She paused. Holden nodded, as if to say, “Go on.”
“Clare was seven months pregnant when she vanished. I suppose if the same thing happened today, she’d risk an unassisted birth, but back then her version of off-grid was a seventy-year-old midwife in a small French town, and that meant birth records, which meant birth certificates, and the names on those birth certificates—our actual true given names—have never been used for anything, ever. Hell, John and I had never even heard our own fucking names until Clare handed us those documents as a ‘Happy sweet sixteen, you should probably know about this.’ For the longest time we thought it was just another made-up identity, but the punch line, the reason I went to France, was that whoever bought our tickets used our birth names.”
“So, Dmitry has your birth certificates?”
“Well, someone in Moscow does, or this is Clare fucking with us again. Even in the digital age, there’s no single French repository for birth information. To get those certificates, someone had to know what name Clare was using, the day we were born, and the town itself. There are only three people on this planet who have that information, and it didn’t come from me or John. Even if, for the sake of argument, someone had the time, resources, and motivation to track those details down, he’d have still had to show up in person to get the actual certificates. So I went to the mairie to see if there were margin notes—stuff that’s recorded but doesn’t show up anywhere else—maybe something about Clare or her babies or a father, and if there was nothing, I wanted to see that nothing for myself.”
“I assume you found the nothing.”
“Far as I know, yeah. The records clerks have both been working there for over fifteen years, so at this point all I know is that if this wasn’t Clare’s doing, whoever tracked that information down did it over fifteen years ago.”
“That’s a long time to wait to use it.”
“Right?”
“You told John?”
“No.”
“But if you had found something?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s complicated.”
“Your brother wants this more than anything in the world, but the closer he gets to finding answers, the less you care if something goes wrong? It’s not that complicated.”
She said, “If this friendship thing is going to work, you’re going to have to learn to lie more. The honesty stuff freaks me out.”
Holden snorted and smiled. “You should think about that.”
He stretched a hand toward her. She reached up. His fingers swallowed hers, and he pulled her off the floor, and she stood, her hand in his, caught off guard and off balance. Her cheeks flushed. She tugged away.
She said, “You’re really going to go after him?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, fuck it,” she said. “Why exactly does John think I know his plan?”
“He said once you settled down enough to get over wanting to kill me, and once you’d had a good meal and got beyond wanting to kill him, that’d probably be about the same time they realized the woman with him wasn’t you. He said they’d be eager to talk with you, and you’d know how to make that happen.”
Her mouth opened. Shut. She knocked the back of her head hard into the wall and then did it again, and again, until the aftermath of sedation mixed with the pain of skull against stone and the throbbing muted the need to hurt something.
She saw the pieces now, Jack’s strategy.
The brilliance of it made her want to smother him.
She kicked her head back again, harder. Holden moved to stop her. She held up a hand to warn him off. “You were in Berlin,” she said. “You saw what the guy gave us.”
His eyes narrowed in accusation.
“Are you stupid?” she said. “No, I’m not carrying the phone.” She reached beneath her waistband, fiddled with her pants, pulled out a SIM case, and held it palm forward. “He made me think it was my idea.”
Holden plucked the case from her hand. Examined it.
“John wants you to call them?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got a spare burner you can have, but you load this up and it won’t matter what steps your brother took to keep you on the outside. They’re going to beeline right for you.”
She cocked her head puppy dog–style and gave his bicep a pitying, patronizing squeeze. “That’s so cute,” she said. “You actually believed John wanted you at Republic Square to save me from myself?” She let the inference dangle like baitfish above a shark tank, then leaned in and whispered, “No, you see, John, in his ‘control other people for the best’ wisdom, foresaw that the Russians wanted me and him both, which meant they have plans for us both, and the only way to keep me on the outside and utilize that plan was if I made contact from the outside. So he made sure I had the means to do that.”
She snatched the SIM case back. “He also knew that if I did call, they’d try to grab me the way they’d grabbed him, and that it’d take more than just one of me to keep me out of their hands.”
She paused for emphasis. “What he really pulled you in for, big guy, was that two-man job.”
CHAPTER 24
Prague 9, near Kolbenova Metro Station
Prague, Czech Republic
JACK
HE SAT ON THE FLOOR IN THE NEAR DARK, TABLE LAMP AT HIS SIDE, door at his back, attuned to movement and conversation in the hall, while his fingers traced up the plastic base to the bulb, to the metal guard that had, until a few hours ago, secured the shade, and back down again, biding time.
He’d been promised freedom.
The suit man’s bodyguards had brought him here instead, marching him through the same windowless walls and windowless hub to the same tiled, windowless room with the same single exit locked from the outside.
Not that he’d confirmed the door was locked.
Some things could be safely assumed.
The room had a bed now, a shoddy bargain-basement contraption topped with a foam mattress, which might, with luck, hold up a few nights before pancaking. Rough, overbleached sheets and a thin blanket had been dumped at its foot, and on the floor near the wall sat a liter of water and a Styrofoam takeaway box, which he assumed held something edible.
The bodyguards had had him strip, and they had examined his fingers and toes, and then taken his watch, wallet, and belt—shoes, too, though they’d eventually given shoes and clothes back—and had left him then, unsecured, alone, and had turned control of the building over to the crew who’d abducted him.
Two of them were in the hall outside.
They were on the floor now, the thug with the knife seated beside the door, the other somewhere along the opposite wall. They had been standing when they started, and they’d been generous with gossip at the beginning, too, speaking with the seditious freedom of men who had no expectation of being recorded or observed or understood.
They’d mocked him for the easy target he made, growing creative in the ways they could torment him, and griping about the limitations placed on them by their boss. And they’d moved on to verbally undressing Anna, crude and graphic in their descriptions of what they’d do to her if they could just convince Vadik to swap positons for a few hours.
The conversation had thinned and would stop completely as late night descended and the body’s need for sleep took over. He waited for that, killing time inside a mental maze that had twice shifted and shrunk in the past five hours.
He knew Dmitry was alive.
Knew Dmitry was aware of present circumstances, if not the particulars, knew that no matter how high Dmitry had climbed within the bureaucratic apparatus, this thing had come from higher still, and knew this abduction hadn’t been Dmitry’s doing.
Clare inside his head, Clare, who’d taught him to do better than believe, saturated that knowledge with doubt.
They give you just enough truth for wishful thinking to take over.
They give you the idea of hope because hope creates fear of losing what y
ou imagine you have, and that keeps you pliable.
He knew the training, knew the warnings, but this wasn’t the time.
He needed to believe.
Silence behind the door deepened.
It’d been an hour since the last spoken word.
He stood, took a deep breath, and pounded both fists hard against the door.
The hits reverberated through the room, shocking the quiet, and drove both men in the hall, swearing, to their feet. A fist punched the door back.
The same voice that held the knife threatened to bash his skull in.
Jack said, “I need the toilet.”
Both men laughed.
The man with the knife said, “Shit your bed.”
Jack waited for silence to settle, waited until the men had settled, and he pounded again, harder. The men swore at him, at each other.
One of them kicked the door.
He waited again and pounded again, mimicking with his fists the mental torture of dripping water and random squeaks, interruptive noises spaced just far enough apart that a tired brain begging to relax got just that close, only to be jarred and startled—pound wait pound wait pound—until the voice with the knife ordered the other to unlock the door and debate ensued and angry frustration won out over reason.
Keys jostled. The doorknob rattled.
The world slowed, and time fell between its cracks.
Jack reached for the lamp.
The door opened. Light spread through the widening gap and shifted, replaced by shadow. Jack drove the lamp upward, metal shade support as a spear tip, up beneath the chin of an angry oncoming face and through soft flesh.
He threw his full weight upward behind that thrust, tore knife from hand, stabbed into neck, and yanked down through the carotid triangle, severing muscle, windpipe.
He let the body drop, stepped into the hallway, into a rising PYa Grach.
Instinct took over, hands blocking wrist, slamming handgun into doorframe, shoving blade into throat to guarantee silence.
The sentry fought for control of the semiautomatic and clawed at Jack’s face, fingers fighting to reach his eyes.
Blade sliced wrist tendons.
Firearm clattered to the floor.
Jack dropped the knife, gripped head, rotated hard, fast, and took the neck with him. The man’s legs went out. The body fell.
Jack stood over the lifeless form, sucking air, catching his breath. Two dead. No gunshots.
Fifteen seconds, which had felt like fifteen minutes.
You need to know your opponent to outthink him.
Understand your enemy and you’ll know his plans before he does.
If these were the suit man’s bodyguards, he would have needed a different strategy, would have had a much harder fight.
But they weren’t. That was their first, second, third mistake.
He reached for the knife, sliced a strip off the sentry’s shirt, used the cloth to wipe blood spatter off his own face, his arms, cleaned the blade, and picked up the semiautomatic. Russian military sidearm. Standard issue.
He pulled the slide, checked the chamber.
Released the magazine, checked ammunition.
Eighteen 7N21 armor-piercing rounds, like they expected some kind of rescue attempt by Kevlar-wearing ninjas. He snapped the magazine back into place, checked both men for keys, money, identification, turned up a pack of cigarettes, a couple hundred euros, enough koruny for a decent meal, and two security badges with names that bore no relation to the names they’d called each other. He left the cigarettes and took the rest, nudged both weapons out of sight, and headed for the hub.
He didn’t know how many men were in the building or where they were, had no way to confirm the absence of cameras in the halls and hub, and wasn’t sure how far sound from pounding on the door had traveled.
Didn’t care.
He’d felt drafts while being marched one place to the next.
In a building like this, that meant doors or windows.
And he also knew Anna was close and only a single sentry guarded her. Vadik, they’d called him—the familiar form of Vadim—similar to the way Jimmy was a diminutive of James used by family, friends, and peers, or as deliberate condescension to put a lesser in his place.
In this case maybe a bit of both.
They considered him a stick-up-the-butt rule follower.
He could work with that.
He reached the end of the hall and followed a hint of cigarette smoke into a perpendicular entryway. A man in his early twenties, in civilian dress, stood military at ease three meters down. Jack strode toward him, purposeful, direct.
The sentry’s hand moved toward his sidearm.
Jack said, “Zdraviya zhelayu.”
A militarized greeting, uncommon, out of place.
The sentry’s hand hesitated, rose an inch, as if he wasn’t sure whether to salute or draw, and that bought another meter.
The sentry’s posture shifted.
Jack gripped handgun, gripped the knife, rushed the remaining distance, got muzzle to temple and knife to shooting hand before the guy’s finger slipped past trigger guard. “Your friends are dead,” he whispered. “Don’t join them.”
The sentry understood the intent, if not the words.
He stopped fighting.
Jack backed the blade up off his fingers.
The sentry released his grip.
Jack knocked the weapon to the floor, kicked it beyond reach, gripped the sentry’s arm, spun him hard, shoved him into the door, and with the muzzle to the back of the man’s head, said, “Unlock it.”
The man did as instructed.
Jack snatched the keys, grabbed the sentry’s collar, and used him as a human shield as he went through the door. He cleared the space, shoved the man into the far corner, and quietly shut them in.
The room was much like the one he’d been in, repartitioned office space, if he had to guess, and he found Anna on a bed much like his, with her right ankle cuffed to a chain and the chain cuffed to the frame.
She had startled awake when the door opened and let out a muffled scream, and she stared now, mouth slack, body immobile, as if not quite sure this was real.
Jack scanned the length of her.
Her eyes were red, puffy from crying, and her hair was a matted disaster, but her clothes were intact, and if she’d been hit or hurt, the cuts and bruises didn’t show. He kept the muzzle trained on the corner, flipped through the keys, found what he needed, and released her ankle.
Anna slipped off the bed and stood.
He nudged her behind him, nodded the sentry over to where she’d been, cuffed his foot as Anna’s had been cuffed, pulled her in tight, and backed toward the door.
He twisted the handle slowly, opened a crack, peered out into an empty hall, pulled Anna after him, relocked the door, put a finger to his lips, and led her back the way he’d come, pausing every few feet in search of airflow.
He felt the first draft at the edge of the hub, knelt, sniffed, followed toward the source, and a few feet farther found the outline of a door.
Palm to the wall, he pushed.
The segment gave way, opening a crack in an inward swing.
He nudged Anna to the side. “Wait here.”
Her eyes widened. She held on to his arm, and shook her head.
She didn’t want to be left behind or risk getting grabbed again.
“One minute,” he said. “Maybe less.”
Definitely less.
He was as vested in keeping her free as she was in getting free—different motive, sure, but just as much at stake—but had no time to persuade fear with logic.
He gripped her wrist, removed her hand.
This close to the outside, he no longer cared about noise or weapon reports.
This was full commitment right into the fatal tunnel, and the only thing that mattered was speed. He pushed through, weapon relaxed, low ready.
Information, details filled h
is head in rapid sequence.
Drab reception room. Small windows. Double front door.
Armed guard at the desk. Twenty feet.
Armed guard at the door. Twenty-five feet.
He fired toward the desk. Double tap to the chest. The guy went down, out of sight. Jack shifted left. Target at the door, reaching.
Jack pulled the trigger. Hit center chest.
The guy struggled to stay standing.
A shaking hand brought the muzzle upward.
Jack fired again.
The guard stumbled backward into the glass, slid to the floor.
Jack strode forward, pulled the trigger, single tap to the head.
He shifted right, weapon high ready, toward the security desk, and he sidestepped for a view behind the counter. The guard was on the floor, bleeding, gasping, struggling up, reaching for the underside of the desk, for what Jack assumed was an alarm.
Trigger pull.
Silence.
Jack patted down the body, searching pockets, neck, hands.
He snatched security badge and wallet, left the service weapon.
He would have rummaged through drawers and the computer system but didn’t have the time, so retraced his steps back to the wall that shielded Anna.
From this side, the hub entrance had a handle.
He pulled the door a few inches, cleared the breach, and pushed through. The hub was empty, and the hall, except for Anna.
He grabbed her hand, tugged her into the reception room.
The door closed behind her.
She followed a few feet in and stopped, legs immobile, focus riveted on the body propped up against the window. Jack left her for the love seat on the opposite wall, shoved furniture across the floor, and blocked the hub entrance. The piece wasn’t bulky enough to stop someone from getting through, but it would keep them from sneaking in the way he just had. He returned to the front door, dragged the guard from the glass to behind the desk, and, there, where Anna couldn’t see, searched the body the way he had with the first.
Liars' Legacy Page 20