“Hell no,” Jake said adamantly as he took her hand in his “If it’s anyone’s fault, then it’s mine. I should have been looking out for my sister. I wasn’t, I was…”
“With me?” Grace asked as she thought of their incredible encounter. It had been indescribably perfect, and now it was marred by something so horrific. “I wanted to go up to the suite Jake, and if I was acting like I normally do than we would have been there, and they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to take Elizabeth.”
“We don’t know that because they might have taken you too…” Jake said as he thought of what could have resulted if he and Grace hadn’t spent time together up in the suite and had been downstairs and in prime view for whoever was responsible for the heinous act. “We will find her.”
“I hate this,” Grace sighed.
“I know, but I don’t hate what happened between us. I just wished it hadn’t ended the way it did” Jake sighed as she he took Grace hand and they held hands for a few minutes but knew they had to get back to their individual homes because they had to find Elizabeth before the worse happened.
“If it was only me,” Grace said.
“Hey, don’t even think like that” Jake demanded. “Whomever is responsible is a madman and to even think if it was you…”
“It shouldn’t have been Elizabeth. My dad was King, right?” Grace asked. “I would have been the desired target, but they couldn’t go after me because of everything” she mused as she thought back to encounter with Jake. “And even before last night and us, you know…”
“It should have been no one,” Jake muttered as they got up and walked out of the library together and stood close to the stairs and embraced one last time and gave each other a simple kiss before they left and she walked to her car and drove way.
Sighing he watched the Sunday traffic drive by and prayed he would get some sign where his sister was to relieve the guilt he felt, as he mumbled to himself and cursed himself as he walked home.
Elizabeth didn’t even know if it was daytime due to the blindfold and she felt her mind was clogged due to the drugs they were giving her. But she was trying to resist the effects but little by little it was wearing her down.
She had felt her dress being pulled off her and knew she was barely clothed in her bra and underwear under the sheets.
She didn’t want to think what they were planning or had done already while she was unconscious due to the drugs pumped into her, and periods of unconsciousness and still she tried to reach out to her family.
Please someone, help me. I don’t know how much longer I can hold on. I need someone to hear me, see me.
Splurge was closed due to a family emergency. Kyle had called into school and took until further notice off. The kids weren’t going to be going to school the next day due to paranoid parents and grandparents afraid they could be pulled off the street; especially Kylie and Michelle. Despite Isabel confidence that she was off limits but how did she trust Nicholas? She couldn’t so she guarded her kids like a hawk.
So, while Kyle spent time with the kids under close supervision at the park and then the movies. Isabel stayed home trying to get some rest before going back to Michael and Maria’s and giving them some moral support.
The license plate tip had been a false alarm because they had found the car in a impound lot that morning. So obviously whoever took Elizabeth covered their tracks and moved onto a new vehicle.
They had to find Elizabeth, and fast because Isabel didn’t want to think what the alternative could be for her honorary niece. Michael was her brother, and Elizabeth and her siblings were family to her, and she was determined to find Elizabeth before the worse happened. Because she knew Nicholas and she had an inkling that Khivar could be brutal from the little she remembered from their outer worldly lives on Antar when she was Vilondra and was not the self she knew.
She had her gut feeling that the theory she had told everyone was right on. Antar was a very different life. She knew with advancing age that Khivar would be getting even more paranoid about potential coups and would need an heir. When things went badly back in high school before they discovered Max’s potential son was hoax and another man’s child. They knew the deal was for Tess to go back to Antar with Max’s heir which would allow Khivar to control the child as a pawn.
Picking up a family clan picture from Max’s recent birthday, a joyous and fun time before everything went haywire. Smiling, she touched on Elizabeth who was smiling wide and laughing, along with her partner in crime Grace.
Closing her eyes, she fell into a trance sleep and tried to focus as her eyes rested.
Elizabeth felt drugged as her eyes opened. She struggled to communicate and to stay coherent enough to be able to find a way out of this predicament. They had ripped the blindfold away not a long before and now she knew it was daylight as it was almost blinding after so much time in darkness. “Please let me go” she pleaded.
“Shut up, for a millionth time” said the invisible man who kept watch as he inputted into a computer across the room.
“You don’t need me,” Elizabeth murmured through her drugged state.
“For the last time, we need you to accomplish our goals” said the man. “She’s annoying. We should have taken her friend no matter what boss wanted,” he muttered. “Gag her…”
“Sure sir,” the second man acknowledged as he approached as Elizabeth found her eyes growing tired as she heard. “Prep her, the doctor will be here in twenty.”
Elizabeth then felt another pinprick and gag placed on around her head as she felt like she was going underwater.
Isabel appeared in the cabin and looked around and gasped when she saw Elizabeth tied to the cot with two men a cross the room. Observing for a few minutes she saw Elizabeth struggling as she looked to Isabel barely coherent. “No, please no…” she whispered as she saw the girl who was her niece just as much as Grace was struggling to get free and yet being defeated by whatever they were pumping into her, for whatever purpose they had in the end.
Which scared Isabel as she watched. She walked unnoticed by those in the cabin who were unable to see the ability of Isabel to be there and to observe the environment. “Please be alright,” she whispered to Elizabeth.
“Help me,” Elizabeth murmured in slurred speech as she didn’t know if she could trust her eyesight and if was real or a dream when she saw her aunt. “They wanted Grace, but they said I also work…” she murmured.
“Damn it,” Isabel whispered as she focused on the girl. “Do you know where you are?”
“Someplace in the middle of the woods, long stone path at the end… They carried me in here, and I was blindfolded so I really don’t know but I felt that it was smooth for awhile before bumpy…”
“Try to fight whatever they are doing to you” Isabel implored. “You are a Guerin, and you will win this battle” she pleaded as she vanished.
“Oh god,” Isabel whispered as she immediately woke up and looked around the living room of her house and wanted to see her family’s faces but she got silence and a empty house as she was rattled as she suddenly heard a soft, “What is it Iz?”
“Max?” Isabel asked as she saw her brother standing behind her by the entrance to the dining room. She whipped around when she recognized his voice. “When did you get here?”
“A little while ago, as you were in one of your trance sleeps. You saw her, didn’t you?” Max asked as he had seen the family picture in his sister’s hands and knew she was doing one of her investigations, and she found something because her sister was now rattled, and Isabel was too even keel to think something rattled her unless it was Elizabeth.
“It’s bad Max, I mean bad” Isabel said. “She’s drugged.”
“Oh god,” Max whispered. “Like me in the White Room?” he murmured as he was brought back to that horrible part of his existence and how he barely made it through and thankfully he had but only because of Liz, and then his family and friends who were there and allowed him to take his time and make peace with it in his own terms.
“I fear it’s worse,” Isabel whispered. “They have her tied to bed, and practically naked Max. I don’t know if they have done anything, but they are keeping her heavily drugged and gagged, and she indicated at one point blindfolded.”
“Sh!t”,” Max cursed.
“She indicated they wanted Grace but because the couldn’t, they found Elizabeth useful” Isabel cried, and Max cringed at the image her sister was painting. It was brutal and to know they had wanted Grace but due to circumstances, they went for the next best option was horrifying and for one brief moment he was glad his daughter was with Jake and unable to be grabbed but then knew he didn’t wish this horror on anyone and especially not Elizabeth.
“Did she indicate where she is?” Max asked.
“No,” Isabel shook her head. “Only a cabin in the woods, a long rocky road at the end of a long smooth drive.”
“So, anywhere?” Max asked as he helped his sister from the couch, and they hugged. “We will find her sis.”
“I don’t want my worse nightmare in that kind of situation Max. We have to find her,” Isabel demanded. “If I am right, and they are planning…” she murmured as she was unable to even say the words.
“I know,” Max said as he hated any of the insane plan they could be dreaming up. Are Kyle and the kids out?”
“Yeah,” Isabel nodded. “I know we’re being paranoid, and the kids are probably safe because I sense Nicholas isn’t lying about that part of it all because he might want revenge against me, well, he takes the final bidding of his true boss.”
“Khivar,” Max asked.
“We’re not taking any chances,” Isabel sighed.
“Given they wanted Grace and almost got her and would have again if circumstances hadn’t prevented it, I am not ready to say you’re truly off limits because who knows what kind of revenge against us.”
“She’s safe Max,” Isabel sighed.
“I know,” Max said acknowledged.
“About last night, you shouldn’t be upset with her you know” Isabel asked of her brother. “She feels your judgment, and I would hate that this could put a wedge between you and your daughter.”
“I am not upset,” Max defended himself against his sister’s words. “I just don’t like knowing my daughter is growing up. On one hand I am glad she didn’t fall into the grasp of Nicholas’s goons but she’s my daughter Iz, and for so long she’s been my little girl and I don’t like another example she’s growing up. When we lost Liz, it was just her and me and…”
“She’s still your little girl!” Isabel implored.
“I knew this day was coming but I just don’t like it was now” Max sighed. “I’ll always love her, and that won’t change.”
“Then you should tell her because of part of the reason she went there with Jake is because she feels unwanted, and she wanted to feel wanted and loved” Isabel sighed.
“She’s loved and she’s wanted, and she knows that” Max said hurt that his daughter would feel like that.
“Max, she has experienced some traumatic times lately” Isabel reminded Max. “Starting with that New Year’s Eve party and the pregnancy she didn’t know until it was over, and then the attacks and then to put the cherry on top, her mother who she believed to be dead for nearly her whole life goes back to her old life with the sisters she didn’t even know”
“She only went back was because Nicholas threatened her, and we wanted to protect her and the twins” Max tried to say in trying to convince himself that was the only reason Beth went back but knew it was also so he could see where it would feel like rejection to their daughter, especially given Grace was at a sensitive time.
“Have you talked to her since all this happened?” Isabel asked. “I mean with Elizabeth?”
“No, I haven’t had the chance” Max acknowledged as he thought of his wife. “I tried this morning before leaving the house, but they weren’t home.”
Isabel nodded. “Michael and Maria need our support,” she sighed. “I never imagined he would have gone after Michael’s family?”
“Because he was going after mine?” Max asked.
“Partly,” Isabel sighed. “It just makes no sense but if any of what I fear than it makes perfect sense and we have to stop them.”
“We will,” Max asserted. “There is no way Nicholas will win and certainly no way Khivar will win”
“He better not,” Isabel sighed as grabbed her jacket as she elected to drive over with Max to the Guerin home.
Beth had just gotten home from Serena’s home after attending the family barbeque for Jonathan’s birthday. He had his friend’s over for a party the night before and now on his actual birthday; a family barbeque was the order of the day and Beth and the twins were invited and they had a thrilling time with lots of fun. Beth had helped Serena and Keith with the organizing, and they all had plenty of time together and partied it up.
And now they were home, and Alexandra and this time Carrie were in their rooms studying for the final set of testing on Monday and Tuesday for Carrie in the one solo class she had from her sister. An elective in creative writing; which she had to turn in a full-term story she had been working on and take a test and she wasn’t sweating it but still she had to do some freshen up on the class. Alexandra had taken her elective in a politics class offered to junior high students to try to drum up interest in politics so they would vote when they became of age.
Which was right in Alexandra wheelhouse and she was looking forward the test the next day and then she was finished for the summer while Carrie was annoyed her sister got to finish one day before she did but still it meant they would onto the summer and waiting for their marks to be posted or mailed and the anticipation and dread they would feel about high school.
Beth was washing some dishes after putting a casserole she had made that would create leftover possibilities during the week in the oven when Alexandra came rushing downstairs and into the kitchen. Beth looked up as she finished putting the final dish into the sink drying rack. Carrie was happily taking a break from writing as she explored the latest book in Maria’s series. She found herself addicted to the story as much as her sister was, and when Alexandra found out the news, she came rushing to find her mother.
“What’s wrong sweetheart?” Beth said looking up and saw her daughter upset about something. “Too much studying?”
“No, that is all fine” Alexandra said not sweating it, but she held a paper she had printed off the internet. “Have you talked to Dad or something?”
“No, not since yesterday… why?” Beth sighed as she knew she had to check in with Max to find out how prom night had gone for Grace.
“Elizabeth Guerin has been kidnapped. It just hit the wires,” Alexandra blurted to the shock of her mother whose jaw dropped. “I guess because of who Maria is, it leaked” she murmured as she handed her mother the story as Beth quickly dried her hands and took the piece of paper from her daughter.
It has been learned that Best selling author Maria Deluca Guerin, known for the best-selling stories associated with the alien craze in Roswell, New Mexico’s teenage daughter Elizabeth Amy Guerin has been reported missing. It’s understood that the fifteen-year-old who is only six weeks away from her sixteenth birthday was taken at the conclusion of West Roswell High’s high school prom last night which took place at the Royal Roswell Palace a local five-star hotel in town. This is a not a runaway situation we’re told as the girl in her Sophomore year of high school was attending with her boyfriend and friends when she disappeared at the conclusion of the night as her boyfriend was alerting the limousine to come pick them up. The girl was gone when he came back and noticed something was off, and he was hit from behind to prevent any attempt to foil the kidnapping of his girlfriend. Elizabeth’s eldest brother, a graduating senior Jacob Guerin was at the same event and reported nothing to indicate where his sister may have disappeared to.
The Sheriff’s department, headed by Sheriff James Valenti Jr. issued a statement as a response to our story that was issued on behalf of the girl’s parents; Maria Deluca Guerin and her husband Michael of Roswell, New Mexico: “Our daughter Elizabeth is truly loved. We along with her three brothers and one sister love her, and we desperately hope someone out there has some answers into where our little girl could be so we can bring her home to a family who clearly wants her in our lives.”
Sheriff Valenti; the local Sheriff for more than 20 years of the small town of Roswell New Mexico is investigating and he stated that they have a suspect and he’s been apprehended and answers are being sought into where the girl may be, but they have NO clues as to where the teenager could be. They think it’s in a wooded area, and maybe involving a cabin, and so if anyone has clues or seen something that would seem weird then please call the Sheriff’s office and make the report because the girl could be in immense danger.
This case is truly personal to the Sheriff as 20 years ago when he married his second wife, they both brought in a child to the marriage. Him, a son; Kyle and for his wife, Amy Deluca a daughter Maria who would marry her high school sweetheart and make Jim the grandfather of her five children when they were born. He has three others fathered by his son and his wife. So, he along with his family desperately seek answers into where Elizabeth could be so they can bring the teenager home
Maria Deluca Guerin is famous for writing a series of best-selling books geared towards young adults that feature a love story between a human girl and an alien who saved her life one day after a shooting. Adventures and all kind of action would unfold in the books that would be spawn into several more books with the latest named Shock and Awe coming out earlier this year and has been on the NYTimes Best Sellers List since its release.
“We want our daughter home again,” Mrs. Deluca Guerin told us when we reached her for comment on this story.
Beth dropped the report on the table as her face went pale. She had known this had been Max’s greatest fear but for Grace or even their younger daughters. To know it has been answered but in Elizabeth was mind-blowing and scary. She suspected when the report said a suspect was under investigation but didn’t release any information that was in connection to the greater threat against the family.
“Mom,” Alexandra said. “Can I call Dad?” she asked because she needed to know everything was alright.
“Sure,” Beth said distracted. “Take this phone, and I’ll go into the living room while you talked to him and if he wants to talk to me afterwards, find me”
“Sure,” Alexandra nodded as she picked up the phone and started dialing as Beth felt pale and distant as a sudden sensation came to her as she found herself looking to in the mirror in the living room and seeing a evil side of Max and flashes of black and coldness when they kissed and the hint of pain in the hand print he had used to kill a man in a suit.
“God,” she whispered as Alexandra came into the living room to report that Max wasn’t home. Neither was Grace, so she was going upstairs to finish studying and to write an email to Roswell as Beth just nodded as she felt in a trance.
As she saw a teenage girl lying in a bed with two men nearby. One bald and one with dark mangy hair, who called each other Stuart and Troy. They were talking, “You need to stop the drugs otherwise this won’t work, as she needs to be completely competent for it to work. Any drugs influencing her system might prevent success and give her harm.”
“Who cares if she’s harmed or not if she gives us what we want?” said Troy.
“Idiots, do you want this to work or not. I am already flaunting many medical ethics rules to do this so you might as well listen. You know what you boss wants or don’t you. I am telling you to reduce the drugs as much as possible and wake her up and we can do this.”
“There is a reason why we need to ply her with drugs. We have to keep her abilities at bay.”
“I don’t care. If this is to work, then she needs to be at least coherent even if she is unconscious by some other method!”
“That we can do,” Stuart said as he relished the abilities to create harm as he thought that the only requirement was there were to be no drugs before the procedure was to start.
“Call me when she’s coherent!”
“Will do” Troy muttered as Beth came back to reality as she stared into space a she knew she was looking at Elizabeth in captivity and it was a hell of a situation for the girl and she didn’t know why she was and then it hit her that she had some gifts and she wondered if she could see into situations.
Going to the phone she dialed and got Max’s voice mail on his cellphone. She figured he was helping look for Elizabeth or giving moral support to Michael and Maria. She needed answers but still she left a message. “Max this is Beth… Please call me as soon as you get this message. I heard, and I am very sorry. Tell Maria and Michael I am very sorry, but something happened, and I need to talk to you” Beth sighed but knew he would be thinking she was talking about the twins. So, she continued. “The kids are fine but call me. Talk to you soon…”
Putting down the phone she prayed this all would work out.
Meanwhile Max was at the Guerin household. Maria was operating in a zombie existence. Amy was staying longer to keep an eye on the younger kids. Michael was over at the station talking over the situation with Jim. Since the story went national, they had been getting inundated with well wishes but Maria only wanted answers into where her daughter was, but so far nothing. Isabel stood watch with Max. She and her brother had made a pact not to tell either parent how ugly the dream was and just that Isabel was able to communicate with Elizabeth and that she was alive for now she mused because she knew they all shared the same fear that when they finished with whatever they were planning than there would be no use to keep Elizabeth alive.
Which meant they had to find her immediately.
Once home, Michael was in a state of rage because he was feeling ineffective and guilty for allowing Nicholas the time to pull off his sick plan and then a call came in from Jim that there was a cabin up north that was unattended most of the year but suddenly had activity around it, and so Jim was sending authorities up there to have a look. So, Michael and Max jumped in the car and drove off… as Beth was leaving the message on his phone.
Maria prayed they would find Elizabeth as she stayed behind and awaited word…
Would they?