26
Carrie awoke and lifted her head, only to hit the roof on the box. Reality immediately set back in. She turned on the flashlight and shined it on her watch: 8:03 AM. They’d been in the box for somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-six hours now. No water or food for all that time, if not more, and Carrie could feel the weakness in her body, the dryness in her mouth as she moved her tongue around, trying to moisten things. She turned the light to Shannon, who started to stir. Shannon looked weak and groggy. Carrie shook her arm to bring her back.
“Shannon, wake up honey.”
Shannon didn’t move right away. Carrie shook her arm harder.
“Shannon, wake up! Wake up honey!”
Shannon slowly started to awaken. “Where are we?” she said weakly.
Carrie turned on the flashlight and shined it around the box. Shannon was groggy, but her eyes opened wider and looked around and started to realize and remember where she was at. She rubbed her eyes.
“Wake up, Sunshine.”
Shannon managed a weak smile and whispered. “Nice try.”
“Hey, I always try to operate as if the glass is half-full,” Carrie answered, rubbing Shannon’s arms.
“Then you must be the most optimistic person to walk the earth,” Shannon retorted, more awake now.
“We’re still alive,” Carrie proclaimed. “And as long as we’re alive, we’ve got hope.”
“They better come soon then,” Shannon responded.
Carrie held the light closer to Hisle. “Getting worse?”
Shannon nodded as she pulled her legs up to her chest. “I don’t know how long I can go on like this.”
Carrie knew that Shannon needed to stay awake. “Tell me about your diabetes.”
“What do you want to know?” Shannon asked weakly.
“Tell me everything you can. We’ve got time to pass. Nobody in my family has ever had diabetes. I think I had one friend who had it, but it didn’t seem like too big of a deal. My sense is that you have a worse kind.”
“I probably do,” Hisle replied. “There are two types of diabetes, type 1 and 2.”
“Is one worse than the other?”
“Yes. Type 2 is the most common form, and most people who have diabetes have it.”
“If you have type 2, what happens?”
“With type 2, your body produces some insulin, but either it isn’t enough or the body doesn’t recognize the insulin and doesn’t use it right. Over time, if the body doesn’t have enough insulin or doesn’t use insulin properly, then glucose…”
“Sugar?”
“Right. When the body doesn’t use the insulin properly, glucose can’t get into the body’s cells and instead builds up in the blood. If that happens for long enough, the cells won’t function properly. Over time, if not taken care of, a person will get dehydrated and fatigued, and you can be more prone to infection. This could take weeks or months before those problems will manifest themselves. Sometimes people go a long time without even knowing they have that kind of diabetes.”
“That’s probably what my friend had then,” Carrie said.
“Probably,” Shannon answered, but then got quiet, “That’s not the kind I have.”
“You have type 1 then?”
Shannon nodded.
“What makes type 1 worse?”
“With type 1, my immune system has destroyed my insulin-producing cells in my pancreas so that my body doesn’t have the insulin hormone. That means glucose won’t move into my cells and instead, it builds up in my blood and I get high blood glucose.”
“So you need to inject insulin then, right?”
“Yes. I need to take insulin. Like I mentioned before, I take, or I should take, insulin every time I eat.”
“How long have you had type 1?”
“About five years. Generally, I’m really good about taking my insulin, but there are times where I’ve forgotten to bring it with me and of course the time I didn’t take it intentionally for a few days and got really sick. I’ve been thinking of going on an insulin pump but I didn’t like the idea of having this little machine attached to my body all day. However, right now I’m really wishing I’d gone to the pump.”
“If your body starts to get out of whack what will happen?”
“My body will start to break down. Eventually, I’ll get confused and start to shake. I’ll probably have issues breathing, rapid breathing.”
“And maybe lose consciousness?”
“At some point,” Shannon said, her voice down to a whisper, “if it gets really bad, I could go into a coma.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Let’s just try to keep talking. The longer I can stay conscious the better.”
The review of documents at the off-site storage was slow and plodding. It wasn’t that people weren’t trying or they didn’t have enough people. They were and they did as Shamus brought the cavalry. It was simply a slow process. While there was a portable Wi-Fi point set up, the work took a lot of manual labor just to get the information into a place where it could be used. The group had to work through the archived files, pulling out the red-ropes, digging through pleadings, correspondence, memorandums, and depositions to find names and other key data. It was a massive and manic excavation of information.
Once the group mined the data out of the files, the information was placed, via laptop and over the Internet, into a program that Hagen had quickly created over at Hisle’s office. The program was cross-referenced into the police and FBI databases that had been created for purposes of cross-referencing Hisle and Flanagan’s work on criminal matters. Hagen was now cross-referencing the information the group was finding with those FBI and police databases. Scheifelbein was doing his best to mask it at HQ and to keep the Feds from noticing.
Mac immediately recognized how difficult the process would be. He immediately arranged for the Wi-Fi hookup and organized the operation as best he could. He had people work in teams, matching an attorney from Lyman’s firm with groups of the retired cops. The groups worked through the documents, the lawyers explaining where the parties, families, and witnesses could be found in the various legal documents. The cops would read through the information and determine what to enter into Hagen’s program.
Riley called Mac from Lyman’s office to report that nothing had turned up as of yet, not even a nibble. He was sounding skeptical. “I don’t know Mac, we’re not finding anything. How much you got left?”
“We’ve just started out here,” Mac answered. “We’re maybe fifteen to twenty percent into the files. It’ll take a while to get through it. There are hundreds of boxes in these three storage units. I mean, if you have a better idea I’m all ears.”
Riles sighed. “I don’t. It’s just that the clock is ticking.”
“I hear ya,” Mac answered as he looked out a window. The sun was now bright in the sky, and a look at his watch told him it was 9:56 AM. “We’ve got eight hours. Something will pop.” He didn’t know if that was confidence or hope, but he didn’t have a choice. They had started down this path, and they had to see it through. “What’s going on at HQ?”
“Nothing like what we’re doing,” Riles answered. “Burton seems focused on the ransom and preparing for the phone call. Although…”
“What?”
“He did ask Peters about what we were doing.”
“What did the captain say?”
“He covered. Said we were on the safe house still. Peters thought it might be a good idea for us to make an appearance.”
“I hate to break away from this.”
“It’s what cell phones are for. Burton has called a meeting for eleven thirty. Peters said we should be there. We keep doing what we’re doing, but…”
“We keep people from wondering where we are.”
While Shawn McRyan watched anxiously, Jupiter Jones opened a computer program he developed to get as much out of pictures as possible. He set it to enhance the best frame of the reflection in the van’s rear window. The program worked slowly, but soon a new window popped up on the screen.