“Tony. Listen.” The iron in Brian’s voice seemed to be what Tony needed. “We have to do this. If it was you we’d do the same.”
“Let me come too. Please.”
“We will get her, we’ll be back, go to Ibiza and party like rock stars. Like it’s 1999.”
Tony crumpled to the floor, and Rebecca knew the fight was over. “I wasn’t even born in 1999.”
Brian picked Tony up off the floor, sat him on the couch. “These guys will take care of you. Just let us do this, okay?”
* * *
Downstairs, an unmarked Mossos sedan. Outside the station, El Raval was the usual tourist carnival. A white kid with Rasta hair drummed on bongos as backpackers danced down the street. Heedless and happy. Rebecca tried not to hate them.
“No plainclothes on the train,” she said to CC.
“I promise.”
Assuming he was telling the truth—and Rebecca hoped he was—if something happened on the train, they were on their own. But Rebecca didn’t see how the kidnappers could make the train work for them. She didn’t plan on giving them the money without seeing Kira. Or at least talking to Kira, hearing exactly how the handoff was going to happen. But the kidnappers couldn’t have Kira on the train, which meant if they planned to take the bag there they’d have to do it by force.
Then they’d be stuck, too. What would they do with the bag? Toss it out a window and hope it didn’t get sucked under the wheels? They’d have an even harder problem getting off the train themselves between stations. The AVE wasn’t a freight train where a hobo could jump off and survive with a bruise or two. It ran at two hundred miles an hour.
The Spanish police would be waiting for them in Zaragoza and Madrid. Barraza had talked directly to the police chief in Zaragoza and explained what was happening and why they thought Zaragoza might be their real stop. The chief had promised to have officers on the platform. In Madrid, both the police and Garza’s anti-terror units would be on alert.
They had followed the instructions. No trackers in the bag, no dye bombs. But they were each wearing GPS-equipped ankle monitors that provided real-time tracking. The recording hadn’t said anything about those.
More than anything Rebecca wished for a pistol. But the recording had said no, and she knew CC wouldn’t give her one, and she had no way to get one on her own quickly in this foreign city. She hated losing the initiative this way, waiting for a call that might not come, with instructions that she might not be able to follow.
They’d given her no choice.
CC closed the door of the unmarked. “Vaya con Dios.” They rolled toward Barcelona Sants.
* * *
“Thank you for figuring Tony out,” she said now, as the train sped west, the dusk outside turning to darkness. “In CC’s office.”
“He just needed to vent.”
She heard a helicopter’s distant thrum. East and north. She waited for it to fade but it seemed to be pacing the train. She wondered if the Mossos had put up a copter without telling them.
A man walked down the aisle. Middle-aged, a long-sleeved shirt and jeans. Gray-tan skin and almond eyes. North African. His eyes scanning the cabin. “Buenos noches.”
“Buenos noches.”
The man looked at her. She wondered if he’d noticed the bag. She wondered if he was looking for it. But he didn’t seem like a kidnapper. He seemed sunbaked and slow. Maybe.
“Do you know which way is the bathroom?”
Rebecca raised a thumb behind her, realizing as she did that she’d let slip she understood English. She waited for him to pass a note, drop a phone in her lap, lean over and whisper, You will leave the train at the next stop—
“Gracias.” He walked on.
Rebecca craned her neck to watch him go. He didn’t look back or acknowledge her.
“What was that,” Brian said.
“Maybe he just needed to go.”
Brian didn’t say anything.
“You have no idea how much I hate this, Bri. Being at their mercy.”
They were silent for a while. Rebecca checked her watch. They were a little more than a half hour from Zaragoza. Assuming the Dropbox clue was right, the kidnappers should be contacting them soon.
She sighed. Almost groaned.
“What, Becks? Beyond the obvious.”
“I wish we knew whether this is about my job. I mean, Europe has some powerful gangs, the ’Ndrangheta especially—”