Page 109 of Protecting Addison
MacGyver had never felt like this before. The relief was overwhelming. Tears sprang to his eyes. He’d come so close to losing part of his family. He needed to talk to the girls. Get their stories. Figure out what happened so it would never happen again. Yes, he’d heard Vogel’s side of the situation, but he had no doubt that the man had downplayed the events.
“Are you all right?” he asked, pulling back and putting his hands on Yana’s cheeks, running his gaze up and down her body, checking for injuries, for anything that looked out of place. Her hair was in disarray, she was dirty, there was a small scrape on her face, and she had a stuffed bear in her arms that MacGyver had never seen before…but otherwise, she looked remarkably whole.
“I am okay,” Yana said clearly. “Ellory here. She help. Safe.”
He interpreted his daughter’s words easily. She was learning English so quickly…Tears sprang to his eyes again. “Ellory?” he asked, looking over at the preteen and his wife. “Are you good?”
“Yeah.”
“Not hurt?” MacGyver clarified.
“No. I think I scraped my side getting out of the container, but otherwise I’m okay. Scared and so glad to see you and Mom, but okay.”
MacGyver held out an arm, and both Ellory and Addison leaned into him. The four of them knelt there on the ground and held each other. Thanking their lucky stars that they were together again.
Ellory lifted her head and looked at MacGyver. “He was here just a few minutes ago, still looking for us. Black shirt, jeans. He has brown hair and it’s cut real short. He’s not too tall. And not fat but…thick.”
Once again, MacGyver was amazed by Ellory. She had every right to be hysterical, and yet she was doing her best to help catch the guy who’d sold them.
“On it,” Kevlar said from behind MacGyver. He turned to the dozen or so men who were standing around and ordered, “Fan out. Find him.No oneleaves this yard without being questioned.”
Immediately, the SEALs who’d come to find the girls disappeared behind Conexes, looking for the man Ellory described. Everyone except for MacGyver’s team. They were all surrounding the family. Protecting them.
Ellory stepped back from her mom, and Yana pulled away from MacGyver to hug her, holding on to her sister just as tightly as she had to him. The girls had been through something that had obviously strengthened the bond between them.
Looking around at MacGyver’s teammates, Ellory gave them a small smile. “You’re all here. Wait, where’s Artem and Borysko? Did he take them?! It was Brady!” she blurted, looking at her mom in a panic.
“Shhhh, we know. Your brothers are safe. Wolf is back at the house with them, along with Remi, Wren, Josie, Maggie, and a few others. And Brady’s in custody. He admitted what happened.”
“Hisstory about what happened,” MacGyver interrupted. “Can you tell us your side?”
“I was called out of class. He told me that you were both hurt, that you weredying, and he was there to pick me up and bring me to you. I asked him to pick up Yana too, because I know that’s what you always did, Mom, and I had no idea how long I’d be at the hospital and I didn’t want her to be left at school. Then he brought us here instead of the hospital, took my phone, and he hurt Yana to make me get out of his car. Then he and the other guy locked us in the container. He said he sold my organs! That my heart was going to go to some girl overseas.”
Ellory’s eyes filled with tears as she leaned into Addison. Yana’s arms were still around her sister, trying to offer her support.
“Why would he do that?” she asked quietly. “I thought he wanted to get to know me.”
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” Addison said. “Some people are just…”
As she searched for the right word, MacGyver finished for her. “Evil. Some people are just evil, El. Vogel is more interested in money than anything else. It has nothing to do with you, sweetheart. If he could get money out of his own mother, I’m sure he would’ve tried.”
The preteen took a deep breath then nodded. She wiped her face with her shoulder and stood up straighter. “He said he was going to blameme. That he could do something with my phone to make it look like I texted him and asked him to pick me up. That it was my idea to say you guys had been in an accident. But I didn’t! Iwouldn’t.”
“We know, El. We have a guy looking at your phone records, he’ll be able to prove that the texts were fake and the timestamps were manipulated,” MacGyver soothed. He stood and picked up Yana, wanting her in his arms.
She held out the bear she was holding. “Beary!”
MacGyver smiled. “He’s very cute.”
“Song. Lights!”
“It plays ‘Jingle Bells’ and has flashing lights,” Ellory said. “There were boxes of them in the container we were in. I found them, and we used them for light to see what else we could find.”
MacGyver had never been so proud of anyone in his life. “And? What else did you find?”
“Well, no cell phones to call for help, but there were these ridiculous little tool sets. With these tiny hammers and screwdrivers in them? I saw that the bottom of the container was rusted out, so we used the tools to make the hole as big as we could. Then when the Conex was lifted, we dropped out the bottom and ran.”
Ellory turned toward his teammates, who were listening intently even as they watched for anyone who might spring out from behind one of the containers to attack the girls. They had no indication that would happen, but no one was taking any chances.
