Hunt for the Lost Treasure

Chapter 10 — Jonathan Beck, meet Sylvia Beach

Maria Winslet was beside herself. Pacing up and down, she gnawed nervously at her thumb nail and her blue eyes stayed glued to the floor. She was worried about her partner, Jonathan Beck. He had just received a push call from Joseph Karsten, one of his highest paying, and most nefarious, clients. The Austrian was asking for a progress report on the delivery of Dr. Nina Gould, a call Beck had been eagerly awaiting until he removed his captive's hoodie and found that he’d kidnapped the wrong person.

Mrs. Sylvia Beach had been in his custody for two days, refusing to speak until she could call her husband, Dr. Lance Beach, to let him know that she was alright and to arrange some sort of release with her captor. However, with the sensitive nature of Beck's lie to his employer, the investigator could not risk any communication until he’d replaced his unwelcome prisoner with the real deal.

“Jesus Christ, Jon! He’s going to have you forked!” Maria wailed. She had a very feminine voice, almost childlike, but in the state she was in she reminded him of a frantic mother of a criminal juvenile. “How did you not know who you were kidnapping?”

Beck licked the corner of his mouth, gesturing toward the frightened Sylvia Beach who was tied up on the office couch under Maria's house in Glasgow. “Look at her, Maria! Look! And tell me she does not look exactly like Gould in low light!”

She had to concede that Beck was right. Maria glanced at the weeping wife of Dr. Beach of Oban and realized that she had the same dark hair, pointy, pretty face, and large brown eyes. “She was driving Nina's car. She was unlocking Nina's house. Explain to me how I was supposed to know that it was not her?” he fumed, bellowing like an animal for being ridiculed for his error.

“Surely when you picked her up and loaded her in you could have seen that it was someone else?” she persisted in her quivering tone that bordered on the hysterical.

Livid, Beck's watery, bloodshot eyes blazed at her. He was shaking in fear and masking it as rage as he shoved his girlfriend hard. “Would you have noticed? Have you ever kidnapped anyone, Maria? Have you? Huh? Have you got any idea what happens while you are taking someone against their will from a house where anyone can see you at any moment?”

She shook her head, retreating as he came at her, shoving her against the table. “No! No, you don't, you stupid bitch! You don't even know anything about the shit I have to get done, do you?”

She lifted her hands defensively and shook her head as she sobbed in fear of his salivating attack. But Beck wanted to set her straight. He hated it when comfortable pen pushers had the cheek to question mistakes, particularly when they had no idea what it was like to exercise that particular feat. It frustrated him to no end when people assumed they knew better without any experience, and now that he’d fucked up with a sinister organization at his throat — something they would no doubt soon discover — he was in no emotional state to explain the mistake to Maria.

Filled with homesick fear, Sylvia watched and listened. If she could win over the woman's empathy she could perhaps get a phone call out to her husband. However, she was sure that she would have no such luck with her taker. Sylvia was not an expert on abduction, but from the scenario the three of them were fixed in, she knew that she would probably not survive unless she tried to escape. For one thing, the furious man would not let someone go who had seen his and his partner's faces.

By affiliation, she would also know that Dr. Gould could figure out who the man and his girlfriend were. Of all things, Sylvia did not know that she was now the only stranger who knew that Maria existed, a very dangerous revelation that could mean the end of Beck and Winslet's cozy freelance career.

“You have no idea how nerve wracking such an operation is, do you?” he yelled as she kept shoving and screaming. “You don't know how easy it is, in all that rush, that time-constrained mission, to miss the finer details of a fucking… woman's… face!” With that he slapped her, followed by a backhand quickly after. That was it for Sylvia, who had never witnessed such abuse in her life.

“Please stop! Please don't! Just… stop!” she shrieked. Instantly she drew Beck's full attention where he stood heaving and spitting. “I swear to God, I will help you sort this out if you just stop hitting her. I swear! Look, I don't know who you are or what you want with Dr. Gould, but I don't care. I just want to go back to my husband and my children and forget about all this.”

“What were you doing with her car? And her house keys?” he asked while tremors still persisted through his large hands.

“She was going to play organ for a funeral service…” she tried to explain.

“Just get to the why, for God's sake!” he roared. “I’m not interested in the Housewives of Happy Oban. Just tell me where she is.”

Sylvia snapped back, “I am trying to tell you, for fuck's sake! If you would shut up for one second I can explain everything. Jesus, I just want to go home!”

Pinching her eyes shut, she waited for a pummeling, but to her surprise, Sylvia was met with two quiet people, patiently waiting for her to elaborate. She sighed, wiping her tears with the back of her taped hands before starting again. “She was going to play, but while we were at the church where she practiced the music she said she had to leave after the service the next day. Said she had an urgent family emergency she had to attend. So Dr. Gould slept over at our place, because the funeral was first thing in the morning.”

Beck sank back in his chair, responding in a soft tone, “That was why she did not come home that night.” He shook his head and looked at Maria. “That was the night I was supposed to grab her.”

“Aye, so after the funeral she left in a taxi,” Sylvia continued. “She asked me if she could leave her car in our yard while she was gone and we said yes, of course. I told her I would feed her cat until she came back, so that is why I took her car to her house two nights ago.”

“Oh my God,” Maria sniffed.

Beck was visibly taken aback by the small discrepancy that had run his plans onto the rocks. “Such a stupid little thing and now Maria and I will pay with our lives.”

“Don't say that,” Sylvia choked. “Please, don't say that. If you let me go, I will help you find her for whatever reason you were going to take her.”

Beck laughed. “Are you serious? Do you honestly think we are going to trust you to help us catch the good little doctor while you have no fucking idea what her fate would be? Listen, lady, don't insult my intelligence.”

“What do we do now?” Maria asked softly. “The newspapers reported that Gould was kidnapped.”

“I know. I saw that, but what good is that going to do us?” he barked. “This bitch is going to be reported missing too; probably has. So we have two problems — one woman we cannot find and another woman we didn't want.”

“But the good thing is,” Maria said, “that the papers will make it look like you succeeded. The…” she peeked at Sylvia before she used important names in front of her, “…your client… won’t know we haven’t captured the right person. It will hold the bullshit together until you’ve managed to get the real Nina Gould, babe.”

Beck gave it some thought. Although he did not like to be outdone with plotting, he had to admit that Maria had a valid point. His mood lifted at once when he realized that Karsten did not have to know that he’d screwed up his quarry’s seizure. Intimidation was key. He pranced over to Sylvia, making sure that he looked positively pissed. Then he sat down next to her, clutching her hair.

“So, where is Dr. Gould, Mrs. Beach?” he growled softly.

“I have no idea,” she replied, knowing in her heart that it was the worst answer she could give, but it was the plain truth. Her eyes teared up as she tried to say it another way, but her tongue would not move. In her peripheral vision she could see the huge man tense up and it scared the poor frail Sylvia to death.

“The next time you say that,” he said calmly, tightening his fingers against her scalp, “I will snap your neck before you even breathe out.”

She knew he was serious. He had too much on the line to be bluffing.