Adrenaline

by Jeff Abbott

  I glanced back. Zaid still held Yasmin, heaving in the massive relief that his child was safe.

  Yasmin kept her scarf over the bottom of her face. They sat, perhaps waiting for Edward to clear the area. I remembered that no one knew Yasmin was missing. She nodded once in answer to words her father spoke. Tears ran down Zaid’s face.

  “I can get you immunity,” I said. “You could negotiate a deal. You don’t have to keep running. Is that going to be your life now? Dodging and hiding?”

  “Immunity? That’s a laugh. I made my choices, Sam. I know that.” I heard a catch in her voice, for the first time, a prick of regret.

  Zaid held his daughter’s hand. He picked up the champagne glass and drank it dry, a nervous gesture. Yasmin stayed still as stone. I couldn’t imagine the levels of therapy she’d need to get her life back.

  “Lucy. Why would you turn your back on your whole world?”

  Then, on her wrist, I saw the little sunburst inside the nine. Same as the thugs in Holland, same as my would-be murderer in Brooklyn. “Lucy, my God.” I jabbed at her tattoo.

  “Get up,” she said. “We’re walking out now.”

  I saw Edward hurrying past a statue of a man in a windblown coat, looking up at the glass ceiling as though expecting a storm. Then he had vanished in the mass of people heading downstairs. I hoped Mila was tracking him; I wanted her to forget about me. Yasmin was safe.

  We were up and walking. I risked a glance back at Zaid just after we passed and saw him jerk slightly as he set down his champagne glass. Cough. He coughed again. Then Yasmin eased out from the booth and hurried toward the entrance.

  I stopped. Yasmin Zaid didn’t. In her eyes was cool resolution. She was hurrying past us, not giving me or Lucy a glance. Or glancing back at her father. She went down the stairs, the same way Edward had gone.

  I took a step forward and felt the gun rub up against my spine. “This way, Sam. You want to see your son? This way.”

  Zaid still sat but his head had sagged forward. No one around him, intent on their bubbly, on their laughter, on checking their phones, noticed. I couldn’t see if he was breathing or not. Poison, I thought.

  “He’s dead,” I said. “She killed him.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  His own daughter.

  “What the hell has Edward done to her?” This world, where wives betrayed husbands, where children poisoned parents. I felt my chest go hollow.

  “Edward’s made her into his own. You honestly don’t want to know. We’re walking, Sam.”

  A server stopped by Zaid, noticing his state, knelt close to him and screamed.

  “Your son,” Lucy said. “Your son.” Like it was a prod to keep me going. I walked.

  Farther down the concourse, Edward waited for Yasmin. She closed the distance between, and his right hand closed around her wrist. His other hand held the briefcase.

  “Just stick to me,” Lucy said, as we went down the stairs, “and you’ll get your kid back.”

  “No, I won’t,” I said and I turned and grabbed the gun she had set in my side, under my jacket. Transport police swarmed past us, hurrying to the champagne bar. “You shoot me now, you won’t have time to get away.” Our lips were an inch apart, like lovers saying good-bye at the train station in an old black-and-white movie.

  “Sam, don’t. Why can’t you just walk away from them? For your son’s sake?” Her voice begged.

  I glanced down the stairs. I could see Edward and Yasmin looking back at us, at Lucy and me locked together. I took the risk. I pivoted and grabbed Lucy’s gun, twisting fingers around the barrel, forcing its aim toward the floor.

  81

  OVER LUCY’S SHOULDER I SAW Edward drop Zaid’s briefcase and raise a heavy, odd-looking gun out from under his trench coat. Larger than a revolver, it had a strange black section connected to it, with a metallic grid pattern on it that looked familiar, that gleamed for a moment in the bright light of the concourse.

  The firing boomed loud and the heat of the bullet passed between Lucy and me. We both fell partway down the stairs, but neither of us relinquished our grip on her gun. In the stunned silence after the gunfire, screams erupted all around us, a choir of chaos.

  Edward fired again. The bullet kicked the green stairs, very close to Lucy’s head, and, still fighting, we tumbled down the rest.

  Lucy powered a fist into my face as we got up. Hard, right below the eye. I wouldn’t let go of the gun.

  “Let go or Daniel is gone!” she screamed.

  I didn’t let go. “Maybe they’ll trade me you for him,” I said.

  She hit me again, as the crowd scattered, no one looking at us, so I tripped her, yanking her backward over my leg. She landed hard on the floor and kicked me in the thigh, and I landed on top of her. The panic in St. Pancras was now a fully fledged stampede, hundreds of people running, seeking cover; if we lay here on the floor we would be trampled.

  I yanked her to her feet. The pistol was gone, lost in the shuffle. I didn’t assume she was still unarmed.

  “You listen to me,” I hissed in her ear. “You’re nothing to me now. Nothing. And you’re nothing to your friend, because he just abandoned you and he didn’t care if he blew your head off trying to kill me. So. I’m your only hope.”

  “Screw you!” Anger and fear shredded her voice. She tried to pull away from me, but I was stronger and I was madder. Her face was white with shock that Edward had risked killing her.

  I yanked her to her feet, wrenched her arm up between her shoulder blades. In the stampeding panic no one accused me of being ungentlemanly. We were swept out into the street by the crowd.

  I pulled her close to me, our faces as close as our wedding kiss. “If you try to run from me, I will catch you and break your neck.”

  She shook her head. “Then you won’t get your kid back.”

  “No, you’ll be dead. And I’ll still find my kid. There is no place on earth you can hide him from me, Lucy. Do you understand? I will never give up. Ever. I will find him. And you will be in a coffin.”

  Her hand went behind her back. I hadn’t frisked her yet, swept along by the sea of panicking commuters. I saw the flash of steel in her hand: knife, short, curved. I dodged her swipe, felt the blade nick my ear.

  “Sam, stop, please! Just let me go!”

  So you can kill me? I thought. I powered a fist into her stomach and she folded, dropping the knife. I grabbed it.

  “Why’d he try to kill you?” I said. She was groggy and she stopped to dry-heave along the sidewalk. Confusion and emotion felt like a storm blossoming in my chest. I’d loved her. Crazy, opera-singing love, beyond-death love. But to love her was to die at her hands now. I forced down the swell of emotion I felt.

  “I don’t know. He’s turned traitor on me,” she managed to gasp.

  “He doesn’t need you,” I said. “This is almost funny. You betray everything for this guy and he betrays you. It’s rich.”

  “I don’t work for him.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “Not Edward. We have the same boss.” She gave me a sideways glance.

  I sensed the beginnings of a deal. “Who? The guy who made you get the tattoo?” I could see that the fight wasn’t out of her yet. You couldn’t beat the fight out of Lucy. It had been one of the traits I loved about her. I put the knife in her back, under her jacket. We walked.

  I looked at her and saw tears on her face.

  “Don’t cry,” I said. Almost automatically. I used to say it as a husband; Lucy’s tears, a rare occurrence, were always like nails in my flesh. “It won’t work on me.”

  We were close to the parking garage. I pushed her along; she went. “Why is he turning on you?”

  “I didn’t know Yasmin would kill her dad,” she said. “She was just supposed to be returned in exchange.”

  “For what?”

  “The other part of the weapons. The chips.”

  “What weapons? What chips?”

&n
bsp; She went silent. Making the point that she had critical information I needed.

  I pressed on. “Well, Yasmin just murdered her dad. So I think this ransom, this kidnapping, was all a big fake she and Edward engineered. Why?”

  “I can’t explain myself,” she said. “You think I can explain other people?”

  “Did she go Patty Hearst? Brainwashed into joining her captors?”

  “It’s one survival mechanism to play along. Trust me, I know,” Lucy said.

  She’d just compared our marriage to a kidnapping. I shook my head. “Your charade is over,” I said.

  “Yes. But it’s another thing to kill your father. Or your husband. I made them save your life here in London. That was the deal.”

  “You’ll regret it,” I said. We hurried up the incline of the parking garage.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think I will.”

  Her words made me feel cold; because if she had Daniel she had the trump card. She had it all.

  Mila stood near her car, watching us approach. Her expression was blank.

  “You caught her,” Mila said. “Congratulations. Hello, Lucy. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  Lucy studied Mila. “I don’t know you.”

  “You will.” Mila stepped forward and put plastic cuffs on Lucy’s hands. I pushed Lucy into the backseat and sat next to her to keep her under control. Mila stormed the Jaguar out of the garage, and I explained to her the chaos that had carried us out of St. Pancras.

  “I have no idea where they would go,” Mila said. “I lost them on the feed.”

  “I know where they’re going,” Lucy said quietly.

  “With you captured, I’m assuming that their plans will change,” I said.

  “Sam’s not dealing with you,” Mila said. “You’re dealing with me.”

  “I told you, Sam. Daniel is close. Let me go and you can have him within a few hours.”

  “I don’t believe you. You didn’t know I was going to be at the station. You thought I was in Holland, probably in a hospital bed. You wouldn’t have brought Daniel with you. No way you’re carting a kid around while playing hired gun. You’ve hidden him somewhere, Lucy, and the deal is you’re going to tell me or I will hand you over to Howell and the Company as a murderer and a traitor. Howell was entirely right about you.”

  “Kill me now, then, because I won’t just tell you. You have to let me go.”

  Mila said, “You won’t tell him but you will tell me.”

  “She’s charming,” Lucy said. “But he won’t shoot me, little Miss Russia. Do you have a name, by the way?”

  “You can call me Mila,” Mila said. “I plan on beating you senseless, by the way. Just so you know, I will enjoy it.”

  “She’ll talk without violence,” I said to Mila.

  “Is this where you thought you would end up?” Lucy said. “I mean, you joined the Company because you wanted to avenge your brother. Now you’re a hunted dog, and you don’t have your kid. You’ve lost everything.”

  “No. I still have you.” I stared ahead into the traffic.

  Lucy said, “What will you do with me?”

  “First, you will tell us where Edward and Yasmin will go,” Mila said. “Sam, shut up. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, Sam, that’s an order,” Lucy said.

  Mila pulled the Jag over in a screech of tires. She launched herself toward the backseat and she hit Lucy, hard, two snapping blows to nose and mouth. Blood gummed under her nostrils, in the corner of her lips.

  “Listen, Mrs. Capra,” Mila said. “Let us be clear as the crystal. You’re nothing to me. You don’t speak to Sam unless I give you permission. You are going to talk to us, or I am going to kill you.”

  “I doubt your superiors want me dead,” Lucy said, her voice a half scream. Blood dotted her spittle. “I have information to barter.”

  “You do not understand who Sam and I work for now. I do not work for a government accountable to voters who do not bother to inform themselves on basic issues. I do not work for an agency worried about budgets controlled by petty politicians. My only rule is that I have to return the car clean.” She flicked a little smile. “I don’t have to be a good example to anyone. I don’t like you. I don’t like what you did to my friend Sam. I don’t like a woman who uses her child as a pawn. You are an infinitely bad mother and an even worse person.”

  “I know what I am,” Lucy said through the blood on her lips. “And I’ll make a deal with you. I will take you to where I think Edward and Yasmin will go. I’ll answer your questions. I’ll tell you where Daniel is.”

  “And your price for this jackpot?” Mila asked.

  “You let me go. When you’ve recovered Edward and his goods, which I promise you will be of great interest. Guarantee me that. If Sam says you’ll do it, I’ll trust him.”

  Cars honked madly, Mila veered back into the flow of traffic.

  “You have no reason to trust me,” I said.

  “Yes, I do. I know you. I know your word is good.” Lucy looked at me, and for a moment I could think we were back in our Bloomsbury flat, a young couple, happy, a baby coming, in love.

  “You let her go and she cannot testify to the Company that you are innocent,” Mila said. “They will never take you back. They will never stop looking for you. A life on the run, Sam, think long and hard about it. Are you going to drag your child along for the ride?”

  A trade-off. My child for my freedom. At least this way I could find my kid, see him, hold him, be a father. Lucy had to deal with me, fairly, or she was dead. She knew it. Her game was over. She wasn’t going anywhere until I had my kid safe in my arms.

  I glanced at Mila. She gave the barest of nods. I leaned back. “Fine, cooperate and we’ll let you go.”

  “If you survive,” she said.

  Mila said, “Where will they go?”

  “New York,” she said. “We were to meet with my boss.”

  “For what reason?”

  “You get Edward, and you’ll know.”

  “This boss. Your tattoo. This is Novem Soles—the Nine Suns?”

  Lucy nodded.

  “What is it?”

  “A group that wants power and doesn’t care how they get it. I can’t give you a single name, though. I don’t know them.”

  “But you got the tattoo.”

  “They make you do that.” She shrugged. “It’s part of owning you. They made me, like they made me do everything else.”

  “Made you? Like you had no free will? What’s Edward smuggling?”

  “Only he and Zaid, and maybe Yasmin, know. I don’t.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I have no reason to lie,” she said. “I don’t know what it is.”

  “Where will they go right now? To New York on the next flight?”

  “I think Yasmin will go home,” she said. “She and Edward have unfinished business.”

  82

  LONDON’S ADRENALINE BAR OCCUPIED an old power station on the border between Hoxton and Shoreditch; it was all open space and brick walls and a gorgeous, long steel bar, much bigger than its brothers, the Rode Prins and Taverne Chevalier, and the bartenders were serving actual cocktails, precise with the measurements, using fresh ingredients. I saw a proper martini being mixed (shaken is still the fastest way to chill, and bruising the liquor is a myth), a bull and bear made with genuine Kentucky bourbon, an excellent bottle of French Bordeaux being opened. The barkeeps had been well trained. My kind of bar. The tables were low and long and rustic, more French farmhouse than elegant, but cool looking. I had thought given its name that it would be a frenetic dance club; rather, Adrenaline seemed an ironic name, a place where cool control would win the day more than frantic action.

  We walked through it, keeping hold of Lucy by the arm. It was easy for a moment to think about the loveliness of a proper bar, rather than to think about my traitorous wife.

  I liked the open space, which somehow seemed warm and inviting. Brigh
t, forceful modern art and bold photographs hung on the walls, all done, Mila said, by local artists, many of whom patronized the bar.

  “You’ll see movie stars here as well,” she said. “I have to do my damnedest to keep us out of the guidebooks so we don’t go touristy.” I knew artists had reclaimed once-blighted Hoxton for their own, and the developers followed the artists, quickly pricing most of them out of the territory they’d staked. A large outdoor patio held sculptures and large blow-ups of photographs; it held a circular stage for live music, currently empty as it was midmorning.

  A thin, well-dressed man approached us. He was handsome, in his early thirties, wore a perfectly tailored suit, and spoke with a West African accent. “Mila, hello. How nice to see you.”

  “This is Kenneth,” Mila said.

  “Kenneth, help me,” Lucy said. “They’re holding me prisoner.”

  He ignored her. Mila introduced me, just as Sam, and he shook my hand.

  “Give Sam whatever he needs,” Mila said.

  He nodded and regarded Lucy.

  She said, “I’ll scream.”

  Kenneth said, “I believe you have no interest in speaking to the British police, do you?”

  Lucy shut up.

  Upstairs was a much bigger office than the bars in Amsterdam or Brussels; it housed an array of computer screens. Mila locked the door behind us and sat at a keyboard, began to type. The back of her computer monitor faced us. I pushed Lucy into an office chair, handcuffed her to it and sat across from her.

  “You want us to take down Edward to help keep you safe? Then you talk to me.”

  “Go to their house. Zaid’s house. That’s where they’ll go.” She turned to Mila. “Since the bar’s open, I’d like a Scotch.”

  Mila ignored her. I went around and looked at what she was doing. She turned off the computer.

  “Your wife is correct,” she said. “We have to go to Zaid’s house.”

  “Why?”

  She looked at Lucy. “Come with me to get your wife’s Scotch.” She leaned down close to Lucy and wheeled her chair into a small, empty, windowless room. She slammed the door and locked it.