His Ransom 6

by Aubrey Dark

  My head spun.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll get him back to Paris so we can meet you.”

  “Who is it?”

  I heard a click as the call disconnected. I turned to see Jake beaming at me as he held out a cup of hot chocolate.

  I hated to tell him. I knew he wanted to stay here. And I wanted to stay here too, in this magical fantasy of a castle. But I couldn’t stay. This was a fairyland, and I needed to come back to reality.

  “It was your brother,” I said.

  “My brother—” His eyes narrowed.

  “The man who says he’s your brother,” I said. “The man who kidnapped me.”

  “What does he want?” Jake’s voice was clipped, already angry. I breathed in deeply. There was nothing else I could do but try to convince him.

  “He wants to meet you again.”

  Chapter Eight

  “My brother’s dead.”

  We were on the train back to Paris. Jake had asked the security guards to stay back in another car. Still, there were people seated all around us. I tried to speak in a whisper.

  “I know you think—”

  “Lacey, this is twisted. This is a sick thing to do. It’s just a sick game that he’s playing.”

  “What if he’s telling the truth?”

  “How can you—do you really think I would lie to you about this?”

  “No,” I said, putting my hand on his. I didn’t want Jake to be angry at me for believing this. “I think it’s possible there was something else that happened when you were a kid. Something you didn’t know about. Maybe—”

  “I can’t believe—”

  “You didn’t see him, Jake. I saw him in the light. I saw his face, the way he quirked his eyebrow just like you do.”

  “Anybody could have studied video of me to see what I looked like, what I acted like.”

  “He was wearing contacts,” I said. “He was wearing dark contacts. Like he was trying to hide the real color of his eyes.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know. I think he didn’t want you to believe he was your brother. I think he wanted you to think he was a fraud, and that was it. He took me down to the catacombs where everything was dim and you couldn’t get a good look at his face.”

  “Why? Why, Lacey? Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know!” I cried out, suddenly aware that the whole back section of people had their heads turned toward us. I prayed that they didn’t speak English.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered, trying to get my sense of calm back. “Maybe it’s the same reason you don’t want to know you have a brother. Because he’s scared. You’re both scared that this might be real. That you have another part of your family alive to care about.”

  Jake’s face went blank and hard.

  “I’ll do this,” he said. “But I want you to know that I’m doing it for you. All of this. And if I meet him again, I can’t promise that I won’t punch him in the face for doing what he did to you.”

  “Sure. Okay. Yes.” I paused for emphasis.

  “Just make sure you take a good look at his face before you punch it.”

  We were under the Eiffel Tower, waiting. Lines of people snaked around us. There was a line for the stairs entrance to the Tower. There was a line for the elevator entrance to the Tower. There were lines to get tickets for either the stairs or the elevator entrance. There were lines out of the bathroom, and I was pretty sure that there was another line to get tickets for the line to the bathroom.

  So many people. I turned around, my eyes searching the crowd. Sean wasn’t there. Neither was that surgeon, Rien. Or if they were, I couldn’t find them in the lines winding around us. Above head, a fake pigeon circled.

  “Stay close,” Jake said, wrapping his arm around me.

  “There’s no way he could do anything here,” I said. “It’s safe. As safe as we can be.”

  My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out.

  “It’s him.”

  “Answer it. Tell him we’re here.” Jake scanned the faces of the people around us.

  “Sean? Hello?”

  “Are you alone?” he asked. “It’s only you and Jake, is that right?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Are you here?”

  “Yes. Are you under the tower?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Come out on the lawn side.”

  I looked up and Jake and motioned in the direction Sean had told us. We pushed our way through the shuffling mass of people.

  “Okay,” I said. My eyes passed over the huge lawn stretching out in front of the Eiffel Tower. There were just as many people out there as there were under the Tower. Families had picnic blankets laid out all over the grass. Streetcart vendors pushed back and forth.

  At my side, Jake waited impatiently, tapping his foot.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “First, a warning. My associate is nearby. Any police, and you’ll be in real trouble.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not, but it didn’t matter. There was nobody else here. Jake didn’t want to get the police involved.

  “Okay,” I said. “We came here alone, like you asked.”

  “Look out to the lawn. There’s a red balloon right next to the third walking path.”

  I peered out, letting my eyes search for anything red. It was like finding Where’s Waldo in my picture books when I was little.

  “Where is he?” Jake asked.

  “Do you see a red balloon?” I asked.

  He looked out with me.

  “The third walking path… there!” I pointed triumphantly. It was only a spot of red. “I see you,” I said into the phone. “We’re coming.”

  I thought Jake would have been more excited, but he walked silently at my side and said nothing. His face was completely blank. I wondered what it would be like, to have someone you thought was completely lost… reappear. I hoped that I hadn’t led us both on a wild goose chase.

  As we walked closer to the red balloon, we saw that it was tied to a wine bottle that was sitting on top of a picnic blanket, next to a few empty wine glasses. Nobody was there. I ran forward and picked up the bottle.

  “A trick?” Jake said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t—”

  “Lacey.”

  Jake stepped forward to my side. I lifted my eyes to see Sean standing right in front of me.

  He had taken out his contacts, and the resemblance was more than striking in broad daylight. The same dazzling green eyes, the same dark hair. The same jawline, lightly stubbled.

  He held out his hand to Jake.

  “Hello, brother.”

  Chapter Nine

  Jake’s eyes betrayed his surprise. Even though I’d told him that the resemblance was remarkable, he hadn’t believed me.

  Not until now.

  He steeled his jaw as he shook the other man’s hand and looked at him more closely.

  I watched his expression change from disbelief to uncertainty, to a kind of curiosity.

  “You say you’re my brother,” Jake said.

  “I am.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Gladly. I’ll explain everything.” Sean seemed completely at ease with the situation. He gestured down to the picnic blanket. “Please, sit.”

  We sat down. Sean uncorked the bottle of wine and poured out a glass. He handed it to me. I took it, but Jake caught my wrist.

  “What? Do you think it’s poisoned?” Sean asked.

  “I have a right to be suspicious,” Jake said.

  Sean shrugged and poured the other glasses full of wine. He raised one and took a sip.

  “See? No tricks.”

  “Okay,” Jake said. His shoulders relaxed a fraction of an inch, but his eyes kept circling around us.

  “I didn’t think that you would be willing to meet me,” Sean said.

  “Lacey convinced me to give you another chance,” Jake said bitterly.
“So here’s your chance. Explain.”

  Sean leaned back. He took a sip of wine.

  “You found our father lying face down on his desk when you were five. Do you remember?”

  “Of course I remember,” Jake said, his eyes darkening. “He was drunk; his cigar was still burning. He had passed out drunk—”

  “No,” Sean said.

  “No?”

  “That’s what they wanted everyone to think. But our father was dead long before the fire started.”

  Jake was silent, listening.

  “I was too young to remember,” Sean continued. “I was only a baby. But I’ve heard what kind of a man he was. He hurt his family. He was abusive. He wasn’t a good man. Maybe you remember that.”

  I sat there without saying a word. Sean sipped at his wine. He didn’t seem to care about his father, but there was a bitter edge to his words even still.

  “And he wasn’t only a terrible family man. He had done bad things with his company. He’d sold technology to overseas buyers without doing any due diligence. I doubt you know this, but he was on the verge of being tried by the U.S. government.”

  “For what?”

  “Treason.”

  Jake’s eyes widened.

  “That’s what they call it when you give military engineering secrets to enemies of our country,” Sean said. “But they decided to get rid of him in another way.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe so that his family would be spared the grief of living through his incarceration. Maybe they knew that other people would be coming to us for retaliation.”

  “They wanted to kill him in order to protect us?” Jake asked.

  “And so that the company would pass out of Carville hands. The next company executive in line wanted us to disappear.”

  “So they staged a fire.” Jake’s eyebrows furrowed deeply. He held his glass of wine loosely in his hand. I don’t think he had taken a sip. All around us, people walked in the bright sunshine, completely oblivious to our conversation.

  “The witness protection program was going to take all of us. We would leave through the back exit of the apartment and relocate. Different place, different names. We’d be taken from our rooms and swept away to a new life. Only…”

  “I wasn’t in my room.” Jake said. He paused. I could tell that he was getting closer to believing what Sean was telling him. It made sense, in a weird way.

  “It was the exact wrong time,” Sean said, nodding. “A mistake on their part. You found him, and you ran down the front exit. The firefighters found you before Witness Protection could. But there was no turning back. We escaped. And since then, Mom and I have been living here under new names, with new—”

  “Wait, mom?”

  Jake swallowed hard. I could almost see his mind whirling from that information.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I leaned forward and pressed against Jake’s arm for support. Sean waited while what he had said sunk in.

  “She’s not… she’s alive?” Jake’s voice caught on the last word.

  “Yes.”

  “Is she here? In Paris?”

  Sean’s eyelashes fluttered, the same as Jake’s had when he told me about his family. I could see the hurt in his face.

  “Yes.”

  Jake faltered. He glanced up at me, and his face hardened.

  “Lacey, would you wait for me over there?” he asked. “I’d like to speak privately with my… with my brother.”

  “Stay in sight,” Sean said, a warning in his voice.

  “Don’t tell her what to do,” Jake said.

  “It’s alright,” I said, wanting to preserve the tense peace between them. “I’ll be right over by that bench.”

  I didn’t know what Jake wanted to talk about with Sean. Probably his mother. I didn’t want to get in the way, but it hurt me to know what Jake was struggling with. I wanted to support him in any way I could.

  And if that meant leaving him alone to talk with his brother, then I would.

  I sat on the bench across the lawn from the blanket where Jake and Sean were talking. Their faces were serious. I was so absorbed in watching them that I almost didn’t notice the man who came to sit next to me on the bench. Then I glanced over at him, and my heart nearly stopped.

  It was the surgeon. Rien. The one who had helped to kidnap me.

  I gasped and started forward. He put his hand on mine to stop me from standing up.

  “It’s alright,” he said. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m just keeping an eye on things.”

  I looked back over at Sean and Jake. They were deeply involved in their conversation. I swallowed back my fear and leaned back against the bench. My heart had started beating again, and I tried to breathe normally.

  “It’s a beautiful day out, isn’t it?” Rien asked. He smiled broadly, his golden eyes glittering in the sunshine. If I hadn’t known who he was or what he was capable of, I would have thought he was handsome.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I’m only a friend,” Rien said, pulling out a stick of gum. He offered me some, and I declined. I wasn’t about to take candy from a kidnapper.

  “A friend?” I echoed.

  “A friend of Sean’s. He said he needed help, and I owed him one. I hate owing people anything, don’t you? Being indebted to a person is so irritating. But when you work in my profession, you’re bound to do favors for someone at some point.”

  “So you’re a professional bad guy.”

  To my surprise, Rien burst out into enthusiastic laughter. He slapped his hands on his thighs, making me jump. But then he bit back his laughter.

  “It’s not just me. There are lots of us.”

  “Lots of who?”

  “Killers. Lots of us.” He snapped his gum.

  “Are you all so cold-blooded?”

  Rien shrugged.

  “We come in all kinds. Some of us are neat, some of us are sloppy. But we all enjoy the kill. ”

  “That’s what you do?”

  “That’s what I’m good at.” He smiled at me, as though it was utterly normal for a killer to be sitting on a bench next to the Eiffel Tower, talking about killing.

  “Is that what Sean does?” I asked. If he was really Jake’s brother, then I wanted to know. But Rien only shrugged again.

  “He’s trying to get out of the game.”

  “Why? So that he doesn’t get caught by the police?”

  Rien chuckled. He put his arms around the back of the bench, basking in the sun.

  “We’re above the police,” he said. “We avoid them, because it would be messy to explain. But people who work for the CIA … we aren’t people. Not really.”

  “You’re not people?” I tilted my head. I didn’t understand.

  “We don’t exist. On paper, anyway.”

  The witness protection program. I was beginning to realize how it all fit together.

  “Sean is… well, Sean Carville is dead. I used to be someone else, too. There’s always a place for us in the good old intelligent forces division, though.”

  “But Sean doesn’t want to do it anymore?”

  “Sean is a wonderful son. He’s taking care of his mom. That’s the reason he took the jobs he took. Now that he’s got money, he doesn’t need to.”

  “That’s why he held me for ransom?”

  “I don’t think that’s the only reason. He’s been checking in on Jake’s career for years and years. Watching him.”

  “Creepy.” I shuddered, thinking of Sean tracking Jake’s life while he didn’t even know his brother existed.

  “Wouldn’t you? If you had a brother?”

  “Why didn’t he get in contact with him sooner?”

  Rien shrugged.

  “I’ve never asked.”

  I looked back over at Jake and Sean. Sean was standing up, offering Jake a hand. Jake took it.

  “Why—”

  I turned back to face Rien, but
he was already walking away. Just another person who didn’t exist, walking in the crowds of a big city. I shuddered.

  Jake and Sean walked over to me. I was a little shocked to see Jake’s eyes ringed red. Had he been crying?

  “Come on, Lacey,” Jake said. “We’re going to the hospital.”

  “Hospital?”

  “Yes.” He looked over at Sean, and I saw the certainty in his eyes.

  “I’m going to go see my mother.”

  Chapter Ten

  Sean led us to the hospital, a small hospital on the edges of the south Paris suburbs.

  “This is where she’s staying?” Jake looked critically at the worn down architecture, the dingy walls of the hospital entrance.

  “It’s a good hospital,” Sean insisted. “She likes it here. This is why she wanted to live in France. All of the old buildings and cracked plaster walls.”

  Jake chewed his lip. I could tell he was uncomfortable. His mom—someone he’d grieved for his whole life—was suddenly alive again. And he knew nothing about her.

  We checked in at the front desk. The nurse eyed me warily and spoke to Jake in French. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Finally she relented and waved us through.

  “What were you saying?” I asked.

  “Sean told her that I was his cousin, come to visit my aunt.”

  “And what about me?”

  “I said you were my girlfriend and—that you had to come in with me. That’s all. They normally don’t let anyone but family come in.”

  “It’s a small hospital,” Sean explained. My mind was still ringing with the word—girlfriend. Jake had never referred to me in those terms before. I took his hand as we walked down the hall to see his mother.

  We stopped outside of the hospital room.

  “I’ll stay here in the hallway,” I said, not wanting to barge in on a family moment. Jake looked as though he was about to argue with me, then changed his mind.

  “Of course,” he said. “We… we won’t be long.”

  “Take as long as you need.”

  He bent to kiss me lightly on the lips. I could feel the nervous tremor in the way he held my hand. Then Sean opened the door and led him in. The smell of fresh linen and lavender wafted out, and then the door closed and I was there alone.