"She's not available right now, may I help you?" I said, immediately tapping Tabby on the shoulder. She turned to me, and I covered the mouthpiece. "Phone call, strange voice asking for you. Go get Mark, I have a strange feeling."
Tabby went without a single complaint, and I uncovered the mouthpiece again. "I'm sorry, I must have missed what you said, this isn't a very good handset. Can you say that again."
"Tell her that if she wants to see her boyfriend again, she needs to come down to Pressman Contractors by midnight. Or else she's going to have a dead city councilman to mourn in the morning."
The line cut off before I could say anything else, and I stared at it, horrified. Mark came in, toweling himself off, his face clouding immediately in concern when she saw me. "What was it?"
"Male voice, calling saying they have Patrick. They want Tabby to go to Pressman Contractors by midnight or else he's going to be killed."
I saw Tabby tremble, but then she found a core of steel, a strength that I hadn't seen before in her. It hadn't been there when Scott Pressman broke her heart, that was for sure. That Tabby would have crumbled, collapsing to the floor.
Instead, I saw the new Tabby, the one who had grown stronger somehow. Maybe she just needed the love of family to be close by, I don't know. But she trembled for a minute, then turned to Mark. "You can get him back."
Mark nodded, but his face was still dark. "Tabby, if they want you, they could anticipate me. They know the Snowman keeps an eye on you, I've intervened a few times on your behalf. They can't expect you to show up by yourself. In fact, you won't be showing up at all."
"What? Like hell I won't," Tabby said, her spirit rising up.
Mark looked at her calmly, but without any wavering in his eyes. I had expected sternness, but instead he responded with almost heart wrenching gentleness. He cupped her cheek with his hand, and shook his hand. "Tabby, if I have any chance of getting him out of there alive, I need to go in there not having to worry about anyone else. You, for all of your brains and all of your spirit, don't have the training. I'd be worried about you, and I can't have that. I have to go alone."
"Would you have taken Sophie?" Tabby asked me, and Mark looked at me before shaking his head.
"Nine months ago, yes. Six months ago, maybe. Not today," he answered. "I need you here. I need you and Sophie to act as my intel and feed me information. We're tapped into the city traffic cam network, I need eyes on target. When I hit, I'm going to hit hard and fast. If I do, I'll have a chance to get him home safely. But Tabby, it's only a chance. I can't give you a guarantee."
Tabby nodded, her eyes hardening as she accepted her role in the mission. "I know. Then one thing," she said, taking his hand off of her cheek and clenching it in hers. "You kill each and every one of them you can."
Mark looked her in the eyes for a moment, then nodded. "I'll be in the bell tower, getting ready. I want to leave within the hour, they won't expect a fast reaction."
He turned and left, heading for the front of Mount Zion and the bell tower. I watched him go, my worry mixing with my love. I mean, seriously, how many men would be willing to lay it all on the line like he was for a woman who wasn't even his blood? Just because of how much Tabby meant to me and to him? Still, I knew what he was going into, and I didn't want a repeat of what had happened last time.
Tabby read my face, and licked her lips, trying to know what to say. "I'm sorry Sophie. I should have asked you too."
I shook my head. "You didn't need to, I would’ve told you that it wasn't something to even debate. We'll get him back, that's for damn sure. Come on, let me show you how the computer system can work."
I could do more with the computers than just the traffic camera system. Using the specialized hacker computer that Mark had put together, and bouncing it off of a satellite uplink, I quickly hacked a weather satellite, which would for the next four hours tell NASA that it was having telemetry problems. While it wasn't as high resolution as a military Keyhole satellite, nor did it have quite as many tools, it still would give me live overhead feed of the entire outside of the Pressman building.
"That's gotta be a few felonies," Tabby noted as I showed her how Mark had access to a weather satellite that he could use for monitoring under special emergencies. She fell into her normal relaxed demeanor. A lot of people took it to be Tabby not caring, but I knew from years of experience that when Tabby was joking, she was focused. It was her way of dealing with the stress.
"You can add it to the laundry list. I think we're on notebook number two of them," I replied, firing up the systems. "All right, we are up and loaded, checking communications. Mark?"