“Ilya? Tell me you’re there,” I order, out of breath as I sprint down the street.
“Ready and waiting,” he reports. “You guys better hurry. It’s about to be a madhouse over here.”
Clenching my teeth, I pick up speed, and Yan and Anton do the same as a vehicle squeals out onto the street a block behind us.
Arslan’s remaining bodyguards are catching up.
The ten-foot fence looms ahead, with community guards pouring onto the road, armed to the teeth.
“Now,” I shout at Yan, and he pulls out a grenade, ripping the pin off with his teeth without slowing down.
The guards scatter as Yan throws the grenade, and Anton and I pull out our guns, firing indiscriminately.
We don’t need to kill them all, just get them out of our way.
We’re now at the fence, so I jump up, grabbing onto a tree branch to lever myself up. This, here, is why we train so hard, why we have to be stronger than most athletes. My muscles scream as I dangle by one hand, lowering the other arm to pull up Anton, and when Anton scales the top of the fence, he pulls me up before reaching down for Yan as I provide the cover fire.
Another grenade from Yan explodes in a deafening flash, chasing away the guards as we jump down from the fence, and then we’re off again, running at top speed.
We need to get to our rendezvous point.
That’s the only way we’ll make it out.
The helicopter roar intensifies above us, the police sirens screaming ever louder.
“Now, Ilya,” I shout into the headset, and his car screeches around the bend, slowing down just enough for us to jump in.
We peel away from Arslan’s community, taking the back roads toward a tunnel, and when the sounds of pursuit fade, we switch vehicles and drive directly to our plane.
We made it.
Our target’s dead, and no one got hurt.
Elated, I call Lucas as soon as our plane lifts off the ground.
“It’s over,” I say when he picks up the phone. “We’re on our way back, so you can tell Sara to get ready. We’re going to pick her up before we make a little detour to New Zealand.”
For a moment, all there is silence. Then Lucas speaks.
“Peter…” His tone is grave. “About Sara… I’m afraid there’s been an accident.”
50
Peter
* * *
My heart turns into a block of ice, my lungs calcifying at Lucas’s words. Sara, in an accident—it’s impossible, unthinkable.
It’s my worst nightmare come true.
Lucas is speaking, telling me something about a car and a dog, but I’m not processing. There is a dull roaring in my ears, and all I can think about is the other time someone gave me news over the phone in that tone.
The stench of death, Tamila’s long lashes singed and glued with blood, Pasha’s tiny hand curled around a toy car… My vision darkens, all awareness fading as anguish tears through me, decimating everything inside.
Sorting through a pile of bodies, hearing the buzzing of the flies, knowing I wasn’t there to save them…
I can’t breathe, can’t feel anything but gut-wrenching horror.
A car accident. Sara. Her body crushed in crumpled heaps of metal.
The agony is too intense to bear. I can’t picture her dead, can’t imagine her vital spark extinguished.
Something red and hot trickles down my forearm. Dimly, I realize my fingers are digging into the phone so hard I’ve torn off a nail. The pain doesn’t register, though. Nothing registers except the hollow agony spreading through my chest.
I can’t lose Sara.
I won’t survive it.
“—so she might have a concussion, but the doctors don’t think that—”
“A concussion?” I latch on to the one word that doesn’t make sense. My thoughts are disjointed and slow, paralyzed by shock and growing grief. “What are you talking about?”
“The doctors don’t think it’s too severe,” Lucas says, his voice taking on an exasperated edge. “Haven’t you been listening? It’s a nasty gash on her forehead, but they’ll make sure it doesn’t leave a scar. And obviously, I’ll cover all the bills—it’s the least I can do under the circumstances.”
“A scar?” It doesn’t click for a moment, the despair encasing me too thick, too absolute, but then my synapses start to fire. Dragging in a long-overdue breath, I rasp out, “She’s… alive?”
“What?” Lucas sounds confused. “Yes, of course. I told you, she has a dislocated shoulder and a possible concussion. Do you have bad reception there or something? Yes, Sara is obviously alive. Her car slammed into the guardrail, and she cut open her head and hurt her shoulder. We brought her to the clinic in Switzerland—the one Esguerra likes to use, remember? Peter, are you listening?”
I am, but I can’t tell him that. My throat muscles have spasmodically locked up, and so has my entire body. The relief is so intense it tears through me like shrapnel from a mine, as painful in its own way as the anguish that choked me before. I don’t remember crying when I lost my son, but now I feel that agonizing moisture on my face, the tears leaving scorching trails on what remains of my heart.
I didn’t lose Sara.
She’s alive.
Injured in my absence but alive.
“Peter? Can you hear me?” Lucas’s voice grows in volume. “f*ck, man, can you hear me?”
“I’m on my way,” I say thickly, and hanging up, I order Anton to change course for Switzerland.
51
Sara
* * *
I drift in and out of floating darkness, my senses alternating between groggy awareness and total blankness. When I’m coherent enough to think, I’m cognizant of the pain, but I can also latch on to other stimuli… like voices.
“How could you do this? Do you not realize what he’s going to do when he returns? We were supposed to keep her safe.” It’s a male voice, harsh and chiding. I know the man the voice belongs to, but the throbbing pain in my temples becomes unbearable whenever I try to think of the name.
“It was your guards who chased her. You could’ve let her go,” a female voice objects. The woman sounds upset. I know her name is something foreign and exotic, but I’m too fuzzy to remember what it is. “He was abusing her, Lucas—“
Yes, Lucas, that’s it, I recall with relief. Lucas Kent, the arms dealer who lives in Cyprus.
“Abusing her? He f*cking worships the ground she stands on. Did you not see the way he looks at her?” Kent sounds like he’s on the verge of killing someone. “And I told you—he called about her every day, wanting to know if she’s eating, sleeping… if she’s f*cking content. Does that sound like a man who’s torturing a woman? And she has been asking about him. Would a woman who hates her kidnapper worry about his safety?”
“No, but—”
“But nothing! Even if he waterboards her every night, it’s none of our f*cking business. I was doing him a favor, and now we’ll be lucky if we don’t end up on his list.”