Charming Deception, Page 14.

“How touching! Such a sweet and loving couple. I’ve got to hand it to you, Blake,” says the man who seems to be in charge of the other three, who are standing there with weapons drawn.

“Get out of the van,” he orders. “Move slowly. Molly Kasjak, put your shoes on.”

I look up at this strange guy with a foreign accent, German maybe. “I’m Samantha Blake, not Molly Kasjak,” I say calmly, bravely, and confidently. “You’ve kidnapped the wrong person, Bozo.”

“Put your shoes on, whatever the hell your name is.”

I crawl around the floor of the van looking for my shoes while two men pull Jaks roughly out of the van and push him around the van toward the back of the warehouse.

“No, I’m staying with my wife. No, I’m not leaving her alone with you. Sam, run! Let me go. Don’t you even touch her,” I hear him shouting as they drag him away. I crawl out of the van and walk in front of the man in charge. He motions me to the side door. We go in and up a flight of rusty, old, rickety metal steps to a clean, well-maintained office.

“Sit, Molly.” I sit in the plush leather office chair near an executive-sized desk, I lean back, cross my legs, and get comfortable. I look around. One exit, down the rickety steps. A wall of barred windows. No way out. I take a deep breath, eyeing my captor. Light complexion, blue eyes, balding. Medium build, muscular, about middle forties.

“Sam. My name is Sam, not Molly. And what exactly do you want with me, Mr…?”

“Your cooperation, Sam. You may call me Werner.”

“And if I don’t cooperate, Werner?”

“We will kill Jakson Blake.”

“Where is he, Werner?”

“Being subdued. He tried to get away from us, to be with you, I’m guessing from his rants.”

“May I see him?”

“In due time. After you complete a project for us. We need you to decode a message. And then encode our answer. As soon as you are done, and the message is sent, received, and acknowledged, you may see Jakson Blake.

Some papers were laid out on the desk. I look them over and began to concentrate.

“What is this? Nothing makes sense to me here. I need...”

“Don’t try it! If you irritate me, Blake will pay dearly. I am not a patient man.”

“I need paper and some pencils, and a pen. I’m not stalling, Werner. Don’t hurt him.”

He opens the desk drawer and puts the supplies on the desk. I get to work. I draw out a table and put values in the chart.

“A calculator would really speed up this process.”

He hands me one from his jacket pocket. I get back to work. I work as quickly as I can without forsaking accuracy in solving the equations, but it still takes me a few hours.

“Okay. This is it. It makes absolutely no sense at all, but there are no errors.”

Werner takes the paper from me, reads it, writes an answer and hands it back to me. I quickly encode it and hand it back. He types it into his laptop and we wait. Soon it beeps a notification.

“Message received and acknowledged,” he smiles at me. “Good work, Samantha Blake.”

“Now may I please see my husband?”

Werner motions me to the hallway with his gun. We walk down the hall.

“Here,” he stops at a door. “He’s in here.” Werner opens the door. Jaks is tied in a chair, lower lip bleeding, right cheek bruised. Definitely roughed up.

14.