“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.”
“Of course,” Sean said. “So we’ll do it. Let’s move on.”
“Move where?” Connor’s voice was vicious. “We have no leads. Just a couple of badass lowlife fuckers in Eastern Europe with the means and the motive. But where? Which one?”
“Maybe they’ll make contact, just to taunt us,” Sean said. “Or maybe Tam will have a clue. Something’s got to give. Call her again.”
Connor picked up the phone, pushed a button, waited. He shook his head and let it drop into his hands. They fell into a silence as cold and heavy as lead.
How the fuck had they found him?
The question burned in Val’s mind as he dragged himself up out of the icy water. The jagged rocks tore and sliced at his hands and knees. Fortunately, he was too numb to really feel it.
When he’d last been here with Domenico at low tide, they’d been equipped with scuba suits, neoprene gripper gloves, flashlights attached to their headgear. It had been high summer, five years ago.
He composed his mind as best he could to remember the twists and turns of the place, the loops, the dead ends. Only one access to the caves was large, light and attractive enough to develop for tourists. The rest was a dank, dripping labyrinth, most of which had to be squeezed through to keep from ripping off one’s scalp.
How had they found him? Every stitch of clothing he had on had been bought two days before in Sorrento en route from the airport.
The ugly truth sank in, slithering into his mind, starting with his belly and creeping its slow, relentless way into his conscious mind.
Not his clothes. Not his equipment. Him. He himself, Val Janos, his physical body, had an RF transmitter in it somewhere.
That was how Hegel’s Seattle team got to Tam and Rachel at the airport—by following him. That was how they’d been nailed the day before at the hotel. That must have been how András had gotten him today. Which meant that Hegel must be dead.
He felt humiliated. He lacked the mental flexibility to think an unthinkable thought. Fucking thick-skulled idiot.
Being deep inside a cave solved the problem in the short term. There was no way they could trace him now. But unless he intended to take up residence there and eat eyeless fish who subsisted only on bat shit, he had to come up with a better idea, and fast. If they knew where he was, they could very well know where he had been. That would be András’s next move once he got tired of searching for Val here.
Tam was waiting in one of those places that was almost certainly archived in their files—unless she had already thumbed her nose at him and left. Altogether possible, knowing her. Probable enough even to hope for. He hoped she would be her usual difficult, independent self and get the hell out of there.
There was the pebbly underground beach that he remembered. He felt the smoother surface, the little sliding rocks beneath his feet. Underwater, of course, but he remembered this spot because it had not been entirely lightless. A deep crack in La Roccia had created a narrow canyon that let in a gleam of indirect light from the outside. From some distance beyond, he could hear the waves crashing, and a dim glow filtered down. What had been three meters of pebbly wet beach at low tide was now a narrow, half-meter strip of jagged rock, the weird, stalactite-sprouting ceiling slanting down low to meet it. Too low to sit.
He shook violently from the cold. His torn knees and hands stung from the salt water. His face and hip stung and throbbed from blows he hadn’t noticed during the fight, and his shoulder—
His shoulder. He reached up to touch the scar from the bullet wound last year. He’d been examined and treated by doctors in PSS’s pay, after having infuriated Hegel and several others with his inconvenient scruples about child killing. Those doctors had been the ones to sew him up in that secret clinic in Bogotá.
The shoulder had been slightly inflamed ever since. He felt nothing out of the ordinary palpating it, although his fingers were numb. He’d thought the chronic pain in the scar was normal enough. It wasn’t the only old wound or scar he had that ached and throbbed. He didn’t heal as fast as he had ten years before.
So he’d assumed. Not anymore.
He could not leave this cave and go to Tam with that thing inside him. He could lead them away from her, but eventually they would catch up with him and overcome him. His resources were almost tapped out, whereas Novak’s were limitless.
And unfortunately for him, he had witnessed what András could do to a man to extract information. He had never forgotten the experience. Val could not hold out forever. Not against that.
The shoulder was his best and only guess. He had to do it here and now. He could think of no place where he would have more light, other than La Grotta’s tourist chamber. What a show that would be for the English and German visitors on the pleasure boats.
He would rather not be sitting nipple deep in ice cold saltwater for an operation like this, but there was no alternative. He freed his knife from the sheath Velcro’ed to his ankle. Not easy. His hands barely functioned. Getting off the waterlogged jacket and unbuttoning his shirt was the next challenge. His fingers felt thick, dead. He was lucky the wound was in front of his shoulder.
Luck? Hah. He was the only miserable fool on earth who could call a detail like that luck. The knife point shook over the scarred meat of his shoulder as he breathed deep, gathering the courage. Wasn’t this just the story of his fucking life. Forever contemplating the knife he had to stab himself with.
Self-pity would not help him. Nor would he warm up any more, waiting. He would only get colder until he was in shock.
So do it, testa di cazzo. Cut. Now.
His muscles jerked, driving the knife into what he desperately hoped was the right direction—the spot where the most pain was concentrated. He stifled the scream into a strangled moan. Tears streamed down his face. He locked his jaw into a grimace that threatened to loosen his teeth—and thought of Imre. That shard of glass, stabbing downward with such resolve. Imre’s courage. His gift.
Again. He prodded. Blood welled up, slippery and hot as it trickled down his arm. Salt burned in the wound. He prodded deeper, making a low, desperate sound in his throat.
Again. He dragged in a sobbing breath, changed the angle of the blade. Cut again.
This