81
OVER LUCY’S SHOULDER I SAW Edward drop Zaid’s briefcase and raise a heavy, odd-looking gun out from under his trench coat. Larger than a revolver, it had a strange black section connected to it, with a metallic grid pattern on it that looked familiar, that gleamed for a moment in the bright light of the concourse.
The firing boomed loud and the heat of the bullet passed between Lucy and me. We both fell partway down the stairs, but neither of us relinquished our grip on her gun. In the stunned silence after the gunfire, screams erupted all around us, a choir of chaos.
Edward fired again. The bullet kicked the green stairs, very close to Lucy’s head, and, still fighting, we tumbled down the rest.
Lucy powered a fist into my face as we got up. Hard, right below the eye. I wouldn’t let go of the gun.
“Let go or Daniel is gone!” she screamed.
I didn’t let go. “Maybe they’ll trade me you for him,” I said.
She hit me again, as the crowd scattered, no one looking at us, so I tripped her, yanking her backward over my leg. She landed hard on the floor and kicked me in the thigh, and I landed on top of her. The panic in St. Pancras was now a fully fledged stampede, hundreds of people running, seeking cover; if we lay here on the floor we would be trampled.
I yanked her to her feet. The pistol was gone, lost in the shuffle. I didn’t assume she was still unarmed.
“You listen to me,” I hissed in her ear. “You’re nothing to me now. Nothing. And you’re nothing to your friend, because he just abandoned you and he didn’t care if he blew your head off trying to kill me. So. I’m your only hope.”
“Screw you!” Anger and fear shredded her voice. She tried to pull away from me, but I was stronger and I was madder. Her face was white with shock that Edward had risked killing her.
I yanked her to her feet, wrenched her arm up between her shoulder blades. In the stampeding panic no one accused me of being ungentlemanly. We were swept out into the street by the crowd.
I pulled her close to me, our faces as close as our wedding kiss. “If you try to run from me, I will catch you and break your neck.”
She shook her head. “Then you won’t get your kid back.”
“No, you’ll be dead. And I’ll still find my kid. There is no place on earth you can hide him from me, Lucy. Do you understand? I will never give up. Ever. I will find him. And you will be in a coffin.”
Her hand went behind her back. I hadn’t frisked her yet, swept along by the sea of panicking commuters. I saw the flash of steel in her hand: knife, short, curved. I dodged her swipe, felt the blade nick my ear.
“Sam, stop, please! Just let me go!”
So you can kill me? I thought. I powered a fist into her stomach and she folded, dropping the knife. I grabbed it.
“Why’d he try to kill you?” I said. She was groggy and she stopped to dry-heave along the sidewalk. Confusion and emotion felt like a storm blossoming in my chest. I’d loved her. Crazy, opera-singing love, beyond-death love. But to love her was to die at her hands now. I forced down the swell of emotion I felt.
“I don’t know. He’s turned traitor on me,” she managed to gasp.
“He doesn’t need you,” I said. “This is almost funny. You betray everything for this guy and he betrays you. It’s rich.”
“I don’t work for him.”
“Who do you work for?”
“Not Edward. We have the same boss.” She gave me a sideways glance.
I sensed the beginnings of a deal. “Who? The guy who made you get the tattoo?” I could see that the fight wasn’t out of her yet. You couldn’t beat the fight out of Lucy. It had been one of the traits I loved about her. I put the knife in her back, under her jacket. We walked.
I looked at her and saw tears on her face.
“Don’t cry,” I said. Almost automatically. I used to say it as a husband; Lucy’s tears, a rare occurrence, were always like nails in my flesh. “It won’t work on me.”
We were close to the parking garage. I pushed her along; she went. “Why is he turning on you?”
“I didn’t know Yasmin would kill her dad,” she said. “She was just supposed to be returned in exchange.”
“For what?”
“The other part of the weapons. The chips.”
“What weapons? What chips?”
She went silent. Making the point that she had critical information I needed.
I pressed on. “Well, Yasmin just murdered her dad. So I think this ransom, this kidnapping, was all a big fake she and Edward engineered. Why?”
“I can’t explain myself,” she said. “You think I can explain other people?”
“Did she go Patty Hearst? Brainwashed into joining her captors?”
“It’s one survival mechanism to play along. Trust me, I know,” Lucy said.
She’d just compared our marriage to a kidnapping. I shook my head. “Your charade is over,” I said.
“Yes. But it’s another thing to kill your father. Or your husband. I made them save your life here in London. That was the deal.”
“You’ll regret it,” I said. We hurried up the incline of the parking garage.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think I will.”
Her words made me feel cold; because if she had Daniel she had the trump card. She had it all.
Mila stood near her car, watching us approach. Her expression was blank.
“You caught her,” Mila said. “Congratulations. Hello, Lucy. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Lucy studied Mila. “I don’t know you.”
“You will.” Mila stepped forward and put plastic cuffs on Lucy’s hands. I pushed Lucy into the backseat and sat next to her to keep her under control. Mila stormed the Jaguar out of the garage, and I explained to her the chaos that had carried us out of St. Pancras.
“I have no idea where they would go,” Mila said. “I lost them on the feed.”
“I know where they’re going,” Lucy said quietly.
“With you captured, I’m assuming that their plans will change,” I said.
“Sam’s not dealing with you,” Mila said. “You’re dealing with me.”
“I told you, Sam. Daniel is close. Let me go and you can have him within a few hours.”
“I don’t believe you. You didn’t know I was going to be at the station. You thought I was in Holland, probably in a hospital bed. You wouldn’t have brought Daniel with you. No way you’re carting a kid around while playing hired gun. You’ve hidden him somewhere, Lucy, and the deal is you’re going to tell me or I will hand you over to Howell and the Company as a murderer and a traitor. Howell was entirely right about you.”
“Kill me now, then, because I won’t just tell you. You have to let me go.”
Mila said, “You won’t tell him but you will tell me.”
“She’s charming,” Lucy said. “But he won’t shoot me, little Miss Russia. Do you have a name, by the way?”
“You can call me Mila,” Mila said. “I plan on beating you senseless, by the way. Just so you know, I will enjoy it.”
“She’ll talk without violence,” I said to Mila.
“Is this where you thought you would end up?” Lucy said. “I mean, you joined the Company because you wanted to avenge your brother. Now you’re a hunted dog, and you don’t have your kid. You’ve lost everything.”
“No. I still have you.” I stared ahead into the traffic.
Lucy said, “What will you do with me?”
“First, you will tell us where Edward and Yasmin will go,” Mila said. “Sam, shut up. That’s an order.”
“Yes, Sam, that’s an order,” Lucy said.
Mila pulled the Jag over in a screech of tires. She launched herself toward the backseat and she hit Lucy, hard, two snapping blows to nose and mouth. Blood gummed under her nostrils, in the corner of her lips.
“Listen, Mrs. Capra,” Mila said. “Let us be clear as the crystal. You’re nothing to me. You don’t speak to Sam unless I give you permission. You are going to talk to us, or I am going to kill you.”
“I doubt your superiors want me dead,” Lucy said, her voice a half scream. Blood dotted her spittle. “I have information to barter.”
“You do not understand who Sam and I work for now. I do not work for a government accountable to voters who do not bother to inform themselves on basic issues. I do not work for an agency worried about budgets controlled by petty politicians. My only rule is that I have to return the car clean.” She flicked a little smile. “I don’t have to be a good example to anyone. I don’t like you. I don’t like what you did to my friend Sam. I don’t like a woman who uses her child as a pawn. You are an infinitely bad mother and an even worse person.”
“I know what I am,” Lucy said through the blood on her lips. “And I’ll make a deal with you. I will take you to where I think Edward and Yasmin will go. I’ll answer your questions. I’ll tell you where Daniel is.”
“And your price for this jackpot?” Mila asked.
“You let me go. When you’ve recovered Edward and his goods, which I promise you will be of great interest. Guarantee me that. If Sam says you’ll do it, I’ll trust him.”
Cars honked madly, Mila veered back into the flow of traffic.
“You have no reason to trust me,” I said.
“Yes, I do. I know you. I know your word is good.” Lucy looked at me, and for a moment I could think we were back in our Bloomsbury flat, a young couple, happy, a baby coming, in love.
“You let her go and she cannot testify to the Company that you are innocent,” Mila said. “They will never take you back. They will never stop looking for you. A life on the run, Sam, think long and hard about it. Are you going to drag your child along for the ride?”
A trade-off. My child for my freedom. At least this way I could find my kid, see him, hold him, be a father. Lucy had to deal with me, fairly, or she was dead. She knew it. Her game was over. She wasn’t going anywhere until I had my kid safe in my arms.
I glanced at Mila. She gave the barest of nods. I leaned back. “Fine, cooperate and we’ll let you go.”
“If you survive,” she said.
Mila said, “Where will they go?”
“New York,” she said. “We were to meet with my boss.”
“For what reason?”
“You get Edward, and you’ll know.”
“This boss. Your tattoo. This is Novem Soles—the Nine Suns?”
Lucy nodded.
“What is it?”
“A group that wants power and doesn’t care how they get it. I can’t give you a single name, though. I don’t know them.”
“But you got the tattoo.”
“They make you do that.” She shrugged. “It’s part of owning you. They made me, like they made me do everything else.”
“Made you? Like you had no free will? What’s Edward smuggling?”
“Only he and Zaid, and maybe Yasmin, know. I don’t.”
“You’re lying.”
“I have no reason to lie,” she said. “I don’t know what it is.”
“Where will they go right now? To New York on the next flight?”
“I think Yasmin will go home,” she said. “She and Edward have unfinished business.”