Part Twelve

Stuarts taps Harry’s shoulder a few times and cries out to rejuvenate him, but there is no response. Finally, he grasps his phone on the bedside table to dial 911.

“Hello, what’s your emergency?” a young woman says.

“My friend Harry fell in our hotel room, and he will not come to,” Stuart says in an anxious tone.

“Help is on the way, Sir. Can you tell me what hotel you are staying at?

“Yes, ma’am. The Four Seasons Hotel on Barclay Street. We are in room 311. Please come as fast as you can,” Stuart says in a crackling voice.

“We will. An ambulance is on its way to you.”

Ten minutes later. A six-foot tall man with wavy brown hair in an EMT uniform is placing a brace over Harry’s neck and giving him oxygen. Two medical personnel lift Harry onto the stretcher and exit the suite, down the hall to the elevator. Stuart grabs his wallet and hotel key and follows them. Stuart sits in the back of the ambulance, watching his buddy’s chest rise and fall. He leans his head toward his knees and prays. Please, Lord, I need you to watch over my best friend, my brother. It’s all my fault that he got hurt. I didn’t expect him to get thrown across the room when I came through the portal. He was attempting to save me. God, use your special gift and heal him.

Stuart takes a deep breath to calm himself down but keeps tapping his fingers across his knee on the drive to the emergency room. What felt like hours was only about a twenty-minute ride to Presbyterian Downtown Hospital. Stuart could see the symbol for the hospital on the street sign within a stone’s throw. They just needed to turn right. Stuart jumps up from his seat as the truck shakes, and an intense thump echoes in Stuart’s ears. He looks out the ambulance’s back door and sees a muscular, almost seven-foot guy dressed in all black, wearing a mask that covers all of his face except his chocolate brown eyes and holding a machine gun. Stuart’s head thumps along with his heartbeat. The loud sirens in the background add to the pain. He wiggles and throws his arms around as the extraction team drags his body out.   

“Who are you? Where are you taking me? I have to stay with my buddy; he’s wounded,” Stuart says while wheezing.

The muscular, tall man wraps a black blindfold around Stuart’s eyes and handcuffs him to the door handle in the SUV’s backseat. Three patrol vehicles approach the scene.

“Drop your weapon and put your hands on top of the car.”

The abductor does not listen. Instead, he shoots the police officers’ vehicles, hitting one cop in the shoulder. It was enough time for him to jump in the car and start the engine.

A female policewoman yells, “Turn off the car and place your hands on the steering wheel.”

The gunman in the passenger seat rolls down the window and starts firing at the cops at lightning speed. Police officers are fighting back with all they have but cannot stop the extraction team as they need to take cover because the SUV is driving straight at them. They slammed into a patrol car, pushing it across the road, and storm off, flying down the road at a hundred miles an hour; heading towards the highway.

Within minutes, Stuart goes from lying on the asphalt looking at the birds flying through the fluffy white clouds to total blackness and the inability to move to see a mafia guy wearing a navy-blue suit sitting next to him with narrowed eyes.

“Where are you taking me?” Stuart utters.

The navy-blue suit man lights a cigar and says, “I have orders to take you to the person you have been searching for. That’s all I can tell you now.”

He puts the blindfold back over Stuart’s eyes and laughs in a sinister way.

Stuart is captured in the backseat of a black SUV, waiting to meet his kidnapper and, perchance, the man he’s been hunting down. The bigger mystery is who knew Stuart was looking into Agent Arthur Watson.

To Be Continued…..