Richard Castle - A Brewing Storm

“Can you have two of your guards escort us to our car?” Storm asked Chatts. There would be no way for him to carry the four bags and defend himself.

“Yes,” Ms. Chatts said. She had the guard make a telephone call, and by the time that Storm and Toppers had gone upstairs, there were two armed, uniformed officers waiting at the entrance for them.

“Please give my best regards to Senator Windslow,” Ms. Chatts said cheerfully as they exited the bank. The Taurus was double-parked directly outside the door. Storm put all four bags into the rear seat while Toppers took a seat in the front.

So far, so good. It was show time now. He needed to stay alert. To watch for some tip off, some clue to the kidnappers’ identity. Something he could use.

As he merged into traffic, Storm checked his rearview mirror and spotted an unmarked Ford sedan behind them. He drove the Taurus to K Street, which was often referred to as the city’s main street because of the many law firms and lobbyist offices that bordered it. The Ford stuck with them. Storm was going West on K Street along with a steady stream of rush hour drivers.

Suddenly, he swerved off the main thoroughfare into the entrance to an underground parking garage. He turned so quickly that he nearly hit a woman walking on the sidewalk. She jumped back and shot him the finger as the Taurus raced down the lot’s ramp.

As soon as the car reached the garage attendant’s station, Storm leaped from it, tossed the keys to one of the workers there, and grabbed the four gym bags from the backseat.

“C’mon!” he hollered to Toppers.

“Where are we going!” she shrieked.

“Follow me! Now!”

Storm rushed down the parking ramp to a basement exit. With Toppers chasing after him, he ran up two flights of concrete steps to a street exit that opened into an alley behind the office building. He dashed out and hurried down the alley to Nineteenth Street NW — a one-way street filled with southbound traffic. The bored taxi driver who stopped for them didn’t bother getting out of his cab. Instead, he pushed a remote button to pop the car’s trunk. Storm tossed the four bags into it and got into the backseat with a now breathless Toppers.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“State Department and we’re in a hurry.”

“Everyone is,” the cabbie said. “That’s what’s wrong with this country.” The driver, whose taxi license was on display, was from Ghana, and he launched into an immediate monologue about the ills of America’s rushed society. Storm ignored the mindless chatter. He was looking at the alleyway to see if anyone had followed them. He didn’t see anyone.

The cabbie abruptly stopped talking, and when Storm looked at the car’s rearview mirror, he saw why. The driver’s eyes were locked onto Topper’s breasts, which were heaving as she struggled to catch her breath from running.

“You might want to redirect your eyes to the road,” Storm suggested.

Storm again glanced behind the cab to see if the Ford was behind them. It wasn’t. He had a hunch that the men inside it were now in the parking garage having a frantic conversation with FBI Agent Showers. She would have known that a ransom drop was being made as soon as Storm traveled from the Dirksen SOB to Riggs National Bank. Why else would he go there? Storm assumed that she had immediately sent two special agents to tail them. At that point, Agent Showers had made a critical error. She’d felt a false sense of security because of the monitor in the Taurus. She had not felt a need to flood the area with agents or call in air surveillance. Storm had not only abandoned the car in the underground parking garage, he’d also left the cell phone that Jedidiah Jones had given him on the vehicle’s front seat. It was probably ringing right now.

When the taxi was about a block from the State Department, Storm announced that he’d changed his mind. “Take us to the Jefferson Memorial,” he said.

As the cab continued south into the traffic traveling around the National Mall, Storm checked for tails. There were none. They had gone “black.”

“You guys married?” the cabbie asked when the cab stopped at a red light.

“No, we work together,” Storm said.

The cabbie caught another peek at Samantha’s cleavage. She was wearing black wedge leather slip-ons without stockings, a tight denim blue jean skirt, and a bright pink, short satin jacket that was layered over a cream-colored silk blouse and sexy black lace camisole.

“You’re a lucky guy,” the cabbie said as the light changed. “To work with such a pretty lady would be a pleasure indeed.”

Samantha smiled and said, “Thank you!”

Ten minutes later, the taxi reached the Jefferson Memorial parking lot. Storm took the four gym bags from the trunk and eyeballed the lot while the driver got out of the car to open the rear passenger door to Samantha, anxious to take a mental snapshot of those architectural marvels, no doubt.

Confident that they hadn’t been followed, Storm led Toppers to the Ford cargo van that he’d parked here earlier.

“We’re taking this,” he explained, unlocking the doors. “Get in.”

Storm had just stored the four gym bags in the cargo area when the rhythmic voice of Rihanna could be heard coming from inside Toppers’s Lilly Pulitzer handbag.

“Your phone?” he asked her.

“Yeah.” It was 6 P.M. The kidnappers were calling right on time.

Toppers was so nervous that she dropped the phone while she was removing it from her handbag. She bent forward and snatched it off the floor mat.

“Give it here,” Storm ordered. He answered it.

A deep voice that sounded like Darth Vader said, “You got our money?” The caller was using some sort of voice changer software.

“That’s right. Where do you want us to go?”

“Arlington National Cemetery. Robert E. Lee mansion. Leave the first gym bag in a public trash receptacle about fifty feet from the house’s front entrance. There’s a National Park Service sign next to the trash can.”

The line went dead.

A trash container in a public park. It was an odd place for a drop. Or was it?

Pulling from the memorial’s parking lot, Storm headed west across the Potomac River into Northern Virginia. He glanced at Toppers. Her face was ghost white. She looked as if she were about to faint or vomit. When he lowered his eyes, he noticed that her tight jean skirt had risen up when she’d bent over to retrieve her cell phone from the floor. She was wearing a tiny red thong with white polka dots. She’d either not noticed or felt no need to readjust her skirt.

She was a distraction and he needed to be focused. He decided to do what he always did when a woman was distracting him, especially sexually. He would talk with her. He would calm her down. Then he could focus on what was important and not her taut little body, her freshly shaved legs, her muscular thighs.

“You’re doing fine,” he said. “Think about something else. Tell me about Matthew. Where did you meet?”

“We were in the same first-year English class. He asked me to have coffee. He kept his eyes on my eyes the entire time. Not many boys do that.”

Her candor surprised him. Why? Did he think she was so naïve that she didn’t understand how her figure affected men? How she could use it to manipulate them?

“What are you studying in school?”

“No one believes me when I tell them, because they assume that someone who looks like I do has to be dumb, but I’m studying mechanical engineering.” She laughed.

Good. He was breaking the tension. Helping her relax. Mechanical engineering. Curious.

Continuing, she said, “I know Senator Winslow thinks I’m stupid. He told Matthew that I was an airhead. But I’ve always been good with math and designing. I’m a whiz at reading and drawing blueprints.”