after
Iwanted to go alone, but when I get to the small airport, I’m met by a young Latinx woman with an efficient-looking haircut and someone so dear and familiar to me that I run right to him and pull him into a hug.
“Percival Wu,” I say, pulling pack and squeezing his shoulder.
“Mr. Vice President,” he says, his grin genuine and only a little bit teasing.
“Last I heard, you were in Jordan doing mysterious things,” I say. Wu had joined the CIA after the war ended, becoming one of those agents that were only identified by numbers and code names in the briefing bulletins I got every morning.
“Just got home to Chicago two days ago. When I heard Mrs. Colchester had been taken, I volunteered right away.”
I swallow at this. I don’t know why Wu of all people should be the one to make me emotional after the night I’ve had, but he does. I feel safe with him at my back, warmed by his loyalty. “Just like old times, right?”
He smiles. “Let’s hope a little easier than that. And can I introduce Agent Gareth to you? She’s newer with the agency, but quite distinguished and specializes in the kind of hostage situation we’re facing.”
“And how would you define that?” I ask them both as I briefly shake Gareth’s hand. The image of Greer at Melwas’s mercy flashes through my mind, and I shove my shaking hand into my pocket. I want to kill him. I want to kill him so badly that I can almost taste it.
“This is the kind of hostage situation that nobody but a few people know about,” she says smoothly, cutting into my thoughts. We start walking to the small plane waiting for us. “This is classified in the highest order, which means we have limited tools, but greater opportunities. I’ll explain more as we get airborne.”
“And where are we going?”
“Newport. Specifically a boathouse there.”
I look at her, and she adds, “Trust me. It will all make sense once we’re on the plane and able to talk at length.”
We got to the boathouse too late. I knew it the minute I stepped foot on the path, having crept up from the woods beside the house. We searched the boathouse, the dock, and the dark house itself, grandly imposing even in the dim evening. There’s no Greer, and no sinister Carpathians lurking about. There’s also no boat but there is clear evidence of a disturbance on the dock. Knocked over paddles, scuffs that still shone on the rain-wet wood. Like someone fought not to get on the boat.
I’m fucking furious. Furious at the thought of anyone laying hands on my Greer, Ash’s little princess, my queen. Shaking with rage at the thought of rope on her skin, tape on her mouth, and even worse…
I stare at those scuffs, willing my heart rate to go down. For the first time in years, I miss my M4. I miss my Glock. I haven’t felt so much like a soldier in years, but now, with this righteous anger, this real fear, my brain dumping adrenaline into my bloodstream by the gallon, I could almost be back in Carpathia charging through the trees.
“We prepared for this,” Gareth says, interrupting my thoughts and taking a moment to holster her gun and button her jacket back up. “There was always a possibility we’d miss them.”
I look back at the Corbenics’s mansion, the one that belongs to Abilene Corbenic’s parents, to Greer’s aunt and uncle. I think of the phone records Gareth and Wu showed me on the plane; it had been Abilene who texted Greer in the middle of the night and beckoned her down to the lobby. I think of the quick actions Merlin had taken as we were in the air, finding all the properties Abilene would have had access to, narrowing it down to this one.
Finally, I think of Abilene’s arm laced through my own yesterday afternoon as we walked down the aisle to Ash. I don’t know her very well, but I would never have guessed her capable of this.
Greer would have recognized the house, I think bleakly. She was being stolen away, using a house owned by her own family…
“Abilene told Merlin and the Secret Service that her phone was stolen two nights ago,” Wu says. “We can’t discount the possibility that she’s telling the truth, and that Melwas’s people took advantage of Abilene’s connection to Greer.”
“We can’t discount the possibility that she’s lying, either,” Gareth says, and there’s something so factual about the way she says it that it doesn’t sound cynical, merely honest. “After all, we have had several people tell us that she seemed to make an amorous connection with one of Melwas’s men in Geneva this winter. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility.”
I tear my eyes away from the wet, scuffed wood. I need a gun in my hand. Or a knife. And I need to be moving.
“Where to next?” I ask, even though I already know. They showed me the pictures on the plane, the mountain resort that Melwas had purchased under a different name, the resort that satellite photography showed being fortified like a castle. It would be a perfect place to keep a secret captive. On paper it belonged to someone else, it’s so far out of the way that no one would find it by accident, and judging from the intelligence, he’s gathered a small army around it.
“Next we go to Carpathia,” Gareth says, and there’s a gleam in her eye she can’t quite hide. I’m glad. It means she’s as bloodthirsty as me.
