Divorced! Now what?
Chapter 78

Theo POV

The heat image cannot replace people underground, or so I am told. However, if they have a fire going for heat or cooking, we might replace them. We are hoping that whoever is holding Bethany is not too smart, and Danny is going to fly over today. If there is no success, we will go again at night. We might be lucky. We need an idea of which one of the three places they are held up in if the imaging fails; Bob suggested we send in a tiny camera on wheels, but we need to be pretty close to operating it. It is hard sitting here watching the black screen and mobile, waiting for something to happen; after about two hours, we heard that we would need to do a night run. The image was not clear, so Bob suggested we get some rest; Danny would keep someone watching the camera for any movement. In the meantime, Scott is organizing a group to go in at a moment's notice. Bob is not going to risk letting anyone in the police force know what we are up to. He said he had yet to get all the informants, and he was sure he was missing something, a piece of the puzzle that would connect the last few dots. The growing number of people involved in this scam is huge, and it is all for power and money. It never fails to shock me what some will do for either of those.

I must have been exhausted because the next thing I knew, Bob was in my room, shaking me to wake up.

'Hey, come get some coffee and dinner. The helicopter just took off, and I thought you might want to be there when they reached the tunnel. There has been no activity so far since Bethany was dropped off. Bob left me a coffee on the bedside table and left me to wake up. I could smell food cooking, and my stomach grumbled to remind me that I had only eaten a cake since the party and needed to get something into it. I might not be interested in eating, but I needed to keep strong when I got my lady back. I took a large gulp of the coffee and headed to the bathroom to wash my face and empty my bladder, which was complete and ready to burst. The body was excellent; the moment I reached the bathroom, I nearly peed myself; one look at the shiny white bowl, and I was a child again, with hardly any bladder control as I rushed to lift the lid and let that baby flow.

Bob cooked steak and eggs, and he is a pretty good cook, which does not surprise me, as he seems to be good at most things he puts his hands on. We sat in front of the television, watching some sports updates as we waited. I understood the need for some normality. The only difference today was, instead of his paperwork on stats, he had his laptop open on some police line, and at any moment, the screen on the television could change from sports reports to thermal imagining. The time I spent with Bob was special; he let few people near him when he was working, and his having me here said a lot about the trust he had in me and my relationship with Bethany.

'That was great, Bob. Thank you,' I said as I wiped my mouth, removing the gravy that had dribbled down my chin, and rubbed my belly in appreciation.

'It was not like Bethany's cuisine, but it was not half bad. The mention of Bethany's name made me blink a few times, pick up my coffee, and finish it. 'Want another coffee?' I offered as I cleared the plates.

'Sure, there might be some cake left over in the fridge, too, Bob suggested as he flicked through something on his laptop. When I returned to the lounge with the coffee and cake, the television was screening the view below the helicopter. It was nearing the underpass, and I yelled just before it reached the pass.

'LOOK. I quickly put the coffee down and rushed to the television to point to what I was looking for. If you were unfamiliar with the underground sections, you would not know how far from the cave's underpass was.

'Is that a campfire?' Bob said and ordered the helicopter to pass by again.

We waited with bated breath as the chopper circled and the sign of a fire beneath the surface appeared. We could not see the bodies; they did not give off enough heat and were too far underground, but we now knew where they were camped, in the largest of the

caverns.

This discovery gave me hope, and I did one of Bethany's happy dances in the lounge room, causing Bob to laugh and jump up and join me. It was a good moment, and hopefully, with more to come, we did a doozie do and hi-five. You would think we won the finals, but we both knew this was not even a semi-final yet; we had a long way to go.

'Time to get Scott in on the action; he should have men ready to go. Under normal situations, I would first ask for some surveillance, but we know that Bethany is hurt. How bad is that? We won't know till we get there. I have surveillance on Cynthia. If there is any sign of her moving to the underpass, I will have her intercepted. Bob called Scott, and I had no idea they knew each other that well. He is a good friend of mine, and that was why I contacted him. He was already working on the case when I had called him, and apparently, that gave Scott a better idea for doing what he was doing rather than a covert operation under orders of secrecy.

Could you speak to me?' Scott said, and I chuckled as if he would have said that to me.

'Sending you a link. We have located heat below the surface, and we believe that could be their campfire. We wait for Scott to log into the link and speak again. Twenty painful minutes later.

'Agreed, do you have any orders?' Wow, Scott is being full-on. I have never seen this side of him. He is usually jovial, even when we are serious. He seems to have a quiet nature about him, but this one he is showing is all battle-ready and ready to fight. 'Target is injured, so surveillance is not an option; the depth of the tunnel is too far to drill down and send in a camera; if there is a fire, is there a vent shaft nearby?' He asked, and I thought for a moment, and unless they had created one, I don't think there was. 'Good question. Danny?' Bob asked Danny, and I had not even realized that Danny was in on this call.

'Let me do another circle, and we should be able to see if there are heat blooms somewhere else. It did not take long to get an answer, but now we had an area to examine.

'Negative, no vents, must be smoking down the tunnels.

'I can send a small team in and check it out. I need to ensure we do not have visitors while my men are there. Could we block off the underpass? Is it not usually busy at night? Some night work or something?' 'Yes, how much time do you need?' Danny asked.

'We can be there in an hour!

'Done. We can set up the road workers, and they can change light bulbs in the tunnel and block the side of the tunnel off; as it is a four-lane tunnel, we can have two lanes blocked and one lane going either way! 'Perfect, get it done. Keep an eye on the sky. Stealth mode. Bob ordered.

They hung up, and I looked at Bob.

'Now we are waiting!

'You don't want to be there?' I asked Bob. I was sure he would want to be at ground zero.

'Can't? We have to be innocent of any connection to this. You know this! Bob said it must be hard for him to be there, watching at a distance.

'Yeah, but I have never had the one I loved be the victim before. I said, almost losing myself to tears.

'Me, neither, son, me neither, Bob replied sadly.