the FBI and Spanish cops for help. But they didn’t have a name or a picture or any way of knowing where she’d gone.
Better not count on them showing up anytime soon.
Her friends were still in the house. She heard them now and then. But no one had come up to see her since her trip to the bathroom. Hunger and thirst were creeping up again. She remembered now, the ache carried a certain pleasure, the triumph of mind over body. Thirst, not so much. Her tongue was swollen, and she could taste her breath.
She closed her eyes and took herself to Boston Children’s, a prison crueler than this one despite its clean white rooms. Thought of the last time she’d seen Ayla Lafan. She’d given Ayla a present, a T-shirt that said ALWAYS BE YOURSELF UNLESS YOU CAN BE A UNICORN.
Ayla stared at the shirt. “Are they real?” she finally said, in her soft high voice.
Kira had an answer ready. “They might be, A.”
“But no one’s ever seen one.”
“No.”
“They’re not, are they? They’re just not. They’ve never been and they never will be.”
Words that forced on Kira a truth she tried to keep from herself. Ayla knew she was dying, and after so many trips to this place and so many friends lost probably knew what dying was. Her serenity didn’t come from ignorance of the threat. If anything, Ayla wanted to spare her parents from their own fear.
Kira promised herself now that whatever happened she would be as tough as that little girl.
She drifted for a while…
Woke when the light snapped on.
* * *
She felt obscurely foolish. How come she hadn’t heard the steps? How had she let someone surprise her when she was in a locked room? She rubbed the sleep from her eyes as the door swung open.
Jacques. No doubt he liked sneaking up here, scaring her even in her sleep. He had a folder tucked under his arm. He looked slightly goofy, like the graduate student he’d pretended to be.
“I need to ask some questions.”
“Fuck off.”
His face changed, and she knew she’d gone too far. He came at her in two steps, punched her. Just once, in the diaphragm, the blow placed perfectly and so fast she had no chance to avoid it.
His fist twisted her, left her gasping, drowning in the open air.
Finally her diaphragm unclenched, and she could breathe. She wiped the tears from her cheeks and stared up at him. She wanted to curse him again, tell him he didn’t scare her. But he did. All those karate classes and she had no idea what violence really was, no idea what it was like to be hit by a man who wasn’t holding back.
He opened the folder, held up her driver’s license.
“Kira Unsworth. Not such a usual name.”
He tucked the license back in the folder—such an organized kidnapper—and pulled out a piece of paper.
The Washington Post. She saw the newspaper’s squiggly font, and she knew what was coming. “FBI Arrests Russian Agent in Maryland,” Jacques read. “When we looked up your name, to see if we were lucky, you’re a billionaire, this came up. Rebecca Unsworth, who supervised the investigation, said the FBI had received a tip about Kuznetsov several months ago.” He handed her the paper.
She didn’t see how lying would help. “My mom.”
“Your mother is an FBI agent?”
“Way up in the bureau.”
Jacques seemed pleased. “The US government will pay very much for you, I think.”
“That’s not how it works.” Could he really be sophisticated enough to take her the way he had and naïve enough to think the FBI would hand him millions of dollars?
He shrugged. We’ll see. He put away the Post, handed her one final piece of paper, the front page of a Spanish newspaper—El País—neatly folded.
“Stand up, hold this.”
He pulled out his phone, took her picture. “Now give me mommy’s email. And mobile. Daddy also.”
She did.
“Are you rich?”
She wondered if she should ask him to define rich, but she didn’t want to risk another punch.
“My parents both work for the federal government. Not super-rich.”
“Any other money?”
Maybe he already knew, maybe he’d seen it on the Internet somewhere.
“My dad sold a phone app a while ago. Made a bunch of money.” Saved my parents’ marriage. Without that stupid app maybe I wouldn’t be here.
Jacques smiled, the most real smile she’d seen from him. “This app—”
“It’s called Twenty-One. Like blackjack, you know, for casinos.”