“You’re a man after my own heart, Janos. I’m calling from the airport. We’re booked through to Paris, since it was the first flight we could get to anyplace in Europe, but we didn’t know where we needed to go from there.”
“Almost certainly Hungary. Call me again if you find a signal for Rachel,” Val said. “I’ll get Tamar, if I can, and meet you in Budapest.”
He hung up, pressed down hard on the accelerator, ignoring the car’s freaky whines, shudders and shimmies of protest.
For Rachel’s sake, the fucking car could make one last effort.
Her timing was spot on. Ana’s eyelids fluttered as Tam parked the Opel in front of the clinic. She circled to the passenger’s side, jerked the door open, unbuckled Ana, and swatted her sticky cheeks.
“Wake up,” she said crisply. “Showtime.”
Ana groaned, her eyes dim and foggy. “What?”
Tam handed her a handful of makeup removal pads and a compact mirror from her purse. “Fix your face.”
Ana glanced at herself in the mirror, gasped in horror, and woke right up. She spent the next couple of minutes repairing her mask. When Tam sensed that she was starting to stall, she yanked Ana’s elbow and dragged her up and out of the car.
Ana twisted away. “What are you going to—ow!”
The needle pierced the underside of Ana’s coat sleeve, digging into her forearm so that Tam could stroll alongside her and hold her arm, oh-so-friendly and companionable. Ana squeaked and flinched.
“Move carefully,” Tam told her. “Now listen. I am the Dottoressa Tiziana Gadaleta. A specialist in…what disease is he suffering from?”
“N-n-no one is quite s-sure,” Ana quavered. “Some kind of tropical parasite, they think. It attacks the nerves. He’s immobilized, but he still feels awful pain. It’s…it’s terrible. Please. Don’t make it worse. He’s already suffering so much.”
“All right, I’m a specialist in tropical parasites.” How appropriate, she reflected. The worst of both worlds. Paralyzed, but still in pain.
Funny. She’d felt that way herself for sixteen years.
Ana dragged her feet. “Wh-what are you going to do to him?”
“Shut up and move,” Tam snapped as they approached the door.
The woman started to whimper. Tam leaned in to her ear. “One wrong move, and the needle goes in,” she murmured. “Don’t doubt it. I have nothing to lose.” For the first time in her life, Tam realized that statement was a lie. The realization did not feel good. In fact, it made her feel horribly vulnerable.
Oh, how she missed Robot Bitch.
Ana staggered beside her like a zombie. The man at the guard booth slid open a glass panel and leaned down. “Buona sera, Signora Santarini,” he said. “What’s the name of your visitor?”
“D-dottoressa Tiziana Gadaleta,” Ana quavered.
The man didn’t look up as he scribbled the name on his register. Perhaps out of carelessness. Or maybe the clinic’s posh visitors were habitually in this emotional state. Ana peered into the retina scan, presented her hand for the palm lock. A mechanical door sighed open.
The clinic was chilly and modern inside. It seemed designed to make one feel both important and vaguely sedated. White-clad doctors hustled officiously to and fro on their important business. No one seemed to notice them. Excellent.
Ana hesitated. Tam smiled pleasantly and prompted her with the needle’s point. “Take me to him. Now.”
Ana sniffed back her tears with violent effort and led her obediently down a series of corridors and stairways. She stopped outside a room, tears streaming down her face.
“Papa,” she said brokenly. “Oh, please. Don’t do this. Please.”
Christ, this was torture. Damn Robot Bitch, to leave her in the lurch right now, in her hour of need. “Open the door,” Tam urged through gritted teeth.
Ana pushed open the door. Tam shoved her inside, glanced at the man on the bed to make sure it was the right person.
It was. She stared at the long form lying on the bed, the dark, sunken eyes that fastened on hers. They widened ever so slightly.
She shoved the needle in. Ana’s jaw dropped in horror as Tam pressed the plunger.
“Don’t worry, I switched the earrings. It’s just a sedative,” Tam assured her in Ana’s last second of lucidity. She gently broke Ana’s tumble to the floor. Left her in a heap of wool and fur by the door.
She walked to the bed. Stengl stared up at her. His breath was labored. He wore an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.
Odd. She’d pictured this crucial, life-changing moment so many times. She felt nothing. Blank and cool, as if he were a stranger.
He looked insubstantial. He was a tall man, but skeletally thin now. She remembered a giant. Sweaty, malodorous, crushingly heavy.
His pale skin was like parchment, his lips peeling and colorless.
There was no need to speak. At least he recognized her, unlike Ana. She had that much satisfaction. There was no surprise in his eyes. If anything, she sensed a look of relief. He knew she’d come to kill him. The end of his suffering was at hand.
She came closer, bent over him. Stared into his bloodshot, watery eyes, wondering who was in there. How he could have done it. Rifle fire crackled in her head. Screams from the basement cells. Dirt scattering down into Mama and Irina’s eyes. Her nails dug into her palms.
His eyes were avid with eagerness for her to free him.
Images superimposed themselves over the man’s face in her mind. Her father, smiling over the jewelry bench as he taught her the craft they both loved. Playing with little Irina. Mamma, fussing over Tam’s pronunciation of French, Russian, Italian, Ukrainian. Lecturing her about politics, philosophy, and manners. Telling her daughter how she was going to love studying at the Sorbonne someday, as she herself had so longed to do.
The life she would have had, the life her little sister Irina would have had. Bones and dust.
She looked at him, and the anger didn’t rise up and choke her as it always had before. The place where it had been had changed. She’d broken her heart wide open, made space inside it for Rachel, and then still more space, for Val. She was transformed, transfigured.
She felt as big as the sky in there.
There was no monster here to vanquish. All power to hurt had been drained out of the creature on that bed. He was a burned-out battery. She would obtain nothing by killing him—and she could lose everything. She was no longer a woman with nothing to lose. She had everything that was precious. Everything to protect and cherish.
He was not worth it.
The strangest sensation opened up inside her at that realization, thrumming in the newly open space inside her chest. Like light, like heat, like music. Sweet, high-pitched sound, far-off children singing.
If she killed him, she would be linked to him. She would carry him forever. All the strength that she needed for the people she loved, she would have to give to Drago Stengl until the day that she died.
She’d carried him long enough. Let his own pain crush him out of existence with its own stately, majestic pace. Why rush it?
She could turn away. Leave him behind. She really could.
He sensed his precious deliverance drifting inexorably away from him, and opened his bloodshot eyes wide in alarm. He tried to speak.
She shook