Death by Denim (14 page)

I clamped my own jaw tight and breathed hard through my nose. I was not going to let him goad me into talking back, even though I’d like to tell him a thing or two. But it wouldn’t do any good. You can’t reason with insanity.

“You must understand,” he continued, “I abhor violence, but there are times when a big stick is more effective than a soft word. Your parents killed twenty years of progress toward bringing down American dominance. They destroyed the cell I so painstakingly pulled together and nurtured over the years. So I find it a fitting addition to my statement that I destroy their creations.” He spread his hands as if to encompass Seth and me.

“What statement could you possibly make?” Seth spat.

The Mole cocked his head, his mouth twisting as if amused. “My colleagues have been scattered. Many have been captured. But the work will go forth. My statement”—he paused for effect—“is to show that I will not be hobbled.”

I didn’t want to ask. I truly didn’t want to hear the answer, but I had to know. “What have you done with my mom?”

“I have done nothing with her.” His lips split in an oily smile. “Yet.”

He was lucky that my hands were still stuck behind my back or I would have clawed his eyes out. I gritted my teeth. “Where is she?”

“Your mother is on her way to rescue her daughter.”

“But she doesn’t know where I am.”

He arched a brow over one pale eye. “Why, certainly she does. The Agency is not exclusive in the use of bait.”

My mouth went dry. “I—I don’t understand.”

“It’s quite simple. Since you would not go to her in Milan, she is coming to you.”

Icy fear licked the back of my neck until my hairs stood on end. I knew I was playing his game, but I had to ask. “How did you know I was supposed to go to Milan?”

His cold smile made my stomach turn. “I have my sources. Close, reliable sources.” He winked and I thought I’d lose it right there.

What did he mean, “close sources”? Close to him or close to my mom? Who even knew? Ryan would never have given me up. And then my heart sank. Caraday. I remembered the way she whispered her instructions to me, how she said my mom was sleeping when I left. . . . That should have raised a huge red flag, had I stopped long enough to think about it. There’s no way Mom would have gone to sleep unless she knew that the Mulos were safe. So either she already had a plan in play or Caraday had been lying to me. Or both.

“And my mom and dad?” Seth asked, though I’m sure he would rather not have heard the answer.

“Yes,” The Mole said in his saccharine voice. “They have received an invitation as well.”

He crossed his long legs and brushed imaginary lint from his trousers, signaling the end of his interest in our conversation. “Labruzzo, we must finalize the preparations. Kindly show our guests to their new accommodations.”

Labruzzo bowed as if he were a manservant.

“Oh, and Labruzzo, one more thing. Please explain what will happen when the Mulos and Signora Connolly arrive for their children, would you?”

Labruzzo’s lips lifted. He fixed me with his black eyes. “Boom,” he said.

 

My legs shook as we crossed back over the metal walkway. I had to breathe through my nose, afraid that if I opened my mouth, I’d scream. The workers down below, the wires, suddenly it made horrible sense to me; they were rigging the textile mill with explosives.

I could barely climb down the stairs, but Labruzzo had no patience for my being slow and growled at me to hurry up. He marched us through the machine room and down a wide corridor lined with the same square bins I had seen earlier near the loading dock.

In front of a battered wooden door, he stopped, jangling the keys on a large brass ring until he found the one to undo the lock.

The door swung open to reveal a room that was only about ten feet square. Even more carts crowded the room, these overflowing with what looked to be cast-off fabric and scraps, all heaped in the corners and spilling out onto the floor. Bits of plastic and paper, old pins and thread spools littered the floor. The tall windows on the far side of the room were caked with grime and only let in a weak, yellowish light. In the small space, the strange smell was even stronger than in the open space of the factory.

“In,” Labruzzo ordered.

I drew back. If he was trying to kill us with chemical fumes, he might not be far off.

Labruzzo grabbed my shoulder and gave me a vicious shove. I stumbled into the room, slipped on a piece of fabric and fell to the floor. Pain shot through my elbow and up my arm.

“Aphra!” Seth rushed to where I lay amid the trash and dropped to his knees, but there wasn’t much he could do to help me.

The door clicked shut behind us, followed by a metallic clunk. Probably Labruzzo setting the lock again. At least Seth and I were together. And, for the first time since I first saw him in Varese, we were alone. It should have been our “moment.” We should have been able to hold each other and comfort each other and tell each other that everything was going to be all right, even though it wasn’t. By keeping us cuffed, The Mole had even taken that away from us.

Frustration and anger swelled inside with edges so sharp it brought tears to my eyes.

“Hey,” Seth whispered. “What’s wrong?”

I rolled onto my side so that I could at least look up at him. He leaned over me, his eyes—his beautiful blue eyes—so filled with tenderness and concern that I cried even more.

“Are you hurt?”

I could only shake my head.

“Then what’s the matter?”

“I want to hug you and I can’t,” I choked out.

“Hold on a sec.” He let himself topple over so that he was lying on the ground facing me and then wriggled like a worm so that we were face-to-face. His voice went husky. “I want to hug you, too,” he said. That made me cry again, only happier this time.

“Hey, shhh . . .” he said, and rubbed his cheek against mine. His warm skin felt sandpapery and soft at the same time. I closed my eyes and nuzzled against him like a cat, breathing in the smell of him—an earthy blend of lime and soap.

“I’ve missed you so much,” I whispered.

“You have no idea.” He pulled back so he could see my face. “I’ve been going crazy. No one would tell me where you were.”

“Me, neither.”

“Where
were
you?”

“Lyon and then Paris.”

“Only a few hours away. No wonder they wouldn’t tell me. I would have found you.”

“I would have found you.”

“You did find me.”

I smiled. “Oh, yeah.”

We lay there looking at each other for several heartbeats, and then Seth leaned close and brushed his lips against mine. A wave of champagne bubbles burst open in my stomach, my head, my heart. I stretched my neck to reach him again, and he kissed me, deeper, longer. For those brief minutes, I forgot my pain and my fear. All I knew was that Seth was there with me. I nestled my cheek in the hollow between his shoulder and his neck.

And then I opened my eyes.

I had found Seth—and because of that, he was lying on the floor of an abandoned factory, manacled and marked for death. I swallowed hard against the ache in my throat. If what The Mole had said was true, my mom had set an alternate plan in play to get the Mulos to safety. If it hadn’t been for me, they might have gotten away.

“Why did you come forward?” I moaned.

Seth pulled back and looked at me incredulously. “What?”

“When Labruzzo arrested me,” I said. “He was making a show of it, trying to flush you out.” Just like Caraday said we were going to do with the Mole. The irony only made it hurt worse. “Why didn’t you stay hidden?”

Seth shifted so that he was angled toward me. “Aphra, look at me.”

I raised my face to him again. His brows dipped low. “I would never let anything happen to you,” he said. “I stepped out of the crowd because it was not possible for me to stand by and watch you be hurt.”

“But . . . you could have gotten away. You could have been free.”

He shook his head. “No, Aphra,” he said softly, “I will never be free of you.”

His cobalt eyes held mine and for that moment, everything else melted away until it was just Seth and me and that was all I needed. It didn’t matter what awaited us or how we were going to get out of it. For that little time I could believe that everything was going to be all right.

I was wrong.

I
could have lain there with Seth for hours, but our aching shoulders and the urgency of the situation wouldn’t allow it. We needed to get out of the textile mill and warn our parents. With some difficulty, we pushed to our feet and stood together, trying to figure out a plan, trying to understand what had happened with each other to lead us to that spot.

“What happened this morning?” I asked him. “Before I got there.”

Seth glanced back at the door, and then leaned close to tell me. “We were eating breakfast when a telegram was delivered. It was kind of a shock, since no one was supposed to know where we were.”

“What did it say?”

“It was the message we dreaded getting for years, ‘Send the books.’”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

“It’s code. We had to learn the code before we went into hiding. If we get a message that says to ‘pack the books,’ we’re supposed to make preparations to leave town. Pack a few things, maybe withdraw some money from the bank, but sit tight and watch and be on high alert. But if the message says to ‘send the books,’ that means to get out immediately.”

“Oh.” So the Agency
had
come to warn the Mulos. I should have trusted that they would, but I had to be sure. “Where did you go?”

“Nata—your mom had rented an apartment one building over. That was our safe place. She rented it with her own money so that no one would know about it. She figured that if we ran after someone discovered where we were hiding, they would never think to look so close.”

That sounded like my mom. Be prepared. Trust no one. “If they didn’t know about the apartment, where did the Agency think you were going to go when you got the ‘books’ message?”

He shrugged. “I hadn’t really thought about that. All I know is that when we got the message, we had to clear out and go to the safe place and wait for instructions.”

“So . . . once you got there, you were supposed to stay in the safe apartment, right? What made you come outside?”

Seth lifted one shoulder. “We could see the street from the window. That was something else your mom insisted on. So . . .” He let his gaze drop. “The police car caught my attention. I mean, he’d left his lights flashing so I figured something was up. I watched and when I saw him bringing you out of the building . . .” He looked up at me, face sincere and open. “I snapped. I ran out of the apartment and my mom ran after me. She tried to make me stop. And my dad followed her.” His shoulders sagged. “They’ve probably been going crazy, trying to figure out where the police car would have taken us. I wonder how The Mole gave them the message where to find us?”

“He probably didn’t have to. My mom would have gone to them immediately. They’re probably all together.” Which meant Caraday was probably with them and they didn’t know she was in league with The Mole. A fresh surge of panic gripped me and I pulled my wrists against the handcuffs. “We’ve got to get these things off.”

“Wait. Can you pick the locks?”

“Me?” I laughed. Well, not really a full-out laugh, but one of those “yeah, right” guffaws. “I’ve never even
seen
a set of handcuffs up close before now.”

“But you have picked locks.”

“Not these kind of locks.” Back at the resort, I’d learned the basics of lock picking from our super, but we’re talking about doors and cupboards. Handcuffs? No way.

“The concept is pretty much the same, though, right?” Seth persisted.

I chewed on my lip. I didn’t share Seth’s confidence, but it’s not like we had a whole lot of other options. I might as well give it a try. There was only one problem. “What am I going to use as a pick?”

Seth scanned the room. “There’s got to be something we can use in here. Let’s look through the bins.”

Without the use of our hands, even that simple task proved to be difficult. We had to turn around backward to dump the bins and then sift through the fabric scraps with our feet. It wasn’t a very effective way to look for any object small enough to fit into a handcuff lock. Besides, if we happened to find something, how were we supposed to pick it up?

“This is going to take forever,” I said.

“Let’s split up.” Seth pointed to the back corner of the room with his chin. “You take that corner and I’ll take the other and we’ll meet in the middle.”

“I hope we’re not still going at it long enough to reach the middle,” I grumbled. Still, I slogged through the trash to my corner of the room and started looking.