Wait for the morning and then crawl for the highway on her hands and knees. How many feet could she cover in an hour? How many hours without water could she survive?
Cops or the locals must drive on this road sometimes, it wasn’t the middle of the desert. Someone would spot her—
She smelled smoke.
From the house.
She couldn’t see the fire directly, but the night was aglow. Jacques had decided to put all that gasoline to good use, burn the evidence.
The smoke thickened. She wondered if she should pull herself up to the road right away, but if she did and Jacques came back, she’d be stuck. Anyway, she could wait now, she didn’t have to get to the highway, the firefighters would come sooner or later to check on this burning house and when they did she could climb to the road and they’d see her. She could even wait for daylight.
She waited. Curled in on herself in the dirt like a brown leaf. Let herself imagine seeing her parents and her brother. What would she say to them? How quickly would they go back to normal? What would she tell them about what had happened, what she’d done?
From the outside they’d think she was brave. She’d beaten her captors. But she felt monstrous, felt like she’d found the weak link, tricked him, made him suffer in a way she couldn’t even dream.
No, she couldn’t imagine telling anyone the details about Rodrigo, not even her mother. Even when she slept he’d be with her. She was glad she’d won, glad she’d escaped, but she’d paid her own price, hadn’t she?
She closed her eyes.
And only then did she feel the warmth on her leg. The wet.
Blood. From her left calf, the wound a couple of inches long. Deep, too. She hadn’t noticed, she’d assumed the pain in her leg was just the ankle. How? The last time she fell she must have rolled across the knife. The knife. The useless knife. But she’d been so amped up in her desperation to reach the bush, hide behind it, that she hadn’t felt it.
Now—
Her leg was slick with it. The wound hurt, not terribly, an ache inside the muscle almost like she’d pulled it. Not bad compared to the ankle, to be honest. But the blood kept coming, a steady trickle. She pushed her palm against it, the pressure ratcheting the pain higher. Pushed as hard as she could, but the blood seeped between her fingers.
She didn’t know anything about veins and arteries in the leg. Didn’t know what she’d cut. Didn’t know how much blood she’d lose in the next minute, the next hour. But she knew she couldn’t survive until sunrise, much less crawl two miles to the highway with this.
What, then? Up to the road and hope that someone would find her. The firefighters had to be coming, right?
She pushed herself back from the bush and felt the wound open wider. She stopped. Looked down. The blood was coming faster now. More than a trickle.
Kira breathed in deep. Not fair, this wasn’t fair. Crawl up, tear open your leg, die in a few minutes. Wait right here and bleed out nice and slow. There was a name for this problem, but she couldn’t remember it right now. Yeah, she was a little distracted.
She wasn’t ready to give up. Truly. She ought to crawl while she still had some strength, she shouldn’t close her eyes. But right now she couldn’t fight. Maybe in a few minutes the cut would clot and she’d have a chance. Maybe. Meantime she would gather her strength.
She ignored the voice in her head, screaming, Don’t quit, come on, Kira.
But she had nothing left.
She closed her eyes.
Fucking hell. And she’d been so close.
33
Outside Zaragoza
The train took forever to stop at the platform, the doors even longer to open. The phone from the kidnappers remained stubbornly dead. They had no more messages from the NSA or anyone else. Frustration and fear pounded Rebecca. She had to have had a better play, another move, but she couldn’t figure it out.
Finally the door slid back. Brian followed her out, holding the green two-million-euro bag, its weight tugging his arm. Two men in blue uniforms waited. A third man in civilian clothes stood a step behind, a phone against his ear. The station was modern and handsome, big triangular ceiling windows alternating with slabs of alabaster. 22:55, the digital clocks above the platform told them. Almost exactly