Val shut his eyes and threw the dice. “I can’t,” he said. “Novak has her now. András abducted her. Less than an hour ago.”
Georg sucked in an audible breath. “You fucking idiot,” he hissed. “How could you have allowed this to happen?”
“She exposed herself when she ran from me,” he said dully. “She was trying to get back to you. She…she wanted you.”
Georg was silent.
“She will be in Novak’s hands within eight hours,” Val added after another minute ticked by. “Dead within twenty-four hours of that, almost certainly. If not sooner.”
“If this happens, you do know what will happen to you, Janos?”
Val stared bleakly at the horizon. “Yes,” he whispered. God help him. He did.
“Pain,” Georg said softly. “For as long as I can inflict it. Pain you cannot imagine. Think about it.”
Val broke the connection. There was no point in thinking about it. The threat barely touched him.
If Novak killed Tamar and Rachel, anything Georg did to him afterward would be supremely redundant. He doubted he would even notice.
In fact, he would make a point of being already dead.
Georg clicked the phone closed with a hand that tingled with excitement. His heart thudded with lust and fury.
She wanted him. She had always wanted him. He had known in his deepest heart that they were destined to be together. He was the only one who could accept or understand her dark side, her secret, shameful desires, and she was the only one who could comprehend his.
He would reward her for her loyalty and save her from that blood-drinking monster, Novak. And she would owe him her life. He liked that.
But he had to be quick and lucid. And ruthless.
He walked down the small spiral staircase into the common room of the luxury apartment he had rented in San Vito. His eyes slid over the five men who were there. Someone had betrayed him. Sold him out to Novak, telling the old man about Tamara’s continued existence and Georg’s search for her. It was one of the men in this room.
It galled him to harbor a traitor, but that same man could be used to feed false information back to Novak.
The traitor would subsequently die a slow and horrible death, once he was identified.
“We’re going back to Budapest at once,” he announced. “Novak has openly challenged me. Tomorrow at midnight, we mount our attack.” He turned to Ferenc. “Call the others. We will conduct a strategy meeting. We must videoconference. Hurry. There is a great deal of planning to do.”
Ferenc pulled out his phone and got to work.
Georg strolled out to the terrace of the luxury villa, which was perched right over the roiling sea. He turned up the volume on his telephone. The crashing of the sea served nicely as white noise to cover his voice. He punched in the code to scramble the call, and dialed the PSS man he dealt with now. The defunct Hegel’s second in command.
“Yes?” the man asked.
“It happens tomorrow,” Georg said without preamble.
There was a startled pause. “Tomorrow? So soon?”
“My men cannot know,” Georg said. “They’re baiting the trap. Your team will mount the attack. I will call you in two hours and explain the details. You will need an eight-man team in Budapest by tomorrow.”
Georg hung up the phone and stared at the heaving waves. There was a great deal of planning to do. Most of his men would probably be dead by tomorrow. He would have to sacrifice them to unmask the traitor, and he would be hard put to replace them. This was going to be expensive.
But his mind was too occupied for planning. Filled with filthy, sweating fantasies that made his crotch ache with eagerness.
Fantasies of fucking Tamara, over and over. While the whole world watched.
Andrea first noticed the curly-headed toddler curled up, thumb in her mouth and sleeping like an angel next to her dad, while passing out the ear phones in the first class cabin. She was the same size as Andrea’s two-year-old Liliana back home, currently being spoiled rotten by Grandma. These long runs out and back to Frankfurt were hard. By the time Andrea got back, she was longing for her Lili.
Funny, that the little cutie was already sacked out even before they took off. Usually, the noise and bustle of boarding revved kids up. If they calmed down at all, it was during that high altitude drone of midflight over the Pole. Portland-Frankfurt was a long flight for a toddler, but Andrea had tricks for the kids, over and beyond the usual crayons the airline provided. She’d be ready when this one woke up.
She beamed at the little girl and smiled at her father, a big, bearded dark man. “What a doll,” she enthused. “How old?”
The guy blinked a few times before answering. “Two,” he said.
“I have a two-year-old at home, too,” Andrea confided. “It’s a beautiful age. No matter what anybody says.”
The man smiled briefly and accepted the beer she’d just poured for him, and looking away as he sipped. Not the chatty type.
Andrea glanced at the kid every time she walked past 10A and 10B. She slept like a rock, in the exact same position, skinny legs curled up, thumb in mouth, arm flung over her head.
Hours later, the little girl had not moved. Her father gazed into space or read a newspaper. Andrea served him his meal. He ate it, folded his hands, dozed without ever touching or looking at the child.
Seven hours into the flight, Andrea served the man a drink and nodded at the little girl. “My, she certainly is a sound sleeper,” she commented. “You’re lucky, on such a long flight.”
The man’s eyes flicked up to hers and away. “Guess so,” he said.
“Let me know when she wakes up and I’ll get her some yogurt and juice,” she offered.
He mumbled something and looked back down into his paper.
After ten hours had gone by, Andrea began feeling nervous. She checked the passenger manifest, not even sure exactly why. John and Melissa Esposito. Well, of course, he was her father. What else?
Maybe the little girl had been dosed with antihistamines so that she’d sleep. Some parents did that when they wanted a hassle-free flight, but she was awfully small for that. Maybe she was a heavy sleeper, and this was her full night stretch. Maybe she was jetlagged from a previous leg of their trip. Or maybe Andrea should just mind her own beeswax.
Even so, an hour later when the man got up to stretch his legs and stroll to the bathroom, she slipped over to 10B, and took a peek.
Same position. The kid did not look good. In fact, Andrea was unpleasantly reminded of that bout of rotavirus that had landed Lili in the children’s hospital last Thanksgiving, an IV in her tiny arm. That pinched, pale look, the pale, wrinkled skin, sunken eyes, the dry, colorless lips. Dehydration. Her cheek was cold. Her hand felt like ice. Andrea smelled pee. She slid her hand down under the child’s body.
Yep. Wet, as was the seat beneath her. No wonder she was cold. At least that meant the dehydration couldn’t have gotten to a critical point yet. Still, Andrea was tempted to check her pulse. Just to see if she had one.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The man’s low voice made her jump. Andrea spun around and faced him. “Ah. Sorry. I was just, ah, checking on your little girl—”
“That’s not necessary,” the man said.
“But she’s wet,” Andrea protested. “She’ll get chilled. And she—”
“Her