3

Gabriel Davis woke up the next morning with a raging headache and a sour stomach. When he tried to sit up he felt his stomach heave in protest and he had to fight back the ever rising contents of his upset stomach.

He has very little recollection of what happened last night. All that he remembers is getting a call from a few of his older buddies from work, and them asking if they could use his basement for a while. When he had inevitably asked them what that wanted to use it for, they had invited him out for a drink to discuss it.

Everything after that was a blur, as he proceeded to get black out drunk. He vaguely remembers Phil from work bitching about old man Kensington and how that bastard had screwed them over. The others begin to rant with him as well until it had become a bitch fest of sorts.

Gabe had to admit that he was pissed at the damn man as well. They get paid every two weeks and this past pay day all of the workers were informed that pay roll hadn't come in so there were no checks to be given out to them. Considering that checks were held back two weeks from when you start, that is a month of work that they were not being paid for because 'the company was having financial trouble'. Over two thousand dollars worth of money that was rightfully his.

The head of HR had reached out to old man Richard Kensington himself, but he was never able to make it passed Kensington's bull dog of a secretary. She gave him the talk around about how incredibly busy Mr. Kensington was and how important his time was. She would not disclose any information, as she was clearly trying to protect her employer. In the end, what it boiled down to was that Kensington did not give a damn about any of his employees. If he did, he would have found a way to pay them for their work.

After the workers were informed that they would not be recieving their highly deserved paychecks, Phil, Tommy, Mikey and a few others got all the workers gathered around and they preached out a speech to get the masses all kinds of fired up. Words like 'strike', 'respect' and 'due compensation' were bandied about until there was a mass walk out of over two thousand employees.

Phil practically passed out torches and pitchforks as he rounded up a lynch mob for the witch hunt. Gabe thought that his speech and the things that he said were a bit on the dramatic side. Gabe agreed that they should not be working for the man's factory if the were not getting paid for it. He wasn't free labor, so he didn't mind the walk out. He was on board with that. His problem had been all the extra shit that Phil had spewed. But others agreed with him and almost every one walked out. Old man Kensington was forced to close down the factory, which means that he would not be able to make his deliveries for the week, which would ultimately set him back quite a pretty penny.

Phil said he had heard rumors that Kensington might have to sell the company. Gabe would probably have felt sorry for the man un normal circumstances, if he were not such a horrible person. He came once to the factory to do an 'accessment' of the workers and the building. It was pretty much just thirty minutes of him walking through the plant looking down his nose at everyone who was working.

He saw some of the deplorable working conditions and the only address he made towards the topic was to blame the employees for the shabby state of the building. He said in a condescending tone that if the employees would take just a little more pride in the work place and treat the building with a little more respect, then it would be in better condition. He informed the plant manager that he was not going to be repairing anything, unless it directly helped the production of his toys and other parts. Anything else would just be for the employees benefits and thus far, they had not deserved such an act of consideration.

From that moment on, Gabe had detested the man. He had lost all respect for the 'boss' and he stopped going out of his way to be a model employee as he had before. That meant no longer working late off the clock to help get essembly done, if the line had fallen behind. That was not his job.

Now he goes into work, gets his job done within the designated time that he is suppose to be clocked in and then he leaves for the night. Or at least, that was what he use to do. As of a few days ago, he is 'on strike' with all of the other workers, which essentially means that he is currently unemployeed.

Since they had walked out of their job, rather than being fired, he was pretty sure that meant that they did not qualify for unemployeement. Which meant that his day was going to be spent job hunting. With his responsibilties, he had to have money coming in. He could not afford to be picky about hours and prefered pay at this point, so he had to take any job that he could find. No matter how crappy a job it was.

Gabe stands up and slowly makes his way towards the bathroom. Along the way vague memories of last night haunt him, playing in broken scnes in his mind. Images of being at the bar with the guys. Drinking beer after beer, only to chase it with shots of whiskey. Phil going on and on about 'the plan'. 

Gabe has a vague recollection of Phil explaining that this 'fool proof plan' was how they were going to 'stick it' to old man Kensington. By taking his precious daughter from him. 

Suddenly Gabe's stomach revolts as all of the events of the night coming flooding back to him in a dizzying rush. He barely makes it back to the toilet before he is emptying his stomach of old alcohol and stomach acid. When he finally is done, he can only lean against the bathtub for support, since his strength has momentarily deserted him.

They had kidnapped a girl last night.

Not just any girl. The worse possible girl that they could have taken. The daughter of none other than Richard fucking Kensington. The pampered little princess who is no doubt a chip off of the old block.

All of the rumors that he has heard about her was that she was a prissy, stuck up snob. That she does not socialize with anyone because she feels that everyone else is beneath her. She also dresses so pretentiously that it is sickening. Last night she was sitting at a bistro and she was dressed to the hilt. Even through his alcohol altered haze, he could recognize how ridiculous it was. She dresed as if she thought she was the queen of England.

When he can stand upright once more, Gabe leaves the bathroom and heads down the hallway. Stopping outside of her door, he slowly pushes it open, in the hopes of not waking her if she is asleep. Gabe watches her for a moment as she sleeps, smiling indulgently.

She has been doing better this last week and he really hopes that it lasts. She opens her eyes slowly and she smiles when she sees him standing in the doorway. “Gabriel.”

“Good morning, mama. I didn't mean to wake you. I was just checking on you as I wa walking past your room. How are you this morning?” Gabe moves slowly into the room.

“I am feeling okay, mostly.  I am just a bit tired.” She tells him. Coming to tand beside of her, he takes her frail hand in his, stroking the translucent skin on the top of her hand.

“We will have to remember to ask Dr. Palmer if that is normal when we go for your appointment with him next week.” Gabe tells his mother

He rubs the back of his neck as he feels the stress knotting his muscles with tension. He refuses to let her see how worried he actually is. Every day he battles his anxiety of her failing health and the thoughts that he could lose her at any moment. Now he gets to add in the worries of how he will be able to afford to pay for all of her co-pays and make up the difference that insurance won't pay towards her many treatments.

Gabe's mother, Liza Davis, is a forty-one year old woman who was in the prime of her life, when one day she went to the doctor for headaches, dizziness and nausea. Her skin would flush and she assumed that she was going through 'the change of life' and that it was merely 'hot flashes'. Her doctor agreed that it could be, but decided to run some tests any ways, before settling on that diagnosis.

The results came back that she had an abnormally high level of excess hormones in her body. A few week and numerous  expensive tests later and they had finally found the cause. A few weeks ago she was diagnosed with a Neuroendocrine tumor in her appendix. It was an aggressively growing tumor that puts out high levels of hormones.

They immediately planned to go in a remove the appendix, hoping to take the cancer with it. They successfully removed it, but it appeared to have spread into her small intestine. Her oncologist, Dr. Palmer, put her on a medicine to help control the excessive hormone levels and he wanted to try targeted drug therapy, before they went the route of chemo.

In two weeks time, she is scheduled to go in for surgery to hopefully remove the tumor and cells in the small intestine. At the rate it is growing, there is a chance that he might have to remove a rather large section of her small intestine. Recovery would take longer and she would have to stay in the hospital for a bit longer than they had planned, which means a higher bill.

One that he had no way to afford now that he did not have a job. He was counting on this pay check to buy her medicines, which their insurance does not cover. It is two hundred and thirty-six dollars for a thirty day supply of the pills. Besides that, she has other daily medicines that insurance pays on, but there is still a fee for them. All in all, he pay nearly five hundred dollars a month in prescription medicines.

Not that he minded paying for it. He would do anything for her. He wa just stressing about how he was going to afford it all. When he adds her medical costs in with utilities, groceries and other monthly expenses, it runs into an astronomical amount.

Liza is on a 'special' diet that can sometimes be rather costly, but Gabe can't worry about that. He has no thought in his mind of how hard it is to afford. He does not begrudge her the fact that he has to work hard to support her medical expenses. He loves his mother more than anything in the world and he would do anything for her. Like working his ass off at a job he hates. Or doing spare jobs around town, while also moonlighting a few shifts at the gas station down the road from their house.

Or even more extreme, like going along with a kidnapping scheme of his former boss's daughter, to hold her for an unreasonably high ransom. That is the type of shit that he will do in order to give his mother the proper care that she deserves. 

Liza was a single mom who had been forced to raise Gabe all on her own. She never had help from anyone. When she got pregnant by her loser boyfriend, her parents had kicked her out of their home and stopped speaking to her, despite the fact that she was just shy of seventeen. She hadn't been old enough to live alone but they didn't care. Even after Gabe's dad had ran off with a bartender that he had met the night before, her parents still felt no sympathy for her. They had turned their back on her and nothing was going to change their minds. Liza's parents had washed their hands of her.

Throughout the entirety of her pregnancy, Liza had worked three jobs, running herself ragged to save up money. She had lived in the old beater car that he had paid six hundred dollars for. She would park it in the back parking lot of a truck stop, since that was the only place that did not have the local police run her off every night. Every bit of money she earned was put in a ziploc freezer bag under her car seat in the hopes of keeping it safe.

When Gabe was born, she got a small studio apartment in an up and coming neighborhood. Over the course of his childhood she worked nights so that she could spend her days with him. She took him to the park to play and she would swing him for hours, even at times when she had worked so much that she was dead on her feet. It never stopped her. She had paid one of her friends from school to watch Gabe at night while she worked.  

Liza had always done what she had to do to give him a good life and now Gabe is trying his best to repay her for that love and devotion. Now it is his turn to take care of her and he plans to devote the same amount of effort that she put into taking care of him.

Liza's eyes begin to drift closed and Gabe pushes a strand of hair back from her face. Leaning down he kisses her forehead, before he straightens up to quietly leave the room so that she can get some much needed rest. 

She has been sleeping all the time it seems over the last couple of weeks. It worries Gabe how little energy she has. His biggest fear is that she is losing her battle with cancer and that he is in turn losing her. That is something that he is not prepared to handle. 

Once in the hall, he thinks about Richard's daughter that is possibly in his basement. He really hopes that his is all just one big whiskey induced nightmare and that the only thing in his basement is that broken dresser, a few dusty, long forgotten boxes and his dented up tool box.

Gabe walks down the hallway until he is standing in front of the door that will lead to the basement. A part of him does not want to find out if someone is down their either way. But the thought that someone is down there.. he has to know. He is so against this plan, but he has to be honest enough to admit that the lure of the money holds a large appeal for him. Phil wants to ransom the girl for half of a million dollars.

Five hundred thousands dollars.

Split flour ways that is one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars each. That money would help him so much. He could pay of Liza's fifty-two thousand dollar hospital bill in one cash payment. He could buy her any medicines that she might need. He would even have enough money to fix the house up and still have a bit to put back for emergencies.

That thought is what gets him opening the door to the basement. Pulling the string that will click on the bare bulb to light up the stairs, he descends them. When he reaches the cold concrete at the bottom, he stops to take a deep breath. Stepping into the basement, he flicks on the light switch and looks around.

“Damn it all to hell!”

Gabe looks around in anger as he takes in the scene before him. The two small windows that are on either side of the large room are boarded up. The dresser is where he left it, but his tool box is gone. His boxes were all shoved into one corner, some ripped, with the contents threatening to spill out at any moment.

But what makes him angry is the heap in the middle of the floor. There is nothing there between the girl and the harsh cold of the floor. She is laying on her stomach, with her hands tied behind her back and her feet bound just above the ankles.

She is laying so perfectly still that a large part of Gabe is terrified that she might have frozen to death last night, once the temperature had dropped. It gets pretty damn cold this time of year and this old, drafty basement offers no shelter from the elements.

Moving over to the girl, Gabe carefully lays a hand on her cheek. It is ice cold to the touch and he nearly hyperventilates, thinking that she might actually be dead. She still has the tape across her mouth and the blindfold on as well, so he can't now for sure if she is unconcious, dead or merely asleep.

Turning her over onto her back, Gabe notices just how beautiful she is. Moving the blindfold away from her eyes, he strokes her cheek softly. “Come on, Kensington.” Pressing two fingers to the base of her neck, he feels the weak but steady pulse beneath his fingers and his shoulders sag in relief.

He nudges her shoulder. “Wake up.”

Suddenly her eyes open wide to reveal shock and horror, looking around the room that she is trapped in. Gabe feels like shit when he sees the tears fill her eyes and her chest starts rising and falling harder with fear. She is beginning to panic, not that he blames her.

“Are you okay?”