Angie stayed alert even though she could see Loubar dozing in a chair not far from her bed. There were no windows to the room, only a door- a metal door with a handle, not a lock. Her hands had gone to sleep some time ago and the cuffs were cutting into her ankles as she tried to keep her mind busy. Loubar held the keys to the cuffs in his pocket. She heard him talking to Rollie about the tracker and the antidote. What she didn’t know at the time was that Rollie had neither and her future was very precarious. She saw Loubar’s stun gun on the desk that he had rested his head for the moment. It was hard to believe that some woman had given birth to this bastard, she thought, incensed. She was strangely, not afraid- just so angry now. He was waiting for something…or someone, she knew that. His cell phone was by his hand as he slept. She rattled her cuffs to wake him up and with sheer force was able to make the bed move and hit the wall with a light thud. Loubar was up, in one graceful move like a cat and put his hand to her throat.

 

"Stop the racket!" he demanded but she kept trying to say something, to get him to remove the gag.

 

"What is it?" he asked her, and with his stun gun to her throat, pulled the gag out of her mouth.

 

" I need to go to the bathroom," Angie said, wincing. She was telling the truth, her bladder was full.

 

"Great, see that pot over there in the corner- that’s it. Here, I’ll just undo you from the bed and amuse myself as you try to make a run for it. Here we go…" he told her and began to unlock the arm and leg cuffs. Angie did not try to move fast or do anything to surprise him. She decided she would play it meek and frightened and see how that worked with him. To her surprise, he did not throw her around or was rough with her. He had to help her, in fact with her pants. She lowered her eyes embarrassed as she relieved herself, her cheeks reddening but his expression did not change. Out of this, she was hoping that he would leave her legs free when he brought her back to the bed, a gesture of some sort of hostage trust due to her behavior. He pushed her back on the bed, but the stun gun came to her throat again as he reapplied the cuffs. Loubar was far from underestimating his hostages.

 

"Tyler has such a brave little woman here," Loubar told her, touching her cheek with his finger, "it will be such a loss to kill you. You have a lot of nice qualities including tracking me down."

 

"It was your keys, I zoomed in on them from the video that you made," Angie told him, rather nonchalant, "and at your house, the download I did before your house blew. I knew I had twenty seconds- piece of cake."

 

Loubar smiled genuinely. If he didn’t have to kill her, he would have enjoyed keeping her around. Her intelligence was ideal and her body- well, he had quite enjoyed her at Tyler’s loft.

 

"Now, if only Tyler’s little pet robot had not pulled that stunt at the loft," he told her, "after I found out about his annoying, little, mutt’s injection and then tripped the ion sensors at the airport, I was very put off! I was almost caught!"

 

Angie looked puzzled, "There are ion sensors at the airports?"

 

"But of course, the general public doesn’t know about them but they are there- Interpol, the CIA, NSA, M-5, they all keep tabs. Tyler’s little ion bug has had me been jumping from place to place now for a week."

 

Loubar leaned down closer to her face, touching the line of her lips with his finger as she jerked her head away from his touch.

 

"You know, Tyler’s telling me he has never had a tracker. I believe him, because now I know who was doing the tracking all this time- that old Cuban, Montgreviejo. Tyler’s emotions will influence Montgreviejo now to get me what I really need," Loubar sized up, "your uncle will persuade his Interpol buddies to give him the antidote or Tyler will find a way. I have faith in him."

 

Angie stared at him, shaking her head, "But, why is it that they haven’t track you here?"

 

Because we are sitting underneath a nice, big uranium storage silo in the middle of Spain. I am a wolf in sheep’s clothing…" Loubar said, laughing out loud.

 

Angie sighed, resigned now that a rescue attempt was not going to happen and shut her eyes tightly as Loubar reapplied the gag.

****

 

Rollie was pacing in the villa room. Interpol would not give him the antidote to bargain with Loubar. Angie’s uncle, who worked for them had told him that he had done all that he could to get assistance but to no avail. Interpol would not deal with terrorists. Guillarmo had left him alone for awhile after he told him that Interpol would not deal. Angie’s uncle looked extremely tired and sick. He told Rollie that he was not giving up totally and he left him to follow up one last contact.

 

Rollie knew that Guillarmo’s hands were tied in a sense and that Interpol considered Angie not a very valuable hostage for negotiation or trade. He decided to talk with Syd. His old mate Syd was a good sounding board for this whole deal.

 

He found Syd on the set, packing up. There was going to be a memorial service for Dani and Dave the next day before the crew went home. Syd was directing his packing better than he did his movies that morning. He looked more relaxed and was sitting in his chair outside of his trailer. He had a cigar in his mouth and a beer in his hand.

 

"Syd?" Rollie called out, disturbing the director’s concentration on the last few things to be packed.

 

"Yeah? Oh- Rollie, it’s you. Come to get your gear?"

 

"Not yet, Syd. Got a problem."

 

"Don’t we all, mate."

 

"Um, Angie’s…"

 

"Angie’s the best thing that ever happened to you, Rollie," Syd remarked, and then shouted at one of the packers loading a truck to watch the last crate he was carelessly hauling up the ramp.

 

"No, Syd- listen- Loubar has Angie. He took her this morning early," Rollie told him softly.

 

"That blue-balled bastard!" Syd said, standing up out of his chair and looking at Rollie with his eyes fixed on Rollie’s; "has he contacted you?"

 

"Yeah- wants something that I don’t have or can get," Rollie told him, sighing and sitting down on the ground next to Syd’s chair.

 

"There’s no one that can help you?" Syd asked, sitting down again and touching his shoulder slightly.

 

"No- the police and Interpol won’t deal."

 

"What’s he want?" Syd asked, rolling his cigar between his fingers.

 

"An antidote- something that will destroy an ion tag in his blood system that Bluey injected him with due to negative fingerprint I.D. back in New York."

 

"Talk the Queen’s English to me, there Rol," Syd asked, a little baffled with the technical terms.

 

"It is a radioactive device that can be tracked. It stays in your blood. He was injected by Bluey out of defense and now can be traced all over the world."

 

"Sounds like Star Wars stuff," Syd commented, "but reminds me of something I saw on T.V. Some guy had something in his blood that he needed to get rid of, oh yeah- venom and they did this medical thing! They hooked him up to a machine and exchanged every drop of his blood just like that." Syd snapped his fingers and Rollie suddenly got an idea and stopped listening to Syd as he went on about how the director made a mistake with the lighting.

 

"Perfect! Syd, I could kiss you!" Rollie said, grabbing the cagey old director and smacking a kiss on his forehead.

 

"Oh, well- glad I could be of service there," Syd said, a little embarrassed.

 

Rollie took some of the F/X gear that had been shipped to the set and brought it back to his room at the villa. He was in a hurry. Guillarmo had been looking for him as he carried up the last box from the car.

 

"Loubar has called. He has given us 12 hours to find a solution," Guillarmo told Rollie solemnly.

 

"I’ve got an idea, Bill. We can try to play Loubar like he has done to us all this time over here," Rollie told him, patting him on the shoulder.

 

"I’m listening…" Guillarmo said, hoping that Tyler had indeed found a way.

 

"Okay, a while back, we did this movie with voodoo spells put on people and this psychiatrist who was trying to help these people out by telling them it was all in their minds…"

 

Guillarmo listened but he did not understand Rollie’s point so far.

 

"The psychiatrist decided that since they so firmly believed that they had a voodoo spell on them, there was no way that words would persuade them- that it would take a physical change in their body to show the purging of the spell from them."

 

Guillarmo only nodded but still was hoping that Rollie would get to the point soon.

 

"Okay, so he injects them with this stuff, calling it Voodoo spell Antidote and tells them it will make them pass the evil out of them."

 

Guillarmo shook his head. Did people pay money to see this movie, he wondered?

 

"Anyway, he told them that once they started to pass orange urine, that the spell would be broken and the evil purged."

 

"And this worked?" Guillarmo asked, "but of course, it was a movie so it did, right?"

"yep, they all were healed just like that. The stuff is called Pyridium and it is a smooth muscle anesthetic. People use it for bladder infections. That was all it was but the power of the mind was so strong, it worked for these people," Rollie told him, his mind racing.

 

"So, you propose to tell Loubar that you have the antidote, inject him with this drug and have him pee orange to persuade him that the ion has been purged. What happens when he checks it out with a tracking device?" Guillarmo asked.

 

"We got to get out before then," Rollie answered.

 

"You know he will test it before he lets Angie go," Guillarmo told him, sternly.

 

"I know that perfectly well," Rollie told him with a smile, "But we will be distracting him in the meanwhile with some rather nasty side effects."

 

"I don’t know, Tyler…" Guillarmo said, running his hand through his hair and thinking, "This is all so relative to him buying the Pyridium as the ion tagger."

 

 

"That’s what we have the nice movie magic for as well," Rollie told him with a smile, "I can rig up a machine that will work for the tech end of it and I just need a little cooperation on your end for a hospital or clinic that we can work this whole shenanigan out of…"

 

"He won’t bring Angie," Guillarmo warned.

 

"He must- it’s the deal he will make," Rollie told him, firmly.

 

"Now, I need you to get this clinic and this drug, Pyridium from your buddies at Interpol. That much, hopefully- they can help us with, eh?" Rollie asked, smiling.

 

Guillarmo didn’t know what to think but then again, he had watched Tyler perform miracles over the years. He would do this thing that he asked. He prayed that Angela would be spared in this game of cons.

 

Rollie waited for the call from Loubar. They stayed in the villa room and counted the hours.

 

At 9 PM that night, Loubar called to see if Tyler had come through for him.

 

"So, you have the antidote now from Interpol?" Loubar asked suspiciously.

 

"On its way. We will meet you in the clinic de ayudar in Toledo. Bring Angie," Rollie told him and gave directions for the clinic.

 

Loubar was still suspicious and responded; "If there is one thing out of line, even a hair out of place, Tyler- she goes."

 

"You’ve got my word that we have the purge antidote, Loubar," Rollie told him and added, "don’t you hurt her again, you hear me?"

 

"Tyler, would I do that? Just tell me the time- we’ll get there in one piece," Loubar told him firmly.

 

By the time Victor Loubar had gotten off the phone, Angie was trying to put together just from Loubar’s one-sided conversation, what was really going on.

 

"Let’s get your dancing shoes on, my dear," Loubar told her, starting to uncuff her feet, " we’ve got a narrow window for tracking times. It’s best we get started now."

 

Angie rubbed her wrists where her skin was numb and looked up as Loubar put a blindfold over her hurriedly. He was determined to get through this quickly. She wondered what Rollie was up to and if she could follow his lead when Loubar got them to their fixed destination. She longed to be back in Rollie’s arms and free of Loubar.

 

She was placed in the trunk of a car, she could smell the gasoline and rubber from the spare tire as she rolled over roughly with the insane driving skills that Loubar possessed. They finally stopped and she heard the sound of the car door slamming and footsteps as they walked away from the trunk of the car. She laid this way in the dark, her hands and feet bound with no further sounds. It was time, she thought then and with all her might, she kicked with her feet into the area where the back seat formed the back of the trunk. Little by little, she inched her way up and squeezed through the cushion of the back seat from the trunk. During her crawl, she managed to free the blindfold from her face and she looked around, taking in a deep breath and choked in sheer fear.

 

She sat in the back of a car that was suspended by a rope to a tree where she could see a timing device with a charge next to it. She looked forward for the car was pitched downward and then she panicked as her body movement made the car rock back and forth. She was in a car that had been dangled over the side of a cliff. Below was a craggy, sheer drop down to the canyon floor some thousand yards down. Loubar had no intention of keeping his promise to Rollie.