The trauma of watching Rais cut the woman’s throat in the rest stop bathroom earlier that day still lingered; she saw it whenever she closed her eyes. The vacant, dead stare. The pool of blood nearly touching her feet. But then she touched her sister’s hair and she knew that she would absolutely accept the same fate if it meant Sara would be safe and away from this man.
Rais continued his conversation in the foreign language, chattering in short, punctuated sentences. He turned and parted the thick curtains slightly, only an inch or so, to peer out at the parking lot.
His back was to her, probably for the first time since they had arrived at the seedy motel.
Maya reached out and very carefully pulled open the drawer of the nightstand. It was all she could reach, handcuffed to her sister and without moving from the bed. Her gaze flitted nervously to Rais’s back, and then to the drawer.
There was a Bible in it, a very old one with a chipped, peeling spine. And beside it was a simple blue ballpoint pen.
She took it and closed the drawer again. At almost the same moment Rais turned back. Maya froze, the pen clutched in her closed fist.
But he did not pay her any attention. He seemed bored with the call now, anxious to get off the phone. Something on the television caught his attention for a few seconds and Maya hid the pen in the elastic waistband of her flannel pajama pants.
The assassin grunted a halfhearted goodbye and ended the call, flinging the phone onto the armchair cushion. He turned toward them, scrutinizing each in turn. Maya stared straight ahead, her gaze as vacant as she could make it, pretending to watch the newscast. Seemingly satisfied, he took his post on the chair again.
Maya gently stroked Sara’s back with her free hand as her younger sister stared at the television, or perhaps at nothing at all, her eyes half-closed. After the incident in the restroom at the rest stop, it took hours for Sara to stop crying, but now she simply lay there, her gaze empty and glazed. It seemed she had nothing left.
Maya ran her fingers up and down her sister’s spine in an attempt to comfort her. There was no way for them to communicate between each other; Rais had made it clear that they were not allowed to speak unless asked a question. There was no way for Maya to relay a message, to create a plan.
Though… maybe it doesn’t have to be verbal, she thought.
Maya stopped touching her sister’s back for a moment. When she resumed, she took her index finger and surreptitiously drew the slow, lazy shape of a letter between Sara’s shoulder blades—a large S.
Sara lifted her head curiously for just a moment, but she did not look up at Maya or say anything. Maya hoped desperately that she understood.
Q, she drew next.
Then U.
Rais sat in the chair in Maya’s peripheral vision. She didn’t dare glance over at him for fear of seeming suspicious. Instead she stared straight ahead, as she had been, and drew the letters.
E. E. Z. E.
She moved her finger slowly, deliberately, pausing for two seconds between each letter and five seconds between each word until she spelled out her message.
Squeeze my hand if you understand.
Maya did not even see Sara move. But their hands were close, on account of being cuffed together, and she felt cool, clammy fingers close tightly around her own for a moment.
She understood. Sara got the message.
Maya started anew, moving slowly as possible. There was no rush, and she needed to make sure that Sara got every word.
If you have a chance, she wrote, you run.
Do not look back.
Do not wait for me.
Find help. Get Dad.
Sara lay there, quietly and perfectly still, for the entire message. It was a quarter after three before Maya finished. Finally she felt the cool touch of a thin finger on the palm of her left hand, nestled partially under Sara’s cheek. The finger traced a pattern on her palm, the letter N.
Not without you, Sara’s message said.
Maya closed her eyes and sighed.
You have to, she wrote back. Or there is no chance for either of us.
She didn’t give Sara an opportunity to respond. Once she had finished her message, she cleared her throat and said quietly, “I have to go to the bathroom.”
Rais raised an eyebrow and gestured toward the open bathroom door on the far end of the room. “By all means.”
“But…” Maya lifted her shackled wrist.
“So?” the assassin asked. “Take her with you. You have a free hand.”
Maya bit her lip. She knew what he was doing; the sole window in the bathroom was small, barely large enough for Maya to fit through and wholly impossible while handcuffed to her sister.
She slid off the bed slowly, prodding her sister to come with her. Sara moved mechanically, as if she had forgotten how to properly use her limbs.
“You have one minute. Do not lock the door,” Rais warned. “If you do I will kick it down.”
Maya led the way and closed the door to the tiny bathroom, cramped with both of them standing in it. She flicked on the light—fairly certain she saw a roach skitter to safety beneath the sink—and then turned on the bath fan, which droned loudly overhead.
“I won’t,” Sara whispered almost immediately. “I won’t go without—”
Maya quickly held a finger to her own lips to signal for quiet. For all she knew, Rais was standing right on the other side of the door with an ear to it. He did not take chances.
She quickly pulled the ballpoint pen from the hem of her pants. She needed something to write on, and the only thing available was toilet paper. Maya tore off a few squares and spread them on the small sink, but every time she pressed the pen to it, the paper tore easily. She tried again with a few fresh squares, but again the paper ripped.
This is no use, she thought bitterly. The shower curtain would do her no good; it was just a plastic sheet hanging over the tub. There were no curtains over the small window.
But there was something she could use.
“Stay still,” she whispered in her sister’s ear. Sara’s pajama pants were white with a pineapple print on them—and they had pockets. Maya turned one of the pockets inside out and, as carefully as she could, tore it out until she had a rough-edged triangular scrap of fabric that had the fruity imprint on one side but was all-white on the other.
She quickly flattened it on the sink and wrote carefully as her sister watched. The pen snagged several times on the fabric, but Maya bit her tongue to avoid grunting in angry frustration as she wrote out a note.
Port Jersey.
Dubrovnik.
There was more that she wanted to write, but she was nearly out of time. Maya stowed the pen under the sink and tightly rolled the fabric note into a cylinder. Then she looked around desperately for a place to hide the note. She couldn’t just stick it under the sink with the pen; that would be too conspicuous, and Rais was thorough. The shower was out of the question. Getting the note wet would run the ink.
An abrupt knock on the thin bathroom door startled them both.
“It’s been a minute,” Rais said clearly from the other side.
“I’m almost done,” she said hastily. She held her breath as she lifted the lid from the toilet tank, hoping that the thrumming bathroom fan drowned out any scraping noise. She looped the rolled-up note through the chain on the flushing mechanism, high enough that it wouldn’t touch the water.
“I said you have one minute. I am opening the door.”
“Just give me a few seconds, please!” Maya pleaded as she quickly replaced the lid. Lastly, she tugged a few hairs from her head and dropped them atop the closed toilet tank. With any luck—with a lot of luck—anyone who was following their trail would recognize the clue.
She could only hope.
The knob to the bathroom door turned. Maya flushed the toilet and crouched in a gesture to suggest she was pulling up her pajama bottoms.
Rais stuck his head into the open door, his gaze directed at the floor. Slowly he panned up to the two girls, inspecting each in turn.
Maya held her breath. Sara reached for her sister’s shackled hand and their fingers intertwined.
“Finished?” he asked slowly.
She nodded.
He looked left and right in distaste. “Wash your hands. This room is disgusting.”
Maya did so, washing with gritty orange hand soap as Sara’s wrist dangled limply next to her own. She dried her hands on the brown towel and the assassin nodded.
“Back on the bed. Go.”
She led Sara back into the room and onto the bed. Rais lingered a moment, glancing around the small bathroom. Then he flicked off the fan and the light and returned to his chair.
Maya put her arm around Sara and held her close.
Dad will find it, she thought desperately. He’ll find it. I know he will.
CHAPTER SIX
Reid headed south on the interstate, trying hard to ride the line between speeding and getting there quickly as he headed toward the rest stop where Thompson’s truck had been ditched. Despite his anxiety to get a lead, find a clue, he was beginning to feel optimistic about being on the road. His grief was still present, sitting heavy in his gut as if he had swallowed a bowling ball, but now it was wrapped in a shell of resolution and tenacity.
Already he was feeling the familiar sensation of his Kent Steele persona taking the reins as he barreled down the highway in the black Trans Am, a trunk full of guns and gadgets at his disposal. There was a time and place to be Reid Lawson, but this wasn’t it. Kent was their father too, whether the girls knew it or not. Kent had been Kate’s husband. And Kent was a man of action. He didn’t wait around for the police to find a lead, for some other agent to do his job.
He was going to find them. He just needed to know where they were going.
The interstate heading south through Virginia was mostly straight, two lanes, lined on both sides with thick trees, and thoroughly monotonous. Reid’s frustration grew with every passing minute that he didn’t get there fast enough.
Why south? he thought. Where would Rais be taking them?
What would I do if I was him? Where would I go?
“That’s it,” he said aloud to himself as a realization struck him like a blow to the head. Rais wanted to be found—but not by the police or the FBI or another CIA agent. He wanted to be found by Kent Steele, and Kent Steele alone.
I can’t think in terms of what he would do. I have to think of what I would do.
What would I do?
The authorities would assume that since the truck was found south of Alexandria, that Rais was taking the girls further south. “Which means I would go…”
His musing was interrupted by the blaring tone of the burner phone in the center console.
“Go north,” Watson said immediately.
“What did you find?”
“There’s nothing to find at the rest stop. Turn it around first. Then we’ll talk.”
Reid didn’t have to be told twice. He dropped the phone into the console, downshifted into third, and jerked the wheel to the left. There weren’t many cars on the highway at this time of day on a Sunday; the Trans Am crossed the empty lane and skidded sideways into the grassy median. Its wheels did not screech against the pavement or lose purchase when the ground turned soft beneath them—Mitch must have installed high-performance radial tires. The Trans Am fishtailed across the median, the front end spinning only slightly as it kicked a cascade of dirt out behind it.
Reid straightened the car as he crossed the barren narrow strip between stretches of highway. As the car found asphalt again, he popped the clutch, shifted up, and slammed down on the pedal. The Trans Am shot forward like a bolt of lightning into the opposite lane.
Reid fought down the sudden exhilaration that spiked in his chest. His brain reacted strongly to anything adrenaline producing; it craved the thrill, the fleeting possibility of losing control and the galvanizing pleasure of gaining it back.
“Heading north,” Reid said as he plucked up the phone again. “What did you find?”
“I’ve got a tech monitoring the police airwaves. Don’t worry, I trust him. A blue sedan was reported abandoned at a used car lot this morning. In it they found a purse, with IDs and cards matching the woman that was killed at the rest stop.”
Reid frowned. Rais had stolen the car and ditched it quickly. “Where?”
“That’s the thing. It’s about two hours north of your current location, in Maryland.”
He scoffed in frustration. “Two hours? I don’t have that kind of time to waste. He’s already got a big lead on us.”
“Working on it,” Watson said cryptically. “There’s more. The dealership says there’s a car missing from their lot—a white SUV, eight years old. We have nothing to track it with other than waiting for it to get spotted. Satellite imaging would be like a needle in a haystack…”
“No,” Reid said. “No, don’t bother. The SUV will mostly likely be another dead end. He’s toying with us. Changing direction, trying to throw us off from wherever he’s really taking them.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because that’s what I would do.” He thought for a moment. Rais already had a lead on them; they needed to get ahead of his game, or at least on par with it. “Have your tech look into any cars reported stolen in the last twelve hours or so, between here and New York.”
“That’s a pretty wide net to throw,” Watson noted.
He was right; Reid knew that a car was stolen about every forty-five seconds in the US, amounting to hundreds of thousands each year. “All right, exclude the top ten most frequently stolen models,” he said. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Rais was smart. He would likely know which cars to avoid and which to aim for. “Scratch off anything expensive or flashy, bright colors, distinguishing features, anything the cops would find easily. And, of course, anything new enough to be equipped with GPS. Focus on locations that wouldn’t have many people around—vacant lots, closed businesses, industrial parks, that sort of thing.”
“Got it,” Watson said. “I’ll call you back when I have info.”
“Thanks.” He stashed the phone in the center console again. He didn’t have two hours to burn driving the highways. He needed something faster, or a better lead on where his girls might be. He wondered if Rais had once again changed direction; perhaps headed north just to turn west, heading inland, or even going south again.
He glanced over at the lanes of southbound traffic. I wonder if I could be passing them right now, right next to me. I’d never know it.
His thoughts were suddenly drowned out by a piercing yet familiar sound—the steady rising and falling of a wailing police siren. Reid swore under his breath as he glanced in the rearview mirror to see a police cruiser tailing him, its red and blue lights flashing.
Not what I need right now. The cop must have spotted him cross the median. He looked again; the cruiser was a Caprice. 5.7-liter engine. Top speed of a hundred and fifty. I doubt the Trans Am can maintain that. Even so, he wasn’t about to pull over and waste precious time.
Instead he slammed the pedal down anew, jumping from the previous eighty-five he was doing up to an even hundred miles an hour. The cruiser kept pace, leaping up in speed effortlessly. Still Reid kept both hands on the wheel, his hands steady, the familiarity and excitement of a high-speed chase returning to him.
Except this time he was the one being chased.
The phone rang again. “You were right,” Watson said. “I got a… wait, is that a siren?”
“Sure is,” Reid muttered. “Anything you can do about this?”
“Me? Not on an unofficial op.”
“I can’t outrun him…”
“But you can outdrive him,” Watson replied. “Call Mitch.”
“Call Mitch?” Reid repeated blankly. “And say what exactly…? Hello?”