Khattak turned in his seat. “Let’s give it some time. Someone will spot the van—it’s the best lead we have.”
The radio squawked at them and Nicolaides picked it up, speaking into the transmitter.
A flurry of remarks were exchanged at high volume, then Nicolaides locked the car into a three-point turn, reversing at speed down the road.
“We have something.”
“The van?” Rachel asked with a sense of premonition.
“There’s a lead in Xidera. The villagers say they’ve seen the van go up the road behind their village. There’s a storehouse there, an old one. It hasn’t been in use for years, no one from the village goes up there. I think it’s worth checking out.”
They completed the drive in silence, the road increasingly rugged as it climbed the north face of the mountain. A vehicle approached from the rear. Rachel urged Nicolaides to allow the other car to pass, but her warning came too late. The vehicle hit them broadside, then accelerated and drove past. She caught a fleeting glimpse of the taillights of a van before the police car flew over a massive piece of stone that tore through the car’s undercarriage. It spun on the slippery road, careened off the path, and plunged wildly down the hill.
It came to a halt fifty feet from the road, at an angle facing the sea.
Rachel hadn’t been wearing her seat belt. Her head received a thump against the partition between the front seat and the rear. Sehr had been more responsible. She unsnapped her belt and staggered out of the car to the driver’s side door, unharmed like Esa, who she’d checked on first.
Nicolaides was unconscious in the driver’s seat. Sehr tried to tug him loose.
Khattak helped Rachel from the car, then gently pushed Sehr aside. Rachel hurried to help, though her vision felt impaired.
“I can manage,” he said. “Sit down, Rachel, before you fall.”
Rachel fell back, feeling sick. She stumbled over to the oak tree she had missed, leaving Khattak to extricate Nicolaides from the car she now recognized was steaming.
“Sir!” she shouted. “Get away from the car!”
She scrambled back to it, diving into the front seat to yank out the portable radio.
Nicolaides was almost loose. Khattak pulled his body from the car to the road, then adjusted his weight over his shoulder and carried him to the nearest tree.
Freed from their weight, the car dipped toward the sea. It skidded close to Sehr. Khattak yanked her out of the way. He lost control, shouting at Sehr. “You could have gotten yourself killed!”
“Sir!” Rachel interrupted, diverting them both. “Look there!”
She’d moved to the opposite side of the road, and just above the ridge, the outline of the storehouse was visible. It was bigger than she’d expected—a gray stone shed edged with broken terracotta tiles. The window to the side of a solid wooden door was blacked out.
Rachel had seen something more. A white glint of steel around the corner—the back of a van. Was it the van that had clipped them?
“We need to get up there.” She glanced over at Sehr, puzzled by her stillness. “Radio in for help.” She’d grabbed the map with the radio, and now she passed them both to Sehr.
“Rachel.” Sehr was looking at Khattak. A red stain marred the front of his shirt. He put his hand to it, surprised. It came away damp and discolored.
“Christ.”
Rachel stumbled to his side, her head aching from the blow she’d sustained in the crash.
“It’s not deep,” he said. “It’s nothing.”
Rachel didn’t respond. She stripped away his shirt, checking the wound herself. He was right, it wasn’t deep, but it was bleeding freely. She ripped a sleeve from his shirt, trying not to react to the sight of the scar that bisected his torso.
“Sehr. Come hold this.”
Rachel ran to the car. Smoke was escaping from the back.
“Rachel, don’t!” Khattak’s voice was urgent with fear.
Rachel didn’t listen. She had a minute, maybe two. She wrested the trunk open and grabbed for the first-aid kit. The car gave a mighty jerk, nearly ripping her arm from its socket. She braced herself, holding on. The bumper slipped out of her grasp. The car jerked down the hill, meeting its inevitable fate. Flames licked up its side in an orange fury. But by the time the car caught fire, Rachel had the kit in her hand.
“Sorry, sir.” She hurried over to Khattak. “You know I don’t follow orders all that well.” She flashed him a reassuring smile.
Sehr was applying pressure to the wound, using Khattak’s sleeve as a bandage. She gave him a tremulous smile. If it was meant to be encouraging, she wasn’t doing it right. Rachel found the disinfectant and managed a passable field dressing. She didn’t mention the scar, though the sight of it shocked her. How on earth had Khattak gotten a scar like that?
“You radio in, sir. We need backup and Nicolaides needs attention. I’ll head up to the shed.” She jerked her head in the direction the van had gone.
“No!” Khattak said sharply. “Not alone, Rachel. You can’t risk it on your own.”
“Sir, I think we were run off the road. Audrey could be in that shed. If she is, we have to get to her before that van comes back. Someone tipped them off.”
“Then I’m coming with you. Sehr can stay with Nicolaides.”
Esa tried to rise but couldn’t. He sank to the ground with a muffled curse, his back against the tree. Rachel didn’t wait.
“Stay with him,” she said to Sehr. “I don’t know how bad that wound is. Get him something to wear.”
She didn’t stick around to listen to more from Khattak.
* * *
Sehr gave him Nicolaides’s jacket and radioed in to Mytilene. She hunched beside Esa on the ground. He opened his eyes to find her watching him.
“I’m fine, Sehr.”
“Esa.” She touched a hand to his scar in horror, her touch lingering on his skin.
“Don’t,” he said, placing his hand over hers. “I’m not hurt, I’ve just lost a little blood. Did you radio in?”
She nodded. “They’re on their way. But I don’t know how far away they are.”
“Sehr,” he said. “Help me up. I have to go after Rachel.”
“Absolutely not!”
“I have to. If the van is there, she’s at risk. I can’t let anything happen to her.”
“So you’d risk your life for Rachel?” Sehr sounded angry. As angry as he’d been earlier.
“Just as she would for me. You saw her grab the kit.”
Sehr didn’t answer this. “Are you sure it’s not worse than you’re telling me? The scar—”
He leaned his head against the tree, his eyes closing. “It’s from the accident with Samina. You remember the surgery.”
He was seeing it again. The car spinning into flame, Samina trapped inside. He’d been helpless to save his wife, his throat ravaged by her name.
His side was burning, but he knew Rachel’s bandage would hold. There were so many things Rachel did well … he wondered if anyone had ever told her. She didn’t panic in a crisis. She became more certain, more utterly reliable. She had trained herself to be all things to Zachary. And as he’d learned in Algonquin, she was guided by a moral imperative of her own. He needed to go after her now.
He looked over at Nicolaides. The crash might have been deliberate. For the traffickers to be operating from Lesvos, many different players would have to be involved. Nicolaides could have been trying to delay and simply miscalculated the risk. He didn’t know Rachel’s determination like Esa did. Rachel wouldn’t let anything derail her quest to find Audrey.
* * *
Sehr’s head turned. She thought she’d heard a siren. But when she looked down the road, no vehicles were in sight. What if the police couldn’t find them? What if she’d given the wrong directions?
Esa tried to rise again. Sehr pushed him back, studying the path Rachel had taken up the hill.
“Fine.” She placed the rad
io in Esa’s hand. “Wait for the police. I’ll go after Rachel.”
“No!” His eyes flew open. “I won’t allow it, Sehr.”
She leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth, surprised by her own boldness. In the extremity of the situation, it was warranted. She could have lost him, and the knife-edge certainty of what that would have meant diminished her resentment.
“You’re in no condition to stop me,” she warned him. “And even if you weren’t, I don’t take kindly to being bossed around. Not even by you, Esa Khattak.”
She gave him a quick smile, infusing more confidence into her voice than she felt. Grabbing the flashlight from the first-aid kit, she followed Rachel up the hill.
* * *
The landscape near the storehouse was bare, save for a pair of ancient oaks whose branches spread over the door. A gravel path led around the side of the shed. Rachel checked the van first, peering through the tinted windshield. She couldn’t see past the empty front seat. She tested a door handle: it was locked.
Stealthily, she moved around the side of the shed to the small, square window. She had to stretch to her tiptoes for a look inside. She’d been right in her guess. This window was blacked out, too. She’d check the other side of the building, and as a last resort, the door.
She could hear a kind of grunting inside—was something being dragged? As quietly as she could, she felt her way around the building, trying not to scatter gravel as she moved. There was another window on the far side. She stretched to her full height. This one wasn’t completely covered; she could see through a strip at the bottom. She pressed her face against the glass, her eyes attempting to penetrate the gloom.
There was someone inside the shed. A hand was chained to a rusted pipe, the body wrapped in a plastic tarp, the head hooded in black. It wasn’t moving. Rachel tried to clean the glass with her hand. She couldn’t see anything else. A shadow moved across the window. She heard a muffled noise.
And then, more loudly, footsteps. The shadow froze.
A knocking on the door was followed by a voice. It was Sehr calling for Rachel.
The door of the shed was thrown open. Rachel heard a cry of surprise, then another body was dragged into the storehouse. Sehr was struggling with a figure dressed in black. Rachel thought she recognized something. It moved out of the light too quickly for her to be sure.
She had to get into the shed before something happened to Sehr.
She weighed her options. What if she broke into the van? And sounded the horn—it could serve as a distraction. Or she could break the window and draw Sehr’s assailant outside. Her hand slipped on the outer frame. Suddenly she noticed there was no movement in the shed, no sound. The night was eerily quiet. She heard a faint rustling and froze. Was it the wind through the oaks?
She had made up her mind to act, when a rough hand seized her by the waist. She felt a heavy, hot breath against her neck. When she turned her head, she caught a flash of orange in her vision.
From the uniform of the Guardia Costiera.
A hand over her mouth, she was swung around and set on her feet without a sound.
She looked up into a face she knew, a face she should have guessed at.
Vincenzo was holding a gun.
41
Lesvos, Greece
“Stay quiet,” he said, speaking in her ear. “I don’t have to shoot you, but I will.”
The gun nudging her ribs, Rachel followed his lead. She expected to be taken to the shed, where the door now stood half-open, sounds issuing from within. A scream from Sehr, a violent oath, a shocking slap.
Rachel was shepherded to the van. Its cargo doors were open, the interior bare of passenger seats, the space cleared out for cargo. It wasn’t empty. There was a body wrapped in plastic at the back.
Vincenzo’s hand was feeling around at her waist.
“Do you have a gun?”
Sweating with fear, Rachel nodded. A frantic pulse pounded in her ears. She was waiting for an opening, trying to clear her thoughts. Praying Sehr was still alive. No shots had been fired because whoever was in the shed couldn’t afford the noise. But Rachel had seen two bodies, so these men were prepared to kill.
Vincenzo felt for her gun, his own buried deep in her ribs.
“Get in,” he said. She obeyed. She thought of slamming the door into his head by swinging it outward, but he was too quick for her.
He looked into her face, closing one of the doors.
Then to her astonishment, he handed over her gun.
“You’ll only get one chance. When we load the bodies into the van, you have to take the shot. Do you understand me?”
She didn’t, but Rachel nodded anyway. When she moved to raise her gun in his face, in an anguished voice he said, “Please, I need your help.”
She lowered her gun. There was something in his misery she trusted.
He slammed a cargo door shut. Rachel waited, praying she was doing the right thing. She was playing with Sehr’s life. And she didn’t hear sirens on the hill.
She knew Khattak was passionately involved—his anger on the hillside was the anger of a man who feared losing what he loved. If Vincenzo killed Sehr, Khattak would never forgive her. She was racked with the fear of how much that mattered.
The door to the storehouse banged open; she heard two men conferring in low voices. They came closer, carrying Sehr’s body. She struggled until one of the men slapped her. He cursed Vincenzo when he saw the cargo door was closed. He let go of his grip on Sehr, yanking on the door.
Rachel crashed her gun down on his head.
He staggered back but didn’t fall, gathering himself to charge her. Rachel’s gun went flying. She could hear sounds of a scuffle—had Sehr tackled Vincenzo? She couldn’t think, couldn’t see, her body thrown like a child’s into the back of the van, where it slipped over the tarp. A low cry sounded from under the covering. Rachel’s thoughts froze but the man was on her, straddling her body, his strong hands at her throat.
She kneed him in the stomach and gained herself an inch of space, tearing at his arms, ripping at his sleeves, adding the fury of her nails to the scratches that ran up his forearms. He grunted, leaning closer. He pressed his elbow to her windpipe. She knew at that moment, there was nothing she could do to save herself.
There was a scrambling sound beyond the van.
“No!” a voice cried, followed by a thump.
The man’s body went slack over Rachel’s. She looked up into Khattak’s pale face. He’d smashed his gun down on the back of the man’s head. His own wound bleeding, he dragged the man’s body off Rachel and shoved it out of the van.
It sprawled into the glare of the flashlight quivering in Sehr’s hand.
Breathing harshly, Rachel stumbled out of the van. Vincenzo was semiconscious on the ground beside the other man.
Rachel sank to her knees and stripped off the other man’s mask, expecting to see Peter Conroy.
But the man who faced her with bold, unblinking eyes wasn’t Peter Conroy.
It was the commander of the Coast Guard, Illario Benemerito.
He spat at Rachel and missed, his lips curled back in a grimace.
“Don’t!” Vincenzo cried. “You have to stop now, Benny.”
Stunned, Rachel said, “Illario? What are you doing here?” Her hands and voice were shaking.
Too weak to struggle to his feet, Benemerito turned his face away.
Rachel touched his arm. “Illario—”
His head swiveled round, his dark eyes impenetrable.
Without expression, he said, “You have nothing you can use against me. And I’m not saying a word.”
* * *
In the noise and confusion that followed, Sehr sat unmoving at Vincenzo’s side, watching police and paramedics gather around Esa and Rachel. One of the medics had stitched up Esa’s wound, and the ambulance had been dispatched down the hill to take Philip Nicolaides to the hospital.
A second ambulance was stationed
under the oaks, its red and blue lights blinking against the dark, showering the sky with sparks. The steady pulse of the lights caused a throbbing behind Sehr’s temples.
Nate was pacing outside the storehouse, his face streaked with tears, his fists clenched at his sides, waiting for police to secure the scene. Two officers were inside, attending to the body in the shed.
When Amélie Roux arrived, Nate was granted permission to enter the storehouse.
Sehr kept her eyes on Esa, who hadn’t looked around for her. He was leaning into the ambulance, Rachel at his side, something inside capturing his attention.
Sehr didn’t feel anything. She was replaying the last fifteen minutes in her mind.
Esa had found her locked in Vincenzo’s grip, just as Benemerito had launched himself at Rachel. She didn’t know what Esa had witnessed during those frenzied moments. She couldn’t guess at how he’d arrived at his difficult decision. Or if it had been difficult.
He’d left Sehr to Vincenzo, flying to Rachel’s rescue, careless of his wound in his desperation.
And even the sight of Audrey, small and shivering in the circle of Nate’s arms, couldn’t thaw the cold at the center of Sehr’s perceptions. She’d trusted Esa. She’d risked herself for him.
And Esa had made his choice.
As always, his choice was Rachel.
* * *
“What’s your name?” Esa asked the girl in the ambulance. His voice was very gentle, but when he saw he’d frightened her, he motioned Rachel closer and Rachel said, “Sami and Aya are looking for you. They’ll be so, so happy.”
He heard the raw emotion in Rachel’s voice and knew she was thinking of Zachary. It was why she’d bonded so strongly with Sami: she understood his unwavering commitment when everyone had told him Israa was dead, never to be recovered.
The girl’s eyelids flickered before she said, “My name is Israa.”
Then she began to cry.
There was a commotion outside the ambulance. Another car had pulled up. Sami had hitched a ride to the scene with one of the volunteers. He called Khattak’s name, his voice throbbing with fear.
Khattak found him in the glow of a police car’s lights. He called Sami over, urging him to the doors of the ambulance. He squeezed Sami’s arm, telling him, “She’s here. She’s safe.”
A Dangerous Crossing--A Novel Page 30