It was Baldwin calling. “The girls are safe, they were found on the lawn in front of the hospital, drugged, but not hurt. They are now in safe hiding. Kat says she is well enough now to join you and help out,” he said. “Not now,” I said, “I have Candace to help, but it depends on how things work out, might need her later. Is everything ready?” “Yep,” he said, “but it’s not going to be easy, so be careful.” “We will be very careful,” I said and hung up. Then I plugged in the listening device and told Harold Crandel to let the boy go free and I will go home. Otherwise I would find him. At about 10pm the man from the front desk was at the door with a message, so I opened the door. With him were 4 well armed men who told me to come with them.

I said “NO”, nice and loud and tried to shut the door, but they pushed their way in! “Thwock!” “Thwock”, and two were down! At the same time Candace shot a third man and I had the fourth on the floor. “Okay,” I told him, “tell your boss you failed and he better not hurt the boy, because if he does, I will find him.” These men had been staying in the room across the hall, so I had this guy drag his friends back there, then he left in a hurry. We all get ready to do the same, we just have to leave a little earlier than planned, that shouldn’t be a problem. “We’ll go out the front door,” I said. “Um, wouldn’t it be better to leave by one of the other exits?”, asked Candace.

“That’s what they will be expecting, so we will do the foolish thing by going out the main door,” I said, “that might surprise them a bit.” In the main lobby there was a guy pretending to read something, but it was obvious he was waiting for us. A quick shot from my dart gun and he was asleep, then out the door we went. There were 2 taxis waiting, both men standing beside them. I shot them both with sleep darts and we took off in one of the taxis. They likely were bugged and would have had tracking devices on them, but that’s okay. We stopped at another hotel where I saw a man just getting out of his car. I ran over to him and soon he too was sleeping. I took his keys and off we went in his car.

“Um, isn’t this stealing?”, asked Candace. “I prefer to think of it as borrowing,” I said, then motioned to her not to say any more. That was just too convenient and easy to get this car. We drove for a bit and stopped by an office building. Off we went to a side door, which was locked, naturally. But MC had it open in no time and as soon as I opened the door the alarm went off. “Great,” said Candace, “now the police will be here in no time.” “Right,” I said, “so let’s go fast!” And off we ran to the next street just as a guy got out of his car and walked away. “Jump in,” I said to everyone, “let’s go!”

Soon we were off once more but at a more leisurely pace now. “This car was waiting for us,” I said, “advance planning.” “Hmm, that was nice,” said Candace, “but how did you manage to arrange that without me knowing?” “It’s a simple code that we use,” I told her. Meow,meow=Yep, all 3 of us can do code, make plans, call help, lots of stuff. Candace looks at Muffin, “I don’t know how you do it, but it’s fantastic being able to understand you.” Meow,meow.=You nice human, we trust you, but we get angry when betrayed. Meow.=Yep, that true, not like being betrayed. But we trust you. “Thanks so much you two,” said Candace, “I promise I won’t betray you.”

They smile at her. “How did they learn to smile?”, Candace asked me. “Practice, is all they told me,” I said, “and I don’t think I want to know more.” We both laughed. Candace directed me to a possible hideout where they might have Anthony. As we head in that direction, MC meows loudly…bomb! I pull into an empty parking lot and we all got out and ran down the street, then turned to walk down a side street when we heard the explosion. Then sirens. By this time we were already close to the edge of town so we kept going and went to hide among some trees. “Do you think they will look for us?”, asked Candace. “Most likely they will,” I said. Within minutes several police cruisers were here, so we came out to surrender to them.

To Be Continued.

©2021 Steve McLeod.