Claimed (15 page)

If all was as I had calculated, Lucien would be fast asleep in that maze-like house, in anticipation of making his move in the morning. If all was as I had calculated, there would be no watch on the house and we could get in, retrieve Andrei and get out in mere minutes. No bullets would need to be fired.

At the estate, Anton and Jean-Luc were on their phones. Lagos held the closest international airport, but there was also a domestic airport in Ibadan, north-east of Abeokuta. If Katrina was acting alone, plans were being set in place to find the car she’d sped off in.

I’d hugged Sasha before I’d left. She’d seemed very frail, like a twig that was about to snap under the strain of what she was going through. “We’ll find him, Sasha,” I’d whispered, hoping my words weren’t a lie.

Alexander:

As much as I would have appreciated Pavel’s extra set of eyes and steady hands, we couldn’t risk it. There was no guarantee that the estate wasn’t being watched. Luckily for us, the house that Ellie had been taken to almost eight years ago was near one of Abeokuta’s illegal but flourishing all-night bars. To any prying eyes, Pavel was just setting out in the middle of the night for a drink.

We had to go back to that spot where Lucien had rescued Ellie. She’d said that she had to try and retrace her steps from that point.

Eight years ago, right after she’d almost been raped, almost in the middle of a panic attack, she’d been taken to a safe house where she’d spent less than an hour
.
Ellie had always regarded her photographic memory as a curse. It had prevented her from being able to heal the same way other people would. It had kept the pain of each beating sharply etched in her brain. Yet in this moment, with so much at stake, we had never relied on her abilities more.

The Jeep slowed to a crawl and we both jumped off silently, our rubber-soled shoes muffling the sound of our landing. The streets were pitch black. The moon had retreated behind a cloud. There were no street lamps, or if they were, there were no bulbs in them. Occasional bursts of noise spilled out from some houses as we passed them, sounds of revelry and celebration. Of course. It was Christmas Eve, or technically, since it was past midnight, it was Christmas Day.

I’d intended to propose to Ellie today.

“Follow me,” she whispered. We were both dressed in black. Even though she was mere inches from me, I could only see her as a dark shadow.

I squeezed her hand to indicate that I understood, and her grip tightened for just a second. Then she was off, moving quietly, her steps certain, stopping every few seconds to make sure I was following her. “Right here,” she muttered under her breath as she reached a crossroad. “Keep up. I can’t wait for you.”

I opened my mouth to tell her I was right behind her, then I closed it.
She wasn’t talking to me.
Her memory was playing a movie reel for her, and her lips were providing the audio track. These were the words that Lucien had spoken to her that night.

The neighbourhoods we padded through grew shabbier and I clenched my gun so hard that my fingers cramped around the grip. Danger surrounded us. Lucien was not the only threat. Abeokuta was safer than crowded and populous Lagos, where it was an exceptionally foolish move to venture out after sunset, particularly if you were a foreigner. But much of Nigeria’s population was tragically poor and poverty moved men into desperation. We could have been randomly attacked if we were seen or heard.

She stopped short and her arm caught mine in warning. I surveyed the house she indicated, as best as I could in the night. There was a concrete wall surrounding the property, as was typical in this part of the world. A gate was set into the front, but it was in full view of two front windows. Neither window had light streaming from it, but that was no guarantee that we would be able to enter undetected.

“There’s a servant’s entrance in the side,” she leaned into me and whispered into my ear. Even now, with danger surrounding us, with Andrei’s life hanging in the balance, my body reacted to her nearness.
I would want her till my dying day.

I nodded in agreement of her suggestion and we set off, hugging the walls and turning the corner. There was another gate there, but this side of the house had no windows that we could be seen through. “Not much visibility here,” I said softly.

She shrugged. In the estate, she’d mentioned she thought Lucien had broken into the place the night he’d taken her there. She’d drawn us a rudimentary floorplan and we’d all gritted our teeth. The house was a security nightmare. There were three sets of stairs, one in the front, one for the servants and one exterior one. Rooms that should have connected to each other didn’t. The architect, if one could even call him or her that, must have been drunk when designing this space.

Jean-Luc had outfitted us with torches. She cupped the head of the pencil-thick flashlight in her hand and slowly parted her fingers, letting a mere sliver of light fall on the handle of the gate.
Unlocked.
We glanced at each other, both of us fearing a trap, yet aware that we had no other options. We needed to get a hold of Andrei before Bectell had a chance to act in the morning.

Her fingers slid open the latch, inch by inch, her entire body tense and poised to flee if the handle creaked. But it moved smoothly and the gate swung inwards without a sound. We entered and I latched it shut behind me. I didn’t want a gust of wind to cause it to slam and awaken everyone.

There was not a lot of space between the exterior property wall and the house. Setback laws were routinely flouted in Nigeria and it seemed that the owners of this place had eschewed a garden for as much house as they could build. We leaned against the side door of the house and Ellie once again reached for a handle, before shaking her head at me.
This time, it was locked.

Had the door been open, alarm bells would have gone off in my brain. But a locked door was reassuring. I saw the tension ease out of her shoulders for an instant as we traded places and I reached into my pocket for the credit-card sized set of lock picks that I had carried in anticipation of this eventuality.

Her eyes widened as she saw me work. She leaned in as I successfully picked the lock and opened the door. “When this is over,” she whispered into my ear, “you’ll have to tell me where you learned that particular trick.”

I smiled inwardly at that. Though the big secrets were out in the open, we still had plenty to discover about each other.
If we survived tonight.

***

The first thing we smelled as we entered the small kitchen was the almost overpowering odour of stale alcohol. I’d barely registered that when a woman’s scream echoed through the house. We exchanged swift glances at each other. The sound had come from the second floor. I stepped on the first stair, instinctively making my way towards the noise, but Ellie’s hand on my shoulder stilled me. She looked strained. “Andrei,” she mouthed. “We need to find Andrei.”

I had told her more than once that there was no one in my employ who would walk by a screaming woman without acting. But a child was being held captive, and his mother had endured so much already.
I had to focus on him.

“Is that Katrina?” she whispered as another cry pierced the air. Her grip on my arm tightened and her knuckles shone white. “What’s happening?”

I shook my head helplessly. “I don’t know,” I whispered back. “I can’t tell.”

We quickly split up and searched the ground floor, our guns drawn and our nerves on edge. She was right. The house was a tactical clusterfuck. Stairs everywhere, rooms with doors on all four sides – there was no way the two of us could properly cover each other.

But we had no other choice. Our only option was stealth; our only hope, an element of surprise and a fervent wish that Lucien would cling to the habits of a lifetime and be fast asleep. Already, the second part of that desire had been dashed to the ground. From the sound of the moans and the screams the woman was making, Lucien was very much awake. It was horrible of me, but I hoped for Sasha’s sake that he would remain distracted until we retrieved Andrei.

In less than five minutes, we reconvened at the base of the back stairs. My search had yielded nothing. From the look on her face, so had hers. “Fuck,” she exhaled. “Okay, let’s go up.”

When she’d drawn us the floor plan, she’d mentioned that Lucien had put her in a bedroom accessible only by this set of stairs so that she could calm down while he got some rest. She’d speculated that Andrei might be in same room, and we’d agreed to start our search of the second floor there.

We climbed in near-perfect silence. I led the way, even though I didn’t know the house, because while there was no way to leave her safely in the compound, I wasn’t going to put her in harm’s way anymore than I could help myself. She was too precious to me. In Hanoi, I’d been ready to die. Today, I wanted us all to walk out of here alive so we could forge a life together, one that had been delayed for far too long.

The stairs let up into a small landing, with only one door in front of it.
A locked door.

Once again, the picks came out and once again, the lock was easily sprung. Whoever had built the house might have made it a security nightmare, but it seemed to me that the design of the house was much more to do with an architectural flight of fancy than any real desire for protection. The locks were cheap and the thin wooden doors looked like a hard kick would open them. No wonder Bectell had only stayed an hour with Ellie so many years ago.

Ellie must have been thinking similar thoughts as I worked on the lock, because as the door yielded, she shook her head. “I don’t like this,” she whispered. “Lucien has never been this sloppy. Be careful.”

I nodded, but the next instant, her concern receded to the back of my mind. As the door swung open, I caught a glimpse of Andrei sleeping peacefully on the bed. Unharmed, safe. I closed my eyes shut as a surge of relief and gratitude and emotion almost threatened to overwhelm me.

She saw the same sight as I did, the young child curled up under the covers. I heard it in her relieved exhale, but then she tensed again. “Get him, quick,” she said under her breath. Her grip on her weapon had not eased and her face was set in worried lines. “I
really
don’t like this.”

I went into the room and I woke the child up. “Andrei, shh, it’s just me,” I whispered to him as his eyes blinked and rested on me. “Let’s go home?”

“Alexander, wanna see puppies,” he whined softly. “Katrina said there were doggies.”

Of course.
Sasha had kept him away from our guard dogs and Andrei had wanted to play with them. Katrina wouldn’t have even had to try very hard to lure him. “You have to come with me to see them,” I lied shamelessly, gathering him into my arms.

Ellie attempted a smile for Andrei. “I’ll go first,” she said. I nodded reluctantly. I didn’t like the idea at all, but Andrei was in my arms and he needed the most protection. Ellie had demonstrated time and time again that she could take care of herself. I’d been captivated by that strength from the first day I’d set my eyes on her.

She tiptoed down the stairs, holding the gun raised and ready. I followed as quietly as I could, whispering to Andrei that we must keep very quiet because the puppies were asleep and we didn’t want to wake them up. He nodded solemnly at that, his blond hair falling over his forehead in a way that reminded me so very much of his dead father.

His father, whose death I’d caused. I wasn’t going to repeat that mistake with this child.
I would not let it happen.

We were at the base of the stairs now, with a turn around the corner to get the dining room, then another half-turn to get to the kitchen. Every nerve in my body was screaming at high-alert, but I struggled to stay calm so that Andrei wouldn’t sense my unease and start crying.

Then I heard the click of a gun and a cold male voice speaking. “Drop your weapon, Ellie or your pretty boyfriend dies.”

***

Ellie:

He could always move silently when he wanted, Lucien. His hands were raised and the barrel of the gun he held was pointing directly at Alexander’s head.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alexander turn slowly, shifting the child so that his own body served as a shield for any bullets. My gun stayed exactly where it was – pointed at Lucien’s forehead.

“Do you think I won’t shoot?” I asked him. My voice was a casual sneer. I could not betray my worry, my weakness, my terror for Alexander’s safety. “I can smell the alcohol from here, Lucien.” I raised one caustic eyebrow. “Drinking before a mission? Didn’t you once call it the hallmark of an
amateur
?”

I was gambling and the stakes had never been higher. But Lucien had snuck up behind us. Had he wanted to shoot, Alexander would be dead already. I’d no doubt that he wanted to kill Alexander, but if my knowledge of him was right, he would want Alexander to know who held the gun.

Lucien snarled. The gun swayed in his hands and my heart stopped in total fear. But he didn’t shoot. “So here you are, Ellie, back in Nigeria with the son of the man who raped you for two years.” Though his words were bitter, there was a trace of hurt in his voice.

For so many years, this man had trained me. Had it not been for him, I would have died in a whorehouse in Lagos, very much the way his own sister had died in a whorehouse in the Middle East. This was fact. This could not be denied.

And so I hesitated, unable to take the shot that I knew I could take. Lucien’s reactions were slowed by the alcohol. I saw the careful attention that Alexander was paying to the scene playing out in front of him. I knew that at the right moment, he would throw his body to the side.

It was risky. But if you wanted to win, you needed to play hard and aggressively. You needed to pretend to be a whore to kill a guard who had raped you. You needed to put yourself on the auction block so that the man who was Dylan’s financier could buy you. You needed to set aside all emotion so that when the moment called for it, you could take the shot and you could kill the man who had kidnapped you, the man who had raped you and caned you and tortured you.