Poe (31 page)

The empty desk by itself wasn’t unusual.

The night shift would typically consist of only two people—Vanko’s crush, Irina, and one doctor. But when Irina left the desk, she always closed and locked the door.

Had she forgotten this time?

If so, it wasn’t like her. Not only was she an attractive woman—although nowhere near Ivanna’s part of the stratosphere—she was also quite professional and extremely efficient. And, in Danya’s experience, she was not one to forget things. Especially when it came to safety.

Danya waited for a moment, checking his watch, wondering if she would return. He listened, hoping he might be able to hear her moving around back there, but it all was quiet.
Too
quiet. And as the seconds ticked by, he began to feel more and more uneasy.

Something wasn’t right.

Stepping past the reception desk, Danya went inside and found that the main examination area was still and lifeless, all of the curtains pulled back to reveal nothing but empty beds.

When he reached the door to the back room, he peered through the window. He didn’t see Irina inside—or the doctor, for that matter—but then he couldn’t see the whole room from here.

Putting a smile on his face, he tapped the glass.

No one answered.

Even if Irina had gone to the cafeteria, the doctor would have remained on duty. The guidelines were very clear on that. Someone on staff had to be present in the infirmary at all times.

Danya opened the door a crack. “Irina? Doctor?”

He wasn’t sure which doctor was on duty. Probably Teterya, a cold man who, according to Vanko, was his biggest rival for Irina.

When no one answered, Danya stepped inside, but a quick look around revealed he wasn’t alone.

“Irina?”

Worse yet, the door to one of the isolation cells was open, and there seemed to be some water on the floor in front of it.

As he walked over, he noticed a plastic cup lying to the side. There had obviously been a spill here, but why hadn’t anyone cleaned it up?

“Irina?” he called out, louder now.

At the sound of his voice, someone pounded against one of the other cell doors and called out in English, “Hello? Hello? Who’s there?”

It was coming from the cell at the opposite end.

Danya walked quickly over and moved up to the door. Raising the window slat, he looked in and saw a prisoner staring back at him.

Summoning up his best English, he said, “Is nurse…with…you?”

It was unlikely, but he supposed it was possible that Irina had somehow managed to lock herself inside.

“Only me,” the prisoner told him. “The nurse is gone.”

He processed her words. “Gone? Where gone?”

“I don’t know. It sounded like a fight. What happened, it wasn’t good.”

The word that stuck out to him was “fight.” Had Irina and the doctor had words? Or was it something much worse than that?

“Where go?” he said. “Where go?”

The prisoner shook her head. “I…I don’t know.”

Danya looked around, hoping to find some clue to where Irina or the doctor was, but saw nothing. He ran back into the examination area, and was starting to do the same there, when he caught sight of something he hadn’t noticed the first time.

The rear exit was ajar.

Danya had never seen it left open before, and was sure there was something in the guidelines about that as well.

He pushed through to the corridor, found it empty.

Which way did they go?

Right led to the stairs, the elevator, and the main part of the prison—all just as easily reachable through the main infirmary door. To the left was a handful of storerooms and a few unused offices, none of which held any medical equipment or supplies.

Why would either of them go there?

For a moment, Danya considered phoning for help, but what if the explanation for their absence was something as simple as a medical emergency, or just a bathroom break?

That would
not
score him any points with his boss.

Danya took a breath. If they went to the right, then everything was fine and they’d show up soon. So, Danya went left, opening each door he passed and checking inside.

He immediately knew there was something different about the storage room when he opened its door.

It was the only room with a light on.

“Irina? Doctor?”

He stepped inside. Though the room was stuffed with boxes and discarded pieces of what appeared to be telecommunications equipment, none of it looked as if it had been disturbed in a very long time.

“Irina?” he said again as he moved around the end of a storage rack.

Though she would have surely answered if she were here, he kept going, drawn forward by a sense that something was wrong.

The first thing he saw when he passed the last shelving unit was the rectangular hole in the wall. There was a partially open door covering half of it, but the other door had been pried away and lay against the wall, hanging by a single hinge.

The second thing he saw was the foot.

A woman’s foot.

For a full two seconds, he didn’t move, unable to fully grasp what he was seeing. Then he rushed forward, nearly tripping over himself. He gasped.

Irina! Oh, God!

He dropped to his knees beside her. “Irina! Irina!”

Her head was tilted to the side, her eyes closed.

“Irina!” This time, shaking her shoulder.

He checked her pulse, but could feel nothing. He looked at her chest to see if she was breathing, but of course she wasn’t.

She had no pulse; how could she be breathing?

All guards had rudimentary first-aid training, and Danya knew he needed to get her heart going and air into her lungs. He reached over to turn her head so it faced upward, giving him better access to her mouth. But he realized with horror that no matter what he did, he would never be able to bring her back.

Her head flopped in his hands, her neck clearly broken.

Which meant this was no accident. She hadn’t simply fallen.

Someone had done this to her.

Someone had
killed
Irina.

“
Where the hell
are they?” Deuce said.

It wasn’t the first time he had said it, or even the third, so Cooper didn’t bother to reply.

From their vantage point on the hill, Cooper watched the prison, while Deuce kept an eye on the abandoned building in the ravine. The moment Alex and El-Hashim appeared, the two men would head for the rendezvous point.

So far, there had been no movement at all in the ravine.

“I don’t like this,” Deuce said. “Maybe we should go see if we can—”

“Just relax,” Cooper told him. “We’re still well within the scheduled time frame.”

Deuce grunted his dissatisfaction, but said nothing more.

Cooper slowly scanned the complex again. It looked exactly as it had when they arrived. Quiet. Tucked in for the night.

He lowered the glasses and was reaching for one of the energy bars in his pocket when a sudden siren pierced the stillness.

There was no question where it was coming from.

The prison.

As Cooper snapped up his binoculars, spotlights came alive in the guard towers, some sweeping their beams through the prison yard, others lighting up the landscape outside the facility walls.

“I
told
you I didn’t like this,” Deuce said.

Cooper ignored him, his attention caught by movement in the parking area in front of the prison. Several people were running toward the facility’s entrance. From the angle of their approach, he figured they were coming from one of the outbuildings. The barracks, no doubt, guards who’d already been awake rushing to help. Others would soon follow.

“This is not good,” Deuce said. “We need to go get Alex.”

Cooper kept his eyes on the prison.

“Cooper! Hey, are you listening to me? We need to go get Alex!”

“Do you see her yet? We can’t risk getting any closer until she shows.”

“But if we wait, we’ll waste time we probably don’t have anymore. We need to be down there when she shows up.” When Cooper didn’t say anything right away, Deuce added, “The purpose of us being here was to keep an eye on the prison in case anything happened. Well, something has! We don’t need to stay here any longer.”

Cooper pulled away from the binoculars and looked at Deuce. “We
do
need to know if anyone is heading in our direction, and this is the best place for that.” He paused, knowing there was also merit to Deuce’s argument. “Stay here. I’ll go see if she’s getting close.”

“No way.
I
go. She’s
my
partner!”

Cooper could sympathize, but he was the running the show. “No, you stay. Is your radio on?”

“Yeah,” Deuce grumbled.

“Good. Let me know if anything more changes.”

Twice during their
trek, Alex and El-Hashim had come upon ramps that lowered the level of the tunnel before flattening out again. When they reached the bottom of the second ramp, they found the ground covered in three inches of water.

“Not so fast,” El-Hashim said. “Please.”

Alex glanced back. The woman was a good dozen feet behind her.

The water alone made it difficult to walk, but that’s not where the problem ended. The stone floor was also slick with algae or some kind of vegetation, so to keep their legs from flying out from under them, they had to take each step with care. Alex had been able to maintain a decent pace, but her companion was apparently not as sure-footed.

She sloshed back to El-Hashim.

“Here,” she said. “Hold my arm.”

El-Hashim grabbed on, sighing in relief. “Thank you.”

Their new pace was not as fast as Alex would have liked, but it was better than what El-Hashim had been doing on her own.

“How much farther?” the woman asked.

“I’m not sure.”

Dr. Teterya’s map wasn’t exactly drawn to scale, but so far it had helped them avoid one of the false branch tunnels.

There was something Alex was sure of, however. Once they reached the end, her chance to learn what El-Hashim knew about her father would be over.

“Whoa,” El-Hashim said as she slipped, her free arm flying into the air to steady herself.

Alex paused for a moment, allowing the woman to regain her balance.

“You’re doing great,” Alex said. “Ready?”

El-Hashim nodded and they started walking again.

As they skirted a piece of floating debris, Alex said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“What?”

“How long have you worked with my father?”

A sideways glance. “This is something you should ask of him, not me.”

“It’s not a subject we usually discuss.”

“Business is business. If he wants you to know, he’ll tell you.”

Alex had expected this answer, and knew she wouldn’t get much further with a lie. It was time to finally be honest.

“Actually, the truth is,” she said, “my father and I don’t discuss anything at all.”

“Yes, texting and emails. You told me that.”

“That wasn’t entirely accurate. The last time I had any communication with my dad was a decade ago, before he fell off the map.”

El-Hashim’s face screwed up in confusion. “I don’t understand. You haven’t heard from him? But you said…”

“That he sent me to get you?”

“Yes.”

“That was a bit of a lie,” Alex told her. “Actually not even a bit. I made it all up.”

El-Hashim released Alex’s arm and took a step back. She started to lose balance again and Alex grabbed her, gripping her bicep. “Careful. You don’t want to break anything down here.”

El-Hashim tried to pull away, but Alex wouldn’t let go.

“Who
are
you?” she demanded.

“You know who I am. You checked me out yourself. I didn’t lie about that.”

El-Hashim continued to struggle. “Then what do you want from me?” Her eyes opened wide in realization. “You
are
here to kill me, aren’t you?”

Alex held her steady and swung the flashlight beam, taking in all of the tunnel. “Do you seriously think I’d go to all the trouble of getting you down here just to kill you? I could have done it in about two seconds flat back at the prison.”

“So then why are we here? Why are you helping me escape?”

“The answer to that is very simple. You were with my father just a handful of days ago, and I want to find him. I want to talk to him. I haven’t seen him in over a decade, and you’re the only one I know who has.”

“And how do you know this? Who told you about us?”

Time to start lying again. “I have a lot of friends. They know I’ve been looking for him.”

“You’re friends with the Crimean police?”

“No,” Alex assured her. “My father is a wanted man, and I have no interest in associating with the people who are out to get him. But I do have friends who have connections to the police, both in and outside the law.” She paused. “I know this is a lot to process right now, and I know you have no real reason to trust me, but I need your help, El-Hashim. I need to know about my father.”

El-Hashim stared at Alex, clearly not quite buying it.

“These friends,” she said. “There’s much more to them than you’re letting on. You couldn’t have done all of this alone. Someone’s waiting outside, aren’t they?”

Alex said nothing. She didn’t have to.

“Who are you working for?”

“That’s not important.”

“It is to me.”

Alex hesitated. “I only took this job because of your contact with my father.”

“And yet, even if I tell you what I know, you’ll turn me over to your colleagues.”

Again Alex was silent. But at least El-Hashim had stopped struggling, probably because she knew there was no point to it. She was physically outmatched and had no chance of getting away.

The corner of the woman’s mouth turned up. “What if we were to make a deal?” she said. “One that’s mutually beneficial?”

“Can you help me find my father or not?

“I honestly have no idea where he is,” she said. “But I do know how to contact him, and I would be willing to give you that information.”