The man didn't say anything. He just grinned at me for another couple of seconds, then started the van and drove off.
I forced myself to focus through a haze of emotions. I was feeling a lot of things at that moment. Ever had that happen? A critical moment in your life comes along, and you feel multiple emotions simultaneously. I was scared as hell, of course, and embarrassed about being trapped in a hamster cage. I was pissed, too, not only at this asshole for abducting me, but at myself for being so clueless.
As I stood there, gripping the bars of the cage in frustration (and to keep myself from being thrown around as the van turned out of the parking lot), I shoved those emotions down into a corner of my mind. I became Agent McLeary of the FBI once again, and I had no time to worry about how much I was shaking. I had to do my job now.
As the van drove along, I paid attention. I already knew we'd turned right out of the lot, so we were heading down the Strip towards the Coruscant. From what I could feel, we'd already gone a block and were now stopped at a light. In another block, we'd be passing right in front of Mark's hotel. If he was watching this, and knew that, he might actually have a chance of coming out and making the intercept.
The problem was letting him know. I couldn't speak, or this moron might hear me and know something's going on. In fact, he was looking down at me at that moment, I noticed, with a bemused look on his face. Fortunately, I didn't have to fake looking scared and horrified. I'm sure I was doing a good job of that entirely on my own.
The problem was that while Mark could see out of my eye implant, I wasn't able to see anything at all from my place on the floor except a nice view of my kidnapper's head and the roof of the van. With the implants I was wearing, Mark could triangulate on my location any time he wanted to, and I was sure he was busy with that right now. Trouble is, by the time he could figure out my location, I'd be well past the Coruscant.
Actually, I thought, what am I worried about? All I had to do was wait until we got wherever this guy was heading. Mark could then come get me at his leisure. Well, that may be true, but what was going to happen to me in the meantime? By the time my partner could show up to save me, who knows what I might have suffered?
We drove on for a bit, and I got the impression we must have passed the Coruscant by now. Finally the van slowed, then came to a stop. The man looked down at me, and now spoke for the first time. "Don't worry, my dear," he said reassuringly. "I'll be right back." Then he got out of the van and shut the door behind him.
Immediately I started testing the bars. Unfortunately, they were quite solid. I tried the door, too, but the clamp he'd used was far too well constructed. I might have been stronger than I looked at this size, but my strength was still much less than a normal woman's.
In fact, as I looked at my surroundings, I realized I was inside no normal hamster cage. The bars were not cheap, thin metal, but heavy steel actually welded to the ceiling and floor. It looked like a fairly crude job, but extremely sturdy. Had my captor built this himself? If so, he'd made something that I immediately figured to be escape-proof.
As I realized this, he returned, tossing two large, flat objects onto the seat above me. I caught only a glimpse of them, but they looked like they had numbers of some kind. "Sorry, Ashley," he said, grinning. "I had to take off the fake plates. Don't want the casino's external cams identifying me that easily, do I?"
I didn't say anything. It was obvious he'd planned this fairly well, though, to my dismay.
Now he reached onto the seat behind him and pulled out some kind of weird-looking, triangular-shaped tool. It reminded me of a radar detector, except the back end had a battery pack sticking out of it, and there were all sorts of wires protruding from it. It had clearly been jury-rigged out of spare parts, and since I didn't know what it was for, I shied away from it automatically.
Holding the bizarre-looking implement, he looked down at me intently, and I immediately retreated into the back of the cage. If the device was some kind of taser or something, it would do far more than just stun my little 10-inch body. It'd probably kill me!
"Don't worry, little one," he said soothingly, trying to calm my fears and not succeeding. "This won't hurt at all."
He reached down and opened up the cage door. If it weren't for that evil-looking device, I might have tried to make a break for it, but as it was, I didn't want to get anywhere near it. Besides, where could I have gone? I was on the floor in the front of a giant van! Even if there had been a way to reach the door handles, I doubted I could have pulled them open, even if he hadn't been there to stop me.
Regardless of that, he didn't give me a choice, inserting the taser-like thing through the gap in the bars and holding it right up next to me. Needless to say, I immediately scuttled to the side and tried to get out of the cage, but there wasn't room to fit between the strange implement and the cage body. "Hey, I said it wouldn't hurt," he insisted, pulling it back and trying to point it at me. "Look, this is for your own good, really. Oh, all right, be that way."
He pulled the device back out, dropped it on the floor, and reached into the cage with his hand. I tried to avoid his fingers, but of course it was impossible. I had nowhere to go, after all. His hand clasped around me, squeezing me tightly, causing me to cry out, at which he lessened his grip slightly until I could breathe again. He didn't drop me, though, but pulled me out of the cage quickly, before I could grab hold of the bars.
Now he held me up to his face. "Look," he said gently, "I don't want to hurt you, Ashley. You're going to have to learn to do what I tell you, though. After all, you're mine now."
I felt my heart sink. Here he was, holding me in his hand, telling me I was now his property! I struggled, trying to break free, but couldn't move his fingers more than a tiny bit. And, of course, the more I tried, the stronger his grip became.
Finally, I gave up. He didn't laugh or anything like that, but simply shook his head. "You'll learn," he muttered, picking up the strange device in his other hand. He pointed at me and flipped a switch, and the thing chirped once, then started to hum. When he pointed it at me, I gave a little scream that probably sounded really pathetic.
Then he moved the implement back and forth along my body a couple of times, and switched it off. Nothing seemed to happen, and I sagged in his grip, relieved beyond measure.
"See?" he said, smiling. "It didn't hurt. Just like I said. Remember this, Ashley, I'll never lie to you. I'm not an evil man. In time, I think you'll even come to like me. At least, I hope so."
Well, I sincerely doubted that!
He put the odd device away and then shoved me back inside my cage, shutting the door and clamping it closed. Then he resumed driving, glancing down at me occasionally. "You're awfully quiet," he said after a few moments. "You certainly had no trouble talking in the casino."
I sighed. I'd thought about keeping silent throughout this whole incident, not giving him the satisfaction of hearing my voice, but that would serve no real purpose. Better to keep him talking, and not thinking about what he was going to do to me when we got to his home.
"Sorry," I said, trying to keep the fear out of my voice. "I just don't have much to say. You are kidnapping me, after all. Would it do me any good to beg you to let me go?"
He laughed. It was a choppy, snorting kind of laugh, the kind that's almost embarrassing to listen to. "So true," he finally said. "You're very perceptive, Ashley. I'm not kidnapping you, though. Think of it as being taken out of your old life and into a new one."
"You'll never get away with this," I said, almost wincing at how clichéd that sounded.
"Oh, I think I will," he said, smiling. "I'm an engineer, you see. I solve problems. This was a particularly interesting one, I have to admit, but I've thought of everything."
"No one thinks of everything," I told him, trying to sound sure of myself, but of course, as I well knew, people got away with crimes every day. Far more are committed than are ever solved.
"Well, I can," he replied, reaching up and peeling away a layer of skin from his face. As he did, I saw that he'd been wearing false eyebrows, cheekbone enhancers, and a cover to make his nose look wider than it really was. Underneath, he had a face that was thin and hawkish, with narrow eyes and a very pale complexion. He looked nothing at all like he had only moments before.
"I see you're surprised," he said idly as we turned a corner. "The disguise is so they can't find me with face ID software. I already changed the license plates on my van, and when I get home, I'll swap out the bumper and peel the white coat off so the real color shows. And, since I've never been fingerprinted, they won't be able to track me down that way, either."
He grinned at me, looking very proud of himself. "Like I said, I thought of everything. See what I mean?"
I had to stop myself from grinning back, because I didn't want him to suspect I had anything up my sleeve. But even those hopes were about to be dashed.
"Oh, and just in case you think I don't know about the tracers the casino gives you," he told me with a satisfied expression, "that's what the EM disruptor was for. I built it myself, you know. It shorted out all those little bugs. Wouldn't hurt anything normal sized, of course, but I'm afraid the casino detectives won't be tracking you down any time soon."
I almost gasped out loud. I hadn't known about any tracing devices, but what if he'd damaged my implants? Mark might never be able to find me!