He looked up, and saw Ilona smiling at him, from the other side of the computer table. An angel, untouched by the filth of that place. She wore her old blue housedress and sweater. Her sweet face shone with pride. His heart leaped at the sight of her. It wouldn’t be long now.
He dragged in a deep breath. May God have mercy on his soul.
Novak sat in front of the computer screen, grinning as the pixels tightened into focus.
“You received the footage?” Val asked mechanically.
“Yes, of course. Very moving, most romantic. Although I personally preferred the dynamism of the previous encounter,” Novak said. “Perhaps the next time, you could vary the menu a bit?”
Val sat there and stared at him, rendered mute by impotent fury. Novak waited for Val to apologize for not being sexually entertaining enough. He stared stonily into the camera’s black eye.
Novak made an impatient sound. “Well, then,” he said. “I will let you speak to your friend. He intrigues me, you know. Despite his dislike of conversation. Here, move your chair a bit. I’ll get out of your way.”
Novak gestured and the computer was shifted so that the angle included Imre, who sat next to him.
He was even more reduced than he had been before. A shriveled wraith. Only his eyes had life. They were luminous with tears.
Answering tears surged up, clogging Val’s throat, and blocking the meaningless questions poised on his tongue.
Are you well. Have they hurt you. Can you hold on for a little while longer.
“Vajda, listen carefully,” Imre said softly, in French. “I am about to give you a gift, my son. Take it and be free.”
He put his hand to his mouth and pulled out what appeared to be a small shard of glass.
Horrified dread swelled inside Val. “Imre, no! What are you—”
“Good-bye.” Imre’s hand stabbed down. Someone shouted. People leaped for Imre, and the chair spun back. Blood sprayed high. Imre’s hand waved in the air, drenched with shiny red. Novak was bellowing, incoherently. The wall spun into view, spattered with blood.
Someone hit the keyboard with their fist. The image disappeared.
A
ndrás sat in the beachside bar, sipping his sixth espresso as he studied the monitor that revealed Janos’s position. The man had been wandering around the beach aimlessly after renting himself a car. The local man with the handheld monitor had him under visual surveillance, not far away. Everything was firmly under control.
Unfortunately, he had not brought Tamara on this pleasure jaunt. András had hoped to wrap this matter up this morning and get on his way. He wondered, with a stab of doubt, if Janos had bonded with Steele. Fucking a beautiful woman could have that effect on an unwary man. But Janos was anything but unwary. He was a seasoned professional and Novak’s hold over him was strong.
He would order the man to deliver her today, and perhaps the matter would end there. A swift, professional exchange.
If not, however, the situation would probably require protracted, sophisticated torture, and he suspected that Janos would take a great deal of time, effort and soundproof privacy to break. András was more than equal to the task.
His cell vibrated. He glanced at it, and was surprised to see that it was from the big boss himself. He answered promptly. “Yes?”
“Do you have them yet?”
András paused, startled at the urgency in the old man’s tone. “I have Janos under my eye physically right now, but not Steele.”
“Bring them in,” Novak rapped out. “Today. Immediately. Do everything you can to bring them in. There’s been a change in plans.”
“What change?”
“We’ve lost our leverage with Janos,” Novak said. “The old man killed himself. Slashed his femoral artery, right over my favorite Turkish rug. While on the videophone to Janos.”
András leaned back and was grateful that his boss could not see the appreciative smile that curved his mouth. “Don’t worry. I’ll bring him in. The woman as well. And I have another prize for you.”
“And that is?” Novak’s voice sounded sulky.
András savored the moment. “Steele’s daughter. Three years old. A lovely flower for you to pluck. Already en route from Seattle.”
There was an astonished pause, and then a harsh, wheezing crack of laughter. “András, you are a genius.”
I know, you selfish old bastard, and so why did you favor that fawning pup Luksch over me?
“I live to serve you, boss,” he said.
“Call me when you have them,” Novak said.
András considered his options. He had no idea when Janos would rejoin the woman. No idea what she might do in the meantime. Too many unknowns. She could take off on her own and fuck them all.
Best to force her whereabouts out of Janos now, reduce the number of variables immediately. He texted the others of his makeshift local team to converge on Janos’s beach. If the man decided to be difficult, one of them had to know of a deserted garage or warehouse nearby where András could exercise his special talents to the fullest.
Val put the computer on the passenger seat very carefully. As if it were a wounded person who could not be jarred. His hands felt numb.
On autopilot, he grabbed the car keys and pushed open the car door. He stumbled out onto the rocky beach and kept walking, all the way to where it sloped down to the rocky little coves.
He fell to his knees. He couldn’t think, couldn’t move. He was cut loose, spinning in space.
Memories played in his mind. Games of chess in the twilight, cups of tea. Philosophy, lectures and arguments and admonishments that made him roll his eyes and scoff, secretly enjoying the attention. Bach and Chopin, Dante and Socrates and Galileo. Van Gogh, Picasso, Rembrandt. The world Imre had shown him. So beautiful, outside that squalid hole he was mired in like a fucking tarpit. Beautiful, even though Val could never quite reach it. Like a mirage in the desert, forever taunting him.
The pebbles roared with each wave that slapped the beach. He realized that he’d come to the place Domenico had brought him when he’d been infiltrating the smuggling ring and fucking Donatella.
The honeycomb of smugglers’ caves.
Tourists came from all over the world to stroll the beach, sip cappuccino, and take boat rides inside the glowing, flickering lakes inside those mysterious caves. No idea of the cruelty and violence and greed that always lurked just out of sight behind the mask of beauty.
Imre.
He started to cry, covering his face, shoulders jerking. He felt like the twelve-year-old boy he had been when Imre had befriended him, and showed him what trust looked like. How kindness felt.
The first time he had understood what kindness even was. He had never known it before, not really. Val’s own mother had not been cruel—but she was broken, weak. Too degraded by drugs and disappointment to trust. Too lost in despair to be kind.
He had loved her anyway, desperately, but he knew even then that she was broken. Kindness required strength and courage. Coherence.
These types of thoughts were so unfamiliar to his mind, it almost hurt to think them. Like eyes opening up for the first time, squinting and awash with tears, unable to bear the brilliant light.
Tamar was the strongest, most courageous woman he had ever known. Strong enough to trust. Strong enough to be kind, too, whether she knew it or not. Kindness from her would be something real. Something he could touch, grab on to. Something he could live in.
He had a dizzy sense of being adrift, swirling, with no oars, no sense of direction. He had to find a course to set, fast. To save the last chance he had for a real life. Him and Tamar and Rachel. They could run together to the ends of the earth. Disappear like smoke.
Anything so that Imre’s desperate last move would not be in vain.
Get Tamar. Get away. He was equal to that with the resources he had, if he moved his ass, made his weak knees, his jelly-like thighs move. If he could stop the tears.
There would be time enough for tears later at that haven at the ends of the earth. With his family around him.
His family.
His heart felt like it would burst. Ah, Imre.
He rubbed the tears out of his eyes again, and that was when he saw them, gleaming in front of his face. Highly shined, pointy-toed, hand-tooled black Italian leather shoes. Well-tailored pants draped over them. A long black cashmere coat, flapping in the raw sea breeze.
Val’s gaze traveled up, saw the big, silenced pistol. Big shoulders. Thick neck. Sealed, hard mouth. Black snake eyes.
András. There were five other men with him. Large, bulky men. Italian, and local, from the looks of them. They shifted into position around him.
“You’ve been called home,” András said. “Where’s the woman?”
He started to rise to his feet. The pistol swung up, aimed at his face. He sank back down. In his peripheral vision, tourists wandered on the beach, too far away to blunder by and help or be witnesses. One of András’s men held a tracking device.
A tracking device? How had they tagged him?
How?
Two thoughts blazed in his head. Contradictory thoughts. The first was that finally, he was free to die after Imre’s gift. Tamar was smart enough, crafty enough to slip away and save herself on her own.
The second was that they could not kill him outright—yet. Not without prying her position out of him first.
So fuck the guns. He’d trained hard for years in the art of fighting from a crouching or kneeling position. Fighting six men on their feet from that position was problematic, but who cared. He had nothing better to do. He was free to die if he damn well felt like it.
No.
He thought of Tamar, and suddenly, he did not feel like it.
His lower body exploded upward, balanced on his hands, boot heel connecting with the chin of the man nearest him,
crunch
. The man pinwheeled backward and fell to the ground, gurgling. Val’s other leg whipped around like a lash and hooked the legs of the next man, dragging him down with a vicious jerk.
Action detonated something inside him, the anger and fear and humiliation of the past days abruptly channeled into berserk madness. He got in a vicious punch to the point of the man’s nose, which loosened his grip on his gun, which Val wrenched loose and out of his hands. He swung it up, shot the man point blank in the gut.
Another man was diving for him.
Thhtp
, he got one into the thigh, knocking his legs out from under him. The man toppled in Val’s direction. Two heavy bodies weighing him down to the jagged rocks.
He struggled, heaving, breaking loose just in time to roll away from a kick from András that would have cracked his spine. He caught it on his hip, let its energy keep him rolling up onto his feet.
He kept the pain at bay as András came on with a growling shout. Parried a slashing blow to the neck, trapped András’s wrist in a tendon-twisting hold, spun him around and sent him flying into one of his men, who tripped and fell on his ass.
András sprawled on top of him, roaring with rage.
Go.
This was his cue to run and test the hopeful theory that they could not shoot him, not without Tamar. Not fatally, at least.
Two shots rang out. Neither hit him. András howled in his thickly accented Italian. “No, dickhead idiot! Hold your fire! We need him alive!”
He slipped, rolled, slid down the steep rocks to the drop-off to the little cove beach where Domenico had showed him the belly-crawl entrance to the cave—and stopped, teetering on the brink.
That entrance had been accessible at low tide. At high tide, on a cold, blustery winter’s day with the sea wildly agitated, that little cove was deep beneath a seething, heaving bowl of frigid foam.
He leaped.
The living room was full of people, but no one seemed to be able to speak. The words had all been said and repeated, over and over. Now they were locked in a nail-chewing, coffee-sipping, miserable silence.
Sveti stared down into the cup of cold herbal tea, rocking back and forth. Her taped ribs hurt every time she drew breath, her wrist throbbed in the brace, her bandaged knees and hands burned and stung, but she deserved it. Worse, even, for letting that happen to Rachel. Again.
“Did you call her again?” she asked.
Connor shook his head. “I’ve called her over ten times. She’s still unreachable.”
Sveti felt her face crumple. She covered it with her hands. “She will hate me so much,” she whispered.
“Wrong. Fuck, no,” Sean said roughly. “Nobody but nobody blames you, Sveti. Tam won’t, either. It was our fault for not being careful. Not taking this thing seriously enough. We’ve all gotten slack. You were right outside the house, for Christ’s sake.”
Sveti shook her head. “I didn’t even get a car license number.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Davy said flatly. “It would have been bogus and it wouldn’t have helped us. Anyone gunning for Tam is a hard-core professional.”
“Davy!” his wife snapped. “Isn’t Sveti miserable enough already?”
“Sorry,” Davy said.
The police had been and gone, an Amber Alert had been issued, but no one had any illusions that they would be able to find whoever had taken Rachel. All the McClouds and their close friends were there, crowded into Connor and Erin’s living room. All except for Nick and Becca, off on their honeymoon in Mexico on a beach in the sun. Sveti wished that he were here, too.
She rubbed her swollen eyes and struggled to breathe around the fear and grief. How scared Rachel must be, all alone with those bad men. It hurt to think of it, worse than any physical pain she could imagine. It would be so much easier to cut it off, to not care, but she had never had any luck with that. She’d tried very hard when she was with the organ thieves, but it had never taken. Not really.
So this was the truth she’d been wondering about. The lurking nightmare of cruelty was reality. Freedom and flowers and the blue sky—that part was just the hopeful dream. It was the answer to her dilemma.
Now she knew the truth. And her only refuge was anger.
“They will never do this to me again,” she heard herself say.
Everyone in the room looked at her, as if afraid her mind had cracked under the strain. She looked around, wild-eyed. She had to make them understand with the limited English that she had.
“They will not do this to me again. The assholes,” she said. “I won’t let them. I want to become like Tam. I want to be able to kick the asses of the assholes. Anyone who hurts or scares a little child, I want to…to cut off their balls. Put out their eyes. Rip out their guts.”
Then they were looking at her, and she knew they were seeing her ninety-pound frame, her skinny wrists, how wispy and weak and insignificant she was. Fury flashed through her. Her fingers clenched into fists as hard as diamonds, for all they were so tiny.
“It doesn’t matter that I’m small.” Her voice was high, shaking. “I’m not stupid. That’s more important. I can get stronger. I can use guns, bombs, rocket launchers. I will make those fuckers pay.”
Margot sat down next to her and slid an arm around her waist. “I don’t doubt it for a second, sweetheart,” she said. “But we have to get this thing sorted out. I understand how angry you are—and how scared. And how young.”
The men looked at each other with obvious alarm. Their women glared right back at them. There was a moment of curious tension.
Sean made a noncommittal sound. “Huh. Well, then. I guess it’s gonna be law enforcement for you, honey, just like your dad,” he said. “Someday.”
Connor’s head sunk down between his shoulders. “I can’t believe this,” he said for the tenth time. “Right outside the door. We should have sent Rachel to Stone Island with—”
“Bodyguards and an armored car, and two of us. Suck it up and let it go,” Sean said harshly.
“Jesus,” Con muttered, “Tam trusted me to protect her kid. And I let her down. I’m a fucking brain-dead idiot
dick
.”
“Stop right there, bro,” Davy said. “Don’t. Not useful.”
Connor’s head came up, eyes blazing. “It could have been Kev,” he said. “Easily. Or Jeannie. He’s got as much of a grudge against me and Erin as he does with Tam. If the people in my family ever have a hope in hell of sleeping through the night, those fuckers have got to die.”