Adrenaline (43 page)

S
HE SAT AT MY BOOTH
. And for one second I thought she would kill me where I sat.

“You are a bad father,” Lucy said. “I told you if you want the baby, back off.”

“Irony is wasted on you,” I said.

“You’re going to make things difficult for me, aren’t you, Sam?”

“You don’t know difficult.”

“Don’t open fire here, Sam. So many innocent people. Not to mention expensive, easily broken champagne bottles.”

“Edward thinks I’m dead.”

“Not anymore. He’s seen you. You will let this exchange happen, or I will never tell you where Daniel is.”

“Daniel.” The name cut like a knife.

“Our son. I named him for your brother, like I said we should.”

I felt my heart shift in my chest.

“Don’t interfere,” she said.

“What is Zaid giving you for his daughter?” Now, thirty feet away, Edward and Yasmin approached Zaid. They stood by the booth, facing him.

“He’s giving us,” Lucy said, “everything he’s worked for in his life. You could learn a lesson here, Sam. He’s doing whatever it takes to protect his child. Back off and Daniel will be yours.”

Yasmin blinked, heavily. The scarf hid the rest of her face.

Zaid handed Edward the case. Edward spoke softly and Yasmin sat beside her father, sagging into the booth. Edward remained standing.

“Stay in your seat, Sam, and I’ll tell you where Daniel is. Don’t interfere,” Lucy said.

Edward turned and hurried away, carrying the case. Zaid embraced his daughter. She seemed very small in his arms. She did not hug him back.

“Reunions are lovely,” Lucy said, and I wanted to tell her to shut the hell up. “You and your son can have a reunion, too. Just stay seated.” She leaned forward, plucked the tiny earpiece from my ear, and crushed it under her boot. “Who are you working with?”

“A crazy woman. I only say that because now she can’t hear us.”

“Sam, come with me. Daniel is very close. I can give him to you now. And then we’re done.”

She’d protected me twice before. I so wanted to believe she’d just give me my son. That, I know, is the definition of both
optimism
and
insanity
.

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.

O
VER 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?”

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.”