“Ours is not to wonder why,” Keane said.
Nico snorted at that. “We’re supposed to find answers, and yet places, like this hotel, go out of their way to stop us from getting them.”
“According to the hotel manager, Charlotte used the key card to unlock her door a couple times. However, the last time she used her key, she supposedly held the door open—probably for her night visitor or her friend who she was with—while she grabbed something and left.”
Nico stopped and thought about that. “I suppose that would work. What about her luggage?”
“After her coworker reported Charlotte as missing to both the hotel and the local authorities, the hotel’s cleaning crew was ordered to stay away from that room. However, the manager did open the door and looked inside, probably to see if any damage was done to the room or to see if she was there, dead or alive. Regardless he says her belongings were not visible, seemingly all gone.”
“Which goes along with the kidnapping theory.”
Keane nodded. “Of course the kidnapper will take everything he can.”
“I want to start there,” Nico said. “I want to get into her room.”
“I was ordered away from that floor, so nobody pegged me as interested in this matter, so I’ve been mostly watching the lobby and the loading bay for anything suspicious when not going through the street cam footage. I’ve been told her room has been cordoned off.”
“Good,” he said. “That’ll mean that most people can’t get in and mess up my crime scene. What floor?”
Keane checked his notes. “She’s on the sixth floor on our side of the building. You want to go from inside or out?”
“If her lock is registered, then somebody will know if we go in.”
“Unless the hotel’s management or security or household staff are allowed back in there, but I haven’t heard any update on that. So we’ll presume that room is not to be disturbed by the hotel personnel.”
“We’ll have to go in from the outside,” Nico said. Then he headed out on the balcony and took a look up. “It would be easier if we had police cooperation. But, if we have to stay undercover because of her brother, well, … we climb up, or we hinder the hall security cameras again and climb over one balcony.”
“There’s no help for it,” Keane said. “These are our options.”
Nico nodded. “I presume the room numbers align for each floor. So our room isn’t in a straight line to hers. However, if we disable the hall cameras long enough to get into one of the rooms next door to hers, then we’ll use the neighboring balcony to enter her room, avoiding the whole key card issue. So we need to find out who’s in the rooms beside her and go in from one of those, if at all possible. These balconies aren’t the easiest to get in and out of, which I’m happy to see. The span’s too long for a jump or even a temporary walkway, but we can use ropes to get from one to the other.” He went back to his bag and brought out what he had, then said, “Not that I came too well-equipped for skyscraper climbing.” He had several carabiners and some rope with him but not enough.
“I’ve got a big bag of gear,” Keane said, “one full of tactical equipment.” He brought it out of the closet and dumped it onto the carpet. They quickly sorted through the equipment, and Nico nodded with satisfaction.
“You know what? We’ll be okay to do this. Let’s get going now. First thing is to check where she was taken from, and then we’ll come back and fill in the rest of the details. We have to at least have a starting point.”
The rough cotton band tied too tightly around Charlotte Ankerby’s mouth bit into the sides of her gums, and she knew she was bleeding. Unconsciousness was a gift her kidnappers weren’t prepared to give her. And that didn’t bode well for her end result. She could see their faces and hear their conversations, yet she didn’t know who they were and neither were they giving much away. But the fact that they weren’t hiding themselves meant they didn’t care if she saw them or not, so either they would be dead soon or she would be dead soon, and she knew it would most likely be her. They’d taken her phone and left her in three-quarter length jeans, a T-shirt, and slip-on sandals on her feet.
They’d caught her as she had unlocked her door to return to her hotel room. She’d been just so tired that she hadn’t even recognized when the men came upon her. She had just pulled open her hotel room door when they snagged her. They’d shoved her inside, subdued her, then quickly picked her up and her luggage, and took her back out again. All before the door closed. She figured they must have jammed it with something somehow, but she didn’t know.
Now here she was, lying in the back of a large vehicle of some kind. Maybe a refrigerator truck? She had no clue, but she was cold, and she was tired. She was beyond tired, and four of them sat at the end of the large five-ton truck, talking. Two of them were smoking and filling the back of the truck with that pungent odor that she couldn’t stand. Nobody had been happier than she was when her city passed the no-smoking-in-public ban. But, in places like this, nobody gave a shit. She coughed several more times, trying to free her lungs of that smoke. One of the men laughed at her, but the other guy said, “Jesus Christ, I wish you’d stop smoking in here. There’s no air.”
“Shut the fuck up,” the smoker replied.
She could put voices to their faces. She just didn’t know why they were doing this.
She’d been warned several times that her activism would get her in trouble, but she
