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 two days since Kira had disappeared. The two longest days of Rebecca’s life. Whatever happened next would be easier.
Unless—
She wouldn’t even let herself think it.
The handful of travelers who had left the train at Zaragoza walked past, stealing looks at the drama.
“Mr. Unsworth? Mrs. Unsworth?” The man in the suit held up a single finger, Hold on, please. A minute ticked by on the digital clock. Behind them, the train’s doors closed. A moment later it pulled out of the station, accelerating, leaving the platform behind. Rebecca felt strangely sorry to see it go. Maybe someone on there had been watching them. Maybe they’d missed a clue.
The clocks ticked to 22:57. If this cop was talking about anything other than Kira, Rebecca would kill him.
“Sí. Sí.” Finally he pocketed the phone, turned to them.
“I’m Lieutenant Suarez. I’m sorry, but that call was about your daughter. Come with me, por favor.”
“We were told to wait here for instructions.”
Suarez shook his head. “It’s possible we may have found where they held her.”
“How?” Rebecca said.
“A fire, a ghost town in the area where the CIA”—he meant NSA, Rebecca assumed—“found the phone. Come, please.”
“Ghost town?” Nothing was making much sense.
“A housing development that was never finished. Because of the financial crisis. Spain has many—” He walked down the platform, giving them no choice but to follow.
“We sent a patrol to the area northwest of Zaragoza as soon as we received the information about the phone. Now the officers say they’ve seen a fire in one of those developments. They’re going to the house. But it’s kilometers off the highway.”
“Hold on.” Brian grabbed Suarez’s shoulder.
“Señor—”
“No one knows if this fire is connected to any of this. If Kira was there, much less if she still is.”
“The timing is strange. To say the least.”
Rebecca reached for Brian, found herself looking at pure male rage, his eyes slits. If he couldn’t calm down he would deck Suarez and then the cops would have no choice but to arrest him.
And Suarez was right, coincidences were rarely coincidences at moments like these.
“Bri, listen—”
“You’re the one who said we should wait here.”
“No, this is good news, I promise.” Maybe better to keep him away just in case. She handed him the phone and the Toyota key. “I’ll go. Stay here if they call.”
She saw him gather himself, nod. “If they do, I’m doing what they say. Whatever it is.”
“Yes, but call me—”
“Go, then.” He turned away, stalked down the platform. Toward the west, open end of the station. Toward nothing.
She understood. Wasn’t even upset with him. Suarez led her through the station, outside. Two police cars waited in front, their lights flashing. He walked her past those, across a wide boulevard, into an empty parking lot.
“Where are we going?”
He pointed east into the night sky. She heard the thrum of a helicopter, distant but closing fast. A minute later she saw its spotlight, following the train tracks toward the station, just a couple hundred feet off the ground. She couldn’t see the bird itself, though. Must have been black.
The engine noise picked up and the spotlight pinned them. She shielded her eyes against the glare as the bird leveled out and then landed in the lot. A Bell 407, a standard long-range seven-seater. The FBI used them too. The door swung open. Garza, the special ops colonel, waved to her. She ducked her head, ran through the wash, glad to see him despite everything. Two men dressed in black were in the back, along with an empty seat. For Brian, presumably. Rebecca buckled herself into the harness and pulled on her headphones. The Bell rose into the night and turned north over the center of Zaragoza.
“You followed us?”
“Yes.” Garza’s voice was raspy in the headphones.
“Thank you.”
“Your husband?”
“Waiting at the train station for instructions. He has the money.” Though she wondered now, what if this were some ruse to divide them, isolate the cash, take the bag from Brian with no cops around? Could the kidnappers have guessed they’d split up?
“They told you about the fire? They’re sending firefighters but it will be a bit. The nearest station is twenty kilometers and they say the road to the development is not good. We may get there first. The police just reached it but the house is burning too fast, they can’t go inside.”
“Have they seen anyone?”
“No.”
Good news, bad news? She didn’t know.
The Bell topped out at one hundred sixty miles an hour. They left downtown Zaragoza behind and sliced through the night, roughly paralleling a four-lane highway. Houses and stores blurred beneath them.
“This road we’re following goes to Pamplona,” Garza said. “Probably another six, seven minutes to the house.”
The land looked surprisingly open beyond the strip of homes and stores that paralleled the highway. Villages were scattered in the night, islands in a sea of darkness. Rebecca understood better now how the kidnappers could have moved Kira here without being noticed.
Soon enough, the helicopter banked right. She saw the fire now, the orange glow in the night. Blue lights flashed near it, tiny in comparison.
Below and ahead, off the highway, more blue lights, taller, no doubt belonging to the fire trucks. They moved weirdly slowly through the darkness, reminding her of Garza’s warning about the road.
The helicopter turned off the highway, quickly passing the trucks. As they closed in the power of the blaze became apparent. It was uncontrolled, shooting into the night. If Kira had been inside the house—
Nothing from Brian, but then she hadn’t texted either. What could she say? Yeah, it’s burning.
Now they were only a few hundred yards away. The helicopter’s spotlight swept over the scrubby ground, past a single strand of bushes that shook in the rotor wash, a row of skeletal houses.
The burning house stood at the end of a cul-de-sac. The flames reached hungry into the night. The police sedan was parked well back, nothing the cops could do. The helicopter slowed abruptly now, the pilot hesitating, looking for the right spot. It moved forward and set down fast. Rebecca’s head bobbed as its skids bounced and settled on the hardpack dirt road.
She unbuckled herself even before the helicopter stopped moving. Garza reached for her but she shook off his hand, jumped out, ran toward the house. The cops on the ground watched her, and one stepped toward her, in case she wanted to try a heroic and pointless rescue. But even twenty feet away the heat was huge, painful. Even if Rebecca had known Kira was inside, she couldn’t have forced herself through it.
The house would collapse soon; it was tilting, sending embers through the night. Some had already settled on other roofs.
The fire trucks were close enough now for her to hear sirens.
Until someone proved otherwise, she had to assume Kira was not in there. The kidnappers had moved her, set fire to the place, a plan to distract the cops while they collected the ransom.
Or Kira had escaped somehow, beaten them, and they’d burned the house to destroy the evidence.
Think.
If she’d escaped, she was close.
She would have run for the highway. She was too much of a city girl to head to open ground. She would want to find a phone as soon as she could.
But she hadn’t been on the road. Why not?
Rebecca walked away from the house, up the road, trotting now. Garza called to her. She ignored him. Maybe she was wasting time, but she couldn’t wait here and watch. Kira was out there. Not inside that house-sized barbeque. Not stuffed in some trunk. Out there. And close. Rebecca had to believe.
Then why hadn’t she called? Why hadn’t she come out when the police showed up?
Think.
Because she was injured, wounded. Even seeing the cops couldn’t get her to move—
The bushes she’d seen, the movement. Not rotor wash. The helicopter had been too far away.
An animal. A person.
Rebecca ran now. She topped the hill, nearly tripped on a chain the cops had knocked aside, kept running. The fire engines were only a few hundred feet away. Their headlights appeared, coming faster than she expected. They bounced down the hill toward her and honked ferociously. She angled aside and kept running, feeling the rush of air as they passed. And then she had the night to herself, none of the cops chasing her, Let her go, she’s emotional.
She ran.
To the top of the second low hill. Where had the bush been? On the downslope.
There.
The leaves shaking. Behind them—
Something, someone, moving.
Rebecca ran down, cutting toward the bush, skidding in the soft dirt, screaming for her daughter.
The bush twisted.
And the voice, weak and thin across the night, just one word:
“Mom?”
A question. As if Kira couldn’t believe her mother had found her.
As if she might ever have doubted.