Final Quest Read online

  Suddenly the engine comes alive.

  “Jump in,” Drew says, as though this is a typical occurrence for him.

  Jasmin quickly leaps into the passenger seat beside Drew while Jamie, Michael and I cram into the back. I end up in the middle between Jamie and Michael.

  Before any of us can respond, we are driving down the highway.

  We have stolen a car. What’s next? What if Drew uses his gun? Grand auto theft and murder. It feels like we’re in a reckless video game.

  “Emily, do you think you could project an image of the girl onto my laptop?” Jamie asks.

  Are any of my friends concerned that we have stolen a car? Are any of my friends concerned that Drew is carrying a gun?

  Guess not, I decide.

  “Emily?” Jamie says.

  “Oh,” I reply. “Let me try.”

  As I look at an image of Jennifer traveling in a car with her abductor, I say, “Volamtashia, Jamie’s laptop.”

  Instantly the image of the girl appears on Jamie’s laptop screen.

  Michael almost ends up on my lap as he attempts to look at the screen.

  Jennifer looks terrified. She appears to be in shock. Her eyes are wide with terror.

  Our old car lurches forward. I’m sure that Drew must have his foot to the floor. The car begins to shake violently.

  Driving at this speed is going to attract the police, the last thing we need right now.

  “Highway 17,” Jamie says as he reads a sign that appears out of the window in the car that the kidnapper is driving.

  I also noticed the highway sign on Jamie’s laptop, although it’s getting a little harder to see with Michael pushing for a view.

  What are we going to do when we reach the car? Is Drew intending to force the abductor’s car off the road? Or is he going to shoot out the tires on the car? At this point, nothing that Drew does will surprise me.

  - 3 -

  END OF THE ROAD

  For the past thirty minutes it was as though we were in a car race. For much of the time, my stomach was in my throat. How we escaped detection by any cops is a shock to me. They must definitely be on their break far away from this largely deserted highway.

  It’s dark.

  Moments ago, we spotted the abductor’s car in front of us. It’s a newer model blue compact car.

  Drew slows down, a welcome relief for me as I was very close to vomiting, an act that Michael would have suffered the brunt of.

  “What now?” I ask.

  As Michael twists away from me, I feel like I can breathe again without his body pushing me against the seat.

  “We can’t let him know we’re following,” Drew says in a manner that suggests he’s familiar with tailing dangerous criminals.

  Michael digs into his backpack.

  “There,” Michael exclaims with a note of satisfaction.

  He has a small bird-like mechanical creature in his hand. It’s one of his nano-drones.

  Michael starts to crank open his window, but nothing happens. It’s stuck. He bangs on it. Still nothing.

  “Here, use mine,” Jamie says as he opens his window.

  Before I know what’s happening, the nano-drone is flying in front of me and out Jamie’s window.

  Michael is now using his spy-pad to control the bird. He slides his finger across the screen as though he’s playing a video game.

  The nano-drone is flying in front of our car as it chases after the kidnapper.

  “Drew, slow down,” Michael says. “We can use the nano-drone to follow him.”

  Our car decelerates. The car we are following pulls away from us although the small drone provides a clear picture of the car on Michael’s spy-pad.

  I’m certain that Drew and Michael must have done this before, or is this just the way guys think? Do they all go through life imagining that they are James Bond?

  The abductor’s car has vanished.

  “What if he turns off the highway?” I ask. “We might lose him.”

  “Not a chance,” Michael smiles. “The nano-drone is now locked onto his car. It doesn’t matter where he goes; we can follow him.”

  “Transfer the image to my laptop,” Jamie says casually to Michael.

  With a flick of a finger, I see the same picture on both Jamie’s laptop and Michael’s spy-pad.

  “The car is turning,” Michael says.

  Even though it’s dark, it appears that the car has entered a narrow dirt road, or even an unkempt driveway.

  I know we’re about to face danger, but I’m certain that we’re all determined to save the innocent girl.

  The kidnapper’s car stops.

  A door opens.

  A man exits. As I try to focus on what the man looks like, the passenger side door opens on his car. Completely unexpected, a woman exits from the car.

  Jennifer was abducted by both a man and a woman.

  “Drew, stop the car,” Michael says. “Let’s see what is going to happen so we can form a plan to save the girl.”

  “A little further,” Drew says. “I think we’re just going past the long driveway that they turned into.”

  As I look at Jamie’s laptop, the man looks like he’s in his early thirties, the woman a little younger, although guessing the age of another person is not a strength for me. Both of the kidnappers look like they could fit into my neighborhood. I was anticipating an older disheveled tough-looking man. I was completely wrong.

  The man who might be a little shorter than the woman opens the back door of his car. As he does this, he stops to look around as though he’s making sure that no one else is watching him. Fortunately, we’re well out of sight.

  The man is wearing beige cotton dress pants and a long-sleeved tailored shirt, although his sleeves are rolled up to his elbows.

  Drew pulls into another driveway and stops the car. Jasmin and Drew quickly peer over the front seat to get a glimpse of what’s happening on the spy-pad and the laptop.

  In the dark, it feels like we’re in the middle of nowhere. This is not some crowded suburb of a big city. There is a rundown trailer in a field opposite us. There are no signs of any houses.

  The man pulls Jennifer from the back seat of the car.

  She’s rigid like a statue. Frozen stiff with fear.

  The woman comes around the car to help. She’s wearing fashionable jeans and a trendy T-shirt. She pats the girl on her head as if to say that everything is going to be alright.

  I want to scream.

  Going to be alright? Who is she kidding? The two of them have abducted a young helpless girl, tied her hands and feet together, gagged her, and then driven her to a remote location hundreds of miles away from her home. Something inside my gut tells me that they have no intention of trading the girl back to her parents for a ransom. In spite of their clean appearance, they are monsters. This is not going to end well.

  “We need a wider view to see where they are going,” I say, anger rising in my voice.

  “Sure,” Michael responds, sliding his finger across the spy-pad screen.

  The image on the screen changes. Instead of a close-up picture, it’s as though the nano-drone is moving away from the car.

  In the darkness, a small house emerges.

  The man carries the girl towards the remote building. The woman keeps touching the girl in a manner that suggests she’s trying to comfort her. The calm before the storm, I think to myself.

  “Close in on the house,” Drew says.

  Once again Michael slides his finger on the spy-pad screen. The view changes again.

  The glow from an almost full moon illuminates the house as if on cue in a horror movie.

  The house is a rundown, deserted structure, probably only two or three rooms, if that, inside. The windows are boarded up. It looks to be uninhabitable. The paint on the exterior walls has long since surrendered to the relentless Florida sun. The roof looks like the head of a bald man who has been scorched for years by the blazing sun.

>   Jasmin gasps when the woman pulls something from her pocket and approaches the door of the house.

  The door is boarded up like the windows. Several large pieces of wood are nailed across the door, preventing it from opening.

  The woman inserts a key into a lock on the door.

  Surprisingly the door immediately opens. No one has to explain to me that the abandoned, rundown appearance of the house is an illusion. The old decrepit house has been given the look of “stay away because I might collapse at any minute”. Old boards have been carefully nailed across the door to create the impression that it would be impossible to enter the house. The reality is that this is a trick, a sort of disguise. The door, in fact, opened quite easily.

  The couple disappears into the house with the horrified girl.

  Michael darts his finger across the spy-pad.

  “Damn it,” he says. “I was too slow.”

  The picture on the screen shows the closed door. I realize that Michael was attempting to have the nano-drone follow the kidnappers into the house.

  I think I’m going to be sick. The speeding car ride, the sweltering temperatures when I’m overdressed, and the thought of what could happen to this helpless girl overwhelm me.

  I push my way over Jamie to get out of the car.

  Although the hot air is suffocating, it feels good to be standing. For a moment or two, I look around me. Everywhere my eyes travel, I see no sign of civilization. It’s almost as though we have stepped into another world. This was a very carefully planned kidnapping. I tremble as I think of how many other young girls might have suffered this same fate.

  - 4 -

  GUNSHOT

  Michael continues to try to find a way to maneuver his nano-drone into the ramshackle house. Like the door, the windows appear to have haphazard boards covering them, but in reality they were probably meticulously placed to prevent anyone from peering inside. Given this careful attention to maintaining secrecy inside the house, Drew has already made the comment that the abductors likely have weapons inside the house. I shuddered when he said this. My active imagination pictures a gunfight between Drew and the abductors.

  Looking at each of my friends, I feel that we have all changed. Even though it’s only a little over two weeks since our horrendous experience in Rome, it seems like we are all much older.

  Drew has just turned sixteen. The reality is we will all be sixteen this year. We are no longer little kids, but somehow I expected the transition between being a teenager and being an adult would last longer. Aren’t teenagers supposed to go through some kind of coming of age phase, a time when we rebel against our parents, or we protest against society, or we have fun with our peers? I think that my friends and I have all missed that trying to find your way teenager stage of our lives. We leaped from being kids to being, well I’m not even exactly sure what we’re being, but we’re certainly not typical teenagers as we stand in a dark field trying to decide how to save a kidnapped girl.

  Drew is eying his gun. What happened to the charming guy who kissed me a few weeks ago? Although I always knew that Drew had a side to him that was a little tougher, a little more detached than the rest of us, his personality now seems to be darker. It’s as though he has crossed the line between being a guy with a bit of an edge to becoming someone bordering on being dangerous. To his trademark jeans and tight T-shirts he has added a skull and crossbones belt buckle that looks like it is heavy enough to be used as an axe. Today, I have witnessed him carrying a gun and stealing a car. Yes, there is definitely something troubling, more ominous about Drew.

  Jasmin attempts to get closer to Drew. He’s not paying any attention to her. It’s almost as if she no longer exists. For that matter, where once upon a time I felt some kind of spark between Drew and myself, it isn’t there anymore. It’s as though Drew is pulling away from us. The question I find myself asking is where is he going?

  “We need to take action?” Drew says in a menacing voice as he nervously moves his gun from one hand to the other.

  No one responds. I think everyone is worried about what Drew is going to do next.

  Jasmin glances back at me. I notice something in her eyes that seems to be asking me what’s wrong with Drew, or is it just anxiety from her own kidnapping experience a little over two weeks ago? Since hooking up with Drew, Jasmin has quickly grown up, or perhaps it might be better to say she has hastily abandoned her childhood. Although she never talks to me about her relationship with him, no one has to tell me that Drew is streetwise, and he has likely pulled Jasmin into his reckless world. I wonder if Jasmin is sensing that Drew has changed for the worse. Is she wondering, like me, what is going on inside his head this evening?

  “Use your emerald to see inside the house,” Jasmin says anxiously.

  I had almost forgotten about my emerald.

  “Akem, Jennifer Johannseon,” I say.

  Immediately I see a picture of the horrified eleven year-old girl resting on a filthy couch, her hands still tied behind her back, and her mouth gagged. Her eyes are wider than saucers. What is she now seeing that is causing the look of panic in her eyes?

  Jamie is staring blankly into his laptop, watching the images of the exterior of the rundown house from the nano-drone. Even Jamie has changed. His boyish looks seem to have vanished overnight. It’s as though his body has now caught up to his adult mind.

  Jamie and I have a special bond, a friendship that is unusual between a girl and a guy. If I’m totally honest though, I sometimes wonder where this friendship is going. There are moments when I feel a physical attraction to Jamie, but this is something that I keep fighting, although I don’t understand why. I think Drew’s presence often confuses what both my heart and mind are telling me about Jamie.

  “I’m going to the house,” Drew states as though he’s ready to lead the charge. He raises his gun in front of him as he struts away from us.

  “There’s no way to approach the house without being seen,” Michael says.

  Michael is absolutely correct. Even though it’s night, there are no trees to hide behind on the field between us and the house. The moon is like a floodlight.

  “I have a smaller nano-drone that might be able to get into the house,” Michael says as he digs into his backpack.

  Michael’s transformation since our trip into the Land of Shade a year ago might represent the greatest change in our group. He has evolved from being an immature class clown into a credible spy. More than once I have wondered whether Michael is already working for the CIA. Maybe his parents don’t really work for a company that manufactures surveillance equipment. Maybe they are really intelligence agents. Since Rome, I have had the feeling that someone is monitoring what we are doing and is protecting us from any kind of official questioning. There are definitely moments when I wonder if Michael’s parents are more involved in our activities than any of us realize. Is it even possible that right now they are watching the pictures from Michael’s nano-drone? Do they have access to our S O S chat room? I need to ask Michael some questions when the opportunity arises.

  “There,” Michael announces as he launches a very small drone that looks like the flies we used in the Roman Colosseum. “This one will find a way into the house.”

  Drew is still marching towards the house, on his own.

  Jasmin casts a look at me as if to say, “Help me stop him.”

  I shrug.

  Jasmin takes off after Drew.

  As I look back into my emerald, Jennifer looks terrified. I sense that something terrible is about to happen.

  “We’ve got to do something,” I say to Jamie and Michael. “I have a bad feeling that something dreadful is about to happen to the girl.”

  “And I have a horrible feeling that something bad is about to happen to Drew,” Jamie says.

  The distance between us and the house of horrors is probably less than half a mile. Drew, with Jasmin desperately trying to catch him, is about half way to the house. I know we have lit
tle time to put a plan into action.

  “Drew is completely in the open,” Michael says.

  “Almost like he has a death wish,” Jamie adds.

  I recoil. Is this what has changed about Drew? Does he want to die? Or does he now see himself as an invincible hero?

  Have we all failed to see his agony of having lived alone for so many years? Is there a family secret that Drew has been hiding from us?

  “We’ve got to get into the house before Drew gets anywhere near it,” I state breathlessly, as though I have just finished running a marathon. “He doesn’t care whether he gets shot, or not. We’ve got to save him.”

  “And we’ve got to save Jasmin,” Michael adds.

  Jasmin is now a step or two behind Drew. They’re both completely exposed in the barren field that surrounds the house.

  The boarded-up door and windows. The abandoned look. The open fields around the house. It’s pretty obvious to me that the abductors carefully selected this location. There’s no way anyone could approach the house without being noticed. I shudder as I wonder how many other innocent victims have been brought to this house.

  Looking back into my emerald, I catch the frightening picture of the woman yanking the terrified girl to the floor. I feel the girl’s horror.

  Jennifer is frantically struggling against the woman who is obviously much stronger. It’s as though the girl is in a fight for her life.

  “God,” Jamie says. He’s leaning against me as he gazes over my shoulder into the emerald.

  “The nano-drone is at the house,” Michael says. “I have to find a way in.”

  The girl is kicking like a trapped animal. The woman continues to force her face first into a grimy wooden floor. Where is the man? Why isn’t he helping the woman to subdue the girl?

  The woman is now sitting on top of the young girl. Although I didn’t see it happen, I suspect the woman must have hit her. Jennifer isn’t moving. Has something happened?

  “We’ve got to get into the house,” I say.

  “I’m in,” Michael suddenly exclaims. “I got the fly through a small crack in one of the windows.”