The bitterness of the betrayal rose in her gorge as she thought of it, and then a wave of grief washed over her as she remembered his last moments, trying to make amends for doing the unforgivable; all in the interests of keeping those he loved safe.
Jet brushed the tears of frustration from her face as she pulled to the stop sign, looking in both directions before rolling through it.
What was done was done. David was dead and was never coming back, and she was now in Nebraska and had the most important job of her life to do.
She’d found her Hannah.
Finally.
Now she needed to get her back.
In the end, the rest was noise.
Getting Hannah back was the only thing that mattered.
Chapter 3
Jet pulled the stolen Toyota Camry to the curb thirty yards from the house, having shut off the headlights as she inched to the curb. All the surrounding homes were dark, with the exception of a few porch lights glimmering in the shadows of midnight. She exited the vehicle, hoisted a black nylon backpack she’d bought earlier that day, and made her way to the vacant home she’d toured three days before with Joanie.
She edged to the porch and stooped, quickly finding the agent lock box and turning the combination to the numbers she’d memorized when Joanie had opened it. Her latex gloves squeaked on the slick surface as she fished inside for the key, and after unlocking the front door, she returned it to its hiding place, spinning the dial so it stopped on a random digit.
Once inside the empty house, she quickly pulled night vision goggles from the bag and put them on — courtesy of an overnight delivery from an internet vendor. She knew better than to purchase anything specialized in Omaha. Caution was an indelible part of her makeup when preparing for any kind of an operation, and rescuing her daughter was no different.
The interior of the house illuminated in the green glow of the goggles — a common commercial version that would be suitable for tonight’s task — and she extracted the rest of her gear.
Jet sat cross-legged on the floor and watched the street out front for forty-five minutes, wary of any movement or signs of life. Nothing. No cars, no dog walkers. The neighborhood was completely still.
She crept to the back door and eased it open, then took cautious steps to the fence that separated the yards. Seeing nothing suspicious, she climbed over the wood slats and moved to the rear entrance of Hannah’s house, ears straining for sounds of movement inside.
The lock took fifteen seconds. She slowly twisted the knob, careful not to make any sound, and when the latch freed, she pushed it open, the hinges silent from the drop of oil she’d applied to each before jimmying the lock.
The house was the twin of the vacant one next door, so she knew exactly where the master bedroom and the guest bedrooms would be. It was a better-than-even chance that Hannah would have her own room.
Her running shoes made no sound as she crept along the hall to the bedrooms. If she had any luck at all, Hannah’s putative parents would sleep with their door closed. If not, and they awakened, she was prepared to deal with them, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to hurt them. They were probably innocent in all this, considering how David had operated. Every player would be compartmentalized from the others, and nobody would know more than they absolutely had to.
She’d ruminated on how he had found these people, eventually deciding that it really didn’t matter. Because of his work with the Mossad, David had been granted access to far greater resources than she could have imagined. The most probable scenario was that he’d arranged to have Hannah delivered to a couple waiting for an adoption. There were myriad ways of achieving anything, she knew, if enough money was thrown at a problem, and he had told her that his operational budget was vast and untraceable.
The master door was closed, so she moved to the first guest bedroom — the likeliest of the two she would have used for a children’s room based on her tour of the home’s twin. The lever handle opened with a click.
Inside, she saw her first problem — a transmitter that would carry any noise Hannah made to a speaker in the master bedroom. Her fingers felt for a pocket knife, and she lifted the wire with a steady hand and severed it with a single slice. Hannah stirred in her toddler bed but didn’t make any noise, still sleeping, unaware of her mother only a few feet away.
Now was the moment of truth.
She leaned down and lifted Hannah, who struggled momentarily in her arms and then snuggled against Jet’s neck as she held her close, still out cold. Jet was surprised how much she weighed — around thirty pounds — and for a brief second, she was struck by how little she actually knew about children and mothering.
As Hannah snuffled against her neck, Jet’s heart melted.
She crept out of the house and down the side access to the Camry, removing her night vision goggles as she approached the vehicle. The streets were still quiet, empty and cold. Hannah woke up as she was being strapped into the child seat and looked at Jet with sleepy eyes, confused by why she was being transported in the middle of the night.
Jet buckled her in and smiled. Hannah reached out to her proffered hand, slapped it in a toddler’s version of high five, and laughed delightedly.
“Sweetheart. I’m so glad I finally found you. I love you. Mommy loves you.”
Hannah looked confused, which made sense. She was being told that Jet loved her, which she understood based on the three familiar words, but not what it meant in proximity to the assurance that Mommy also loved her.
“You want to go for a ride?”
Hannah giggled again.
“Okay, sweetheart, we’re going to go for a ride. Right now.”
Jet rounded the front of the car and climbed behind the wheel, then crossed the two wires she’d left dangling. The engine turned over with a purr, and she eased the vehicle down the street, waiting to turn on the headlights until she’d rounded the corner that would take them out of the subdivision.
As she drove the two miles to the industrial area where she’d left her rental car, Jet considered what she’d just done, and the hurdles she’d have to face getting Hannah out of the country. She’d need a passport and all the right paperwork. More importantly, she’d need to evade any law enforcement effort to apprehend her.
Jet had thought through all the elements of their escape with care and had calculated that they could be in Dallas after a hard ten hours of driving. There, she could find contacts who would be able to create documents for her. There were thriving underworld operations in virtually every major city that could create whatever she needed. But she had to get clear of Nebraska before daybreak, which meant she had no time to lose.
She swung onto the main road and gazed at Hannah in the back seat, her eyes already beginning to close from the rocking motion of the car. Jet realized this would be way harder with a toddler, but there was no turning back. She had her daughter. They would figure the rest out in the process.
They changed vehicles, and Jet opened the five-gallon gas can she had stowed in the trunk and doused the stolen Toyota inside and out, leaving her gloves and her shoes on the passenger seat after donning the replacement pair she’d stashed in the rental. She opened a pack of cigarettes she’d purchased for the purpose and lit one, then after puffing it until the tip glowed red in the darkness, she flicked it through the open window of the glistening Camry.
The vapor ignited with a whump, and within three minutes, they were back on the city streets, making their way to the motel, Hannah now asleep after the momentary excitement of the impromptu fireworks display from the car’s immolation.
A police cruiser pulled alongside as she waited at a light; the patrolman glanced at her, boredom evident on his face. A housewife in a family car late at night was as unexciting as it got. The light changed, and he tromped on the gas, the engine growling as he pulled ahead. Jet smiled to herself and eased away from the signal, careful to do so at a moderate pace.
Halfway up the nex
t block, the squad car hit its emergency lights and swung around in a screeching arc, siren blaring.
Someone must have phoned in the burning car, or the gas tank had ignited and prompted a call from nearby security guards at the warehouses in the area. Whichever, that would draw every policeman within miles, ensuring that her trip out of town would be uneventful.
The motel’s lights bathed the parking lot with a fluorescent glow, and she noticed there were quite a few more cars than when she had left. None of the rooms were illuminated, suggesting everyone was asleep. She could slip into her room, grab her essentials out of the safe and be on the road within a matter of minutes. She had stolen a Chevy Equinox earlier that night and parked it next to the rental car lot, so her final task would be to transfer everything to the SUV when she dropped the car off — no point raising eyebrows by failing to return the vehicle.
“All right, sweetheart. I’ll be right back. I just need to get my stuff. Be good,” she crooned to Hannah, who watched her with sleepy eyes before slowly closing them again.
Jet’s eyes roved over the parked cars, automatically scanning for anomalies or suspicious tells, but saw nothing. Her mind was poring over all the items she’d need to get for Hannah — diapers, food, toys, a bed, clothes — all the sundry goods that were required to care for a toddler. She would have to stop somewhere after she crossed the state line. With any luck, the police wouldn’t be notified until morning, and it would take a little while for them to issue an all-points bulletin with Hannah’s description and a photo. By then she would be in Kansas or Oklahoma, on her way to Texas.
She tossed her clothes into her suitcase and went into the bathroom to retrieve her hygiene kit. There was more than enough room in the bag for all of her items as well as anything Hannah would need. The safe sprang open with a beep, and she quickly emptied it, slipping one of the passports into her back pocket before changing her top to a maroon one. All black might draw attention in rural states in America’s heartland, and she didn’t want to be memorable in any way.
Jet glanced at her watch. She’d been inside for six minutes.
She grabbed the handle of her suitcase and shouldered her purse, then moved to the door, taking a last survey of the little room to ensure she had everything. Satisfied, she twisted the handle and stepped into the night, her suitcase rolling behind her.
Hannah was still asleep when she returned to the car, and she took care to open the trunk as quietly as possible so as not to wake her.
A spike of pain stabbed into her thigh as she was hoisting the bags into the back, and she spun around, instinctively brushing at the painful spot. Her hand felt something hard — her vision began to blur. She fought for consciousness as her knees buckled, and she slumped to the ground, her last image was of two men approaching her from a blue van parked thirty feet away, one of them carrying what looked like an air rifle.
Then the world spun, and everything went black.
Chapter 4
The first thing Jet registered was that she was lying on a hard slab in the dark. She turned her head and tried to move her limbs, but it was no good. She had been bound with some kind of straps.
Her fingers worked on finding some weakness in the bindings, and she struggled to slide an arm free, but the straps were secure. Whoever had done this to her had known what they were doing.
Her head pounded, sinuses screaming in pain, but she choked the discomfort back while she tried to focus. Something dripped rhythmically in the corner of the small room. Water. One drop, every ten to fifteen seconds. It smelled like mold and must and dank, fetid air.
What the hell was this?
And then panic flooded her.
Where was Hannah?
Her breathing and pulse rate spiked as she fought against the restraints, exhausting herself as she flailed in vain, trying to break free. It took every bit of operational discipline she had to talk herself down and regain her composure. Losing it wouldn’t help anything. She needed to glean as much information as she could about wherever she was and wait for an opportunity.
Think. What happened?
Last thing she remembered was that she had been shot with a dart, and then everything had gone hazy.
Obviously some sort of tranquilizer.
But why? And who could have possibly known that she was at the motel? She’d been clean. No tails. She was sure of it. Nothing made any sense.
And yet here she was, bound in a dark room, imprisoned by unknown captors.
Footsteps echoed on concrete, and then metal scraped on metal. Light streamed into the room as the door at the far end opened, and a man stepped in. She could tell it was a man by his silhouette, as well as his cologne. Sickeningly sweet. Other men waited in the hall — there had been more than one set of footsteps.
The man reached to the side, and the chamber became flooded with yellow light. A lamp mounted to a collapsible tripod stood by the gray wall. She could make out paint peeling from its damp surface beyond the glare.
She had shut her eyes, pretending to be incapacitated. They might slip if they thought she was still unconscious.
“Come on. Wake up. The drug has worn off by now, so let’s not waste each other’s time. I know you’re listening to every word, so open your eyes, and let’s get down to business, shall we?” the man said. He pronounced his consonants oddly, with a slight lisp, but different. Almost like a speech impediment, the word ‘so’ sounding more like ‘tho’.
Jet opened her eyes and regarded him.
“There. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Sorry about the little bondage session, but I’ve been warned that you are extremely dangerous — that your entire body is literally a lethal weapon, cliche as that might sound. It seemed prudent to restrain you until we’d had a chance to chat.”
“Is that what you call this? Chatting?” Jet snapped.
“Well, you’ll have to forgive my manners. I’ve had to improvise. This was all the hospitality I could arrange at short notice. But yes, we are going to have a nice little chat, and you’re going to discover how you can help me so that I can help you.” The man’s voice and cadence were eerily menacing, even though he was soft-spoken, almost gentle in his cadence, which was more chilling than if he had been screaming abuse at her.
“Help you? I don’t have any idea who you are. Why would I want to help you? You’ve kidnapped me from a motel in the dead of night for God knows wha-”
“Please. Spare me. I know who you are. I know all about you. Again, don’t waste my time with denials or protestations.”
Jet bit her tongue.
“Let’s see if this rings any bells. Your code name was Jet. You were with the Israeli intelligence service for almost six years, during which time you broke every record for effectiveness. Assassinations, kidnappings, blackmail, insurrection, false flag attacks…when the Mossad needed the dirtiest of the dirty done, you were who they sent.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Who are you?”
“Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere. So you concede that we don’t need to play around anymore? You may call me Arthur. Nice to meet you…Jet.” He walked closer to her, and the lamp’s glow illuminated his face. There was something wrong with it. The skin. It looked like scar tissue, like…
“Yes, it was the result of a horrible burn. Six surgeries later, and this was the best they could do. But I’ve learned to live with it. A friendly dose of napalm in Vietnam. A long, long time ago. I’m actually very lucky I have sight in both eyes. You can’t have helped but notice that I have a hard time pronouncing some sounds, though. That’s a regrettable byproduct of not having lips.”
“Arthur. Fair enough. Who are you?”
“Why, can’t you guess? I’m very sorry to hear about David, by the way. He was a solid fellow. An honorable man.”
“You knew David?”
“Obviously. I arranged for one of my subordinates to help with information about the Russian. About Belize. I also helped him in sourcing weapons and blue
prints…”
“You’re his contact with the CIA?”
“Not exactly — most of the grunt work went through my underling, Terry. But I was the ultimate authority. He couldn’t have done any of it without my approval.”
“Why does the CIA have me tied up in a cell?”
“Now we come to the heart of the matter. Because, my dear girl, I need your help with a matter of some delicacy. A matter that is right up your street.”
“Where’s my daughter?”
“I was wondering when you would get to that. She’s fine. I have arranged for her to be cared for by a temporary foster family — good people who will lavish her with love. I’m afraid you have caused some problems for me, and for yourself, with the original couple that raised her. I interceded and clamped a lid on the kidnapping so it doesn’t go viral, but it will leak out eventually. They adore her, and the only thing they know is that she’s been kidnapped. Baby Samantha, by the way. That’s her name.”
“That isn’t what I named her.”
He waved a black leather-gloved hand at her. “Call her whatever you like when this is over.”
“You have no right to steal my baby. She’s mine. You know it. This is wrong.”
“Well, I suppose it is rather wrong, but it is the only way I could think of to have my needs met. I want you to do something for me, and I’m quite sure that you wouldn’t have done it voluntarily, so I needed some leverage. I would say that having your daughter is pretty good leverage, wouldn’t you?”
She struggled against the straps, then relaxed. No point in using energy she might need later.
“See? I was right. It was prudent to keep you restrained for our first discussion. Imagine how unpleasant it could have become if you’d been able to reach me.”
“Unpleasant for you, perhaps. Not for me,” she spat.
“True. Which is why you are perfectly suited to this job.”
“What makes you think I’d do anything for the CIA?”
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