Chapter 18

Betsy paced the floor, criss-crossing the living room in her house. Fortunately, the house was built with a wide open spacial style that allowed her a lot of room to move. If the room had been a bit smaller, she would have been bouncing off the walls ... literally, not figuratively.

Not for the first time since returning to the house that morning, she asked, “Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie answered without having to ask who he was.

“Why isn’t Gary here?”

“He had to go to the mainland,” Charlie said.

“Why?”

Charlie shrugged her shoulders to indicate that she didn’t know much beyond a superficial explanation that there was a problem and he needed to go to the mainland. Gary had not been very forthcoming other than to ask her to get the pilot to the airport as soon as possible.

She said, “He said it had something to do with Chuck’s disappearance.”

“Gary works for me. He should tell me what he’s doing,” Betsy spat.

“You were offshore until late last night and I’m sure that he felt he could handle it without interrupting your work,” Charlie said.

“Where’s Chuck?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said for the thousandth time.

Betsy said, “I hate not knowing what is going on.”

“I know,” Charlie said. She muttered, “I hate you hating not knowing what is going on.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Where’s Chuck?”

It wasn’t until mid-afternoon of the next day when Gary and Chuck returned to the house. The two men walked in the door trying to act casual, but they weren’t very convincing. One look at Betsy and they both knew she was a little irate. Rather than rushing to hug Chuck, she had stood there looking at the two men with an expression that could have curdled milk.

Betsy glared over at Gary. He looked over at a chair as if he noticed something interesting about it. She glanced at the chair, but didn’t see anything that should have attracted his attention like that. She knew he was hiding something from her.

She looked back at Chuck. He looked very uneasy as well. They were hiding something and the lack of smiles on their faces suggested that it was bad news.

Irritated, she asked, “Where were you?”

“I was in Los Angeles,” Chuck answered trying to adopt a nice conversational tone of voice.

He and Gary had a long hard discussion with Ed about what to tell Betsy and how to go about telling her. Chuck feared that she would over react in a way that would jeopardize her own security. She’d blame Gary for his kidnapping and fire him out of anger. He didn’t want that to happen.

Chuck didn’t blame Gary for anything that had happened to him. He had argued not to tell Betsy anything and just let her think that he taken off for a day or two. He wanted to say that he hadn’t acted in a responsible manner. After all, this relationship thing was still a little new to him. He figured that he’d take the fall for not having called her or answered his phone.

As always, Ed had argued for the truth. He felt they should tell her everything, but a little at a time. If she wanted a bit more, then tell her at least as much truth as Betsy could handle without getting over excited. Ed knew better than most, that people wanted the truth, but only in increments that they could handle.

On the other hand, Gary wanted to tell her everything. He knew he had failed, and was ready to offer his resignation. He accepted that it was his fault for not considering the possibility that someone would want to get at Betsy by using Chuck. It wasn’t until after they had discovered him missing that it dawned on him that Chuck could be a target.

Gary had always been a bodyguard. His role was to protect his principal against harm. The fact was that he wasn’t serving as her bodyguard any longer. In a way, he had come to rely upon her ability to protect herself when moving around. There was no way for any bodyguard to keep up with her once she started moving.

Gary was in charge of security. It was a job which entailed a different set of responsibilities than being a bodyguard. He had gotten into the mindset that his job was to provide security around the places where Betsy lived and worked. In that sense, he had done a good job. The house was now a fortress, covered with sensors that would detect any threat that approached the place. Her apartment was nearly as secure. The Bloated Shark had emergency communications equipment that could summon help in seconds, although these days it might take some time for help to arrive.

Gary knew that they didn’t have the personnel to provide around the clock security for Chuck without requiring Chuck to drastically change his lifestyle. In the current economic climate, it wasn’t going to be easy finding additional security personnel. Chuck was going to have to move out of his home where they could provide the security necessary to protect him. Gary was not aware that Betsy and Chuck had actually been discussing doing exactly that.

Chuck was sure that Betsy would smother him with bodyguards in an attempt to prevent something like this from ever happening again. He wanted to keep his freedom as much as possible. He figured that it wouldn’t happen again. After all, how many Detective Travers were out there? He assumed there wouldn’t be many, but all it took was one.

“You didn’t say anything to me about going to Los Angeles,” Betsy said with a frown.

She glanced back over at Gary. He was rocking back and forth on his heels. He wouldn’t look at her; finding something very interesting on the ceiling. She frowned.

“It was a spur of the moment trip,” Chuck said thinking that he hadn’t known about it until after he woke up there.

“You couldn’t have called?”

There was an edge to her voice letting him know that she was more than a little irritated at him. He tried not to act concerned, but he was. He wasn’t going to lie to her, although he wasn’t going to volunteer anything.

He answered, “I couldn’t.”

“What do you mean you couldn’t?”

“I was indisposed,” Chuck answered thinking that was a pretty good way of putting it.

Gary shot him a dark look. Indisposed was putting it mildly. Beaten half to death was more accurate.

“Indisposed?”

“Yeah.”

Betsy turned to Gary and asked, “What was the nature of his indisposition?”

“It’s complicated,” Gary answered.

She could see that they were hiding something and she wasn’t going to let them get away with it. She studied Gary and watched him shifting around guiltily. Chuck looked a little calmer.

“I want to hear the whole story, that is if you can find some short words to explain it to a simpleton like me,” Betsy said sarcastically.

She had spent the day thinking that Chuck had been in an accident and was lying in a gutter somewhere with a broken body awaiting discovery. Then she had discovered that Gary and Stacy were both missing. They had left without telling her what they were doing. She had taken that to mean that something really bad had happened.

Chuck said, “Betsy, drop it. I was indisposed and couldn’t call you. As soon as things cleared up, I came here.”

“I’m not going to drop it,” Betsy said.

“I fear that I am to blame for his absence. You’ll have my resignation once I have a chance to write it up,” Gary said.

“What are you talking about?” Betsy asked.

“I didn’t think to provide Chuck with the kind of security that should have been in place.”

Somewhat confused, Betsy asked, “Why would he need security?”

Deciding there was no way to bury it, Chuck came to a hard decision. He asked, “Do you want the long or short version?”

“Let’s start with the short version. Then we’ll move to the long version and finally, the very long version,” Betsy said earning a wince from both Chuck and Gary.

“I was abducted, tortured, rescued, healed, and then I came home,” Chuck answered thinking it couldn’t be put much more succinctly than that.

Betsy stood there with her mouth opening and closing, seeking something to say, but not having much luck in even figuring out where to begin. She looked over at Gary and could see that he didn’t look too happy.

“Abducted?”

“Yes.”

“Who abducted you?”

“Detective Travers,” Gary answered.

“Why?”

Chuck answered, “He wanted to know about the security around your place.”

“He tortured you?” Betsy asked feeling sick to her stomach.

She hadn’t really thought that Chuck would ever be in danger. She had never even considered the possibility. He didn’t do anything that would make himself a target, unlike everyone else she knew. Her parents were often exposed to danger because they were involved in fighting evil. Her brothers and sisters were also targets as a result of their activities.

The problem was that Chuck wasn’t a fighter like the other members of her family. He wasn’t even a public figure. He stayed around his store, and avoided publicity. He occasionally traveled with her, but she’d never thought that would expose him to danger other than as an innocent bystander, but she would be there to protect him.

“Yes. I wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to know.”

She looked over Chuck and examined him carefully. He didn’t look like he had been tortured. In fact, he looked pretty healthy. She wondered if he had been beaten with rolled up phone books to minimize the visible damage. If so, they hadn’t hurt him all that much.

She thought about him saying that he had gone to Los Angeles while indisposed. Indisposed meant that he hadn’t been in good condition. It dawned on her that he must have been in pretty bad shape.

Heart racing, she asked, “How bad was it?”

When Chuck looked away, Gary answered, “It was very bad. He required Kelly’s services.”

Betsy stared down at the floor quietly thinking about Gary’s answer. She knew how her mother healed people. The Goddess, in a sort of punishment for her mother’s challenge, had required her to have sex in order to heal people. If Chuck had required Kelly’s help to heal him, then her mother’s intervention had been rather intimate.

It went without saying that she wasn’t pleased to learn that her mother had sex with her fiancee. However, she knew that her mother wouldn’t have done it if the situation wasn’t dire. There were lines that her mother preferred not to cross and that was one of them. After all, she had not treated Carl after he had been injured in the fight.

In a tone of voice intending to let Gary know that she wasn’t going to accept half answers, she asked, “How bad was it?”

“Pretty bad.”

“How bad?”

Gary held out his tablet and said, “You can see for yourself.”

Betsy accepted the tablet from him thinking that she’d see Chuck a little beat up. She glanced down at the image of Chuck’s hand. Her face grew tight thinking that she’d enjoy pulling the fingernails off of the man who did this to Chuck. She could understand why Gary would take Chuck to her mother for healing. Every bone in his hand must have been broken.

Gary whispered to Chuck, “She’s going to blow.”

“Ya think?” Chuck asked rhetorically.

Betsy ignored the exchange. She went to the next image which showed his face. It took her a second to realize what she was looking at. It didn’t look like a human face. She could feel herself getting faint. It hurt far more than she could believe to see her boyfriend in such a horrible shape. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that he was okay now.