“You think you sneak past me? You think I did this for you?” Jacques caught the Spaniard across the jaw with a right cross. So fast. Rodrigo’s head whipped sideways, and he went to a knee.
“Next time I kill you.” He turned to Kira. “And you, stop flirting. Egging him on.”
Are you joking? But she kept herself from arguing. Let Rodrigo think she was encouraging him. Jacques was practically a cyborg. Rodrigo was the weak link. He was dumb and drugged—and he wanted her. Let him think the feeling was mutual.
“Tell her you’re sorry,” Jacques said.
“Sorry.” Jacques pointed to the door and Rodrigo staggered out.
Just her and Jacques now. “This game you’re playing. You won’t like it if I leave him with you.”
Her kidnapper, accusing her of playing games? And he was right.
Then he was gone. The deadbolt slammed into place. She tried to make herself feel better by imagining the nail, plunging it into Jacques’s neck. Or Rodrigo’s. The vision had no power. They were too big, too strong.
She needed a better weapon. But she had no idea what that might be, much less how to find it.
25
Sabadell, Barcelona
Noon.
The exterior of the headquarters of the Mossos d’Esquadra looked as new and glittery as the rest of Barcelona. But inside, the building was unmistakably a police station, bureaucracy with a coiled edge.
After the ransom demand hit their phones, Rebecca was smart enough not to say I told you so. She simply forwarded the picture to Wilkerson, let him wrangle the Spanish cops. She could imagine those conversations: Mierda, meet fan. We flying in the whole bureau to find her, or do you plan to do your jobs?
Now Rebecca and Brian sat with Wilkerson in a conference room on the top floor of Mossos headquarters. Across the table, three unsmiling fiftysomething men: Hector Barraza, the chief of the Mossos; Javier Garza, a colonel in the Grupo Especial de Operaciones, Spain’s elite counterterror police; and Raul Fernandes, the deputy director general of the Interior Ministry. Fernandes had just come up from Madrid. He sat with arms folded, body language that suggested he’d rather be anywhere but here.
For the moment they had all tacitly agreed to ignore the ransom demand.
Instead Barraza walked them through the search. Marine patrols along the Mediterranean coast. Unannounced visits to the home of anyone in Catalonia who had ever been arrested for kidnapping. The promise to informants of what the Mossos called a “white card,” a get-out-of-jail-free promise for any crime short of murder, in return for solid information on Kira’s location. Added patrols on the roads near the Pyrenees, the mountains that separated Spain and France.
“Sea, air, and land. I promise you, if your daughter is still in Catalonia, we will find her.”
Sea, air, and land. Rebecca itched to be out looking for Kira. But she’d be walking the streets of the Gothic Quarter for something to do. And the Mossos could track a hundred leads in the time it took her to find one, if they were properly motivated. After meeting Barraza, she believed they were. He was almost unhealthily skinny, with nicotine-stained fingers and deep-set eyes that didn’t shy from contact. Some cops at his level were bureaucrats. Others were believers.
She pegged Barraza as a believer.
“Let me finish by saying, I understand the motives of the kidnappers remain”—Barraza hesitated—“opaque. To me, finding your daughter is the priority. Whether this is for money or it has a political element, we can sort that out when she is safe.”
Rebecca wanted to argue. Until we know who took her, how can we know where she is? But Barraza had a point. Kidnappings weren’t like other crimes. Normally, police only became involved after a crime. But kidnappings happened in real time. They didn’t end until the victim was found, alive or not. Everyone in this room would happily give up arresting the kidnappers if doing so ensured Kira’s safe return.
Maybe not happily.
“But who these people are must be connected to where they are,” Brian said.
She tapped his arm, No, Bri, this guy’s on our side—
“They’ve done everything possible to keep their identities from us. I don’t suppose you have any ideas?”
The bluntness of the question seemed to throw Brian. “Don’t you think I’d tell you if I did?”
“Of course. Raul—” Barraza nodded to Fernandes, the Interior Ministry deputy director general.
“Thank you.” He ran his thumb along his strangely black mustache. “As you know, we only learned of the kidnapping this morning.”