She heard the motorcycle rumble back. Voices downstairs, faint, then louder, then abruptly stopping. After another minute, a car engine, fading into the night. Had Jacques left? Lilly? Both of them?
She had to assume the recording for her parents had been a lie, a way to distract her. Jacques was selling her to the highest bidder. Maybe tonight, maybe in the morning. But soon. Either her parents hadn’t raised the money or Jacques planned to take it and sell her anyway. To a sheikh, an oligarch, who knew? She wouldn’t have believed such a man existed. But then she wouldn’t have believed she could be snatched out of a crowded club and made to vanish.
She remembered something Becks had said, years before. Act like prey, you’re prey.
Time to be a predator.
She reached up to the shelf.
She couldn’t find the bag where she’d hidden the nail, the lighter, and the bottle. She bit back her panic, tried again. There.
She brought them down, tucked the nail into the back of her panties. It dug at her. It felt good.
Time for a test. She had to be sure. She flicked the lighter. The flame glowed. She flicked it off, uncapped the bottle, poured a few drops of the precious clear liquid inside into the cap.
She waited. Listened. Heard a voice downstairs. Spanish. Maybe Rodrigo. Maybe the television. No one on the stairs, no one in the hall.
She flicked the lighter again, touched flame to the cap.
Watched as a fireball, tiny and perfect, flared up.
Come on, Rodrigo. You horny bastard. Come to me.
29
Barcelona
At exactly 9:23 p.m., the express to Madrid pulled smoothly away from the platform at Barcelona Sants. It accelerated through a trainyard, swung left, passed through a tunnel whose concrete walls were covered in swoops of red and orange graffiti. Beyond the tunnel, chain-link fences gave a glimpse of busy highways and apartment buildings glowing against the final rays of the sunset. Minute by minute the city fell away.
“She deserves her chance,” Rebecca said. She sat by the aisle, Brian on the window, the bag at their feet. Every so often she or he would pat it, their friend and companion. “I’d trade for her.”
The only silver lining in this horror, she felt strangely warm toward Brian. He was as torn up as she was. She’d never doubted he wanted the best for the kids. He had taken care of them all those nights when she’d been working late. But over the years she’d wondered if his own broken childhood stopped him from loving anyone properly.
Then again their own relationship had been so messed up for so long. Maybe she hadn’t judged him fairly. Maybe she couldn’t.
“She’s coming back.”
He couldn’t know. But she didn’t argue. She’d always been logical, unafraid to look at the truth. Men liked to think those traits were stereotypically male, as if they had a monopoly on truth. A lie. Women could never forget the core truth that they were physically weaker, that even an average man could kill them with his hands.
Still, right now she wanted nothing more than Brian’s unearned male confidence. She leaned against him.
“They won, they’ll get the money, that’s all they want.”
“Two million. Too bad you couldn’t just write them an app instead.”
“Huh?”
She was surprised he hadn’t seen the coincidence too.
“You know, two million, what you got for your app.”
He kissed her forehead. “Oh yeah, I guess so.”
* * *
CC had sent a plainclothes team along with the officers to the Font de Canaletes. But on summer evenings La Rambla was as crowded as Times Square. Running counter-surveillance was impossible. No one saw anything.
Meanwhile, Rebecca, Brian, and Tony waited in his office, hoping for something from Barraza or the NSA or the FBI. Or anyone.
But despite parsing the recording to the millisecond, the NSA found nothing more. The Mossos didn’t find much either. They pulled fingerprints from the Helado fire door, but the prints didn’t match anyone in the Spanish or Interpol databases. Still, they could be useful. If an informant led the Mossos to an empty safe house, matching prints could prove that the kidnappers had been there.
Even so, by around eight thirty Rebecca knew they had no choice but to leave the Mossos and take the express to Madrid. But when Brian picked up the bag of money, Tony lost his cool.
“You can’t.” He stood in front of CC’s office door. “Mom please—”
Rebecca tried to hug him. He lifted his arms, shook her off. He