Richard Castle - Wild Storm

Was it just another decoration or…

One way to find out. He picked it up. Sure enough, it had a dial tone. He stuck his finger in the 0 — the first number in the 011 he’d need to start an international call — and cranked it all the way around to the STOP. Remarkably, it returned not a series of clicks, like a rotary phone, but a beeping sound. Like a normal, modern touch-tone phone.

He kept dialing, getting almost feverish in his haste to complete the number. It was one he knew by heart, one he had dialed countless thousands of times, one that led him to a voice that was, to him, the sweetest in all the world.

The line went silent as faraway computers started making their efforts to connect two phone lines that were even more distant. After what felt like an infinite stretching of time, he heard a ringing.

“Hello?” said that dulcet voice. It was Alida. He was so choked with emotion, he could barely make himself reply.

“Honey, it’s me.”

“Billy?!?” she said, her volume rising. “Billy?!? Is that you? Oh my God, oh my God!”

She was crying. He was, too. They had, during their forty-five years of marriage, never gone a day without talking. Now, after a month of not communicating, neither could push out a single syllable.

Finally, William overcame the lump with a torrent of words: “I love you. I’ve missed you so much and no matter what happens, I want you to know you were the most wonderful part of my life. Being married to you has been the best thing I’ve ever done. And if I don’t make it back, I want you to know that I loved you right until the very last breath I took. And if there is something after that, the first thing I’ll do when I get there is to start loving you all over again, you hear? Do you hear me Alida May McRae? I love you.”

She was sobbing now. Whatever effort she was making at a reply wasn’t coming out as words.

“Also, I want you to remarry. I don’t want you to be some sad widow who lives the rest of her life alone. Keep my picture somewhere and look at it every now and then. But not on your nightstand, you hear? I don’t want you to be pining away for ol’ Billy McRae. I’ve had a great life with you, and that’s enough. But even if mine ends, yours has to go on. You’ve got a lot of good years left. I want you to find a new guy who treats you really well and takes care of you the way I should have. I’m so sorry, Alida May. I’m so sorry this happened. I miss you so much. And the thought that I’ll never get to see you again is—”

“Billy, stop with that talk,” Alida said, now that she had finally been able to control her breathing. “Where are you? We’re going to get you out of there.”

“I don’t know. I’m on a boat somewhere. It’s a very large boat, like a cruise ship but without other passengers. Listen, that doesn’t matter. I’ve got something else to say that’s very important. You have to get out of the house. These men who have kidnapped me, they’re watching you all the time. They’re taking pictures of you. They say they’re going to hurt you if I don’t do exactly as they say. So you have to run. Go to the police station or the FBI or whatever. Just make sure you’ve gone somewhere safe and that no one is following you, you hear?”

“I will, Billy, I will. But now you listen to me. A man came asking about you. His name was Derrick Storm. He called himself a contractor for the government, but I got the sense he was…something more than that. He promised me he’d find you. Just tell me where you are and I’ll let him know. He’ll rescue you.”

“You don’t understand,” William said. “They snatched me while I was jogging and then they drugged me and took me somewhere. They’ve been keeping me in rooms without windows. I managed to escape my room, but…I didn’t even know I was on a boat until just now. So I’m on a boat in a body of water, but I can’t even tell you what body of water.”

“Please, Billy. You have to try. Can you see land? Is there a city with a skyline you recognize or maybe some kind of landmark or something?”

William looked out the window, his eyes scanning the distant shoreline. It was so far away, he couldn’t really see any of the structures. There were some cliffs. Some other spots were treelined. He more just had a sense that land was there. But it could be California or England or…

“Wait!” he said, having to suppress the urge to shout. “Yes, yes I see something, it’s…My God, I think that’s the Rock of Gibraltar. Yes, yes, it is. I swear, that’s it. We’re in the Mediterranean, in the Strait of Gibraltar, maybe ten miles from the coast. South of the Rock of Gibraltar. Does that help?”

“Yes, it does. Oh, Billy, we’re going to get you home. And when we do, I’m going to hold you forever and never let you—”

“Someone’s coming,” he cut her off. “I love you.”

And then he hung up. He ran through the bedroom, into the bathroom. But he could already hear the bedroom door opening. Out of the scores of rooms on this boat, how did they know he was in this one?

The cameras. They must have seen him on one of the monitors in the hallway and known exactly where to look. He just hoped that they didn’t know he had used his time in the room to call Alida. He didn’t want to put her in any more jeopardy than she was already in.

He slid back the shower curtain and quickly dove into the bathtub. It was the only place to hide. He quieted his breathing, hoping against hope that maybe they’d overlook him.

But no. The light came on in the bathroom. The shower curtain was being peeled back. McRae closed his eyes, almost like a child who thought that if he couldn’t see the bad guys, the bad guys couldn’t see him.

“There you are.”

It was Alpha. McRae opened his eyes. The Viking-like man loomed large over him.

“Let’s go, Dr. McRae. You’ve been a bad boy and there will be a punishment.”

Alpha slapped one enormous hand on McRae’s back, bunched up a huge handful of pajama, and used it as a handle to lift McRae out of the tub. McRae allowed himself to be shoved/led back to his quarters. For as devastated as he was that his brief escape had come to an end, for as much as he feared whatever reprisal he was about to face, it had been worth it.

For one thing, he didn’t see any hiding places for cameras on his way out of the bedroom. So his captors didn’t know about the phone call he had made.

For another, he now knew Alida would be safe.

He was just glad he had gotten to hear her sweet voice one last time.

CAIRO, Egypt

The 6 October Bridge had been called “the spinal cord of Cairo,” snaking as it did from the west bank of the Nile, through Gezira Island, over the river itself, and then on to the airport.

Its main span was 423 feet long, and Derrick Storm waited until he was nearly in the middle to slowly apply his breaks and bring the cargo truck to a stop, ignoring the angry beeps from the driver behind him.

This was the spot he had been looking for. The river was deep. The current was swift.

Just right.

He had sped through the night to get here. Having departed shortly before an ambulance arrived to care for Ahmed — and untied the guard in the shack on his way out — he had taken the cargo truck and the promethium, which he and Ahmed agreed was the best course of action. Well, it was more Storm’s idea than Ahmed’s. But Ahmed wasn’t exactly in a position to argue. Nor did he quibble when Storm asked him to have someone return his rental car. Men on the brink of bleeding to death tended to be quite suggestible.

The long drive north had given Storm time to work out a lot of things relating to Ingrid Karlsson, allowing him to untangle the twisted mix of ideology and ambition that fueled her madness. She was a woman who shunned the beliefs that fueled much of humanity’s violence toward itself. She was the citizen of the world, the one who rejected the concept of national boundaries or government intervention in markets or any of the people who would impose their way on others.