When Andy woke up, he found himself in a cell. It looked like he was in a dungeon. There were a two other cells but only one other had someone in it. That cell was on the other side of the room, and he couldn't see who was in there. He was fairly sure it was a woman, but he just could see who.
"Hello? Can you hear me?" Asked Andy to the woman in the other cell when she started to move about in her cot. "Are you okay?"
Her only response was a small groan as she shifted. Then she was silent again, and Andy waited. He waited for her to wake up and waited for whoever kidnapped him to show themselves.
Maggie sat on the sofa waiting for Andy to return from the dentist's appointment. He should have been back by now and her calls to Brighton had gone unanswered, so her level of worry grew exponentially. She couldn't help but wonder where Andy could be.
Brighton and his tech used the computer to follow the tracker to where Andy was being held. It had taken them over thirty minutes to get the computer to sync up with the tracker in Andy's shoe and then another 30 minutes for it to pinpoint Andy's exact location. They had taken Andy from the dental office over an hour ago, and the wire malfunctioned. Brighton wanted to get to his location as quickly as possible.
Andy was sitting on the bed in his cell. The person in the other cell still had said nothing to him but was moving around a bit more. There were some stairs just to his left. They led up to what Andy assumed with the main floor of the house he was in. The door at the top of the stairs opened and someone started down the stairs.
Madeline gracefully came down the stairs carrying three bags. She had a serene smile on her face as she handed one bag to Andy. Then she walked to the cell across from his and placed a second bag inside that cell. After looking longingly in at the inhabitant, Madeline made her way to the third cell and went in, closed the door behind her and sat down.
"There is some water and a snack in the bag for you, dear one." She breathed, then opened her own bag and took out her bottle of water and sipped.
"What the hell is going on here?" asked Andy. "Why are you in that cell?"
"I'm here because he told me to come here and wait for him. He wanted us all to be together." She answered. "Our little family all together finely."
"Who is he?" asked Andy.
"I am your birth father." Said the man, coming down the stairs. "I never got to be part of the decision about our family when you were born, so I am making the decisions now."
"Mr. Ogden?" said Andy. "But you are the CEO of Rider Engineering, the company I work for! I don't get it. What is going on here?"
"I am the CEO; and I am also your father…"
"My father is in Oregon. His name is Jonathan. You are not my father," said a defiant Andy.
"You are right, I am your birth father, and as such, I am now choosing to become the head of this family. You will all follow my rules, and I will then treat you fairly." Said Ogden.
"I'm not following your rules. Except for the ones I have to at work. You are my birth father, not my real father. I owe you nothing," Said Andy, who was feeling furious about the entire situation.
"Andy, don't be that way! You don't know what he will do to punish you. He will hurt the ones you care about…Like Maggie." Said Madeline, who was on the verge of tears. "That's what he did to me."
"Screw you, old man!" said the voice from the cell across from Andy. "I'm with Andy! I'm not following your rules either."
Jessica had finally woken all the way up and was standing up in the middle of her cell. As defiant as her twin brother.
Andy was trying to keep the discussion going, hoping to give Brighton and his team time to get there and arrest this maniac before anything crazy happens to him, his sister, or his birth mother. From what he could tell, more than an hour had passed since they had taken him. He was sure Brighton would be there soon. He just needed to keep the conversation going without making his birth father too angry.
"You will follow my rules, or your loved ones will be the ones to pay, just as Madeline has warned you." Ogden ordered. "I expect obedience. I am the head of this family, and you will do as I say."
All at once, there were flashes of light and loud bangs everywhere. Andy ducked under his bed in his cell. Police officers rushed into the basement and took down Ogden in a flurry of movement. Brighton stood over him with his gun drawn and looked at the CEO of Andys company and read him his rights.
They released Andy and his sister from their cells, but they took his birth mother and father into custody. She may have been coerced into helping him, but she had helped. She was likely going to face some charges.
When they went up to the main floor of the house, Andy and Jessica found their belongings. The first thing Andy did was call Maggie to let her know he was okay.
When her phone finally rang, Maggie was a bundle of nerves. To hear Andy's voice on the other end of the line brought her to tears. Amelia helped her to the sofa and held her hand while the two talked on the phone.
Maggie was shocked to find that out. After everything they had thought about Madeline and Jessica, the culprit turned out to by Andy's birth father! She had not seen that one coming! Andy promised to give her and Amilia the full story when he got back to the Safehouse.
They would all be able to go home now. Maggie's excitement lasted only a moment; she remembered that someone had torched her small condo, requiring repairs before she could return. The wave of excitement turned into a flood of grief.
All the ups and downs were making Maggie feel like she had bipolar disorder. That was one thing she did not need added to her life. What she wanted now was for Andy to get back to the house, for them all to have a nice dinner together, and for her to get work started on the repairs to her condo so she could go home.
Together, Maggie and Amelia started a celebratory dinner with the food that was in the house. Hamburgers, air-fried French fries, a salad, and ice cream for dessert. They even fried up the last of the bacon in case anyone wanted to make their burger into a bacon cheeseburger.
Brighton and Andy arrived at the Safehouse just as the last of the dinner preparations were being completed. They each took a turn in the bathroom to freshen up and rejoined the group in the dining room. With the case solved, the two police officers had been relieved from duty and were gone, so it would just be the four of them for dinner.
"Oh, this tastes so good!" said Andy, as he started in on a second bacon cheeseburger. He never had lunch because of the pretend trip to the dentist and the second kidnapping.
"I'm glad you like it," Answered Amelia. "Now, fill us in on the details of the arrest of the kidnapper!"
Brighton updated Maggie and Amelia on what happened at the Ogden house when they arrived to find Andy. They discovered that Matthew Ogden's father had raised him in an authoritarian home where his rules were law. When Madeline had gotten pregnant, Ogden's father had locked him in one cell in the basement for several months. His life growing up continued to be riddled with punishment after punishment for even the smallest infractions. He grew up thinking that was house families worked and that one day he would get his family back. He would get Madeline and their babies back and rule with his own iron fist.
Over time, he had wormed his way back into Madeline's life and systematically began to psychologically abuse her until she would do anything he told her to do. Then he started on a plan to work his way into the lives of Andy and Jessica. That is when he hired Andy to work as an engineer at his company.
Worming his way into Jessica's life had been harder because she was more of a free spirit and hadn't really developed a career as much as an accumulation of various jobs. There was nothing for him to lure her in with work wise. He ended up kidnapping her and locking her in a cell. That was how she ended up losing her job, because he had kidnapped her.
Ogden had kept Jessica drugged to keep her under control over the last several days, and he had been imprecise with the dosage; therefore, she was staying overnight in the hospital for observation because she felt unwell after their rescue. Andy planned to pick her up and take her home when they released her late the next day.
At the police station Ogden had ranted and raved about how he was the head of the family, and they were all required to do as he said, and now he would have to punish all three of them. He went against the advice of this lawyer and provided every detail of how he got the information on each of them, how he could blackmail Michael into doing his bidding, every little detail of the entire plot to kill Maggie and the Rose's are Red, Violets are Blue poems.
Everything was tied up with a tidy little bow except for Maggie's condo. It still needed to be cleaned and repaired from the fires that had been lit a few nights ago.
Brighton excitedly told Maggie that the victim witness program had hired a vendor to work on her condo, and the work had already begun. Luckily, the damage was minimal, and everything would be finished the next day. Most of the work needed was cleaning up after the fire department.
Maggie was so excited to hear the news that she jumped up and gave Brighton a big hug. The gruff older man blushed and fidgeted in his seat with embarrassment.
"Thank you so much, Brighton! You don't know what this means to me!" said Maggie.
"I didn't really do much. I just submitted your name for their help. They did all the work in getting a vendor to do the cleaning and repair work to get it ready for you to move back in," he explained.
"Well, thank you for submitting my name, so they would do the work. I appreciate it very much." Said Maggie. "I can't wait to get back to my little home and sleep in my own bed."
With dinner and dessert finished, Brighton excused himself. He had left the residents of the Safehouse knowing that they were safe, and a van would be there in the morning to take them home. Pick up time would be at 9am.
Amelia also excused herself to go to her bedroom to call her husband. She was now free to fill him in on all the details of what had been going on over the last few days. Amelia decided she would be a bit vague about her kidnapping, so he would not be too upset by everything that had happened to her and her best friend. She knew he would be both upset and angry that she and Maggie had taken such chances instead of calling the police for help.
The conversation with her husband went exactly as she expected. Amelia was glad to be on the phone with him rather than in person. She didn't think she could have handled his emotional outburst in person. Overall, he was glad they were both safe, but he was indeed angry that they had taken the food out to the kidnappers without police involvement. He was horrified that someone had kidnapped her, left her for dead in an abandoned warehouse, and that someone from the culprit's group had broken into the Safehouse where she was staying.