromptu crisis center. The guests were still downstairs partying, none the wiser to what was going on up here.

“Our guys are on it. The money will be ready. The bills won’t be marked, as he asked, but the bag will have a tracking device. Once we have the girls we can go get him and the money.”

“Unless he dumps the bag. I would dump the bag the moment I could,” Gideon said.

“He might, that’s why there will also be a pinhead sized tracer inside one of the bundles, wrapped inside the paper holding the bills together. By the time he discovers it, we’ll have him. Forgive me for saying so, but he doesn’t seem like the brightest pineapple in the field.”

I snorted. “He’s not, that’s why I was glad he found another job, and wouldn’t be my problem any longer. God, what a mess,” Gideon said.

I fisted my hands in my hair as I sat down. “Ellie is just healing from a concussion and Katie is healing from heart surgery. They have to be so scared.”

“Katie sounded okay except for her allergies. As long as they don’t lift her up by her arms or tie her arms behind her back she should be okay. The leads to the defibrillator are in her arm and chest cavity. She has to be careful about pinching them off.”

I looked up at him. “What is Katie allergic to? You said she was coughing and her allergies were bothering her?”

He nodded and his eyes got big as something dawned on him. “Wait, she’s only allergic to one thing. Cinnamon.”

“Cinnamon? What do you think that means?” I asked, pulling out my own phone.

“I don’t know. I know the coughing was fake, though. She wanted me to pick up on the allergy thing. She saw something with cinnamon, or smelled it somewhere.”

“Will she have a reaction just by smelling it,” Captain Buckley asked.

Gideon shook his head. “No, she has to eat it or get it in her mouth. Sometimes if there is large amount somewhere her nose will run, but she has to eat it for her to have a bad reaction.”

I tapped my phone on my hand. “Cinnamon, cinnamon,” I thought aloud. “It could mean anything.”

Gideon sighed. “I know. I hate sitting here helpless!”

I typed, ‘cinnamon Hawaii’ into my search bar and waited while options loaded. I hit the top page and waited for it to load, while listening to Gideon talk to himself about not following his gut with Marcus. No matter what any of us said, he would blame himself for this debacle.

My eyes scanned the page and my heart rate increased. “Hey, Gideon, have you ever heard of Sea Lotus Organic Farm?”

He looked up at me and shook his head. “No, what is it?”

“It’s the main supplier of organic cinnamon on the island. Do you think she was giving you a clue?”

“Where’s it located?” he asked, looking over my shoulder. I called up the maps and pointed.

Gideon motioned the Captain over. “Maltrand says this is the main producer of cinnamon on the island. It’s just outside the Oahu Forest Wildlife Refuge. Do you think it’s possible they’re in the park somewhere?”

The captain looked skeptical. “I have a search team headed that direction, but I doubt we will find them anywhere inside the wilderness reserve, it’s too remote.”

He wandered away and I hung my head, my phone still tapping against my hand. “Sorry, boss, I tried. Cinnamon is just too vague of a clue. It grows everywhere on this island.”

He pounded his fist in his other hand. “I’m scared to death they’re going to hurt Katie’s arm or leg where they did the surgery. If they do she’ll start bleeding internally. She’s on blood thinners and if that happens…”

“Gideon, you have to stop torturing yourself. You talked to her and you know, at least for right now, she’s okay. Let’s hang onto that and not borrow trouble.”

“I have all the money I could ever want, or spend, and I can’t help her. I can’t make it okay. That’s killing me right now.”

I nodded, my phone still tapping my palm. “You aren’t alone. If I ever get a chance to hold Ellie again, I’m never letting her go.”

Ellie

I pulled the comforter off the bed trying to ignore the skittering of wood ticks that were hiding underneath it. Katie and Lei stood on each side of me and I whispered low, so the two men asleep outside the door wouldn’t hear us. “We’ve been sitting on that bed for hours. Remind me to check for ticks when we get back to Orchid Reef.”

Both girls tried to hide their laughter, but I noticed both of them brushing their backsides off. I threw the blanket and comforter on the floor, and pulled the top sheet off the bed. I grabbed the small box cutter and started cutting the sheet as quietly as I could.

“What are you doing?” Lei asked, her whisper sounding like a shout in the room.

“I’m cutting strips from the bed so we can tie those guys up and get the hell out of here,” I said, my teeth grinding together as I made strip after strip. “I will not let a bunch of nimrods like them outwit me. I’m getting Katie back to her husband and I’m going back to, to,” I threw my hands up in frustration, “whatever Mr. I.T. is to me. I’m getting you back to,” I paused again and motioned at her. “Do you have a boyfriend?” She shook her head, a smile playing at her lips and I huffed. “Fine, I’m getting you back to your new job heading the hotel that Katie owns.”

Katie moved closer to me and whispered in my ear, “He’s your husband.”

I frowned, the weight of knowing that I wasn’t actually his wife heavy on my shoulders. “Not legally,” I answered.

“I wasn’t talking about legally, Ellie. He loves you, in the end, that’s all that really matters.”

I nodded quickly, willing the tears to stay behind my eyes, so I pointed at the walls. “Will you check for anything we can use as a weapon while I finish this?”

Katie walked around the room while I kept making strips with the sheet. She motioned me over and I abandoned my job long enough to see what she had.

“It’s a lamp,” she said, throwing the shade on the bed. “It’s not very heavy, but would the cord be useful as a tie?”

I nodded, using the box cutter to detach the cord from the base. “Perfect. See if you can find any more cords. They’ll be helpful. Maybe the curtains, just be careful not to move the drapes. If they see them moving, they will know we’re free in here.”

She nodded and moved to the wall by the window, checking the drapes. She gave me a thumbs down when she found the drapes didn’t use cord pulls. I went back to my sheet stripping and leaned into Lei’s ear. “Go check the bathroom. See if there are any towels, or anything we can use as gags with a strip of sheet. We don’t want them to be able to yell and draw attention.”

She disappeared, but I doubted she would find much in this old dilapidated hotel. We knew we weren’t more than an hour’s drive from Honolulu. Obviously this room hadn’t been used in a good long time, but the more items we could utilize from the room, the faster we would get out of this jam. I was worried about not having any shoes, but I couldn’t do anything about it right now. I finished making the strips, some thin enough to tie hands and feet and some thicker to tie them to their chairs.

Lei came back in and shook her head. “Nothing in there, but an old bathtub, toilet, and sink. I checked the toilet, no snakes if you have to go.”

I snorted at her words. “Oh, I have to go, but you aren’t gonna catch me going in a place like this.”

I motioned Katie over. “We have the element of surprise on our hands. Since there aren’t any windows we can climb out of, we’re going to tie them up and run.”

“Maybe we can just sneak past them, since they’re sleeping,” Katie suggested.

“I thought about it, but if they wake up then we’re unprepared and we’re right back where we started. Lei and I will each take one of the guys,” I explained, sitting down on the bed and picking up some strips of sheet. I wrapped them around each foot, tying them around my ankle as makeshift protection for my feet. They wouldn’t stop much, but it was better than having nothing at all.

I handed Lei a strip of sheet. “That’s long enough to tie them to their chair then we can use the shorter ones to tie their hands and feet. We’ll gag them once we have them tied to the chair, so they don’t try to bite us.”

Katie shook her head so much it was easy to see even in the dim light of night. “Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would hear that sentence come from your mouth, Ellie.”

“Believe me when I say that never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be responsible for getting my boss’s wife out of such a precarious situation, but I will do it.”

“It’s now or never, ladies,” Lei said, gripping the sheet in each hand, ready to sling it around her victim.

I did the same with mine and with my eyes motioned for Katie to open the door quietly. Ever so slowly, she turned the handle while Lei kept an eye on the men sleeping outside. The plan depended on them being surprised in their sleep. Lei gave one nod and she and I stepped out to the front of the hotel. Under the overhang, the two men were resting in lawn chairs, their heads resting on the backs of the chairs. I mouthed ‘1, 2, 3,’ and we both slipped the sheet around their chests. What happened when we pulled them taut seemed to happen in slow motion. My captor tried to fight, but I had caught his arms with the sheet and had it tied by the time he knew what hit him. Lei wasn’t that lucky. Her captor managed to get out of the strap before she could tie it. He went after her, punching her in the side of the face so hard she staggered backward and landed on her butt.

“Katie, tie that one!” I yelled as I dodged the second guy’s fist. He turned to see whom I was yelling at and I pulled my arm back, tunnel vision keeping my eye on the prize as I pushed my arm forward and connected with his jaw. His head snapped even farther to the side and he went down like a snowman on a warm spring day.