The Power Couple

by Alex Berenson

  Outside, they collected their licenses from the bouncer. “Not here?”

  “No.” Rebecca showed him Kira’s picture. “Remember her?”

  “Tall, right? She came early.”

  “Did you see her leave?”

  “I’m more focused on who’s coming in. Good luck.” He turned to the line.

  Rebecca reached for him but Brian tugged her away. “That’s the one place we know she isn’t.”

  He was right. They found a quiet doorway down the block.

  “The cops”—Rebecca, thinking out loud—“they’ll blow us off.”

  “At least until tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Tomorrow. She couldn’t imagine Kira would be gone tomorrow. In fact, some part of her wanted to believe Kira would beat them back to the apartment. She was nineteen, after all. So very young. Rebecca had made plenty of mistakes at nineteen. The one she regretted most, even twenty-five years later: Sophomore year, getting on a motorcycle after a house party maybe five miles from campus. The guy who owned it lived in the house. They’d talked for a while and then made out for a while. Nothing serious.

  When the keg kicked, Rebecca realized she’d said goodbye to all her friends, waved away their protests, It’s fine, see you tomorrow. She had no way home. I’ll take you on my bike, the guy said.

  Your bicycle?

  My motorcycle. He seemed obscurely offended.

  She didn’t know how many beers she’d had. Four, five, maybe, in those big red cups. Light beer. Who got drunk on light beer? She was merely tipsy. Mere-lee tip-see. You’re cool to drive? Ride?

  Oh yeah, I’ve had like one beer. Which wasn’t true. She’d seen him have three. Or four.

  Rebecca had never ridden on a motorcycle before. Her mother would have been aghast—that was the fifty-cent word that came to her that night, aghast—at the thought. And as soon as she thought it she knew she would agree.

  The bike was a big rumbling old Harley. Neither of them wore helmets. Connecticut didn’t have helmet laws for adults, surprising for a northeastern nanny state but true. A brain bucket? the guy said. Forget it. Just hold on tight.

  He brought her home in one piece. Didn’t even try to take her inside. A gentleman, or maybe he had a girlfriend. His name was Jake, or Nate, or Dave—even at the time Rebecca hadn’t known. Four letters, ended in an e, all she could remember when she woke up the next morning, her head in a vise and her stomach doing backflips. Never again, she told herself.

  Not the motorcycle, she had to admit she liked the motorcycle, its unavoidable carnality. The way she’d spread her legs around his waist, the thrum of the engine. If dancing was a vertical expression of a horizontal desire, riding a motorcycle was sex backward. But riding drunk, with a guy she’d just met, stupid stupid stupid.

  One pleasure at a time.

  So yeah, Rebecca understood, nineteen was not exactly the age of wisdom. She understood more than Kira thought. She understood something else, too. It was her fault, not Kira’s, that Kira hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her about this guy. Because probably Kira would be fine, probably she’d escape this mistake just like Rebecca had slid off that Harley without a scratch.

  But if Kira didn’t… Rebecca would blame herself, now and forever.

  * * *

  “Becks,” Brian said, bringing her back to the sticky Spanish night. “You okay?”

  Not even close. “We split up. Show her picture to every bouncer in the Gothic Quarter. You work back toward the apartment, check on Tony. I’ll go the other way.”

  “You sure?”

  “Cover twice the ground.”

  He nodded. “Meet back here around four? We can talk to the Mansion manager?”

  The question bothered her, though she wasn’t sure why. “Sure.”

  They mapped the blocks. Brian wrapped his arms tightly around her. “After we find her, we’re gonna take her to the vet to get her chipped.”

  “I like it.” She extracted herself from his arms. “Go.”

  He went. She watched him turn a corner and disappear into the Gothic Quarter before she realized why his meet back here around four comment had bothered her. He hadn’t said, Unless we find her first.

  He’d just assumed they wouldn’t.

  7

  Somewhere in Spain

  Frigid air poured out of the car’s vents. Kira found herself shivering, a high-frequency shaking that set her handcuffs rattling. Jacques and Rodrigo didn’t seem to mind. She didn’t understand the point of the air-conditioning.

  Maybe she was overthinking. Maybe there was no point.

  So much she didn’t understand.

  Panic real as water poured down her throat. For the second time this night she couldn’t breathe. But now she felt no opiate pleasure, only a desperate need to escape.

  Impossible. She lowered her head, made herself see the stun gun Jacques held. Two choices. Scream and be punished. Or close her eyes and think. She didn’t feel drunk anymore, the fear had overwhelmed the alcohol. Maybe the spray they’d put up her nose had helped too. She didn’t know how that stuff worked. Still, reality kept sliding away from her. She wanted to tell herself she was dreaming.

  She rubbed her wrists in the handcuffs. These men had hurt her already. They would hurt her more. Pretending she was dreaming wouldn’t stop them.

  Pretending she was dreaming was the same as giving up.

  * * *

  She couldn’t count on her parents. Or the police. Or anyone. She’d better figure out how to save herself.

  The biggest panic of her old life, her life BK, before kidnapping, had been the SAT, the college admissions exam. Her first practice test was dismal. The second was worse. Rebecca’s advice came down to study study study some more. Casual reassurance, not Mom’s strong suit. Kira could feel her eating disorder creeping back as the test approached. Forget college, I’ll get skinny enough to model.

  One night, the exam still weeks away, Brian came into her room. Kira was staring miserably at a book of practice tests. Without a word he grabbed it and tore it in half along the spine, a long lovely rippp.

  Dad! She was half-thrilled, half-offended. Half Bri and half Becks.

  She’d seen her father’s impulsive streak before. If impulsive was the word. Most memorably August before tenth grade. A family trip west. Fly to Denver, drive to Las Vegas. But Rebecca only got to Salt Lake before she had to fly back to D.C. Some crisis in some investigation. There was always some crisis in some investigation. So, she wasn’t around for when they headed south from Salt Lake, the mountains to the left, the desert to the right.

  They’d been on the interstate for an hour when Brian said, “This is boring, let’s check out the sand.”

  They wound up on a two-lane road that knifed through the ugliest land Kira had ever seen. Scrubby bushes, brown sand, rocks that seemed to melt in the sun. Waves of superheated air shimmered off the asphalt. The emptiness made judging distance difficult. Not another car or truck in sight, much less a building.

  NO SERVICES NEXT 70 MILES, white letters warned on a blue sign. CHECK FUEL.

  “That was boring?” Tony said. “What’s this?”

  “One hundred and eleven degrees,” Brian said. “A rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert.”

  He turned on the radio and it spun endlessly. “Searching for signs of terrestrial life.”

  “Clever. Can we go back to the highway, Dad?” Tony was more like Becks, who would surely have considered this road a waste of time. All downside, no upside.

  “Let’s see what this brand-spanking-new Hyundai Santa Fe can do. Two-point-four liters, yee-hah.” Staccato like he was talking to himself, not them.

  He pulled the steering wheel left and put them in the center of the road so the double yellow line split the SUV in half.

  “This can’t be a good idea,” Tony said.

  “Once in a lifetime, here or the Autobahn.”

  The engine roared, and they accelerated, eighty-f
ive, ninety, ninety-five—

  A warning chime rang—

  One hundred. The Hyundai shook and Kira watched Brian tighten his grip on the wheel.

  “This isn’t funny, Dad,” Tony said.

  “We’re fine.” Brian’s voice sounded unnaturally calm.

  One hundred and four. Tony tapped her arm. “Say something. He listens to you.”

  But no, she didn’t want to say anything. She remembered when she was five six seven, how her dad held her hands in his and whipped her around and Mom yelled but he just grinned and spun her faster—

  One hundred and seven. The air howled hurricane-loud.

  The Hyundai went over a bump in the road. On the landing they caught air and pushed right. If they had been in their lane they would have edged off the asphalt.

  The jolt snapped Kira out of her reverie:

  “Dad, please!”

  Brian exhaled and the car slowed, one hundred, ninety-five, ninety, the shaking stopped.

  He looked over his shoulder at them. “Got a little excited.”

  His blue eyes scared Kira. Flat and empty as the flame from the Bunsen burners in chemistry class. Like the speed was all that counted.

  Brian blinked and the look was gone.

  Forty minutes later he pulled over at a convenience store, the first they’d seen since the interstate. “Sorry. Thought it would be fun. Anybody want anything?”

  He left them in the car.

  “That was weird,” Tony said.

  Kira knew weird was standing in for a bunch of words they didn’t want to say. Crazy. Terrifying. Though she couldn’t help remembering how calm she had felt until the end. “I guess.”

  “We should tell Mom.”

  And yet Kira couldn’t. Even the idea seemed like a betrayal. “Yeah, no, I don’t think so. She’d freak. Anyway, what would we say? Dad drove really fast for like a minute and nothing happened?”

  And without another word they agreed not to talk about it.

  * * *

  But yeah. Dad had a rough streak, even if he tucked it away most of the time.

  And as Kira sat cross-legged on her bed that night and watched him tearing up the SAT prep guide, pulling out pages, ripping them lengthwise, she knew she was seeing it.

  “NSA, the programs are incredibly complex. To handle them we simplify, go step-by-step. Each question on its own. Pare away the wrong answers. You’ll get there. It’s just words and graphs and drawings. You’re smart, you’ll be fine.”

  The strange part, he was right. She stopped freaking out after he explained it that way. Not that she wasn’t still nervous, but her fear went to a manageable place.

  She just had to try the same trick now.

  * * *

  She closed her eyes. Start at the beginning. Why her?

  Jacques must have targeted her. Planned to kidnap her soon as he saw her in Paris. Or even before. Maybe he’d known she was going to Barcelona the next day. Hard to believe. Yet he and his buddies had taken her here, not in Paris. He’d led her away from safety. He’d made her phone disappear. He’d taken her from The Mansion to Helado.

  She could see now how carefully they had set her up. Lilly was the key. He’s with his sister, yeah she’s a jerk but it’s more proof he’s safe. Then Lilly picked up Rodrigo. Suddenly Kira was with three strangers, not just one. Lilly even did the so-called cocaine first and hit herself with the antidote to reverse its effects. Then she made sure Kira took the right amount, didn’t overdose.

  Everything made sense now, right down to Lilly’s wig. So no one would know what she really looked like.

  They must have a place to hide her, too. Whoever was driving this car hadn’t asked Jacques where to go. He’d steered them straight out of Barcelona. Kira was pretty sure they were moving into the center of Spain. She’d seen a sign for Madrid. Barcelona on the beach, Madrid in the middle, Tony had said on the train down from Paris. Don’t you know anything about Spain?

  Okay.

  Go with the idea Jacques had targeted her. Why her? Okay, he said for the money. Maybe so. But if not… she was nobody. Tony was nobody. Her dad was a coder for the National Security Agency along with about a thousand other guys. But her mom… her mom wasn’t nobody. Rebecca Unsworth ran the Russia counterintelligence desk at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  At least in Washington, D.C., Rebecca was the real deal. Especially these days.

  How big? Kira wasn’t totally sure. Becks talked to the FBI director. She’d even briefed the president. Would spies target Kira to get to her mother? Could they think Kira knew something important, some password? Could they be that crazy?

  The other possibility was that Jacques had picked her at random. Say he cruised around Paris, looking for young female tourists. Kira had been with Tony last night. But she had gotten rid of him fast. Jacques would figure she would be by herself when she met him again.

  But how had he pulled off the kidnapping in Barcelona when they’d met in Paris? Okay, maybe he went back and forth. Two huge party cities, American tourists on their Rick Steves trips. Maybe this was Jacques’s game: Find a girl in one city, kidnap her somewhere else. The police wouldn’t connect anything.

  So was he part of a gang? Maybe. Did Europe even have big gangs? The mafia, right? But she was pretty sure Jacques wasn’t Italian. Maybe he freelanced. Called his buddies if he found a target. In fact… maybe she was wrong about what he had in mind. He hadn’t said anything about selling her. Maybe he just wanted to ransom her back to her parents.

  Or maybe not. They’d gone to a lot of trouble already. Maybe Jacques already had a buyer, someone who’d pay for a tall American—

  That fear snapped her eyes open. Beside her Jacques stared out his window. She wondered if she should just reach between the front seats, grab at the steering wheel with her cuffed hands, try to take them off the highway before they could take her wherever they were taking her.

  Lilly turned, looked at Kira. Like she could read Kira’s mind.

  Kira sat back. Waited. Think. Thinking keeps the fear away. Should she say something about her mom, try to convince Jacques he’d screwed up? Everybody makes mistakes. The whole FBI is going to be up your ass in about twelve hours.

  But she had a feeling Jacques wouldn’t care.

  * * *

  The driver stayed in the right lane, drove steady, not too fast. The countryside was mostly bare, scattered houses in the darkness. Not the Utah desert, but emptier than she’d expected. She thought of Europe as all cities. Obviously not.

  She felt Jacques tense beside her, and in the rearview mirror she saw blue flashing lights that could only be police.

  Even faster than she’d thought.

  Jacques reached up, put painful hollows in her cheeks with his thumb and forefinger. “They stop us, you say nothing.”

  He tucked the stun gun under the driver’s seat, came out with a pistol. “Understand, Kira?”

  “I understand.” She didn’t pray much, but she was praying now, Please God, let them pull us over. She’d take her chances.

  The lights brightened. Kira could see now there were two sets. Two police cars, they couldn’t have shown up randomly.

  The driver said something in French.

  The headlights closed in until they flooded the sedan even through its tinted windows. Kira thought of the strobes at Helado—

  Hit your sirens, pull us over, be the good guys—

  Jacques squeezed her hands tight in her lap so she couldn’t show them her cuffs. The first police car drew even. She just had time enough to glimpse the officer in the front passenger seat looking them over before the car pulled away. No. Oh come on.

  The second sedan passed without even slowing. The cruelest joke yet. “Please.” Even as the word left her lips she knew she shouldn’t have spoken.

  Jacques gave the sedans a fingertip wave as they disappeared. “Please?” He touched the pistol to her temple, its muzzle cool against her skin. She made herself keep her
eyes open.

  “Beg.”

  No. He wasn’t going to shoot her, not after going to so much trouble to take her. “No.”

  He pulled the pistol back, held it sideways in front of her so it pointed at Rodrigo’s window. Its silver muzzle glinted in the dim interior light. “Walther. Semiauto. Do you know how it works?”

  * * *

  She knew. One side effect of having an FBI agent for a mother. The week after Kira’s eighteenth birthday, Rebecca brought her to Quantico for target practice. You don’t have to hit a quarter from a hundred feet, but we have a firearm in the house. You should be able to use it.

  I’ve seen movies. It’s just a gun.

  Not a gun, Kira. Use the right word. Firearm, pistol.

  Just like Becks to insist on the terminology. Whatever. Pull the trigger, boom.

  Don’t be dumb, Kira. How to load it, swap out the magazine, clear it if it jams, fire it. It’s like a car, it can be dangerous or it can save your life.

  It’s nothing like a car, Mom.

  Yet discovering her mother trusted her enough to put a pistol in her hands felt good. She stopped arguing.

  Rebecca’s first lesson: Never point it at anyone unless you’re willing to pull the trigger. Which means, never point it at anyone who isn’t a threat. Not even if you’ve checked it and are sure it’s unloaded. Never.

  * * *

  Too bad Jacques hadn’t had her mom as a firearm-safety teacher. He pressed the pistol into her ribs. “I said, do you know how it works?”

  She shook her head. No point in giving away too much.

  “It’s called a double-action pistol. That means once it’s loaded, I fire just by squeezing the trigger. I pull it halfway to cock it, then the rest of the way to shoot it.”

  He twisted forward to look at her face. He was enjoying himself, she saw. He wanted to feel her fear.

  His finger tightened around the trigger, millimeter by millimeter, until the pistol gave a tiny metal click. “It’s cocked now—”