Secretive (13 page)

Jack, who was a pace ahead of her, looked back.

Zoe closed the distance between them. “I think I saw Sam.”

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“W
HERE?”

“Behind us. He had on a baseball cap, a brown one. I think it was him.”

“Let’s find out.” Jack moved to a store window, and they pretended to admire the display of watches. “Look in the reflection. Do you see him?”

“No, he’s too far away. Let me look over your shoulder,” Zoe said and popped up on her tiptoes.

“Don’t do that.”

“It is him.” Zoe dropped down. “It’s okay. He didn’t see me. He’s looking at his phone, but he’s moving this way.”

Jack grabbed her hand. “Come on. Let’s see if we can lose him.” They blended in with several people moving up the stairs to the mezzanine level. They crossed to the other side so they could look down through the open area to the main level.

“There he is.” Zoe spotted the baseball cap moving toward them. From above, she could see the silver hair at the base of his neck. He kept his head bent over his phone, only glancing up to avoid running into people.

“Let’s keep moving,” Jack said, and they took off, heading toward him. They came even with Sam and kept walking. Jack caught her arm. “Look at that.” Below them, Sam had done a one-eighty and was now trailing along after them, shadowing their movements on the lower level as they walked along the upper level, all the while concentrating on the screen of his phone.

“How did he do that?” Zoe asked. “He didn’t look up here.”

“He’s tracking us.”

“Tracking us?” Zoe stopped. “How could he do that?”

“With a real-time GPS tracker. There’s got to be one on you or in your stuff somewhere. We’ve got to keep moving as we look for it.”

A real-time GPS tracker? Zoe wouldn’t have believed it, except she’d seen the way Sam had turned without hesitation to follow them. And he was still following them. “How—when could he...? Oh, on the plane. He could have done it on the plane while I slept.”

“Forget about that now. Let’s find the thing first,” Jack said. “Where’s your phone? That’s the most likely place. Maybe he put some sort of tracking app on it.”

Zoe laughed. “Right. Not on my phone.” She worked it out of her back pocket. “No apps. It barely takes pictures.”

Jack took a quick glance at it and handed it back. “That’s practically pre-historic in technology years.”

The brown cap continued to pace along in their wake. “Could it be on my clothes?”

“I don’t think so. It’s probably on something you’d always have with you—like your coat or purse.”

“We ditched our coats along with the clothes, so it can’t be there.” Zoe glanced back. “He’s coming up the escalator. Aghh. It’s got to be in my messenger bag. Come on,” she said and moved into a women’s clothing store displaying skimpy T-shirts and camisoles. Zoe dumped the contents of her purse on a glass counter that enclosed perfume bottles. She didn’t bother pulling out Bent’s laptop because she’d only picked it up a few hours earlier—even though it seemed like it had been much longer than that.

A sales lady approached. “May I help you?” she asked doubtfully.

“Just lost my lipstick,” Zoe said as she pawed through the receipts and tubes of lip-gloss.

“Well, let me know if you’d like to try our new scent, Drastic.”

“Not now, thanks.” Zoe pushed her sunglasses, her plane ticket stubs, and her wallet out of the way. “Good grief. There’s so much stuff in here, this is the perfect place to hide something,” she muttered. Breath mints, a Chinese take-out menu, a bottle of ibuprofen. Jack stepped to the shop door and returned.

“He’s on the other side of the mezzanine.”

Ear buds with their cords tangled in a hair clip. A case for her sunglasses that she never used. A stack of business cards held together with a rubber band. Three sticks of cinnamon-flavored gum.

“Nothing. Where is it?” Zoe said, sweeping her hand through the stack of stuff. She paused when she picked up her empty sunglass case. There was a thickness at the bottom. She shook it, but nothing came out. She worked her fingers inside and pried out a small black box about the size of a matchbox, but thinner.

“Jack,” she said, drawing his attention away from the shop entrance.

She held up the box. He sent her a blinding smile and grabbed it. “Let’s see if this is the problem.”

Zoe swept the rest of the items into her messenger bag as Jack approached a woman who was leaving the store, her powder blue shopping bag with her new clothes hooked over her elbow. Jack brushed by her and dropped the black box into the open shopping bag. “Slick,” Zoe said as he returned to her side.

A few seconds later, Sam strode by, head bent over his phone. He didn’t look into the shop, just followed the woman with the powder blue bag. They watched as Sam trailed her down the corridor.

“Thank goodness she didn’t head for the EuroStar area.”

“Speaking of that,” Jack said, “We’d better get over there. Don’t want to miss our train.”

Zoe couldn’t help looking over her shoulder as they took an escalator down to the main level and went to the EuroStar concourse, but she didn’t see any brown baseball caps.

They fed their tickets into the automatic ticket gates and the glass panels popped open. “Good thing it’s mid-week. We would never have gotten tickets if it were the weekend,” Jack said.

Zoe knew he was trying to make conversation to get her down from the jittery nervous feeling that vibrated through her. “No long weekend here,” Zoe said, trying to match his easy tone.

Jack looked at her blankly as they lined up for security.

“Tomorrow is Thanksgiving,” Zoe said. “At least, it is in the States.”

“I’d forgotten,” Jack said as they moved through security. An official took a quick glance at their passports then they were through to the departure waiting area. Zoe hadn’t expected to have her passport examined before they left London, but it all went so quickly that it was over before she had time to worry. “Well, that was simple,” she said. “I guess the police haven’t flagged our passports.” Jack murmured an agreement as they boarded their train.

Zoe let out a sigh of relief as the train pulled out of the station with no sighting of Sam.

“We’ll be in Paris in under three hours,” Jack said.

“Let’s get something to eat,” Zoe said, realizing that she was ravenous. “All this running and hiding has given me an appetite.”

“We’d better stick with the café. It will be the cheapest, and we need to keep as much of our cash as possible.”

“Fine. Sandwiches it is.” They made their way to the café and ordered sandwiches and drinks, which they ate as they stood at the tall tables in the café area. “Did you see anyone...who looked familiar as we passed through the carriages?”

“No,” Jack said. “You?”

“No.”

“Good.”

They ate in silence as London slipped away and was replaced by fields and hedgerows. As they returned to their seats, an announcement stated they were about to enter the Channel Tunnel.

“Hand me Bent’s laptop, would you? I’d like to take a look at those emails.”

“I hope it’s not password protected,” Zoe said.

Jack opened the laptop and the screen came to life, exactly as they had left it.

“I can’t believe that he wouldn’t have some sort of security on his laptop. I mean, he was a hacker, after all. If anyone should know the risks, it would be him.”

Jack shrugged. “Cobbler’s kids have no shoes and all that. Maybe he had some sort of incredible firewall and virus detection. Maybe he was just foolish. Whatever the reason, I’m glad.” Jack settled down to read. Zoe read over his shoulder for a while, but with her full stomach and feeling of safety, her eyelids began to feel heavy.

The train emerged from the Chunnel and her attention was drawn to the slightly rolling French countryside with its smattering of villages, each dominated with a church spire. She felt her eyes drifting closed. She awoke to the general hubbub of talk and motion as people stood and stretched or moved through the aisles. Jack was absorbed in the screen of the laptop. “Incredible,” he murmured.

“We’re here, Jack.”

He glanced up and blinked. “Right.” He slammed the laptop closed and shoved it at Zoe.

She stowed it in the messenger bag. “What’s wrong with you?”

Jack jerked Zoe’s suitcase off the rack at the entrance to the train without answering.

Zoe said, amazed, “You’re angry.” Jack was rarely angry, and if he was angry, he didn’t show it. He hid his emotions, tamping them down inside.

Jack rotated his shoulders as he worked a deep breath in and out of his lungs. “Sorry.” People stepped off the train and surged around them. “You’re staring at me,” he said, irritated.

“It’s such an unusual spectacle. Fascinating really. I think I should jot it down on my calendar or something.” He closed his eyes but grinned slightly as she continued, “I’m usually the one who flies off the handle, not you. So, what’s incredible?” Zoe asked as they turned and walked along the platform.

“He was playing both sides against the middle,” Jack said.

“Bent?” Zoe asked, dodging other travelers.

“Yes. Bent—Ares—whatever his current name was—it’s all there on the computer. Apparently, he had several email addresses and he downloaded them all to a single email account. Some of the emails are to Bent and some are to Ares. And, if that’s not enough, there’s a second, completely different account. It was open, but minimized. That’s why we didn’t see it when we looked at it in his office.”

“Who was he on the other email account? Someone totally different?” Zoe asked.

“No, still Ares, but it’s the recipient who is more interesting.” Jack paused to consult a board with train departure times. “That’s the one we want, the sleeper train to Munich, to start. Come on, let’s get our tickets and I’ll show you what I found.”

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A
NNA had established a habit of taking a smoke break on the wall walk of the castle after dinner, so no one said anything when she picked up her lighter and cigarettes and left the dining room. Costa didn’t like the cold, so he wouldn’t follow. She stopped by her room to put on her long wool coat. While the drafty rooms of the castle were freezing, they were actually a few degrees warmer than the even more frigid air outdoors.

She took the circular staircase at the end of the hallway, which followed the curve of the tower. At the top, the thick wooden door stuck, but she shoved it open, ducked through the low pointed doorway, and stepped onto the wall walk.

Icy air swept over her cheeks and tossed her hair into her eyes. She shook it away and lit a cigarette, sheltering it from the wind. She took a long drag, then blew out a stream of smoke. Below the castle, at the base of the steep bluff, a handful of lights twinkled in the tiny village of Lintzberg. Beyond, a few lights dotted the motorway, but the rest of the heavily forested countryside was dark, the land rising and dropping steeply under the canopy of stars.

Anna shifted her gaze to the parking lot, a small sweep of open ground directly below her at the base of the castle wall. A second stone wall, this one with massive wrought-iron gates, encircled the whole castle area and edged the cliff, enclosing the parking area.

Satisfied that no one was lingering among the cars below her, she twisted around and turned her attention to the courtyard inside the castle. The far side of the castle was in ruins with only a section of one of the interior walls left standing. Three stories of stone jutted up against the night sky, the stars visible through rows of narrow windows. Nothing moved in the courtyard. Anna took out her phone and called Wade.

When he answered she kept her voice low, but her tone was sharp. “Finally. Why didn’t you answer earlier?”

“Now, Anna, don’t get mad—”

She rubbed her forehead with the heel of the hand that held the cigarette. “No names! How many times do I have to tell you?”

“Right. Sorry. Anyway, I’ve got some bad news. I can’t go to London.”

“Why not?”

“Haven’t got a passport.”

“Well, get one.”

“Can’t. It takes weeks and weeks. You have to fill out a form and send it off. Not to mention the picture...”

“Not a real one. Get a fake passport, you idiot.”

There was a pause. “I don’t think that would be right.”

“What?”

“Traveling on a fake passport...that could get me into a lot of trouble. Federal offense and all. I mean, I don’t know for sure, but I bet it’s a crime.”

Anna flung her cigarette butt to the stone path and spoke through gritted teeth. “So kidnapping is okay, but you draw the line at using a fake passport?”

“See, I’ve been thinking. This hasn’t gone the way we thought it would, has it? It’s gotten so complicated. I think I better bow out.”

“You don’t mean that. If this is an attempt to get a larger share, you can forget it.”

“Sorry, Anna. Don’t call again. I won’t answer.”

“Don’t you dare—”

He cut her off. “It’s been real.”

A dial tone sounded in her ear. She hit redial, but he didn’t answer. She hung-up on the voicemail message, redialed again. Voicemail.

Anna swung around toward the village and the forest. She was so angry she wanted to throw something. Her fingers clinched around the phone. No, that would be stupid. She shoved it in her pocket and worked to calm her breathing. She never should have counted on Wade. He wasn’t reliable, but he was the best she could come up with on short notice. She paced a few steps along the narrow walk. What would she do now?

She knew Costa well enough to know that he liked her, but he didn’t love her. Someday—either in a few weeks or a few years—he would move on to someone else. She already saw signs of his waning interest. What would she do when he moved on? She had nowhere to go, hardly any money. The ransom money would have set her up nicely, but now...she blinked and swallowed the thickness in her throat. Now she had nothing.

She needed to get inside. Soon, Costa would send Ernesto to look for her, if she didn’t return. She wiped a finger under each eye and raised her chin to the chilly air. She would find something, some way to survive.

She went inside and met Costa in the hallway. He caught her frigid fingers in his hands. “You should smoke inside. You know I do not mind.”