Defiant Hero

Meg didn't understand at first. The man was smiling, and his pleasant expression and tone of voice didn't match his words. "We've taken your daughter hostage." She was in the parking garage beneath her condo, hauling a box of files from the back of her car, when he approached her. She wasn't even a hundred feet away from Ramon, the building's security guard. The smiling man must've seen the confusion in her eyes, be-cause he said it again. In a Kazbekistani dialect. "We have your daughter, and if you don't follow our orders, we'll kill her." And this time, Meg understood. Amy. She dropped the box. "Everything okay over there, Ms. Moore?" Ramon was down off his stool, starting toward them. There'd recently been a rape in another parking garage in this part of Washington, DC. "Tell him yes," the smiling man murmured, opening his baseball jacket, giving her a flash of a very deadly looking gun. Oh, God. "Where is she?" "If I don't make a phone call to my associates within the next hour, she's dead," he told her as he bent down to pick up the box. "My associates are Kazbekistani Extremists." Terrorists. But not just regular terrorists. The Extremists were religious zealots, capable of terrible violence and cruelty, all in the name of their god. And they had Amy. Oh, God. "Everything's fine," Meg called to the guard, her voice shaking only slightly. "We're old college friends." The man turned his friendly smile on Ramon. "I thought I recognized Meggie. I didn't mean to appear before her like the ghost of Christmas past, though, and scare her half to death." Ramon's hand was on the gun holstered at his waist. He smiled politely, but his dark brown gaze was on Meg. "Ms. Moore?" Help. She'd prepared for situations like this, back when she was working at the American embassy in Kazbekistan, an Eastern European country also know as K-stan or "the Pit" to the Americans who served time there. During her stay, she was reminded regularly that the United States didn't negotiate with terrorists. The best solution was preventive--stay safe, stay secure, stay away from dangerous persons and situations. It was a little late for that now--although who would have thought a K-stani terrorist would show up here in Washing-ton, all these years later? Meg knew what she should do in this situation. She should enlist Ramon's help while this man held her box of files, while his hands were full and he couldn't easily reach for his gun. She should be a strong American and refuse to negotiate with terrorists. She should seek help from the FBI. Who, no matter how good they were, wouldn't be able to find her ten-year-old daughter within the next sixty minutes. After which time Amy would be killed. Meg forced a smile. American be damned. She was playing this one out as Amy's very frightened mother. "It's all right, Ramon," she lied. "We're . . . old friends." "How about I carry this upstairs for you?" The man continued the charade. His English was remarkably good--he had only the faintest of accents. "We could talk about old times over a cup of coffee." "Great." She smiled again at Ramon, who watched them all the way over to the elevators. "Where is she?" Meg hissed from behind her frozen smile. "Where's Amy? And what about my grandmother?" Amy had planned to take her great-grandmother, Eve, to the Smithsonian while Meg picked up these files she'd been hired to translate. Meg hadn't been sure exactly who was the baby-sitter--the ten-year-old or the seventy-five-year-old.[read more]