CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Davos, Switzerland

September 18

Evening

When Julian’s car turned the corner and sped up the long curving driveway, Wade saw the clinic come into view and how the late sun burned orange on its white facade, and he went numb. It was the sunset that Becca might have seen but would not.

“They’re never going to let us do this,” Lily said.

“To say nothing of Phase Two,” Darrell said. “But I guess one thing at a time, right?”

Wade knew what his father would say to their plan. “I forbid it. It’s a theory, a mental construct. You can’t play with people’s lives using chaos theory!”

Except that Wade wasn’t playing.

“Silva is totally on board,” said Julian. “He said, ‘A soldier doesn’t watch a fellow soldier die, not without a fight. Count me in.’ I don’t know if you know Silva’s story. He had a brother, both in Afghanistan together. Silva was wounded, trapped, under fire. Against the orders of their commanding officer, his brother came for him, saved Silva, but lost his life doing it. It’s what drives Silva now, saving others. He’ll never leave anyone behind.”

Lily wiped her eyes. “I love him,” she said. “He’s one of the best.”

“He is,” Wade said. Turning to Lily and Darrell, he put his hands on their hands. “If there’s any chance, we have to take it. There are no options. No choice.”

Darrell drilled him with his eyes. “Bro, the risk—”

“I know!” he said. “I know it’s crazy. I keep hearing my dad in my head. I get it. It’s impossible. It has to be impossible. There are a trillion reasons not to do it, and only one reason to do it. Hope. It’s the only hope of saving her. It’s the only thing we have left. Or there’s been no point to any of this: the Legacy, our search, or anything else.”

There was no more arguing.

“I really hope Silva has a rock-solid plan,” Darrell said as Julian turned off the engine and sat quietly. “You just don’t steal a patient.”

“We have to expect . . . ,” Lily said softly, “we have to . . . what she looks like . . .” Her voice cracked. She didn’t say any more.

The car stood cooling while the sun slid slowly behind the trees. The clinic’s alabaster facade turned gray. Julian had told them that Becca’s family were at a hotel down the mountain and would be arriving soon, but not yet, and because of the quarantine, no cars came, no cars went. Wade felt his insides turn to lead, his blood to ice. Becca was dying inside that building. Maybe she would be gone mere hours from now. No one knew for certain. The gray stone exterior quite suddenly reminded him of a funeral home.

“Is it dark enough yet?” Darrell whispered, the first one to speak for an hour.

Julian nodded. “I think so. I’ll text Silva.” His fingers trembling, he tapped a brief message to Silva’s phone.

We’re here.

A reply shot back.

Julian to the front desk. Distract. Others to the gray van.

Wade looked over. A dark-gray paneled van stood at the far end of the lot, nose out.

“I’ll go to the desk with you,” Darrell said. “I can distract for as long as it takes.”

“Yeah, you can,” Lily said. “Wade, you and me.”

Darrell cracked open the car door, closed it behind him, adjusted his shirt, pulled his sleeves down, and entered the building with Julian. The doors rang when they opened and again when they closed. Wade and Lily left the car and scurried over to the gray van.

Not more than twenty seconds passed before Silva could be seen hurrying along the side of the clinic. He cradled what appeared to be a rolled-up blanket. It was Becca.

Lily opened the van doors as quietly as possible.

Silva shifted Becca in his arms. “Wade, take her shoulders.”

He slid his hands under her shoulders. She weighed nothing, was barely there. He crouched backward into the van and pulled her in, catching a glimpse of her face. Eyes shut, cheekbones as sharp and hard as stone, lips parted, teeth apart. His knees gave out as he set her down on a low cot that was secured to the floor of the van.

“Lily, in the front,” Silva said, lifting Becca’s legs onto the cot with the effort of moving a washcloth. He strapped her in. “Wade, get Darrell and Julian now. We have twenty seconds before— Go!”

Wade rushed to the clinic’s front entrance, pushed his way to the desk. He brusquely cut into Darrell’s monologue about surf punk guitar solos to an uncomprehending staff.

“We have to go,” he said.

“But they’re interested—”

“We have to go,” Wade said. “Bye, everyone, and thanks.”

As soon as they were outside—boomph!—a great green halo appeared over the clinic. At the same time the van roared up to the front doors.

“Fireworks?” said Darrell as he leaped into the van. “They’ll go crazy in there.”

“Not our problem now,” said Silva. “And not appropriate, I know, but workable. They’ll go from quarantine into full immediate lockdown before they”—boomph!—“realize it’s just loud and showy. Belt up!” He slammed his foot to the floor, and the van shot away down the hill.

The journey to a private airport west of Zurich was agonizingly slow. Because the authorities were searching for a young woman who had disappeared from a private medical facility, Silva had to slip cleverly past several police checkpoints. What might normally have been a two-hour trip took them until nearly dawn. Then, by the time a small team of discreet medical personnel—courtesy of the Ackroyd Foundation—could be assembled, and a jet chartered and flight plans filed, it was evening of the next day.

They lifted off at last a full day after the kidnapping—Becca strapped to a gurney and attended by two doctors—and began the first leg of a many-legged journey from country to country, airstrip to airstrip, on their way to the ancient and mysterious island of Crete.