Jace looked at his father and said, "Tell me." The man smiled as he got up from the ground.
"Vrasin e saj." He said. Jace looked at him as if he was insane.
"I'd rather die!"
The man said, "Then face your death as what you always were. A boy pretending to be a man." He took out his gun, cocked it, and aimed it at Jace's forehead. "Did you really think that you'd save her by doing this? I'm going to kill her anyway. Lamtumniree!" He closed his finger around the handle; Laura kicked his arm just as a loud boom sounded and the bullet zoomed right over Jace’s head. She grabbed the gun and pointed it at the man. She then took her own gun and pointed it at Jace, who was reaching for his gun.
"Don't even think about it. The bomb is obviously not timed. One of you has the detonator. I could just shoot you both now, or you can just hand it to me and you'll live to see a fair trial. Which one?" The men were silent. "I'm on a tight schedule. What will it be?" They remained silent. Then, Jace took out what looked to be the detonator. "Jace, give it here." Laura commanded.
"Yes, Jace, give it to her. " the man agreed. Laura became rather confused. Jace wasted no time, however, and grabbed the gun out of her hands and placed the detonator in hers.
"The bomb will go off in ten seconds. 10...9...8..." the detonator spoke.
"What?"
The man laughed.
"5...4...3...2...1..." Laura took her gun and shot the detonator.
"Have a nice day...." the device said, changing tones as the electricity burned. Then, they heard it. The boom. It was far away, but they could hear it all the same.
“Congratulations, Agent Pang. You have just killed your friend.”
**************
"Rebecca!!!!" Caitlin, Sarah, and Xarissa yelled. They had seen the bomb explode, and didn't know if Becca had made it out or not. Caitlin worked hard on the circuit board to repair the communications, and it came alive with a drone of static. They stood in suspense for the next 6 minutes.
Then they heard a voice through the static on the Com.
"It's me! I'm all right! Can you pick me up? I'm sort of floating in the sea right now."
They all cheered.
***************
Laura felt a sudden pain, then collapsed on to the ground.
"Nice one, Jace." The man said. Laura saw Jace whirling her gun around before she lost consciousness.
"Do we take her with us?" Jace asked.
"Yes. She might hold valuable information." The man said. He then picked her up, and they both disappeared.
****************
“I can’t believe the connection still worked,” Rebecca said, taking out her Bluetooth. The jet erupted into life and zoomed out of the water.
“Well, that’s HIA electronics, for you,” Caitlin answered, smiling. She was extremely relieved that Rebecca had been able to eject before the bomb exploded.
“Where’s Laura?” Rebecca asked, looking around. Caitlin and Xarissa gave her blank stares.
“We don’t know,” Xarissa finally said.
“Where did she drop off?” Rebecca asked, already standing and moving towards the back of the jet.
“I have the coordinates,” Sarah said from the pilot seat. “Should I set it for there?”
“Yes,” Rebecca said, grabbing a backpack.
“Rebecca, we don’t know where she landed or if she moved anywhere,” Caitlin said.
“We can’t just give up,” Rebecca answered, strapping the parachute on.
“I never said we would.” Caitlin stood. “I’ll come with you. We need to take a jet.”
Rebecca paused for a minute, then agreed. “Fine, we’ll look for her. If she already found the terrorists, she could be in trouble. Sarah, track our progress.”
“Alright.”
Rebecca took the backpack off and hung it back on the wall. She grabbed her Bluetooth and put it in again. “I’ll radio in if there are any problems. If not, I’ll just send a signal and we’ll meet back at these coordinates.”
“Rebecca,” Sarah said, as they opened the hatch.
“Hm.”
“Be careful.”
“I will.” She jumped in after Caitlin, and the doors automatically shut and locked. “See you, guys.” She jumped to the pilot’s seat, and pushed a button. Jet SM02 deployed, the engines started, and they were off.
****************
They searched the city for hours, but found no trace of Laura. Then they realized that Laura had a tracking device in her shoe. They all did. So they returned to the plane and consulted Sarah and Xarissa. "Oh, why didn't I think of that?" Sarah said as she face palmed herself. Xarissa started to try to find her, but the signal was dead. Then, they found her! She was in a moving vehicle that was driving towards the sea.
"I'm on it!" Xarissa said and jumped into the SM02. Within five minutes, the jet had reached the car. She shot at the tires, and it skidded to a stop. Xarissa landed and went to get Laura. She ran to the car and ripped the door open, and there in the car seat were Laura’s shoes. But no Laura. Xarissa grit her teeth and ran to the front of the car. The wires had been reconnected into an automatic system. She ran back to the airplane--ignoring the vice president who had gotten out of his car--and flew back into the air. "Guys, it's hopeless. They've got Laura and removed her tracking device." Xarissa told the others.
"Well, what do we do?" Sarah asked.
"I don't know." Rebecca admitted.
Then she remembered something. Jace had chosen to take classes at that school, probably because it was the closest high school near Heritage. He must have known that someone was on his tail. He must have led them onto it on purpose. Rebecca thought she was the one who had tricked him, but she didn’t see the bottom layer of the cake. This whole time, he had been doing things to trap them. She felt like he knew their every move, like he expected them to go a certain way. This whole time, he must have known that Laura would strike out alone.
That’s why it seemed so easy for them to get away when they had been trapped. At the apartment, he must have expected Laura to be the one to inspect the car, and Laura would have been the one they kidnapped. When Rebecca had come instead, they kidnapped her to go along with the flow, and made it easy enough to get away. They had never really wanted Rebecca or Caitlin or anyone else.
They wanted Laura. All the pieces started to fit together. If Laura had been the one to fly out with the bomb, they would have just tracked it, taken it down, and captured her. If Laura had stayed in the jet with the others, they would have kidnapped one of the people going out, forcing them to come save them. What they really wanted, though, was to catch Laura all alone. And that’s exactly what they had done.
So why was it so important that they got Laura, specifically? What did she know that the others didn’t?
****************