“Bad men,” was his reply. “Greedy men, who stand to lose a great deal, should order and law come to East Timor.”
“Do they have names?” she persisted.
“Their names would mean nothing to you,” he said. “To me, and to my neighbors, they are cause to tremble in fear.” He turned back to Molly—obviously he’d identified her as a better audience for his dramatic tale. “In prison, my grandson was separated from his mother for quite afew days. Imelda—Danjuma’s mother—was frantic. When at last they put the boy back into her arms, she was ready to do their bidding.” He glanced back at the door, moving closer and lowering his voice so that his daughter-in-law wouldn’t overhear.
Assuming she could even speak English.
Molly was clutching Gina’s hand, quite obviously believing every awful word of this story.
All Gina could think was, where was Emilio’s gun right now, and how could she gain possession of it?
Was his story true? Maybe it was.
If there was one thing Gina had learned in life, it was that people were capable of doing terrible, atrocious things to each other.
She thought of Narari, back in Kenya, dead at age thirteen. And Lucy, who she’d helped to save, whose older sister was still back there, nearing her baby’s delivery date—knowing that when her child was born, she’d have to be cut again.
She thought about the terrorist she’d nicknamed Bob, who had told her
his
story while he held her hostage on that airplane. She’d been sympathetic—his life had been one struggle after another. She’d seen him as a person, instead of a hijacker with a gun.
He’d seen her only as a means to a bloody end.
“I don’t know all that they did to Imelda,” Emilio continued, his voice quieter but much harder now. “She did tell me that, before she left, with Danjuma in her arms, they made her thank them for killing her husband. My son.” His voice broke. “Forgive me.”
“For turning around and kidnapping us?” Gina said. “No problem—we’ll forgive you—just let us go.”
But Molly was murmuring, “That’s terrible.”
“They told her,” Emilio said, tears in his eyes, “to find me, and tell me that they had Sumaiya. My wife. If I wanted to see her again, I had to . . .” He gestured to the room around them. “I haven’t used this room in over ten years, well, not for what it was intended. Yes, at one time, I made quite a fortune dealing in . . . others’ misfortune, it’s true. But that was years ago. My . . . skills have dulled. I knew it would be easier to lead Grady Morant here—have him come to me—”
Molly interrupted him. “There has to be another way to get your wife out of that prison.” She turned to Gina. “You could call—”
Gina squeezed her fingers, hard, also warning her with her eyes not to say Max’s name, or to mention his affiliation with the FBI. She spoke loudly over Molly, just in case she didn’t get it. “My brother? He’s a police officer in New Jersey,” she lied to Emilio. “Maybe he knows somebody in, I don’t know, the FBI or CIA or something—someone who could help.”
Molly got it. Ix-nay on entioning-may Ax-may.
Emilio, meanwhile, was sadly shaking his head. “It’s too late.”
Gina knew that that was her optimistic friend’s least favorite sentence. Molly sat up again. “It’s never too late.”
“Sumaiya is dead,” Emilio told them. “The message came this morning, from a contact within the prison. Her body was buried in a mass grave last week. I suspected as much—my repeated requests demanding proof of life—you know, as we did with the television in the warehouse? They have all been ignored.”
He turned to Gina, who was trying to make sense of this latest twist in his tale. “I can see you are not impressed. Why should you believe anything I tell you? My fortune came from ransom money. I held you at gunpoint and packed you into a shipping crate, took you halfway around the world against your will. I can assure you until I drop dead from exertion that I have nothing against you, that I didn’t wish to harm you, that my singleminded goal was to save the woman I love.”
If he had started to cry, Gina would have remained skeptical, but he didn’t. Instead, both his voice and eyes got hard. Bitter. Angry.
“Since she’s dead, my goal has changed. The last thing I wish to do is give them what they want. I’m not sure how to protect you, since my enemy is here, all around us—everywhere on this island, on neighboring islands, too. I’d take you to the hospital in Dili, but I fear you’ll be less safe there. I
do
have a friend who is a doctor, though. My new plan, if you’ll agree, is to take you to his home where you’ll receive the care you need. You’ll be safe there.”
“Why not take us to the American Embassy?” Gina was on her feet. Could this really be happening? Was he really going to just . . . let them go?
“There is none on this small island. And even if there were . . .” He laughed. “By helping you, I don’t want to harm myself. Imelda, Danjuma, and I will have to leave our home forever, but we won’t find sanctuary in your America, I can guarantee you that.” He shook his head. “After I drop you at my doctor friend’s, you may be able to convince him to fly you to the nearest embassy. He has a plane, although his pilot could be too easily bought. You see, it won’t take long for my enemies to realize I’m gone. At which point there’ll be an extensive search for the two of you.”
He was fumbling in his pocket for something. His gun? Gina took a step back as he pulled out . . . a cell phone? “Here,” he said, holding it out to her.
She opened it, hardly daring to believe . . . But the icons implied that both its battery and reception were strong.
He was getting something else of out his pocket now, too. A piece of paper. “My contacts in Jakarta have spotted Morant. He’s here in Indonesia. Call him.” He handed that to her, too.
It was . . . a printed e-mail? With a phone number on it.
I await your further communication. G.M.
Although, hang on!
This was a phone number that Gina knew—at least in part—by heart.
The last four digits were the same as Max’s number. She had to sit down.
Holy crap, Max was here, too.
The entire rest of the world was falling apart, and Max was here, trying to find her.
“Call him,” Emilio said again. “Tell him I’ll be taking you to the residence of Dr. Olhan Katip, on the north side of this island, Pulau Meda. We are near Pulau Wetar. Katip has a gated estate—”
He may have kept talking.
But Gina had stopped listening. She stood up and moved out of range as Molly tried to snatch both the phone and the paper from her.
Heart pounding, Gina dialed the phone, praying that life couldn’t be so cruel as to make that number a mere coincidence.
At about ten
A
.
M
., Jules’s cell phone rang again.
Jones was rummaging in the kitchen, searching among the well-stocked shelves for something to eat that was loaded with carbs.
He settled on one of the three cans of Beef-a-Roni that were front and center.
Which was quite a luxury—his not having to take a can from the long-forgotten back of the shelf in order to keep the apartment’s owners from realizing they’d had unauthorized guests.
Jules had told him that this place was used by the CIA as part of an ongoing investigation into terrorist activity.
The terrorist in question lived two houses down from their kidnapping suspect.
What a lucky coincidence. Or it would be if Jones believed in either luck or coincidences.
He knew how things worked out here on these isolated little islands. Chances were if a suspected terrorist had moved in practically next door to Emilio Testa, there was a good reason for it.
Whatever the connection, this place was a godsend. It had kept them dry during the predawn rain showers. Without this apartment, they’d have been out on that roof last night, all night.
Of course, that was still an option for tonight—should they have to wait that long to kick down Emilio Testa’s door.
Because today’s fucking had started with news from Jakarta that Benny, Jules’s CIA contact, had turned up extremely dead.
Jules and Max were in the middle of a discussion about whether they should stay here or leave. Whether Benny’s death had anything to do with them. And whether Jules should go all the way back to Jakarta to get that surveillance equipment they wanted.
But now Jules looked at his ringing phone. “Okay,” he said, loudly enough to include Jones in the conversation. “This isn’t Yashi—it’s a number I don’t recognize. It could be our man.”
Jones came out of the kitchen. “I should answer it, then.”
“I’m putting it on speaker,” Jules agreed. “Remember, he might have his phone on speaker, too.”
Jones felt adrenaline surge through him, and he forced himself to have faith in Jules’s promise that Testa wouldn’t be able to locate them via satellite, thanks to Yashi back in D.C. He forced himself to focus. It was easy to stop listening while amped up. It was easy to hear only what you wanted to hear, or misunderstand even the simplest of communications.
But Jones’s mental prep didn’t prepare him for what he heard after Jules answered the call, after he himself grunted an identifier. “Morant.” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d introduced himself that way.
“Hey. It’s me.” Holy Jesus. It was Gina.
Across the room, Max was still keeping an eye on Testa’s house—where no one had entered or exited since they’d started watching. But now, he turned—signaling for Jules to mute the phone—so that Gina, or anyone else listening, wouldn’t be able to hear him speak.
The relief Max must’ve been feeling had to be staggering—to actually hear Gina’s voice and know she was still alive, at least for now. But as Jules hit the mute, it was clear to Jones that Max’s focus was on making sure Molly was alive, too—without jeopardizing the women’s safety.
“She didn’t say ‘It’s Gina.’ ” Max’s words were rapid-fire. “She said, ‘It’s me.’ Don’t call her by name, don’t talk about Molly by name, either. Testa may not know who’s who, and we want to keep it that way. Ask her: Are you okay, are you
both
okay?”
At Max’s nod, Jules unmuted the phone, and Jones said exactly that.
“Yes,” Gina said, and Jones started breathing again.
Thank you, God.
He had to sit down, the relief was so intense. How did Max manage to stay standing?
“We’re both fine,” she continued. “Except Molly’s, well, she’s a little dehydrated.”
So much for Max’s theory about not naming names.
“We both are,” Gina kept going. “And it’s never fun to be a hostage—even if it’s only one man running around with a little handgun.”
Jules muted the phone, shaking his head in admiration. “She just told us—”
“Yeah,” Max cut him off, because Gina was still talking.
“I mean, Imelda’s pretty shy, and her son, Danjuma’s only a two-year-old, but . . . Crowbar Guy’s pretty scary. Of course, there could be more people in the house that we haven’t seen . . .”
Jones stood up, realizing why Jules was grinning. Gina had just told them that her captors consisted of four people, who, between them, proba-bly had only one small firearm. “Let’s go kick in that fucking door,” he said.
But Gina was speaking again. There had been a pause, a rumble of a voice in the background, and she then said, “Emilio says I’m wasting time. I’m sorry. But . . . Is Max with you? Because . . .” She laughed in something that sounded like disbelief. “Emilio is going to let us go.”
“What?”
“They had his wife,” she continued, “but he found out she’s dead, that the people who took her killed her, so he doesn’t want to . . . Look, it’s complicated, but I just thought it would be easier to do this if maybe Max were with you. Is he there? Can I . . . Please, I need to talk to him.”
Max took the phone from Jules. Unmuted it. “Gina,” he said. “I’m here.”
“Oh, Max,” Gina’s voice was thick with emotion. “Thank God—” But then she was gone.
Replaced by a male voice—it had to be Emilio. “This reunion is touching, but time is short. I’m going to bring the women to a friend on the northside of Pulau Meda, an island north of East Timor. They’ll be quite safe there until you arrive.”
A few minutes after Emilio took the phone from Gina, the excrement quite suddenly hit the fan.
One minute Emilio was calmly talking to Max on the phone, giving him directions to his doctor’s house. But then he stopped talking, as if listening to something Max was telling him. And then he was shouting.
Molly’s Italian was mostly limited to items she could order off a dessert cart, but she knew the word for
hurry
.
She was hearing it now, in abundance, from Emilio.
Imelda ran in, snatched her young son, ran out.
Crowbar Guy popped in, rattled off a stream of Italian, took what looked like a key ring from Emilio, then vanished.
And that nasty little gun that they hadn’t seen since climbing into the shipping container appeared, in Emilio’s very steady hand.
He aimed the barrel directly at Gina, who still looked stunned that Max had come looking for her, and that she’d actually spoken to him on the phone.
She fumbled as Emilio tossed her the cell phone, but managed to catch it.
“What
is going on?” Molly asked.
“Tell your friend,” Emilio ordered Gina, “that if anyone so much as sets foot inside this house, you’ll be the first to die.”
C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN
Max’s mistake had been in letting the kidnapper know that they were on Pulau Meda.
It was more than obvious that Emilio hadn’t expected them to arrive in Indonesia quite so soon.
And
it was pretty clear that Emilio had expected Jones to be alone, that Max’s presence had rattled him.
Max had been in the middle of discussing Emilio’s plan to take Molly and Gina to some doctor’s estate. Where there was—oh-so conveniently—a plane that Jones could use to fly them out of there.
That was when Max had made the mistake of suggesting Emilio simply surrender his hostages right there, in his home. Max would see them safely off the island. While he didn’t tip off Emilio to the fact that he was right across the street, he did let the kidnapper know he was close by.
There was a lot of shouting at that point—until Emilio took advantage of
his
phone’s mute button.
Max should have said yes to everything, then intercepted them en route. Of course, then he had to factor in the inherent danger of surprising a man who was in possession of at least one deadly weapon. Guns and surprises were a bad mix.
“Damn it,” he said now.
“Yeah,” Jules agreed, watching the street. “I’m picking up a real mixed signal, too. It reads like a total trap. But if he sincerely wants to let them go—”
“Fuck what he wants or doesn’t want.” Jones was locked and loaded. “I’m going in, before he takes them and runs.”
“Heads up,” Jules announced. “I’ve got a garage door opening.”
Just like that, Jones kicked out the screen and went out the side window.
Damn
it. He should’ve been the last one out, not the first. He was the freaking target, for the love of God.
But then Max heard Gina’s voice, over the phone: “Max, Emilio’s got a gun, he says he doesn’t want you to . . . come in . . . ? Where
are
you? Oh, my God, are you really that close? Yeah, yeah—I know,” she sounded annoyed, obviously speaking to Emilio. “Max, he says to tell you if you come in here, he’ll shoot me.” Back to Emilio. “I told him, all right?”
“White van, leaving garage,” Jules announced over the sound of tires squealing.
Goddamn it.
“Are you and Molly still inside the house?” Max asked Gina as he followed Jones. There was about a ten-foot drop to the alley alongside the building, but he landed on his feet. Jules was right behind him.
“Yes,” Gina told him.
“You’re not in a moving vehicle.” He had to make sure.
There was a battered Ford Escort parked on the street—Jones had already opened the rusted door and started hot-wiring the damn thing.
“No.” She was definite.
“And Molly’s with you?” Max asked.
“She’s right here,” Gina said. “Max, what’s going on?”
Jules was already inside the garage, weapon drawn. Whoever had driven away in that van had been in such a hurry, they’d not only left the garage bay open wide, but the door to the house was also ajar.
And it was some door, too. Like something you’d see on a bunker, built to withstand a major assault.
Max called to Jules in a low voice. “Hold up.”
Jules jammed something between the door and the frame, making sure it wouldn’t swing shut as he nodded, signaling that he copied—that he wasn’t going any farther inside. “Jones,” he hissed, to catch the man’s eye as he came back out to the open bay door. He silently motioned for Jones to get out of the street. He also pointed into the garage and mimed holding a steering wheel. His meaning was quite clear. There was a car in there.
Jones nodded as he closed the Escort’s door and jogged toward them.
Max was focusing on Gina, who was on the other end of that phone. “Tell Emilio I’m right outside, that I want to come in—just to talk. No weapons, completely unarmed—hands up and open. Tell him I’ll strip naked if he wants me to. God knows I’ve done it before.”
Gina actually laughed. “Really?”
“Yeah, tell him.”
She sounded . . . exactly the way she’d always sounded. Max didn’t know what he’d expected—maybe a subdued, frightened, defeated Gina, overcome with the terror of knowing just how slim her chances were of making it out of this situation unharmed.
“Oh, Max,” she said, “you don’t know how glad I am to hear your voice.”
“Just tell him, Gina,” he said, but he couldn’t stop himself from adding, “And ditto.” He muted the phone as she passed along his message, because he could see that Jules had something to add.
But Jones spoke first. “We don’t have much time before reinforcements arrive.”
“Are we sure he’s not telling the truth?” Jules asked. “If I kidnapped someone, and decided to let her go, except suddenly her very angry husband showed up on my doorstep, I’d go into cornered animal mode, too. If Emilio’s wife
is
dead—”
“If he even has a wife,” Jones pointed out.
“Work your magic on this car,” Jules ordered Jones. “Testa might not be willing to hand over his keys. Let’s be ready to move. I’m going to call the embassy in Dili, give them a heads up as to the situation.” He turned to Max. “I need your phone—you’ve got mine.”
Max fished in his pocket and handed his over.
“Max?” Gina came back onto Jules’s phone.
“I’m here,” he told her.
“You can come in,” she said. “But he wants you in a T-shirt, no jacket, nothing on your head, hands up and out, like you said. He says, while you’re in here, if he hears a noise in the hall, he’ll shoot me.”
“Understood.” Max was already stripping down, jacket, holster, weapons, all in a pile on the concrete floor. “I’m going in,” he told Jules.
Jones pulled himself out of the car. “Don’t let him hurt them.”
“I won’t,” Max promised.
It couldn’t have been easy—having to stay out here when Molly was in there, but Jones nodded.
“I’m not getting through to the embassy,” Jules reported.
“Keep trying. Gina,” Max said into the phone, “tell Emilio I’m opening the door from the garage to the house. Keep the phone line open if you can, okay? I’m giving this phone to Jules. I want him to be able to listen in.” He handed it over, muted, his voice also lowered as he looked from Jules to Jones. “If I say
fire,
you come in fast and shoot to kill. Do you understand?”
Jones nodded.
“Max.” Jules stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Don’t do anything too stupid.”
“Where were you with that advice a year and a half ago?” Max went into the house. “I’m coming down the hall,” he called out loudly, his hands open and out.
Jules Cassidy was here, too?
Gina didn’t have time to wonder how many other members of his team Max had brought with him, or how Jones had managed to get in touch with any of them, because Emilio moved his gun from her side to directly under her chin.
The barrel was cold and heavy. And capable of blowing her head completely off her shoulders if he pulled that trigger.
She stood very still, phone still open in her hands.
But then Max appeared in the doorway to the room.
He glanced quickly around, taking it all in—Molly still sitting on the bed, that gun in Emilio’s hands—before meeting her gaze.
“Hi,” he said, as if they’d run into each other in the cereal aisle of the supermarket.
Except, what
was
the correct greeting for this type of situation? On top of the etiquette confusion, Gina found herself distracted by how different Max looked.
She found herself thinking the most inane thoughts—that his broken collarbone must’ve been completely healed in order for him to hold his hands up in the air like that.
And maybe it was the way that black T-shirt hugged his upper body and shoulders, or the way he was holding his arms that made his muscles stretch the fabric of his sleeves, but he looked as if he’d gotten completely back into shape during the months she’d been gone.
Back in shape and then some.
But it wasn’t just his super-buffness that made him look like a stranger. It had obviously been a while since he’d last shaved, and thick stubble covered his chin. His dark hair was uncombed and matted, too, as if he’d worn a hat for days on end.
Jeans and sneakers instead of a well-tailored suit—although she’d gotten used to seeing him dressed in casual clothes in the rehab center.
No, it was his eyes that made him look most like a stranger—as well as least like one.
Gina had always loved Max’s eyes. They were bottomless and so exotically dark brown as to seem almost black.
He was looking at her now the way she’d always wanted him to look at her. With nothing hidden. With everything he was feeling right there for her to see.
Fear. Anger. Vulnerability. Frustration. It was all apparent, along with incredible relief.
And a boatload of hope.
“Hey, Max,” she whispered back.
But he’d already focused his attention on Emilio. And that gun. “Step back from her, Mr. Testa. There’s no need for that. Just let her go, take two steps back and point that thing at me.”
“How many are here with you?” Emilio asked. His breathing was ragged, his muscles tense. Gina could feel his heart beating, hard, against her back. Or maybe that was her heart.
“Step away from the girl. Woman,” Max corrected himself with a shake of his head and an apologetic grimace in her direction. “Then we’ll talk.”
“I’ll make the rules,” Emilio’s voice was tight. “I’ve got the gun.”
“I know you don’t want to hurt her,” Max’s tone was soothing, calm, “so just aim your weapon at me and—”
“Is Grady Morant here, too?” Emilio asked. “He’s out in the garage, isn’t he? I don’t want him coming in here.”
“He won’t. And if you step away from Gina,” Max repeated, “we’ll discuss the best way for all of us to get to safety.”
Gina found herself praying that Emilio’s finger didn’t tighten on that trigger, that he didn’t shoot her—either intentionally or accidentally. It wasn’t just because she didn’t want her brains sprayed onto the wall. It was because she knew that if Emilio killed her here, like this, Max would never recover.
And she’d already brought way too much pain into his life.
“Right about now,” she told him, “that NYU law school thing is looking like a real missed opportunity.”
He smiled, a brief and rueful twist of his lips. “Yeah.” But he didn’t even glance at her—he was busy staring down Emilio.
Who finally let her go.
Gina stumbled from suddenly having to hold herself up. She went down to her hands and knees, dropping the phone as she scrambled to get some distance between her head and that gun.
Except Emilio now aimed the damn thing at Max.
“Good,” Max said, no doubt for Jules’s benefit. “Keep it right here, right on me.”
“Please don’t shoot him,” Gina begged. “I’d rather be shot myself, than have to—”
“That’s not helping,” Max told her.
“—live through that again,” she finished. “Can’t you just aim your gun at the floor? Please?”
“Max can keep his hands up,” Molly chimed in. “We all want the same thing—to get out of here alive. So let’s just bring this down a notch.”
Emilio lowered his gun.
Relief made Gina’s knees wobble, and she sat on the edge of the bed. “Thank you.” Molly scrunched forward, put her arms around her.
And Max went to work. “Let’s do this. Let me take Gina and Molly down to the dock. We’ll hire a seaplane to take us to the American Embassy in Dili. We’ll just walk out of here. We’ll just walk away. We can all leave at the same time—you can go in one direction, we’ll go in the other. We’re not looking to jam you up, Testa. We just want Gina and Molly to be safe. I can see that you took good care of them. We all appreciate that very much—”
“How did you find me so quickly?” Emilio asked.
“That doesn’t matter,” Max said. “We need to focus—”
“Yes, it does,” Emilio said. “Because I’ve had some time to think. I don’t want the bastards who killed my wife to go unpunished. If you have . . . connections. To your government. To the CIA—I know they’ve been here, on Pulau Meda . . . If that was how you found me, and if you can guarantee . . . What is it called? Amnesty? And perhaps a financial incentive that will allow me to relocate . . . ? I have information I could share.”
Emilio Testa had no doubt figured that if they were willing to cut a deal with Grady Morant, they’d be open to doing the same with just about anybody.
Jones himself didn’t trust the scumbag, but Max and Jules were the ones talking to him—Jules via one cell phone, even as he used the other to keep trying the embassy—as if they were his new best friends. Of course, it was hard to tell with either of them if they really believed Emilio, or if they were just trying to make him
think
they believed him.
Whatever the case, it was radically different from the negotiating technique Max had used when he’d opened that Hamburg hotel room door to find Jones in the hall.
Still, whatever they were doing, they were doing it right.
“Jones,” Jules called, and he looked up from trying to pick the lock on the trunk of that Impala.
Molly was standing just inside in the doorway that led to the house.
She looked tired and pale, her hair pulled back from her face in a braid. She was dressed for a summer day in Northern Germany—in long pants. She’d rolled up the bottoms to compensate for the Indonesian heat, and she’d tied the sleeves of her sweatshirt around her expanding waistline.
“Ma’am, do you need medical attention?” Jules asked her.
But she spotted Jones.
And ran to him.
And then, oh Jesus, he had his arms around her. “Please tell me—”
“Are you . . . ?” She pulled back, looking him over as thoroughly as he was looking at her.
“I’m all right.” “I’m okay.” They both said it at once, followed by “Are you sure?”
Jones didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Molly did both as he kissed her. But then she winced and he quickly loosened his grip. “You
are
hurt. I’m going to kill him—”
“No, no—it’s the biopsy.”
Oh, Jesus. He’d actually forgotten. Jones pulled back to look at her. “Is it . . . ?” He couldn’t say it.