Chapter 76: Epilogue

Then, one day, I looked up and there he stood. The man who said he was my grandfather. The father of my beloved mother. He wore an expensive suit, his hair custom styled and his nails buffed. He had a cigar in his mouth, but it was unlit as he walked around me in my ratty recliner.

“How are you feeling, Cris? Top of the world? You look like shit. You’re dirty, your hair needs cutting, and you’ve lost weight. Who is going to pay a million dollars for a blonde virgin with electric blue eyes if he looks like this?”

I tried to lift my head up, but it weighed too much. I let it sink back onto my chest. “What the fuck do you want,” I drooled. “Drop dead, you pervert.”

“Is that anyway to talk to your grandfather? Henry, see that he’s bathed, trimmed and weighed. If you have to force feed him, start pumping those weight gain shakes down him. We have two months to get him ready for Sayf bin `Abd al-Rahman Al-Shamsi.”

The doctor or whatever he was nodded and pulled me out of the chair, pushing me towards my bathroom. It had a shower, but I’d never used it on my own. The thought of the two of them watching and helping me to scrub made me nauseous. I tried to shrug off his hand, but my grandfather twisted my arm behind my back and shoved me into the bathroom. I fell on the toilet, spreading my arms onto the porcelain lid to keep from sprawling on the floor. Both men bent over to lift me up and that’s when I dragged the lid off and swung it.

Heavy enough that it knocked both of them down and out, yet I followed the swing, too. Landed on top of their bodies and stayed there until I had enough strength to get up. Both men had money, credit cards and keys in their pockets. Tasers and a flat case with preloaded syringes. I used two of those to stab both men in the butt and whatever it was in there, it made them limp, flaccid and breathe slowly. Not that I cared if it killed them.

I struggled to strip the doc of his clothes‒those were closer to my size than my short, bulky grandfather. I opened the door, looked out on the long hallway and slid down the wall so that it helped hold me up. I didn’t care where it went, I was just focused on getting out of the room and away from the pair.

A staircase led down but at the end of the hallway, I saw an elevator. It was coming up and the floor indicator read 25. I was in a building that had at least 25 floors which told me that it was a big city, not a rural area. Somewhere on the east coast as out west tended to sprawl out not up. Except for California and I didn’t think gramps had taken me there. Nor Europe.

I wasn’t ready to deal with anyone, so I took the stairs to the lower floors and found another elevator that was clearly a freight one. Took it all the way to the basement, found a dark corner where there was storage that hadn’t been moved in decades and buried my way into it. Fell asleep and didn’t wake for hours.

When I finally did, I sat up and felt horrible. My body was craving the drugs that they had used on me. I was starving and thirsty. My skin felt as if a million ants were crawling underneath and I wanted to scream for relief. I had no clue what time it was, how long I had slept or how long the pair had been comatose or if they still were. I just knew that I had to get out of the building and find someone to help me.

I looked down at myself. Dressed in sweatpants and t-shirt, I was filthy, ragged and thin. I looked homeless. I had no ID, no cell phone but I had money. To use the credit cards would be to pinpoint my position so I tossed them back into the room. Counting the cash, I had over two thousand dollars from both of their wallets.

The boxes I had lain on were filled with clothing. Warm sweaters and pants. Socks, coats and shoes. I found enough so that I was decent looking, even though I had no underwear. Covered my hair and tucked the long ponytail under a cap, I hunched my way out into the basement and followed the signs to the street.

Noise assailed me. Cabs honking. People yelling, the wail of sirens and the total volume of a big city. I didn’t recognize the skyline, nor the street names. As I turned a corner, I came out on a square that was instantly recognized by me and anyone else who had never even been there. Madison Square Garden was just down the street from me. I turned around and the building I had just exited was a huge skyscraper, apartments and businesses shared the space inside. I was in New York City, not in Europe or some other US city as I had feared. DeAngelis had taken me back to his home state, where he had felt most comfortable.

I spun around and checked behind me and then in front. There were so many people on the street that it panicked me. They brushed against me, nearly knocked me down and were rude enough to blame for being in their way. I cried out and someone grabbed my arm, pulling me out of the way into the recessed nook of a store front. A coffee shop. The smell made me instantly thirsty and hungry.

I took in the one person that had shown me a kindness. He was a short man, black in a leather coat with a fur collar. Like the old-time bomber jackets I’d seen on WWII pilots. He had black eyes and gray hair cut short to his skull. Wore gold earrings with diamonds in one ear. I could see the part of a tattoo above the collar of his jacket and the neck of his shirt. He wore winter clothes. That made me realize how cold I was, even with my own coat on.

“Hey, dude. You okay?” he asked me. “You jonesin’?”

I gaped at him. I had no idea what he meant. “You comin’ down off your drug of choice?”

“I don’t do drugs,” I whispered, and he shook his head.

“Dude, you’re the Wiki entry of a user. You got the shakes, the AIDS look and the eye. I know a place where you can dry out, get some help.” He waited for me to answer him.

I backed up but he held me in a grip I couldn’t break. It hurt. My skin bruised as we watched. “No. Let me go, mister. I can’t stay here.” I twisted but he held on. I tried to kick him, and he shoved me further back into the nook where anyone passing would only see his back.

“Sorry, dude,” He smiled, and his gold teeth glittered in the dark. “I can use a chicken like you.”

I kicked him. Right for his nuts but he bent to the side and let go of me. I fell forward onto the concrete steps and banged my chin. Saw stars and split my face open. Blood splattered my hands as I pushed myself up and reached for my lips. He grabbed my head and pulled me onto my feet as I swatted at his fuzzy form. He twirled me around so that I had my back to him, reached his arm under my chin and put me in a sleeper hold. In seconds, the night became darker, the lights of the city glimmered and faded. I heard sounds diminish and then I was floating on a dark tide that rocked me quietly, peacefully and inevitably.

When I opened my eyes, I was lying on a bed that consisted of a disgusting mattress lying on the floor. Which in itself was covered with garbage, left-over food, dirty clothes and diapers. Used condoms. I tried to move, and my body refused to do anything but twitch. I felt as heavy as if gravity had descended only on me. There weren’t any ties or cuffs on my wrists or ankles, yet I couldn’t move.

I yelled. No one came to see why. I listened and heard nothing. No voices, no hum of fridge or train. No sirens or taxis. Nothing. Not even the calls of birds or insects. Struggling to lift myself, I was astonished that not even a finger would obey my command to move. Yet, I could breathe so I wasn’t paralyzed with succyhinocholine. I had no explanation for what kept me immobile. All I could do was lie there crying in frustration until whoever had taken me came to get me.

They did come. The man who had caught me in the street and someone I had hoped never to see again. DeAngelis stood there with him and as I watched, he handed over a large sum of money to the pimp. His eyes never left me as he stared at me on the old mattress.

“I see we have to have a lesson in obedience, Cris,” he said to me softly.

The man slipped his blood money into his pocket and stepped closer. “Can I watch?” he asked with a leer.

My grandfather took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and beat me. I couldn’t defend myself. After a while, I no longer even felt it. When he was finished, he told the pimp that he could play with me as he wished but that he was not to touch my face or break anything. I heard him say that but by that time, nothing really sank into my brain. I was lost in that place where I had last seen Crispin. Where nothing touched me or hurt me. He was not there anymore, I was alone. I curled up in a ball and covered my head, like a turtle hid in its shell. I hid. For hours. Days. Maybe years.

It was the smell of the ocean that brought me out. Salt and spray. The sky was a brilliant blue and the air was awash with the fresh scent of the water. Cautiously, I peeked through my eyelashes and saw the side of a boat near my hand. A huge boat that spread out before me larger than any I’d ever been on. Bigger than the ferry. A yacht. Three stories of the cabin rose above my head. I saw a satellite dish and people dressed in white uniforms, along with men in fancy suits. Dark skinned, bearded and wearing headdresses like Arabs did.

The water was a brilliant turquoise and towards the shore, I could see white and rose-colored buildings. Greek or maybe Italian. I was in a wheelchair, my hands and feet velcroed to the arms and legs. I wore a pair of white linen slacks and a white tunic that was soft and made of cotton. Sunglasses on my face. Gold bracelet cuffs on my arms. Sandals or what they called espadrilles. Made of straw, I thought. I felt weird. As if my body didn’t belong to me. I wanted desperately to move but was afraid to try. Before I could do anything, someone came up behind me and chattered in Arabic, whirling my chair around and driving me down into the belly of the yacht.

The inside was as fancy as the images I’d seen of the Vegas Night Clubs. Like a Sheikh’s palace. I guessed that it was…a palace on water. I gagged. Tried to throw up at the thought of what had happened or would happen to me. For how long. I wanted to howl. The person came around and undid my hands and feet, positioned the chair next to a huge bed and picked me up. I turned my face away even as I wanted to bite them.

On the bed, I could see who it was. A woman. Dressed in a white nurse uniform. She spoke Arabic but she looked European. Blonde with gray eyes, nearly six feet tall and she handled me as if I were not problem. While I lay there in shock, she undressed me, bathed me and cathed me finally dressing me in soft cotton pajamas before she stuck me with two needles in my belly.

Tears trickled down my face. She stopped and stared at me. “Why?” I whispered as her mouth gaped open. “Why are you doing this to me?”

I didn’t hear her answer. If she did.

*****

 

“What is your name?” Her voice was a whisper in my ear, and I could vaguely remember it. As I opened my eyes, I stared into gray eyes that were thickly lashed, all natural under light eyebrows. The blonde in the uniform.

I was on the bed, in pajamas and she sat next to me as close as lovers. We were alone. “Can you hear me, Saqr?”

“Cris. My name is Cris,” I managed. “My Dad. Call my Dad. Policeman.”

“Oh my God,” she said. “You’re American?”

I grabbed her arm and pulled myself up. “Please. I’m American. I’ve been kidnapped. Please help me!”

“How did you get here? Never mind, I know how,” she said grimly. “I can’t do anything for you. They’ll kill me and then cut your throat. You don’t go against the Sheik. Especially in his own country.”

“Where are we?” I tried to sit up, swing my legs off the bed but I was so weak. She helped me, pulled me into her side. I could see out the huge windows at the coast of some fancy hi-rise city. The tallest skyscrapers I’d ever seen. Recognized it from history lessons. Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

“Oh God,” I said. “How am I going to get home?” Tears poured down my face and she wiped them off.

“How old are you…Cris?”

“Sixteen. I’m sixteen. Or I was when I disappeared. How long have I been here? Where is the man who sold me? My grandfather? Who bought me?”

“Sheikh Sayf bin `Abd al-Rahman Al-Shamsi.”

I keened. She placed her hand over my mouth and hushed me. “Quiet. There are other people on the yacht who would not be happy to see you know what’s going on. Or that I gave you Narcan to bring you out of the drugs. You’re going to crash soon and that’s not going to be comfortable for either of us.”

“I’m an addict? What else did he do to me? Wait, I don’t want to know,” I shuddered. “What are you going to do?”

“You are going to sleep. I’m going back to my cabin and get ready to go to shore. Shopping. If you scream, or show any sign of awareness, we’ll both be in trouble,” she warned.

“You’re going to turn me in,” I despaired.

She didn’t answer me just let me fall back onto the bed as she rose, turned around and left me alone. I think that it was worse knowing that I would be awake for whatever was going to happen to me next. I wondered if I could find something to kill myself in the room. Or if I could even get up to do so. Or was it better to play dead so no one else knew I was awake. Alive.

She came back in the night, dressed in pants and long jacket, her head covered in a shawl. With robes for me and a shot that made me buzz with energy and a plan to get me off the boat. She told me that the Sheikh was at the family oil meeting, his bodyguards there too which left only a skeleton crew on board. He had kept me from his family as his…sexual preferences were not in line with his religious older brother’s faith so no one other than the crew knew I was on board.

She helped me out of the stateroom that had been my prison and into the galley where robed tradesmen were busy loading new supplies. None of them paid any attention to another helper in dirty white robes wearing a keffiyeh that indicated he was a peasant. One of them threw a bag of wrinkled oranges at me and barked a command. My brain instantly translated it as ‘take that to the boat and bring a fresh bag.’

I replied in a manner and tone that did not offend him. The nurse and I walked out together, and she subtly aimed me for the side of the yacht where another smaller dhow was off-loading supplies.

“Now what?’ I whispered.

“We’re taking the skiff,” she pointed to the small boat bobbing behind the dhow, only yards from the dock. That was covered with vendors pushing carts, women with huge baskets of fruits and platters piled high with flat breads. Once we reached the wharf, we could disappear into the crowds. I would have jumped in the water and swum to shore but she warned me about sharks, snakes and other nasty critters that lurked in the waters of the Arabian Sea.

I let her pull me through the crowds once we hit the wharf. No one paid me any attention, but some did stare at the woman in western attire even though she had her hair covered. We hurried down the street onto a broad avenue, I let her lead as I had no idea where I was or needed to go.

I stopped because I literally couldn’t take one more step. Whatever she had given me had worn off and I felt like shit. She understood that and pulled me over to a bench that was situated under a scrolled awning that covered a bus stop. We were the only ones there and she set me down on the seat.

“I can’t do anything for you here,” she said in English. “A woman, even an American one can’t order around a male.”

“Where’s the American Embassy?”

“Too far for you to walk. We can’t be on the street for long. As soon as he learns you’re not on board, he’ll send a thousand men and police out to look for you.”

“Call the Embassy.”

“I can’t. I’d have to ask for the number and that will trigger an instant alert.”

“You have a cell phone? Look it up on Google.”

“I left my cell on the boat. He can find me by a locater app.”

“Pay phones?”

“Look around. Do you see any pay phones? Everyone has cells.”

“Taxi? How much time do we have before he goes to the boat and find me missing?”

“His meetings usually last a few hours. Then, he likes to spend time at the racetrack. After that, he usually…visits you. I tend to you after he’s done. Depending on how long he’s been with you, he typically doesn’t see you for a few days to a week afterwards.”

My entire body convulsed, and I leaned forward to vomit until there was blood in it. She grabbed me by the arm before I could fall off the bench. Yelled in my ear that if I kept doing that, she would have to call an ambulance and that would surely bring me right back into the pervert’s possession.

I sat up and wiped my mouth off on the hem of the dirty robe. “I wish you had overdosed me.” I stood up shakily, stepped to the curb, put my finger in my mouth and blew a piercing whistle. Like anywhere around the world in any big city, the universal signal for a taxi worked here, too.

Three cabs pulled in front of the bus stop and I inspected all three, choosing the one that was a Coptic Christian, not an Arab. Opening the door was almost beyond me and he gave me a doubtful look at my clothing. His face lightened when she offered him a handful of Euros as she slid into the cab next to me.

“British Embassy, please,” she said, and the driver nodded. He spoke some English. I was nervous the entire ride, looking behind to see if we were being followed. It wasn’t until we were on Embassy Row that I turned to her.

“British? Why are you helping me?”

“The… your embassy is right across the street. And my younger sister was taken on her school vacation, sex traffickers. I’ve been looking for her since.”

I didn’t say anything. The taxi stopped in front of a square modern building of blinding white surrounded by steel gates and a barred courtyard with bollards to stop a car bomb. The top of the building reminded me of gun turrets, and I could see armed guards with riot guns using them to fire on anyone stupid enough to try and charge the gates.

Across the street was the modest, equally modern American embassy but their entrance looked more like the shop in a strip mall. The gate beside it was thirty feet high and steel. I didn’t see anyone guarding it, but I could bet they were there. We exited the taxi and waited until he drove off. Standing in the street was nerve-wracking, I expected fleets of black SUVs to come screeching up and haul us off at gunpoint. Instead, we walked across, and she opened the glass-fronted door to enter an air-conditioned lobby. Behind the waist-high counter was a man in a suit with the American Diplomatic seal on his pocket. He ignored me and asked her if he could help.

“Yes. This is…” She looked at me and the man stared at my blue-green eyes, realizing that I was not an Arab. I pulled off the headdress and literally collapsed on the floor which brought the armed soldiers and the official around to my side.

“Is he ill?”

“Yes. Suffering from drug withdrawal and torture,” she said flatly. She went on to explain what had happened to me and the pity in their eyes made me angry.

“What’s your name, son?” he asked gently as the soldiers lifted me onto my feet and almost carried me into the back room. I heard him call for a doctor. I burst out bawling. Couldn’t stop. Clung to the soldier until the doctor came into the room. He gave me a shot that made me calm down. Only then was I able to talk coherently and tell them my name.

Cris Snow. The John Doe Trust Fund kid. They knew who I was. Taking my fingerprints proved that I was really him. Once that was established, they flew me to Germany, the Air Force Base where I was treated. The lady came, too. There, I learned her name, Annabel Harris, and that she was a direct descendant of Caitlyn and Sheriff Harris.

I was there a week in the hospital when the nurse, an AF Corpsman brought me a phone. Her eyes were smiling as she handed it to me. I took it and held the old-fashioned portable to my ear. I dialed the number that I had memorized and prayed that it was still working.

“Hello?” I listened. “Matt? Dad? I’m coming home.”

The End.