Charlie took a big bite of eggs. “Do you think anyone knows we’re missing yet?” she asked.
Waverly carefully applied a coat of mascara to her upper lashes. “Yes, by now Beau will realize we didn’t make it to that wedding. He’ll know we’re missing, but I have no idea what he’ll do about it or how he’ll find us.” She bit her lip, carefully brushing eye shadow across the other lid to match.
Beau was clever and loyal and resourceful. He would work unceasingly to find Waverly, but the problem was that he would have so very little to work with. For all intents and purposes, she and Charlie had simply vanished somewhere between Sarajevo and Pristina. That was a long and lonely road. They could be anywhere by now.
Charlie had said the day before that she thought they were somewhere in Kosovo, based on the license plates, but that still only narrowed it down to an entire country. It was a small country, true, but a large and imprecise region if you were searching for only two people, especially if there was a reason to keep them hidden.
Waverly rubbed a touch of blush below her cheekbones to highlight them. She was working hard to remain calm, to summon the Zen-like serenity she tried to channel on the show. She was choosing to ignore so much about her circumstances right now. She could focus on recipes and camera angles because they distracted her from thinking about Andrew or worrying about how exactly they were going to get out of their current predicament.
At least they hadn’t been taken by the people who were after Charlie. Waverly shuddered at the thought. As long as she did her job like their captors wanted, it seemed there was a good chance things could still turn out well. She glanced at her sister and her unborn child, feeling the responsibility for their safety settle on her shoulders like a lead blanket. She couldn’t exactly orchestrate a rescue, but she could do her best to keep them safe until they were rescued or released by the people who had taken them.
And who knows, she thought, trying to think of anything positive about their current situation, anything to keep her panic at bay, if they were rescued, this would make a pretty sensational story. She sat back and studied her reflection, then blended the blush into her cheekbones a little more. Maybe she should publicize it when this whole ordeal was over and they were safely home. Perhaps it would prove to be the elusive ratings boost the show needed. Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond had never been kidnapped by Albanian nationalists. As long as they could stay safe until they were rescued, maybe this entire ordeal could actually turn out to have a silver lining. Waverly bit her lip and studied her reflection. First she needed to be very careful and keep their captors happy until someone came to rescue them.
“Junior likes breakfast,” Charlie observed, putting her hand to her belly. “He’s kicking hard. Ouch.” She flinched.
Waverly surveyed her sister out of the corner of her eye. More things to add to the list of items to try not to worry about right now. The baby. How long would their captors keep them here? Charlie couldn’t have the baby here, in the middle of nowhere. They needed to be on a plane to the US before she reached thirty-six weeks. Waverly did the math. That left about eight weeks. Surely someone would rescue them before then. Living in this uncertainty and tension for eight weeks was unthinkable. How many cooking shows could they possible want her to tape?
She closed her eyes and practiced a few breathing exercises her therapist had taught her years before to help control her panic attacks. She pushed all the troubling thoughts from her mind, all the things she could not control. She had become good at not thinking too hard about things, practiced at letting go of anything unpleasant. She employed the same tricks now, breathing in strength, breathing out everything else—her worry over the baby, her fierce longing for Andrew, the strain of being in captivity, the uncertainty of their situation. She did this ten times, until she felt a veneer of calm and poise descend upon her. She knew every bad and difficult thought was still there under the surface, lurking. Nothing had changed, but she could focus on the pinpoints of light, the tiny bits of her current situation that felt positive and hopeful. With the last exhale she opened her eyes, then peered into the mirror and applied Dior Grege 1947 to her lips, making a perfect pucker. She was ready to face the day.
CHAPTER 23
A half hour later, when Artur and Jetmir escorted Waverly and Charlie to the first taping, the outbuilding was buzzing with activity. Erjon met them at the foot of the stage. He was dressed as impeccably as before and smoking a cigarette. It was barely seven in the morning.
“You are refreshed?” he asked, not waiting for a reply. He gestured with the lit cigarette. “Come, we are ready to make the show.”
Someone found a seat for Charlie off to the side where she could watch the action but be out of the way. She sat in her leather jacket, shivering a little in the chill, wishing again that she’d brought a warmer coat. A young woman appeared with a blanket and handed it to her. Charlie wrapped it around her legs and belly. It was musty, but at least it was warm.
Up on the brightly lit stage, Waverly was getting a wireless microphone attached to her gown. Charlie kept an eye on the stage but also surreptitiously surveyed the entire room, taking stock of the operation. She counted six people besides Erjon. Jetmir had disappeared and Artur stood by the single metal door, hand on his gun, scowling. It seemed to be his perpetual expression. Off to one corner beside the front entrance was a little room where Erjon and others went in and out. It looked like an office or a command center of some sort. Charlie made a mental note to check it out. Maybe there was a telephone there.
Realistically, though, what good would it do to call anyone? What could she say? “We’re alive and being held probably somewhere in Kosovo.” There were thousands of miles of land, hundreds of villages. If she could get a look outside at a nearby town or at a piece of mail with an address . . . She shifted uncomfortably, trying to come up with some halfway decent plan. Her mind had been running full tilt since they’d awakened from being drugged, her thoughts going round and round like a hamster in a wheel, but so far it was getting her nowhere.
Onstage Waverly was being introduced to a stunningly beautiful young woman wearing a sequined silver evening gown with a slit to the knee, towering high heels, and a glittering crown and sash. Charlie leaned forward, intrigued by the spectacle.
“This is Antigona.” Erjon proudly introduced the young woman to Waverly. “She is Miss Kosovo. She will help you host the show.”
Waverly and the young woman looked each other up and down in a silent mutual assessment.
“Oh, this should be interesting,” Charlie murmured, amused despite their current difficult circumstances. Waverly did not like to share the spotlight.
“And how is she helping me exactly?” Waverly asked with a frosty, polite smile.
Erjon explained, “Each show you will make an American food, and Antigona will make a food from Kosovo, a traditional Albanian food. Then we will compare them.” He clapped his hands. “So America will see how excellent is Albanian food and culture. You see?” He seemed very confident about this plan.
Antigona was adjusting her sash and casting bored looks around the room, perched on her high heels like a lovely water bird about to take flight.
“What are you going to cook?” Waverly asked her. The girl gave her a startled look. She had very large dark eyes and a long oval face that was almost too pretty to be real.
“She doesn’t speak English,” Erjon told her. “You will tell the American people what she makes and how good it is.”
Waverly looked skeptical. “Does she cook? She certainly doesn’t appear to eat.” She looked the slim young woman up and down critically.
“Yes, yes,” Erjon said impatiently. “She is Kosovar Albanian girl. Of course she cooks. All Albanian girls cook. So they can take care of us men.” He laughed heartily at his own joke.
Waverly huffed at this display of female disempowerment but appeared to regain her composure after a warning cough from Charlie.
“Fin
e. What is she going to make? What did you say her name was, Antagony?”
“Antipathy,” Charlie murmured under her breath, wishing Andrew were here to witness the scene. They would amuse themselves by coming up with variations on the girl’s name. She missed her brother-in-law and wondered again what was happening between Waverly and him. Waverly had said he was heading to his fishing cabin in the Adirondacks. Would he even know they were missing? She hoped so, and that he was doing everything in his power to find them. She tried to imagine what that might be but failed. Maybe Andrew had previously untapped reservoirs of heroism and cunning, an edge of James Bond to him. Maybe he was at this very moment miraculously zeroing in on their location.
She entertained a brief fantasy of Andrew bursting through the doors of the outbuilding and freeing them, sweeping them away in a helicopter he’d parked directly on top of the garden plot. But strangely, when she played it out in her head, it was not Andrew who broke through the door. It was Johan Kruger. She shook her head, trying to dismiss the image of Johan sucker-punching Artur in the nose, but it lingered, giving her a warm little glow in her stomach. What she wouldn’t give to see him come through the door in real life.
Onstage they were about to start filming. A young woman with a makeup kit dabbed at Antigona’s forehead with pressed powder. She approached Waverly, but Waverly shook her head. On the fake marble island in the forefront of the cobbled-together kitchen sat an array of ingredients, mixing bowls, and measuring cups and spoons. The cameraman, a skinny young man with acne, who looked barely out of his teens, gestured for silence, and Antigona took up her position next to Waverly behind the island.
“Action,” Erjon called, waving his hand. “Now cook!”
Over the next hour Waverly whipped up a batch of simple buttery sugar cookies dipped in sugar and lemon zest, and Antigona made a similar Albanian cookie called kurabie. Antigona proved to be a quick hand in the kitchen, and Charlie enjoyed the spectacle of watching the two women try to out-dazzle each other and fight for dominance at center stage.
Although Waverly was filming the cooking videos under duress, Charlie knew her sister couldn’t resist the allure of the camera. Once the filming started, Waverly acted as though she had forgotten all about being kidnapped and forced to cook in a sham kitchen in an outbuilding somewhere in Kosovo. She ramped up the Simply Perfect Waverly Talbot charm and made those butter cookies look like the best thing on earth. Which was probably why they were in this situation to begin with. Waverly’s star power had convinced their captors that she could sell anything, even Albanian unification.
Charlie sighed and massaged the back of her neck where a muscle was knotted from stress. It was so hard to sit there and do nothing, just wait for a rescue that seemed far away and improbable. If only Waverly could charm her way out of their imprisonment and back to freedom. Determined to at least gather information, Charlie looked for a chance to snoop around.
While the cookies baked, the show took a short break. Erjon joined his cooking stars on the stage to explain the next section. All eyes seemed to be focused on the front, so Charlie seized the opportunity to stretch her legs and further her investigations. She wandered the length of the outbuilding, taking her time so that people turned back to their work and ignored her slow meander. The outbuilding was damp and cold and smelled like a curious mixture of baking lemon cookies and cigarette smoke. Charlie closed her eyes briefly and apologized to the baby for the secondhand smoke, determining to find some fresh air as soon as possible.
At last she reached the office door at the opposite end of the room from the stage. She peered inside. The small space was brightly lit with a fluorescent light and cluttered with papers scattered over a large metal desk that took up most of the room. The young woman who was serving as the show’s makeup artist was seated at the desk in front of a computer screen. She looked up and caught sight of Charlie, her eyes widening in alarm.
As the girl rose to intercept her, Charlie caught a glimpse of the computer screen. It was a news update from NBC News. Waverly’s face was plastered across the screen with the caption Celebrity Chef Vanishes.
The young woman moved to the door and blocked Charlie’s view of the computer, looking at her suspiciously.
“WC?” Charlie asked innocently, pretending that she had not seen anything.
The young woman came out and shut the door to the office behind her, then called for Artur to escort Charlie to the toilet. It was a squatty potty attached to the outside of the building. In the smelly dimness of the closet-size space, Charlie awkwardly squatted, her rounded belly throwing her off balance. She braced herself against the side of the small enclosure, elated by the headline she had glimpsed. Celebrity Chef Vanishes. So they knew Waverly was missing, and it was headline-worthy news. Waverly would be pleased to hear that. Undoubtedly, then, Andrew knew they were missing, and Charlie’s colleagues at Care Network most likely did too. This was good. It would have been better if the headline had said Celebrity Chef ’s Location Pinpointed, but still, at least they were on the radar. Cheered by the thought, Charlie struggled to her feet and headed back to see if Waverly was finished filming.
“Of all the stupid, half-baked ideas . . . ,” Waverly huffed as Artur led them around the perimeter of the yard. Charlie had petitioned Erjon to let them have some fresh air after filming was done, and he had agreed to fifteen minutes if they stayed on the property and with Artur at all times. “And that pageant princess . . . She kept stepping on my toes on purpose so she could get more camera time.”
They rounded the tilled garden. Charlie inhaled the earthy scent of turned soil and fresh country air. It was a sunny day, and it felt wonderful to be away from the stuffy, smoky confines of their room and the outbuilding.
“I missed the last part,” Charlie confessed. “What did they have you do when the cookies were done?”
Waverly rolled her eyes, stumbling over a clod of earth. “That was a complete farce. I had to taste my cookies, then taste her cookies, and say how great they both were, and how similar. Erjon said I could like mine, but I should be more impressed with hers. Like she can bake a better cookie than I can.” Waverly sniffed. “Mine were lighter. She overworked hers.”
They cut across the narrow strip of grass at the back of the house and headed into the scraggly orchard they could see from their window. Charlie glanced back at Artur and moved a little farther away, taking Waverly’s arm. She didn’t have any idea how much English he could understand, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
“I saw something today,” she said, lowering her voice. “Look, is this an apple tree?” she said in a louder voice, stopping to admire a twisted apple tree covered in tiny new green leaves. Artur plodded along behind them morosely. When they stopped he paused to light a cigarette. Charlie took the opportunity and moved around the tree, giving them more privacy. “I saw a news alert on a computer screen in the office,” she whispered urgently. “It was your face on the screen. They know you’re missing.”
“Who knows?” Waverly asked, her face brightening.
“All of America by now, I’d guess,” Charlie murmured. “It was on MSNBC.”
Waverly gripped her hand hard. “Oh, this is good news,” she exclaimed, relief bubbling in her voice like champagne. “So they’re looking for us?”
“Yeah, but it may not be enough. Listen.” Charlie pointed up at the tree, pretending to be explaining something about it to Waverly. Artur wasn’t even looking at them. He was fiddling with a lighter. “We have to get word to someone outside somehow. We can’t just wait until filming is over. It could take weeks at this rate. I’ll miss the trial date.”
Waverly nodded. “And you have to be on a plane back to America before you’re thirty-six weeks along. You can’t have the baby here.”
Charlie grimaced at the thought. “Agreed. So here’s what we have to do.”
Artur was watching them and smoking, his face impassive.
“What are these apples go
od for?” Charlie asked loudly.
“These are cooking apples, I’ll bet. Too tart to make applesauce. Unless you add a lot of sugar,” Waverly answered with equal volume.
Artur took a long drag on the cigarette and sighed in a tired way.
“We have to try to figure out where we are in Kosovo,” Charlie muttered, glancing at their guard. “Anything to narrow down the search. And then we have to get a message to someone outside.”
Waverly looked at Charlie askance. “And just how do you propose we do that?” she asked.
Charlie lifted her chin. “I don’t know yet,” she admitted, “but we don’t have much time.”
CHAPTER 24
Artur knocked on the door at five thirty the next morning, rousing Waverly from a particularly delicious dream. She and Andrew had been breakfasting in Paris, eating pain au chocolat on a balcony overlooking a winding street in the Latin Quarter. For a moment after Artur’s sharp knock on the door, Waverly allowed herself to drift back into a half sleep, trying to recapture the magic of the dream. Paris in the spring, the sun warm on her face. She looked down onto the street, savoring the last crumbs of the buttery pastry, when a little girl passed below the balcony, holding on to a woman’s hand. Waverly could only see the top of the woman’s head, but the child looked up, and Waverly gasped. It was the same girl—round, dark eyes, hair tousled by the breeze, and that strawberry birthmark perched on her right cheek.
“Wait,” Waverly called, leaning over the balcony, trying to get her attention as the girl turned away, and then another loud knock on the door woke her. Abruptly the girl, the balcony, the sun, and Paris disappeared. Across the room Charlie groaned and rolled over but didn’t rise. She was growing rounder by the day; her belly stuck out like half a small watermelon under the blanket.
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