Which sounded like something Kira in a less-than-charitable mood might say.
“I should have warned her.”
“Tony.” She wrapped her arms around his skinny body. “You couldn’t have known.”
But he detached himself, pushed her away, stalked off to his bedroom.
Rebecca grabbed the posters and the tape. “I’m gonna go for a walk. Put some up.”
“Becks—”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I hear from Rob or Jake. Look at her phone records, see if anything pops.”
* * *
A few minutes later she stood in the Plaça de Catalunya, a giant concrete square at the north end of La Rambla. Double-decker buses and taxis rolled past. Tourists milled around an oddly sinister clown who wore pure white face paint and juggled four balls in endless loops. Rebecca swung her head side to side with a metronome’s regularity, clocking the crowds. As if she could make Kira appear by staring hard enough.
Her phone buzzed. “Jake.”
“This guy—well, judge for yourself.” His voice had a strange edge.
Jake wasn’t normally coy. He must have something he didn’t want to tell her. “Go.”
“The number’s clean. Like spotless. It was lit up for the first time a month ago, in Paris. Up by Saint-Ouen, northern Paris, that big market up there, right?”
“Les Puces, right.” The market had come up before in counterterror investigations.
“So assume the phone was stolen and jailbroken and he bought it there.” Jailbreaking a phone meant prying into the core software and modifying it so that it could run on any carrier and download apps that Apple or Google hadn’t approved. Any decent hacker could do it. The phone might be glitchy but it would look normal.
“Sure,” Rebecca said.
“Anyway. Your guy hooked the phone up to Orange S.A.; prepaid, there’s no account, no credit card. Pure burner. But the phone was off. At least the mobile connection is off. Airplane mode, basically. Obviously, whoever has it could still use it through Wi-Fi to download apps, surf.”
“Obviously.”
“But understand, even that’s a little bit dangerous for him. Every time he uses it, the phone’s browser picks up cookies, and the more cookies get planted, the bigger the digital trace, even over Wi-Fi. Think of it this way: A specific phone’s browser is trackable like a specific computer’s; unless you have the skills to make sure it’s generic, and that’s not impossible, but it’s trickier on a phone than a computer. Pretty easy to download Tor for a computer, not so much for a phone.”
“So you have his browser, Jake? You can tell me what sites he visited?”
“No, he didn’t use the phone enough. He only lit it up once. One call, to the Paris mayor’s office—”
“What?”
“The main number, for less than a minute. Probably just to check the phone was working. Then nothing until the texts to Kira in Paris and then in Barcelona.”
“Everything else was wireless?”
“Correct. On the regular networks the phone was only ever used to message your daughter’s phone and that test call.”
Rebecca saw why Broadnik was so amped. On the one hand, the phone was a dead end. Even the NSA couldn’t trace links that didn’t exist. On the other…
“No one uses a phone that way,” she said.
“Correct. Can’t even do a voice log.”
For the last few years, the NSA had recorded most calls made over public networks, trillions in all. The agency had logged the voice of practically every human being, a fact it didn’t advertise. An even bigger secret was the fact that its voice-recognition software could compare that library to new calls.
The software was close to perfect. To find matches it relied not just on pitch or intonation but on tiny differences in the length of gaps between words. Those were unique. As a result, the agency could determine with extraordinary confidence who had made a call, even if the person was calling from someone else’s phone. Whoever Jacques was, the NSA almost certainly had a record of his voice. But if he hadn’t used the phone, the agency couldn’t match him.
So did Jacques know who she was, the resources she could call on? Or was he naturally careful? Clever or lucky. Lucky or clever. Either way, the next step would be going back to CC and Wilkerson. They’d have to pay attention.
“I’ll check the sequentials too,” Broadnik said. Meaning phone numbers close to the one Jacques had used. “If they were turned on at the same time, used in a similar pattern. Just in case they bought a bunch of SIM cards all at once. Wouldn’t count on it though.”
“Question. You think there’s an app for a jailbroken phone that would let you simulate a message? So the phone would look like it had sent a message when it hadn’t.”
“Child’s play. I mean, if there’s not, I could write it in a day. It would be easier than coding a real messaging app, just a fake screen.”
Thanks, Jake. Really glad to hear fooling my daughter was so easy.
But Rebecca would bet they’d solved the mystery of why Kira hadn’t texted. Jacques had made her phone disappear and then when she’d asked to borrow his he’d agreed. Go right ahead…
“Thanks, Jake. I have to talk to the Spanish police.”
“Want me to call the DGSI too?” The DGSI was the French equivalent of the FBI, the national law enforcement agency that handled counterterror and counterespionage.
“Not yet.” Asking the French for help would be a whole new level of complexity, and Rebecca didn’t see what it would add, at least for now. “But if you hear anything else—”
“Course.”
* * *
On the way back to the apartment, her phone rang again. Rob Wilkerson.
“CC says they checked. No one matching her name or description in the hospitals or station houses. The coroner too. So that’s good…”
Good, your daughter is still missing. “I have news too.” She told Wilkerson what Broadnik had said.
“That’ll get CC’s attention.”
“Enough to call in a couple detectives to come with me to the big clubs?”
“I think. I’ll ask him to light up their informants too, see if anybody’s heard anything.”
“Can he pull video from Sants and the airport?” Barcelona Sants was the city’s main train station.
Wilkerson hesitated.
“Unless you have some reason to believe she went through there I don’t want to make that ask yet. The detectives, the snitches, CC can do that on his own. Tape from the transportation hubs is bigger. Even with the phone, realistically, it hasn’t even been one day.”
She wanted to argue, but Wilkerson was right.
“I’ll call you after I’ve talked to him.” Then he was gone. But she felt slightly better. The wheels were starting to turn.
* * *
Step-by-step, her mood improved. So far, everything suggested Jacques was a pro. Thrill killers—even serial killers—were sloppier. And picked easier targets. Jacques had known from the start Kira was traveling with her parents. He would have expected they would search for her. If he’d wanted easier prey he could have found a woman traveling on her own.
The level of planning, along with the difficulty of the target, suggested that Jacques intended this job as a kidnapping rather than murder.
She hoped.
* * *
At the apartment, she found Brian sitting on the couch.
“I know I should be putting up posters. Instead of sitting here just hoping she’ll walk in.”
She filled him on the calls from Broadnik and Wilkerson. “I’m gonna go to the clubs.”
“I should come.”
“Stay with Tony. He needs you.”
“Becks.” He sagged back. Suddenly he looked defeated. Old. She had never thought Brian looked old before. Even during the worst years of their marriage. Even when he had been sneaking into the basement with a bottle of bourbon, his face had never shown the stress. He’d picked u
p a few extra lines on his forehead, but his skin was still tight and he’d kept his hair. Now it seemed as if the years had hit him all at once, his jowls loose, his mouth slightly open.
He stood. His face changed again; tightened, toughened, the shift so decisive that for a moment she wondered if she’d imagined the weakness.
“You do the clubs if you think that makes sense. Tony and I will go to the train station, put these up”—he grabbed the posters—“the subways, the bus stops, walk the Gothic Quarter. We’re not sitting here while she’s out there.”
She went to him. He put his arms around her, squeezed her almost hard enough to hurt, hard enough for her to feel how strong he was.
“We’re gonna find her, Becks.”
“Yeah, we are.”
19
Somewhere in Spain
Alone again.
In the dark again.
Her life was a bad country song.
* * *
Jacques had stood over her, nudged the orange peels and water bottle with a booted foot.
“Rodrigo came?”
“No, I snuck out, got myself an orange. Then I decided I missed it in here, so I came right back up and locked myself in.”
He reached down, swept up the peels. Again she was struck by the quickness and precision of his moves. Like the best instructors in her karate classes. Personal trainer her ass. He had hand-to-hand combat training. Too bad he hadn’t mentioned it back in Paris.
“Clever girl.” He nodded at the empty hallway. “He’s not supposed to bother you when we’re not here.”
Because I’ll be worth less if I get raped before I get sold? Because you’re jealous? Or just because you’re a control freak? She didn’t much care. As long as he stayed focused on her and didn’t notice the lighter or the screw and nail.
“He didn’t bother me. I like a man with the confidence to paint his nails.” Probably talking too much, but she didn’t care.
“Promise me you’ll tell me if he tries anything like that again.”
“Trouble in paradise, Jacques?”
“Don’t be too clever.”
He turned, pulled the door shut.
* * *
She counted to a thousand, slowly. She didn’t cheat. Four hundred and three… Four hundred and four… A thousand didn’t seem like a big number, not in a world filled with billionaires. But counting it took a while. Eight hundred and five… Lucky her, she had time. When she was done she stood, double-checked the shelf where she’d found the stuff, then the shelf on the other side. She didn’t come up with anything else. She had the lighter, the nail, and the tape. Maybe a piece of wood if she was strong enough to tear the shelving off its hinges.
She had something else, too. The knowledge of trouble between Jacques and Rodrigo. Of course she couldn’t ignore the chance they were only pretending, toying with her. She wouldn’t put anything past Jacques. But Jacques’s annoyance with Rodrigo had seemed real.
They could hand her off or move her to another safe house anytime. She couldn’t wait too long to make her move. But she thought that for now she would be better off biding her time, figuring out how to take advantage of Rodrigo.
She sucked down the bottle of water, sat back, listened, waited. A sweet, dense smell seeped into the closet. When the kidnapping’s done, me and my boys love to chill with a fat blunt.
* * *
After a while she realized she had to pee.
Badly.
Thanks, Rodrigo, for that extra water bottle. The need was not a gentle I can hold this a while itch but a heavy hot-stone pressure in her bladder. She tried to distract herself—I’m thinking about kittens now, puppies and kittens, cute lil furballs—but her body wouldn’t take the bait.
Minute by minute, the stress worsened until it was nearly overwhelming. She didn’t understand how a simple need could be such torture. Yet it was. Maybe because she knew she could relieve it in the simplest way possible.
But she didn’t want to piss in here, to foul her nest.
She didn’t want to beg for the bathroom, either. Humiliation atop humiliation. But she had no choice. She went to the door, knocked. Nothing. Downstairs the mumbled voices continued.
She knocked again. Hard this time, hard enough to rattle the heavy door on its hinges.
Finally she heard a slow tread on the steps. Rodrigo. She couldn’t help wondering if he was taking his time on purpose. Like he knew what she wanted and liked making her suffer.
He pulled open the door. “Yes?”
Interesting. He hadn’t pushed her away from the door or even told her to back off. She was standing, barely a step from him. If she’d had the lighter ready…
“I need the toilet.”
He smirked. The weed had turned his eyes into a red-lined map of a country she didn’t want to visit.
“Uno o dos.”
“Pee. Come on. Please.”
He reached behind the door, came out with the hood. So they kept it on a hook out there. Another fact for the file.
She wasn’t going to normalize wearing the hood. She shook her head.
He tapped his fingers to his lips. “Un beso.”
“A kiss?”
“Sí, un beso.”
Could she risk playing this game? What would happen the next time he had the house to himself?
“Jacques told me no.”
“I don’t see Jacques.”
She shook her head. He raised his hands to her shoulders, pushed. She stumbled backward, barely stayed on her feet. He started to close the door.
“Okay. One kiss.”
She put a hand to his cheek, pressed her lips to his, darted out her tongue. Flirty and light. Just a touch, enough to leave him wanting more before she pulled away. Didn’t want to give him the wrong idea.
The wrong idea? Flirty and light? She ought to be clawing his face—
With Jacques and Lilly downstairs?
“That’s all?” He leaned in again.
“For now.” She kept her voice easy. “I really do have to pee.”
He pointed down the hall, mock-courteous with his black-painted nails. Badly as she needed it, she made herself walk instead of run, checked out the hallway. Two closed doors. A plain wood floor. The bathroom door open a crack.
The smell of pot grew stronger. She could hear someone speaking English downstairs, the voice strangely familiar, “You’re probably thinking, ‘My boyfriend said this was a superhero movie but that guy in the suit just turned that other guy into a fucking kebab!’ ”
Great. They were watching Deadpool.
* * *
The bathroom was small, a plastic shower-tub, a cheap sink. Not too clean. A narrow frosted-glass window. Not exactly as impassible as the plywood in the closet, but enough to keep her from seeing out.
In a glass on the sink, three razors. Calling her name. She wondered if she was maybe a little stoned herself, she felt weirdly loose. They’d hotboxed her.
She started to close the door. Rodrigo put a hand on it.
“I watch.”
“Forget it.” She was serious, too. She’d yell for Jacques.
He looked around. His eyes stuck on the razors. “One minute.” He closed the door.
She squatted down and pissed. Relief. Her stream mostly clear. Becks was big on making sure that one stayed hydrated, one’s urine remained colorless. Thanks Mom. Through the window she heard the faint growl of a big truck moving fast. Not close, miles away. But still proof that this house was somewhere near a highway. Not in some empty valley in the mountains or a farmhouse ten miles from the nearest road.
The razors weren’t even three feet away. But they were boy razors. Not leg-shaving disposables, certainly not straight blades. Multiple blades in a metal head. Even if Rodrigo didn’t notice she’d taken one, she didn’t see how she could pry the blade out.
Okay, best leave them.
What about a toothbrush? There were three in the water glass on the sink. If she tape
d the nail to the end of the brush, she’d have a real weapon. She reached for them—
“Almost done?” Rodrigo said from the hall.
She pulled back her arm. Not yet. He was paying too much attention. She knew she couldn’t keep putting off the real risks. But for now waiting seemed like the best move. Gathering information, finding weaknesses.
The door swung open just as she covered herself. His eyes went straight to the sink, the razors.
“You took one.”
“No.” She didn’t have to fake the tremor in her voice. Downstairs Deadpool merrily shot bad guys. “I promise.”
Her fear seemed to please him. He stepped out of the bathroom and pointed at the closet, Go, then. Without a word she walked back to the closet. Hating herself. What progress had she actually made? Found a lighter she was afraid to use and a razor she was afraid to steal?
Worst of all, when she heard the deadbolt snap in place she felt not fear or anger but relief.
20
Barcelona
Rebecca knew the Mossos detective. Not personally, but the type. He was compact, no-nonsense, wearing a button-down blue shirt and neatly pressed khakis.
He stood next to Rob Wilkerson on the Passeig Marítim, where the city’s narrow central beach met its fanciest nightclubs.
“Rebecca,” Wilkerson said. “This is Ernesto Xili. Smartest cop in town.”
“Smart enough to know that’s a lie.” His English was almost unaccented, with a hint of formality, as if he’d gone to boarding school somewhere. “Rob explained the situation. Do you have reason to think she came to Opium? Or any club?”
“I don’t think they grabbed her right after they left The Mansion. She looked fine on the video. Either they stuffed her in a car while she was fighting or they hit her over the head in an alley or they softened her up somewhere else first. Told her they wanted to go to another bar or a club.”
The Power Couple Page 17