As he went in, Keane followed him, and they quickly closed the door and walked out onto the balcony. Then they opened up their gear and used a rope and an anchor and quickly hooked on to the other railing, which was just a little too far to span otherwise. And, with a short rope, they quickly crossed over and jumped to the other side. He left the rope there in case he needed to make a fast getaway. He entered in through the locked balcony doors, quickly picking the lock and popping inside.
He did a search around the room. The bed hadn’t been disturbed, yet a glass had been unwrapped and used in the bathroom. She hadn’t touched the minibar, and no obvious belongings were left behind. He bent to look under the bed but found nothing there either. Frowning, he checked around and wondered if any fingerprints or something forensic had been left behind. Had the hotel security team even checked? He quickly pulled out his phone and asked.
The hotel security staff assured me that they’re on it.
Nobody’s been here, from what I can see, other than our victim and her kidnappers. And the cops have not been here. I saw no crime scene tape at the door and no fingerprint dust in this room.
Are you sure you’re in the right room?
Six hundred twelve?
Yes.
The locals have done nothing?
Maybe they think they are to back off completely on investigating this one.
Maybe, he said, but that’s not good. It’s been almost a full day already.
Nico did a quick search, going into the closet, checking everything, including the drawers. The bottom drawer held pants, the second held shirts, and the top held underwear, socks, bras. He found no luggage here, so, if she hadn’t unpacked all her luggage, when the kidnappers grabbed her and her bags, the kidnappers thought they had taken it all. But underneath her lingerie were her return tickets and passport. He quickly mentioned that to his team.
Take it all, Miles said. You can leave the clothing if you want, but she’ll need the passport to get herself into the country.
Is it safe to disrupt the crime scene, do you think?
We need to get her first, and then we need to get her out of there. Papers will make it easier to get her back home again.
Not to mention we have some US military help, correct?
Navy for sure, Miles said with a thumbs-up emoji.
Nico quickly pulled out the passport and the paperwork, then glanced at it and tucked it into his shirt pocket. He went through the rest, wondering if he should pack up the clothing. Noting how very little was here, she must have come for just a couple days. On a whim, he rolled it all up into a tight ball and stuffed it into the back of his tactical bag. And then, just like that, he and Keane were out crossing between balconies again, then exited the other hotel room and reentered the hotel hallway.
As he walked past, he removed the towels from the two security cams, and they disappeared into the stairwell and back to their room, removing their gloves and pocketing them as they went. As he got in, he swore, “That was a complete waste.”
“Not really,” Keane said. “We know she didn’t leave on her own if she didn’t take her passport.”
He had to give him a plus on that one. “But we took evidence from the local cops. Except they don’t seem to be doing their jobs.”
“I’m sure our guys will tell them when necessary.”
Nico sat down and pulled out the paperwork, then went through her passport. Nothing different here. He looked at the rest of the stack of papers. Some of it appeared to be part of her speech for the keynote talk, while other sheets appeared to be notes of some kind, maybe for a book. They seemed to be more amusing anecdotes or sad journal entries. And she had a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills as well. He frowned. “These are still in US dollars. She didn’t even convert to Australian dollars.”
“No time maybe,” Keane said.
“Or she was going somewhere else.”
“Or she needed it for something. Could even be that’s her level of comfort zone though.”
“And yet we found no purse,” he said thoughtfully.
“So, she didn’t keep her passport in her purse or this kind of money there either.”
The two men looked at each other and frowned.
“Either she expected a problem or just assumed there could be one.” Nico quickly folded everything together, then added the papers and the documents to the rest of her things stashed in his bag. It still didn’t help them at all in locating her, although it would make getting her back into the country easier. He sat down with the video feeds and checked all the entrances and exits.
At that point in time, Keane crowed. “Okay, so we have a helicopter that arrived not the night she was taken but after the kidnapping.”
Instantly Nico focused on his friend. “When did it leave?”
Keane kept tapping away on his keyboard and then said, “It hasn’t yet.”
Ever so slowly, the two men stared at each other.
“What are the chances that that’s how she’s getting out of here? That the pilot stayed at the hotel overnight? Or was he paid to deliver it and not paid to wait around?” asked Nico.
“I still like the laundry idea for sneaking her from her room to the basement and then out on some truck,”
