She glanced down at that poor little girl and flagrantly broke airline regulations with her next words. “If you give me a diaper and fresh clothes, I’ll change her for you,” she offered.
“No, thank you. Don’t worry about it,” the man growled.
“It’s no trouble. She really should wake up anyway, just so she can take in some fluids,” Andrea said earnestly. “The air in here can really dry out a little—”
“Miss?” The man leaned right up to her ear and murmured, “Why don’t you fuck off and leave us alone? That way, I won’t have to make a formal complaint to the airline about your inappropriate questions, and the fact that I found you touching my daughter’s private parts when I got back from the rest room. Hmm?”
Andrea jerked away. Her heart thudded, her face reddened. She scurried away, tears of shock and hurt indignation clogging her throat.
She conferred with her colleagues, but it was almost time to serve breakfast, it was a very full flight, everyone was waking up and stretching their legs, and none of the rest of the flight crew wanted to tangle with a crazy guy. Certainly not when they were all so close to landing the plane and letting the problem just walk away.
The next two and a half hours crawled by. Andrea ignored him, but she felt his eyes on her. Hot, nasty little pinpricks, burning into her neck. The little girl did not move, even during the shudder and roar of landing. When the doors opened, John Esposito tossed the child over his shoulder so that her head and arms dangled limply down his back, and waited in line to exit, impassive. He held only a briefcase.
A briefcase? He didn’t even have a baby bag. What kind of father took a two-year-old on a fifteen-hour flight with no bag? Not a book, not a toy, not a snack. No wet wipes, bottle, sippy cup, nose tissues. To say nothing of diapers, a change of clothing. Like, what the hell?
Something was off. Something was really wrong with this picture.
Her stomach fluttered. She stood with her colleagues as the passengers filed out, chirping “Buh-bye! Buh-bye!” like a trained parrot. She didn’t look at John Esposito as he walked by with his limp burden, but she peeked as he unfolded the stroller in the icy cold jetway and dropped the child in it. He did not fasten the little girl in. Or tuck any sort of cover over her.
He turned, looked. He’d known she’d look. He was ready with a triumphant smile that said, I won, you cowardly, ineffectual bitch.
“Buh-bye,” he taunted softly, with a waggle of his fingers.
He disappeared down the jetway. Andrea wrenched her faltering smile back into alignment and longed for Lili so hard it hurt.
She needed to grab her little girl. Hug her and snuggle her. Right now. But Lili was on the wrong side of the world. It was night back in Portland. She couldn’t even call. It would be hours before Lili woke up.
Until then, Andrea was going to stare at the airport hotel room ceiling and wait. Feeling scared.
She could already be dead.
Val wrestled his mind back to blankness as he moored the small, inflatable motorboat to a huge vine that clung to the side of the ancient stonework bridge. The road that ran over it led to Novak’s crumbling eighteenth-century palace on the river. The McClouds had texted Rachel’s radio frequency to him, and her icon had come to rest here some hours before. Val had been unsurprised that the revenge orgy would take place at Novak’s favorite residence. The old man felt like an aristocrat here. It pumped up his vanity.
He knew the place well. He’d spent lonely years here, in the old days, once it was discovered that he had a knack for computers and technological devices. He’d made it his business back then to learn every detail about the ancient palace, having nothing better to do in his leisure time. The grounds were honeycombed with dungeons, wells, cisterns and drains, and he’d spent long hours studying antique floor plans he’d found in the library, hand-drafted in elegant cursive script. He’d wriggled through miles of culverts, tunnels and various other lightless, dripping holes, just out of curiosity. And since knowledge was power, his policy was to share what he learned only when his colleagues or employer had a pressing need to know it.
No one had ever asked.
He could only hope that no one else had made such a thorough study of the estate since then. It was unlikely. Crawling through dank, rat-infested eighteenth-century sewer pipes was the kind of thing only unbalanced teenagers did voluntarily.
And desperate, luckless bastards like himself, of course.
He opened the computer and checked Rachel’s icon. It remained stationary. The satellite photograph on his screen showed a bird’s-eye view of the place, which he remembered well. The icon blinked in what looked like one of the outbuildings, garages that used to be the stables. He slid the computer into his pack and climbed carefully out of the boat.
Keeping his mind focused on the task. Not letting it wander to what they might be doing to her right—
No. He picked his way over moss-slimed rocks, blanked out his mind with manufactured white noise.
In the flickering twilight dimness beneath the bridge, he shone the flashlight on the rusty iron grate bolted over the sewer hole in the wall. It dated back to the first World War, from the looks of it. He rattled the thing, examined the corroded bolts. He wouldn’t even need the welding equipment. A few wrenches with the crowbar—this one for Rachel, oof, this one for Tam—and ah, fuck. A fresh, hot wet spot in his shoulder. He’d ripped open the wound again. But the grate was loose.
She could be dead. Or worse.
He stepped savagely on the thought. Look straight ahead. Not productive, to think of it. Not useful to them.
Yes, and neither are you, testa di cazzo. He’d been buzzing around this problem for almost twenty-four hours like a fly around a turd. Endless precious hours wasted in inefficient, infuriating means of travel. No time to equip, no time to assemble a team or plan something brilliant. András had certainly had the use of a private plane waiting at the Naples airport. He’d probably gotten to Budapest during the night, and to Novak’s estate by the small hours of the morning with his prize. Hours for them to play with her if they’d wanted to. If Novak had been in a hurry.
Whereas Val himself had been forced to drive like a maniac to the Roma airport at Fiumicino and abandon the rental car in the taxi lane, door hanging open, keys in the ignition. He’d sprinted up to the ticketing area, waiting on line after line, trying desperately to find a seat on a commercial flight.
He was spoiled, by all the high budget shortcuts of PSS and the obscenely rich corporations and military operations that they serviced. Cristo, how did normal people survive the nightmarish frustration?
Normal people didn’t usually have their lovers chained under a torturer’s knife.
One last wrench, one last blaze of agony to take his mind off his troubles, and the grate came loose from the mouth of the sewer pipe. Thud, clang, and it rolled into the water with a sullen splash.
He clutched the flashlight in his teeth and scooped out armfuls of trash, twigs, leaves and sludge that had drifted down with the rainwater overflow for decades. It had lodged against the grate into a sludgy wall, making the opening too small for a man to crawl through.
He wished he had a team, but it took time to coordinate a team. The McClouds were fierce and competent and well meaning, but they were hours behind him, having to cross two continents and an ocean. He could not hope for help from them. By the time they followed their beacons to the source, whatever was going to happen would have long since happened. So be it.
He tightened his teeth on the pen flashlight and launched himself headfirst into the dark, wet hole. It was like crawling into his own grave.
Which did not bother him. He was not