The mentalist wasn’t happy, pacing along the side of the room, just out of sight of the stretch of windows. She couldn’t tell if he was frustrated because the group had separated, or because he disagreed with Majors’s decisions. Maybe this was a weak point in the group. She didn’t have the first clue how to get around his telepathic block. Setting him against Arthur would be placing the irresistible force against the immovable object. Knocking him unconscious would probably do the trick. Simple, really. Too bad she was tied to a chair.
This was not how she wanted to be spending her afternoon.
The second part of any kidnapping was the waiting. The kidnappers made demands, everybody had to wait while the demands were delivered, then wait for a respectable amount of time to pass while negotiations continued. Celia, meantime, waited for rescue, which could happen quickly if the kidnappers weren’t that clever. Or she could be here awhile.
The chair was a standard padded task chair, comfortable for what it was, with plenty of lumbar support. But no headrest, nothing to lean on if she tipped her head back. She wanted to lie back and maybe take a nap. Kidnappers always hated it when she was able to sleep during her own kidnapping.
She dozed off anyway, but it wasn’t comfortable, and she jerked awake when she started to slump forward and tugged against her bindings. Her nose had started running, and she awkwardly wiped it on her shoulder. No dignity. That was fine, she didn’t need dignity to get out of this.
A phone rang. Celia instinctively looked around at her own pockets, but they’d taken her purse and her phone. The noise came from Majors. He retrieved the device from his pocket. Even halfway across the space, Celia heard a panicked voice on the line. Majors’s expression darkened.
“Fine,” he said, when the explanation had stopped. “Just get ba
ck here. We’ll deal with it.” He put the phone away and looked over her shoulder, taking in his remaining henchmen. He told them, “There’s a problem.”
Celia smiled.
TWENTY
ARTHUR stayed in communication with Captain Paulson as the police attempted to locate the car and identify Celia West’s captors. They succeeded at neither. The car dropped off surveillance after a couple of blocks, ducking through blind alleys and into the south part of town that didn’t have so many cameras. The features of the two people weren’t clear enough—they wore large sunglasses and turned the collars of their coats up—and the facial recognition software, even the advanced version on the Olympiad computer, couldn’t identify them.
Suzanne arrived within the hour to find Arthur at the computer, Bethy slouching in a chair at the conference table, and Anna pacing.
Anna had been pacing the whole time, thinking. Focusing. Trying to drill through whatever the bad guys had done to block her ability. That was Arthur’s hypothesis, that they had a way to block his telepathy, and the same block affected Anna’s power. But she had to be able to do something, and she knew she could find Celia if she could just figure out how. She was giving herself a headache.
“Grandma!” Bethy called and ran to the woman, who caught her up in a hug. Suzanne glared at Arthur over Bethy’s shoulder.
“I had to include them. It was Anna—” He sighed. “Anna, would you care to explain?”
“Not really,” she said. But now everyone was looking at her, and she didn’t have a choice. “I find people. I know where people are.”
“That’s your power?” her grandmother asked, looking thoughtful. “We’d been wondering. That’s … all right.” Anna realized just how closely her family had been watching, waiting for her to reveal … something. If she’d been anything like Captain Olympus, they probably wouldn’t have had to wait so long. She’d never have been able to keep it secret.
She probably shouldn’t have kept it secret for so long. “It’s not very impressive,” she said, frowning.
“Don’t sell yourself short. You knew instantly that something had happened to Celia,” Arthur said, not turning from the computer displays.
“But if they’ve got somebody who can block mental powers, then I can’t do anything, none of us can do anything—”
“We can always do something,” Suzanne said. Anna suddenly felt better. They were the Olympiad.
“I’m afraid we’re at a bit of a loss here,” Arthur said. “Paulson will do what he can, but this came out of the blue, and we’re not expecting any ransom demands—”
“No, it didn’t,” Anna said. “It didn’t come out of the blue. Mom was leaving the courthouse after the hearing about the lawsuit. What if … she thinks the lawsuit happened because someone wants to stop West Corp from getting the city planning contract. She must have gotten the lawsuit thrown out, and what if those people are working for whoever wants to stop her?” The empty office building. Superior Construction’s fake lawyers. If this had anything to do with the lawsuit, the trail would start there. She blushed.
“Yes, Anna?” Arthur prompted gently. “What is it?”
She was thinking out loud but afraid to speak too quickly lest the pieces that were falling into place got jostled. “I think I know where we can go to figure out who took her.” She explained about Horizon Tower, about tracking down information for the lawsuit, about the empty law office. Her father politely didn’t ask her how she knew so much about all this.
“It’s as good a place to start as any,” Arthur said with a renewed sense of purpose. He picked up the phone again and talked to Paulson, passing along the information and closing with, “Wait for me, I want to be there when you go in … Well, I don’t exactly know what good I can do, and I won’t know unless I’m there, will I?”
He hung up the phone and started to flee the room before turning back. “Wait here. I’ll call as soon as we learn anything.”
“But Dad—” Anna called after him, but he was already gone. The real superheroes were on the job. Fine, okay. She returned to pacing.
Suzanne sat with Bethy at the conference table and took her youngest granddaughter’s hand. “It’ll be all right, I promise you. We’ve always gotten Celia back in situations like this.”
“How many times was Mom kidnapped?” Bethy asked, shocked.