Kidnapped At Christmas

But it was even more evidence Hermes had been sent as a messenger not a killer. She could almost feel her brain storing the information like memory chips sliding into mental slots.

She walked back through the alcove into the office. The smell of wet paint still lingered in the air. Hermes had graffitied two walls, one with a warning message and the other with a huge, crude bird. Quickly she took a picture of both with her tablet and uploaded them to the ATHENA database on the Torchlight News server. Then she slipped back onto the balcony just long enough to zero in on Hermes’s face as Joshua held him pinned waiting for the police. She saved that picture too. As long as she had computer access and her Torchlight password she could access ATHENA no matter where she was in the world. Then she grabbed an electronic stylus pen and started for the stairs.

Questions burned in her mind. She paused on the second-story landing, opened a fresh document on the tablet and jotted them down with the stylus, using them like an electronic pen and paper, just as if she was sitting in the corner of an editorial meeting listening to a reporter talk about their big new exposé. Why would Magpie send a graffiti artist to break into Torchlight News and scrawl a warning on the wall the same day they kidnapped a journalist? Why do both? Vandalism was vile, yes, but if a reporter was pitching this story in an editorial meeting, methodical Samantha would have pointed out that threats usually escalated in severity. That is: normally the warning came first, then the attempted murder.

She wrote “Does Magpie have a vendetta against Torchlight?” in block letters at the top of the page and underlined it twice. No doubt Olivia would get every single journalist at the newspaper to report in on what they were working on. Maybe the mysterious Magpie would emerge from there and the paper would know what it did to land on Magpie’s radar.

She crossed the second-floor landing and froze. Olivia’s office door was ajar. She could hear the creak of someone’s weight shifting on the old office floorboards and computer keys clacking. There was somebody else in the building. Her heart raced through her chest, so suddenly she found herself battling to breathe. Were the police in there already? But if so, wouldn’t they have announced their presence? The door swung open quickly. She was face-to-face with a stranger. He was short, in plain clothes and probably forty, with a square face and a red baseball cap.

And familiar. So very familiar. And she didn’t know why.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing here?”

The man hesitated. Then suddenly he lunged for her tablet computer and tried to yank it from her hand.

“Drop it!” he shouted.

Was he kidding?

“No! Get out of here! The police are on their way!” Her grip tightened on the tablet. For a moment, she thought he was going to succeed in pulling it from her hands. But then, while all his body strength was focused on the tablet, she kicked him as hard as she could. He swore and let go. She yanked the tablet back, hearing the edge of the case crack as she wrenched it from his hands. She ran down the stairs to the ground floor, panicked tears building in her throat.

“Joshua! Help!” She grabbed the front door handle, Joshua’s name escaping her lips even before she could finish yanking it all the way open. “There’s another intruder in the building!”

“Ma’am! Get away from the building!” Strong hands grabbed her shoulders and pulled her away from the door. Samantha looked up into the face of a senior officer whose hair was tied back in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Half a dozen more officers rushed past them into the building. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

“I’m... I’m fine. Thank you, Officer. But there’s a man in the building. Second floor. He’s short and wearing a red baseball cap. I don’t know if he’s armed.” Samantha looked around. Police vehicles and people in uniform seemed to be spilling down the streets in both directions.

But she couldn’t see Joshua anywhere.

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