Page 8 of The Beachside Cafe 5
“If you were trying to be more like me, you wouldn’t be making stupid decisions behind my back. You shouldn’t have brought her here. Now I’ll have to deal with her myself. That puts me at a lot of risk. I’m ashamed to be your sister.”
“Don’t say that, Mandy!” Jennifer cried out, sounding just like the child Amanda was treating her as. “I’m really trying!”
“Just be quiet and let’s get her to the room.”
SIX
The moment Cameron heard the scuffling as Jaymee was picked up and placed on the gurney, he was out of the car and heading for the front entrance of IDL. He would bust through the front doors and demand action if he had to.
By the time he’d crossed the parking lot, he knew that was probably a bad idea. The security guards and/or receptions as the front desk had to know what the company was all about. They were probably briefed daily and carried firearms.
He pictured himself going in Wick style and taking them all out. A grin came to his face. A very unlikely scenario in the real world. His grin disappeared when he remembered Jaymee was in danger and he had no idea where to go in the enormous building to find her. He had to, though, before it was too late.
The first place he would check would be Amanda’s office. He took the phone off speaker and held it to his ear, wishing he could give Jaymee comfort without alerting the women holding her that her cell phone was still active and on a call with him.
He stopped going toward the front door and casually turned to walk around the building to the entrance he’d seen Jaymee go in.
Say something, Jaymee,he pleaded in his mind, pressing the phone hard against his ear.Say something so I know you’re alive.
As if on cue, he heard Jaymee’s mumbles coming through to him and he breathed a sigh of relief, temporarily closing his eyes.
“Where are you… taking me… I… want to go home…”
“You aren’t going home now, Jaymee,” Amanda responded. “We’re going to have to deal with you since you couldn’t keep your nose out of our business.”
“You need to let me go,” Jaymee said in a clearer voice. Cameron wanted so badly to say something to her, to let her know she wasn’t alone.
He stopped when he went around the corner of the building. He watched the door, wondering if it would raise any alarms if he went in. Or it might be locked. He imagined the kind of security they had in the building had to be remarkable.
Cameron had to take a chance though. It was the only way he knew of to get to where Jaymee had been.
He walked to the door, looking around him but trying to look nonchalant at the same time.
He closed his eyes when he set his hand on the knob, saying a quick prayer for a miracle.
When the handle turned in his hand and the door clicked open, Cameron breathed a sigh of disbelief and relief at the same time. He’d gotten his miracle. He looked up and mouthed “thank you” before going through the open doorway.
He looked far ahead to the other end of the hallway all the way on the other side of the building. The hallway was so long, he could barely see the window at the end of it. He made sure the door closed silently behind him before stepping away from it. He continued to listen to the sounds Jaymee and the women were making, his heart aching for her.
“What are you doing? Don’t do this. You don’t need to do this. I don’t have to tell anyone what happened. If you just tell me where Doug’s body is, I won’t tell anyone about anything. I’ll just pretend I found it. You don’t have to do this. Please…”
Her voice was beginning to sound desperate. Cameron wondered what Amanda was doing to make Jaymee sound that way. He heard shuffling and the sound of leather rubbing against itself.
“Don’t,” Jaymee continued as she began to panic. Cameron hurried down the hallway, stopping at every door and pressing his ear against it. At that rate, he would never find Jaymee in time. But he didn’t know what else to do. “Please. Please don’t strap me down. I don’t want any of your chemicals in my body. I don’t agree to let you do experiments on me.”
Amanda laughed, causing Cameron to grimace. It was the most unamused sound he’d ever heard. “You still believe Jennifer’s video huh? Well, what she said was true. And what we do to people here is true. But she isn’t one of them. That was all for show. What’s really going on is much, much worse than that.”
Cameron heard the tears in Jaymee’s voice. Her words were much more confident than she was letting on. “You can’t do this and get away with it. I’m going to be found. It’s not like no one knows I’m here. They’re going to come find me. There are people who are going to come and find me. You won’t get away with it.”
“You don’t know how many times I’ve heard people say that,” Amanda replied. “I wouldn’t have brought you here myself. That was a foolish decision made by my sister. I think she really wanted to see me doing this to you. She’s always had a thing about it. She enjoys watching the experiments but doesn’t have the brain capacity to develop any of them.”
Cameron’s heartbeat was rapid, causing him to be short of breath. He tried to get himself under control. The building was ten stories high. Jaymee could be in literally any room in the building and he wouldn’t know it.
He wanted desperately to call the detectives and alert them to what was going on. But he didn’t dare hang up on Jaymee. It was his last lifeline to her, the only thing he had connecting him to her during her time of crisis. Even though he couldn’t say anything, he knew it had to be a comfort to know the phone was there and the call hadn’t been disconnected.
“Why did Jennifer bring me here in the first place?” Jaymee asked. “Why did you take me up in the elevator? Is this the seventh floor? Is this the place where they’re doing all the real experiments your sister told us about?”
“My sister…” Amanda said, scornfully, “is a raging idiot. She tells too many true facts when she should be making things up.”
