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C is for — “Can you please just listen?”.  Someone who doesn’t like to be told

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There were four of us in the room, aside from the technical team, who were monitoring all the phones in the house.

Josephine, my daughter, the headstrong, ‘I can handle anything, Dad’, type, two members of the FBI, a man and a woman team who specialised in kidnapped children, and myself.

How did we get here?

It was a combination of things, not just one element.  It was never going to be as simple as that.

Josephine would say that had I told her before the event what I thought, it would not have happened.

That, of course, discounted the fact I tried, on several occasions, culminating in the last time she spoke to me when I said, as my last parting shot, ‘Can you please just listen to what I have to say.’

She would not.  No one was going to tell her how to live her life or how to bring up her daughter.

No one.

Fair enough.

Again, with the benefit of hindsight, I could have done more, but her parting shot that it was a bit rich for someone who hadn’t spent any time with his children to be telling them what to do, I figured she was, perhaps, right.

But, for all intents and purposes, it was now water under the bridge.  An elegant and apt expression that was not going to assuage the pain.

I looked at the phone that brought in the first message, the message that arrived at 6 pm precisely on a Monday evening.

Distorted to try and hide the caller’s identity, but I knew who it was.

Danny Trevino.  Smooth, handsome, beguiling, sophisticated, and too good to be true.  He had swept Angelica off her feet.

I met him once and saw right through him.  I didn’t like him and he knew it.  That amiable smile turned into something else, and I knew then we were in trouble.

I tried to warn Angelina.  She was not interested.  There was too much of her mother’s obstinance in her, and sadly, we had never bonded.  Again, there was too little contact when it mattered.

I tried to warn Josephine.  Well, you know how that went.  When she called, and I came, the best she could say was, ‘I’m sure you’re going to say I told you so, so get it over with’.

And, now we were here.

Waiting.

The great thing about being me is that people would look at me and then keep going.

I was the sort of person who other people didn’t give a second look.  Ordinary, unassuming, invisible.

I learned that when I was younger, I was treated as if I were invisible.  Then, I met a man who taught me that invisibility was an asset.

Just think, no matter where you go, no one will ever notice, and he was right.  No matter where I went, anywhere on the world, no one bothered.

Except Monique, who, for a French woman, defied all the tropes and was equally invisible.  We met in a Parisian bar, both trying to get a drink, and the bartenders simply ignored us.

It was the perfect match.  We travelled together, here, there and everywhere, until one night after telling me she had a friend to see, girls turf, she said, she came back with a rather nasty bullet hole.

Three years we’d been together before I discovered she was an assassin.  And three months before I became one too.

Three children and thirty years later, Monique had died in an accident trying to escape a fast closing net of police, and I retired the next day.

Monique’s mother had raised our children, and by the time I’d retired, they’d all moved on.  Was I selfish?  Yes.  Do I regret what I did?  Sometimes, like now.

Could I do something about the current situation?

Pierre was Monique’s brother and the only one of her family who knew what she did.  As a consultant to any police force who needed him, in his downtime, he was one of these people who looked for missing persons.

He didn’t do it for the money.  Rather, the clients would pay the so-called reward to a relevant charity.

I had called him a few weeks back when I realised that Angelina’s romantic attachment to Danny was getting serious, but disturbingly, his influence over her was the controlling kind and not in a good way.

It was good to see him again when I picked him and his team up from the airport.  That and the cloak-and-dagger stuff that went with it.

So, for the last four weeks, they had embarked on round-the-clock surveillance, everywhere he went, everyone he saw, everyone.

I had a portfolio of photos of Danny and Angelique together, and Pierre wanted to kill him.  He could, if he wanted to, but later.  Danny was not the driving force in this kidnapping. Someone else was, and he was still working on that when Danny pulled a surprise manoeuvre.

Pierre’s cover was blown, and she was taken.  All he said was that Danny was too stupid to organise something as sophisticated as this, and, what was more unsettling, it was someone who knew who I was or had been.

The ransom was going to be big.  And there was no way Angelique would be returned alive.

The phone rang, and everyone jumped.

My cell phone vibrated in my hand five seconds later and flashed a message: “Got him.”

When I told Pierre we were about to get a call from the kidnappers, he said the usual tactic was to have a person from their team outside reporting on who was there and sometimes pick up conversations inside.

He was right.

Agent Laraby, the male, as he looked at Josephine, said, “Ready.  As we discussed.”

She nodded.

He pushed the answer button.  In the background, we could hear Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’ playing.  It was one of my favourites.

It was also a clue.  The kidnapper was enjoying playing games.

“10 million dollars, you know the drill.  Within 24 hours, I will call with the delivery address.  24 hours, or she dies.”

The phone went dead.

Of course, the kidnapper knew they would be tracing the call.  The kidnapper also knew the FBI were there, and more importantly, I was there.  The only surprise was how little they’d asked for.

Josephine looked like she had been hit by a bus.  “That’s ridiculous.  I haven’t ten dollars to my name, let alone ten million.”

Agent Laraby looked at me.

“I suppose I’d better go and make some phone calls.”

“We don’t pay ransoms, Mr Jones.”

“With what you have, are you going to be able to rescue her before 24 hours are up?”

“We are following several positive leads.”

“Then, just in case, I’d like to have options available to us.”

Josephine looked over at me.  “Where are you going to get ten million from?”

It surprised me that she had taken so long to ask the question.  None of the children had known what their parents did, and all had been told we were not the richest people in the neighbourhood.  Telling them we had money would only have made them self-indulgent and lazy.

It didn’t quite work as we expected.

“I have friends.”

She shook her head.  “You’ve got nothing.  Why are you here anyway?”

“You called me.”

“Well, it’s too late.  We ain’t got any money, and she’s going to die.  Somehow, this is all your fault.  Go.  And don’t come back.  Ever.”

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©  Charles Heath  2025