“Hey!” Elzabeth exclaimed, but Angelyn hushed her.
“Manhattan Island is locked off, every single person who enters and leaves is recorded and tracked. Someone who wanted to kidnap anyone would have to recruit help from the staff already on the island, and they wouldn’t be able to easily get George off it. They’d have to plan to keep him here until … well, whatever it was they were planning to do with him happened. It’d be easier to just kill him outright than hold him for ransom.”
Again, Elzabeth gasped a sob, and we all hushed her.
“I’ve hacked into the port authority database,” Charles said. “They don’t show anyone entering the island in the last month matching the two kidnappers from the surveillance video. In fact, cross-referencing the security video with the island’s staff database … and there they are.”
Elzabeth rushed to look over his shoulder at his handheld. “You found who did it? Really?”
I crossed my arms. “If you could find that out just by hacking into the official database, the island’s security will have already figured it out for themselves.”
“Exactly,” he said, smiling slyly. “They probably figured it out in a matter of minutes. But I’m guessing Stanton told them not to do anything about it.”
“Then that would mean she was behind it,” I said, and Charles smiled. “But why?”
“I’m still working on that.”
“Charles,” I said. “What is Stanton doing, right this minute?”
He punched a set of commands into his handheld, calling up the hotel-security feed, most likely. “Huh. She’s in the lift, on her way up here.”
“Want to bet she’s going to do a bed check?” I grabbed Ladhi, Angelyn, and Elzabeth and hauled them toward the door. “We’ve got to get back to our rooms.” I squeezed Ethan’s arm on the way out. “Call us if you figure out anything else.”
“Yeah, of course.”
Elzabeth and Angelyn raced to their rooms, and Ladhi and I ran back to ours, closing the door just as the lift at the end of the hall slid open. We hurried to rip off our uniforms and grab our pajamas, pull back the sheets, and find our handhelds so we could pretend to be reading.
Stanton had the lock codes to all the rooms. Our door opened, and Ladhi and I were lying our beds, reading dutifully. Or pretending to read.
“Girls?” she asked, looking us over, frowning, like this wasn’t what she’d expected to find.
“Yes, Ms. Stanton?” Ladhi asked, because she was the polite one.
“It’s late. Lights out.”
Dutifully, we turned off our handhelds and the lights. Stanton didn’t close the door until we were under our covers and still. It kind of made me want to get up and scream and dance around, just to see what she’d do. Truly amazing how she brought out in the worst in me. She probably did it on purpose.
When the door finally closed, I sat up and turned the light back on. “Did you notice she checked our room first?”
“Does that surprise you?” Ladhi asked.
Not really. I had another hunch, so I jumped out of bed and went to the door, rattled the handle. Locked, from the outside this time. She’d locked us all in.
“She’s on to us,” I muttered.
“Can she do that? What if there really is a fire, what if—” Ladhi stopped there. She sat up in bed, gripping the blankets. “What are we going to do?”
I paced along the wall by the window. We had to be able to do something besides just sit here.
“George is going to be okay, right?” Ladhi said. “I’m sure it’s just a big misunderstanding.”
I ran my hands around the window frame, pressing on the glass, hoping for a way to open it, push it out, but no. Solid as a view port in a space station. Should have made me feel better, but it didn’t. Even if I could open the window, what was I going to do, jump from the fifth story and shatter my fragile offworlder bones on the concrete sidewalk below? On Mars, I could jump out a fifth-story window and land like a soap bubble. Well, maybe not a soap bubble. Maybe more like a pillow. But soft enough.
“Polly, sit down, you’re making me nervous.”
I started to round on her, to yell and vent, which wouldn’t have been fair to her but I was getting really anxious, when my handheld beeped—incoming call. We both jumped, and I ran to my bed to grab it. “Yes? What?”
“Polly.” It was Charles. Of course it was. “I’m starting a group call … now.” He lowered his gaze, pressed buttons, and three other boxes opened on the screen. Ethan in one, Tenzig in a second, and Angelyn in the other, with Elzabeth leaning over her shoulder, her eyes still red from crying. They all looked surprised—except Ethan, who was in the room with Charles—and talked over each other. “Who is this—” “How did you—” “What—”