Blood red love
99
Chapter 99.
Vidar watched as Charlie walked up the steps to their private jet, Caine was keeping close to her while Vidar talked to the pilot. They had decided to go back home and stay a couple of days before heading to Vegas. Charlie wanted to talk to her brother and Tyson. Not only did she want to let then know she was engaged, she wanted to tell them about her new nature. There was something else going on in that head of hers, but she hadn’t confided in him yet. Vidar wasn’t worried, she didn’t seem upset or worried more than was expected. Truth be told, he was surprised at how well she was handling everything. If it had been anyone other than Charlie, he would have said they hadn’t understood the severity of what was facing them. But he knew Charlie was more than aware of it.
“Ready for your second flight?” he asked her as he joined her and Caine.
“Ready,” she said with a smile. The three of them would be going home by themselves. The other members would go directly to Vegas with the exception for Jun. Jun was heading for Hongkong and his wife. Apparently the ordeal with Min and Charlie’s insistence that Jun would reach out had worked wonders and Jun had been invited to his wife’s home for the first
time in forty years. He would fill her in on what was happening and join the rest in Vegas, hopefully with his wife by his side.
“Looking forward to going home?” Caine asked.
“Yes, I miss Shadow,” she told them. Vidar chuckled and to his surprise, he found that he also missed the little cat. Other than that, he was a little nervous about telling Huxton and Tyson he had proposed to Charlie without asking them first. He had the ring made their first week together. And after almost loosing her and Charlie making her decision, it just didn’t seem to be anything else standing in his way. He loved Charlie, she loved him, it was the natural step to take. The first couple of hours the three spent discussing what they would do the two days. they had at home before leaving again. After five hours in the air, Vidar suggested that Charlie take a nap in the bedroom of the plane. It would help with the jetlag and pass some
of the seven hours remaining.
“I don’t know. I think I’m good where I am,” she told him.
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“Is there something wrong?” Vidar asked, Charlie looked uncomfortable.
“No, not really,” she said. Vidar exchanged a look with Caine and could tell his friend had picked up on Charlies odd behaviour as well.
“So why don’t you want to lay down?” Vidar pushed. To his horror a single tear ran down Charlies face. She quickly wiped it away, but it was too late. Something was seriously wrong. “Charlie,” Vidar tried to make his voice soft but firm.
“When Millard took me. The first time I woke up was in a cabin on an aeroplane. He talked to me and then he drugged me again. I felt so helpless and exposed. I just don’t think I want to go into a room like that again. At least not now,” she told them. Vidar had her out of her seat and into his lap in seconds.
“I’m sorry, baby. I shouldn’t have forced you to tell me, and you don’t have to go anywhere. near the cabin. You can stay right here and sleep,” he said. He was gently rubbing her back.
“Thank you,” she said in a small voice. She had handled everything so well. Vidar almost forgot that the ordeal must have left scars. His soul wanted to go into the luggage department and kill Millard. But it would mean leaving Charlie, and at the moment, she needed him. Caine stood up and got a blanket he put over her. Then he sat down in the seat. next to Vidar and pulled her feet into his lap. Charlie relaxed and snuggled closer to Vidar.
“Go to sleep, lilla lo. We will watch over you,” he told her and k*ssed her head. She nodded
and he could feel her drift off. He and Caine remained as they were, before Charlie had turned, they could have had a whispered conversation making it low enough not to disturb her. But now, they didn’t dare to risk it. After a couple of hours, Charlie moved in Vidar’s lap. He looked down and saw her opening her eyes. “Morning,” he said and k*ssed her.
“Morning,” she answered. “Have I been asleep for long?”
“Four hours,” Caine said.
“We still have about three to go. Are you hungry?“She seemed to consider the question.
“I could eat,” she told him.
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“I will get something.” Caine offered and gently put her feet down. Vidar didn’t want to let her go from his arms, but he knew she would be more comfortable eating in her own seat. So
he lifted her into the seat Caine just left. Caine came back with a tray of cheese, fruit and bread. As they ate, Charlie looked like she had something she wanted to say, but stopped
herself.
“What is it you need to tell us?” Vidar finally asked her.
“I have an idea,” she said. Both Caine and Vidar nodded. “I think I know a way to track Popov,
Drakos and Sato.”
“That is amazing news. Why would you hesitate to tell us this?” Vidar asked.
“It
may not be strictly legal,” she confessed. “Or, it defiantly isn’t, not even a little,” she added. Vidar looked at her and Caine laughed.
“You do know what we do, right?” Caine asked.
“Yeah, but sometimes Vidar has a strange hangup when it comes to me.” she said. Vidar
smiled.
“I do have strange hangups when it comes to you. But this time I’m all ears.” he told her.
“We have gathered a lot of information on the three of them, including alias and things lik that,” she told them. “I can create a program that uses that information to track them. It would search for credit cards with the known names being used, tickets being booked. library cards being used and so on. Almost everything today leaves a digital fingerprint. If we collect those fingerprints and run them through a pattern recognition software and we can create a model of their movements in correlation to each other and their most trusted people,” she
told them.
“That would give us possible meeting locations and joint warehouses,” Caine said.
“Yes, it could,” Charlie agreed.
“That is brilliant. But how would you access all that information?” Vidar asked
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“Well, that is kind of the illegal part of the thing. I would need to hack into places like banks, railway operations, authorities and so on.”
“Isn’t that risky. Things like that tend to have high security,” Caine asked.
“It can be. But I think I can modify the technology in the bug James used to make our intrusion almost undetectable.”
“And you are sure it won’t be traced back to you if they find it?” Vidar asked.
“I can make it more or less untraceable, nothing is ever perfect. But we can get close to it. It would go faster and probably work better if I could use Lucas. That would of course mean…”
“That we need to tell him everything,” Vidar ended her sentence.
“Right,” she agreed. Vidar looked at Caine. They trusted Lucas and had talked before about letting him know about the other world. They just hadn’t seen a reason for it.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Vidar said.
“I agree,” Caine chimed in.
“Should we talk to him all three?” Charlie asked.
“No, let me handle that, lilla lo. I will let you know the outcome and when you can s working with him.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
“Any other brilliant ideas?” Vidar asked.
“No, not at the moment.”
start
“That’s okay, you have to leave some of the problem solving to the rest of us,” he told her. The rest of the flight was spent putting together a plan for how to and when to go through. their ‘to do list‘ in the the two days they had to complete before heading for Vegas. Luckily
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there were three of them and they could divide the tasks between them, there were some they all needed to be present for but most only required one or two of them.