Mr Holt's mobile phone chimed with a message during morning tea time. We all looked at him.
"Grab your gear," he said. "We're going to the Cliffedge Waterpark. We need to be there in less than half an hour. Kim, we'll mic you up in the car. You're going to have to wear ankle and wrist weights. Looks like Chad doesn't want to underestimate you. We've faked the weights to look heavier than they are, so it shouldn't be too much heavy."
In the car, Big Brother drove while Mr Holt and Shigure helped me put on my wire and camera. They said they faked the weights, but they felt pretty heavy to me when Mr Holt and Shigure finished strapping them on me. Perhaps there were other people besides Chad who were worried that I'd try leaping over the Blue Gulf to defy death again. The weights made me feel tired without having even gotten up yet. It was like the weight of the world was pulling me down into the ground. These weights were heavy enough to make me sweat. Did they really reduce the weights and not increase them? How was I meant to walk with so much weight hanging off me? My shoulders were already sore from gravity trying to dislocate my shoulders.
"It'll be crowded there," Mr Holt told me, "and it'll be hard to keep clear lines of sight. Get rid of the weights if anything goes wrong. He hasn't given us a specific location in the waterpark, so anything could happen. The wire and camera are only water resistant. Not waterproof, so if something happens and you get drenched, you'll have to keep us updated via your link with Shigure instead. Keep your eyes open for anyone else who could be a potential target as well as the hostage he said he'll have. If you need us to pull you out fast because you're in grave danger, give us the code, bread basket."
"Got it," I replied, taking a few deep breaths and bracing myself. I could do this. Nothing to be scared of. I had a trustworthy team with me. I could trust them. I would not stuff up.
"All you have to do is keep him talking and distracted while Kimi Shigure and I try to take him down. Big Brother, Sarsen, you two are in charge of protecting the hostage. There'll be another two teams out there preparing to clear the area and evacuate members of the public. Once we make contact, they will be surreptitiously trying to evacuate the people in the waterpark. Kim, if you're in danger, whoever is closest to you will come to back you up."
At the entrance gate, Mr Holt paid for my ticket, while everyone else paid and entered in ones, twos or threes. Shigure had already disappeared. We figured that Chad or perhaps his people, were watching the gate. Although we hadn't seen any sign of him working with anyone else, we couldn't be certain and so had to assume that he did have people working for him.
In order to not seem too suspicious and while we waited for Chad to contact us, Mr Holt took me on some rides. The kind where we might get sprayed or sprinkled but were unlikely to get very wet. Through a window reflection, I figured we must look like a father and daughter couple. I had to admit, my reflection did not look very enthused.
The weights didn't help and were tiring to move in. There was no way to enjoy anything when my strength was being sapped. It just made me feel sick and tired of everything even sooner. The rides made my head hurt and feel nauseous, reminding me that I still had a concussion.
Mr Holt left me somewhere less crowded to buy an ice cream. A crowd of young men on an outing together or something crowded the walkway, passing me by. Before I knew it, I had been yanked in amongst the young men with a heavy arm over my shoulder, being dragged along.
"Get off me."
I fought the heavy arm but wasn't strong enough. I fumbled to get rid of the weights weighing me down but was stopped. I tried using all the fighting tricks I had been taught but was expertly countered. Every time I tried to lift my head, it was dragged back down by the heavy arm. When I tried to duck away, the hand dangling over my shoulder suddenly pricked my skin in warning with a sharp blade hidden in the palm and held me tightly. We passed into the shadow of a building and the crowd of young men jostled me with my captor, forcing me to join them in the wave pool where I was dunked.
The sandbag weights on me grew even heavier after being soaked. I was so done with this. I wanted to go home. I felt heavy, sick and confused. My headache had flared back up in full force.
So much for the water resistant wire and camera then. Maybe the Agency didn't have enough money to get me waterproof equipment instead. Perhaps there hadn't been enough time, considering that we'd had to leave almost immediately upon receiving Chad's message. In any case, I now could only rely upon my link with Shigure. I decided to leave my mental chatroom with him open so that he could see and hear what was going on through me if he wanted.
When I had been forced to drink and breathe a lot more water than was good for me, I was helped coughing and spluttering to the nearby first aid station. I could barely walk. My vision was blurry and spotty as I had been on the verge of drowning. Things happened in a kind of blur.
After coughing my lungs out, I was offered a drink. I thought someone was just being nice, but the drink made my legs go soft and made me feel drowsy after a few sips. I couldn't believe I had been so easily handled. Why hadn't I been more alert and aware? Someone helped me out the back of the first aid station, saying they'd bring me somewhere where I could lie down and rest for a while. Fighting the drug, I tried to keep my wits about me, wondering if I would be able to stay awake long enough to see who my captor was. I hoped Shigure was still somewhere nearby because I couldn't for the life of me remember the code word that would bring help. Hopefully, he would be able to figure things out from the messy thoughts that I was allowing to leak into the chatroom.
Unfortunately, he didn't arrive to save me. While I was being half carried through a quiet garden and into the back door of a building with rough stone walls, I passed out.
Cold. It was cold. It was cold.
It was also dark because I'd been blindfolded and I had been tied up. With rough and wet rope, it felt like. I could smell damp stone and hear slapping water. So we were still in the water park then? Maybe in a maintenance area?
"Little Bluebird, you need a lot more training. Kidnapping you was almost too easy," said Chad's familiar voice. "Your team is so slow."
It made me shiver.
Thick fingers with slight callouses brushed down my arm making goosebumps rise in its wake and then down to my shoulder and over the bare skin of my chest.
I started.
No wonder I was cold.
I was naked.
My head was still a messy whirl that made it difficult for me to figure out what was up and what was down. My limbs were heavy and I could barely move them. I could feel them just enough to know that I had been tied to a bed with my legs spread apart.
Vulnerable. Very vulnerable. I was in big trouble. Danger.
Alarm bells were ringing and whooping in my head.
"Thank you for coming so punctually," Chad said, still dragging his fingers across my body. "I hadn't expected you to bring quite as many friends to help you but they still weren't good enough for me. It's a bit of a let down to realise how bad they are at this game and how good I am at it. It made acquiring you almost an anticlimax. I'm very disappointed."
"Why?" I managed to get the word out my clumsy lips.
I had expected there to be a hostage situation, but hadn't planned on being kidnapped myself. Didn't he say I was meant to be the mediator?
"Why?" Chad snorted and I felt Shigure's attention with me in our chatroom while I fought to suppress my panic so that he would be able to clearly hear what was going on on my side of things. I felt his concern and I sent him a bit of reassurance that I was alright for the moment. "Because we should be hunting down all those criminals but once the City Authorities see that they have stopped committing crimes and have gone into hiding, they turn a blind eye. They don't bother bringing them to justice. Whereas the victims will never receive the vengeance they deserve. Someone has to speak for the dead and all those victims. The people I kill deserve to die. I'm not a good man. Never said I was. I'm a selfish man. A very selfish man. When I saw that you didn't leave Tirion Wolf's house with your team because you had an inkling that something was wrong, and then again when that homicidal rapist protected you - that was when I decided. I decided I'd have you and keep you. The only woman to have noticed me when I was trying to hide is worthy of my attention. The girl that managed to find her way into a hardened criminal's heart and make him treat her like his daughter must be something."
Because of the drug still in my system, I could only get one or two word syllables out at a time and didn't know how to compress what I wanted to say to him into one or two syllables. My lips and tongue felt uncoordinated. So I insulted him.
"Jerk!"
"Yes. I'll jerk you, Little Bluebird. I'll jerk you so hard, you won't want anything else but my jerkwad to fill you. Soon. I'm just waiting for the timer to go off and to listen to the sound of the rest of the people on my list for today to go boom."
My eyes widened and my eyelashes scratched against the blindfold. Although my mind was racing at the news, I was simultaneously trying to analyse my surroundings and figure out where I was and whether it was possible to break free and escape. It felt like the blindfold was made of a sort of rough material. A coarse cotton or something. Something with a loose weave, given that my eyelashes kept getting stuck in the weft of the weave.
Bombs. He had made bombs! Shigure, did you hear that? There were time bombs!
"Who?" I asked. "Where?"
Chad laughed.
"Just like a City Agent. I suppose there's no harm telling you now," he said, playing with one of my nipples and making me grimace at first in pain and then strangely feel thrills at the way he was handling that sensitive bit of flesh. I wanted none of it. What had he done to me? "I have you now and it's not like you can tell anybody to save those bastards in time."
"No - hos-tage? Me-di-ate?"
"Rule One for living with a Chad Thundercock like me. All Chad Thundercocks are liars. Sorry, Little Bluebird. I needed a good excuse to make sure you came. Otherwise when would I have the chance to kidnap you?"
I wanted to ask why, but lives were at stake. Multiple lives held greater weight than my own safety.
"Inno-cents?"
"Are you asking if innocent people will get involved?" he chuckled, chucking my chin. "What a good girl you are. Your people are already clearing the waterpark, so it's unlikely any innocent people will be involved in that explosion. Hopefully they stay outside the main gate so they don't get caught in the blast radius."
*"Shigure? You hearing this?"*
*"Got it. I'm passing the message on. Keep him talking."*
"People wouldn't know or think of it but the owner of Cliffedge Waterpark? He's a sex trader, child molester and rapist involved in people trafficking. People and kids go missing in the waterpark all the time. It's like any amusement park. Easy to enter. Not so easy to leave. All you have to do is leave a witness trail that makes it sound like the kid went back to the car to look for their parents or was wandering around lost for a while. Once he hears your people are there, he'll have holed himself up in his office or panic room. Either one will do."