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,