She hadn’t found anything of note in the desk, but the possibility that the villa was used for more than parties gave her hope and she’d moved through the next room as quickly as possible, all too aware of the ticking clock, the fact that Ronan would be heading to one of their meeting places.
She’d just opened the top drawer of a sideboard that seemed to act as a bar in the third room when an alarm pealed though the house.
It took her a few seconds to realize that’s what the sound — a low, rhythmic squeal — was. It could only mean one thing: Ronan was on the loose downstairs, which meant the place would be on lockdown as they tried to find him, and quite possibly as they tried to find her, since she’d arrived on his arm and was now conspicuously absent.
For a split second, she hesitated. Her time was up. Elise wasn’t here, wasn’t going to be here. Ronan wouldn’t leave without her, and every second he waited meant more exposure, a greater possibility of being caught.
She knew better than to think the people behind Manifest would simply call the police if they caught Ronan, but if she left now, it was all for nothing: the weeks of planning, of biding their time in Florence, the exposure they’d subjected themselves to by attending the party.
She turned back to the sideboard. The top drawer was empty, but when she opened the second one her breath caught in her throat: a series of manila folders were lined up against the green felt interior.
She grabbed for the first folder as the alarm echoed through the house, praying it was something, anything, that would take them closer to Elise.
Her eyes skimmed the page. It looked like a delivery receipt for a container ship in the port of Naples, an illegible signature scrawled on the receipt line. Her fingers itched for her phone and a way to take a photograph of the signature to decipher later.
She flipped through the page inside the folder, hoping for a manifest, something that would tell her what had been brought into port for the people behind Manifest, but there was only a series of receipts like the first one — dates and a signature acknowledging receipt of the shipping container.
She filed away the dates, all of them the month before, in April, and set the folder aside, scrambling for the one behind it.
When she opened it, she was met with the image of a young woman with dark hair and haunted eyes, her cheeks hollow, a purple bruise shadowing her right eye.
Julia’s stomach rolled over when she saw the title of the page: Asset #US4879KM.
What kind of audacity did Manifest have to have to keep a hard copy of their ongoing crimes? She chided herself for her naivety. The world was full of criminals who’d been getting away with their crimes for so long they assumed they were invincible.
She flipped through the pages behind the first one and was met with more pictures of more women, some of them wearing looks of defeat while others lifted their chins at the person behind the camera as if in challenge, all of them with the same haunted look of the first woman.
A look that said they’d seen too much, had endured too much.
She was three-quarters of the way through the images when she was met with her sister’s familiar gaze.
Elise stared back with a mixture of resignation and defiance Julia knew well. Her face was unmarked, but two faint red lines marked the portion of her neck that was visible in the picture.
Julia combed the page carefully, her eyes snagging on a date at the bottom.
DOS: 2019/June/25
LOC: 36.8915° N, 27.2877° E
The second line was a coordinate, but she had no idea what the first line referred to.
Distant shouting sounded from somewhere in the house, but she couldn’t tell if it was down the hall, in one of the stairwells, or somewhere else.
She thought about taking the folder with her, then decided it would be stupid. Better to let Manifest — and whoever lived or worked in this house — think their secrets hadn’t been uncovered.
She memorized the coordinates and the date on Elise’s page and reluctantly put it back where she found it along with the other folders.
Then she ran for the door.
21
It wasn’t the first time Ronan was glad he’d brought the taser. They hadn’t been patted down for weapons on arrival at the party — a professional courtesy for Manifest guests — but everyone expected a gun.
A taser was rarely considered, and its use was inevitably followed by a dramatic pause during which everyone involved stopped to think, “Did he just use a fucking taser?”
Aside from the obvious advantage of giving him a few seconds head start in the ensuing chase, he had to admit that he enjoyed the shock value.
The taser only worked once before it had to be charged, but it was enough. He ducked out of the circle of guards and slipped through the crowd of onlookers, whose shock added to his sense of satisfaction. He could only assume it had been awhile — or maybe never — since one of their sick little parties had been disrupted.
By the time the guards were in full-fledged chase, the alarm ringing through the house with an eerie squawk, he’d made it to the kitchen.
He hoped Julia skipped trying the first two meeting places. They hadn’t known about the alarm, hadn’t anticipated the added attention. There was no way one of their first two meeting places would be accessible now.
He barreled through the cooks and servers, knocking over trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres on his way to the door at the back of the kitchen that led to the tunnels under the villa.
There was no way to know if it was still accessible — the blueprints had been a hundred years old — but Ronan was betting on the fact that modern renovations of historical properties rarely allowed for the demolition of historical details.
The doorframe was small, short enough that he made a mental note to duck when he opened the door. When he did, he saw that he’d been right: a narrow stairway descended into the darkness below, cobwebs hanging from the old stone ceiling.
He shut the door behind him, wondering if the kitchen staff would think to tell anyone about him, wondering if anyone would think to ask.
The stairs were stone and almost seemed to be carved into the building’s foundation. They went on forever, turning and twisting as they took him farther underground until he felt like he’d entered an alternate dimension, one where he would step from the tunnels and find that his whole life had passed him by.
He was almost surprised when he finally hit the ground, his foot reaching into the darkness for a step that wasn’t there.
He took a couple steps forward and was able to make out the beginnings of the old tunnel, crumbling brick arching overhead.
There was no sign of Julia.
He called her name to be sure she wasn’t hiding in the shadows, then cursed when she didn’t answer. There hadn’t been time to look at his watch when he’d been running from the guards, and it was too dark to see it in the tunnel, but he knew instinctively that they were already past the ten-minute time limit they’d set for Julia to find Elise.
Fear simmered inside him, but he forced himself to ignore it, to turn to the cold reason that always got him out of a tight spot.
Only two things could have caused her delay: she’d either found something — hopefully Elise — and it was taking longer than they’d expected for her to make her way to their meeting point, or she’d been caught.
There was no way to know which unless he returned to the house, and returning to the house meant he wouldn’t be there if Julia showed, not to mention a greater chance of getting caught.
He’d escaped once. Twice was too lucky, even for him.
He would wait. Julia was smart and resourceful. She would show, and if she didn’t he would burn the place down looking for her.
He’d barely come to the decision when he heard feet on the steps above him.
Had the kitchen staff alerted security to the fact that a man had torn through the kitchen on his way to a door most of them had probably never notic
ed? Was security doing their due diligence, checking every possible escape route?
He stepped into the shadows and put his back against the tunnel’s cold wall as he waited, the footsteps getting louder as the person approached the bottom of the staircase.
It seemed to take forever, the tunnel swallowing time in the same way it had on his way down the stairs. There was a pause when the person finally reached the bottom.
“Ronan?” Julia’s voice was soft and tentative.
“Jesus christ.” He stepped from the shadows and pulled her into his arms, then took her face in his hand, inspecting it for signs of harm. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “They’re not bringing the girls. I think the fight with the guards set off some kind of alarm, some kind of protocol, but — ”
“They weren’t there?” He’d risked Julia’s life and Elise hadn’t even gotten to the building.
“No, but I’m trying to tell you I found something,” she said in a rush. “Some kind of… asset list…” She shook her head. “I don’t want to call it that but that’s what it said.”
He glanced back at the stairs, half expecting to hear feet descending the staircase. “Slow down. I’m not getting what you’re saying.”
“There was a folder with pictures of women,” she said, her eyes wide in the dark. “Elise was there too, and there was a date in June and… coordinates or something.”
Coordinates. Another meeting place for the girls? The location of the auction that was supposed to take place after tonight’s showcase?
“Okay,” he said, “that’s good. It’s something. But we have to go.”
She glanced behind her. “Elise…”
“You said she wasn’t there,” he said gently.
“I know.” Her voice sounded so forlorn that he pulled her back into his arms. “We’re not done,” he said into her hair. “We’ll find her, I promise. But right now, we have to get out of here.”
He wasn’t even sure the tunnel would give them an unobstructed exit — there was no way to know for sure based on the old blueprints — but it was the only shot they had, and the sooner they started walking, the sooner they’d find out.
“What if we never get another chance?” she asked, her voice small.
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
She nodded.
“We’ll get another chance.” He took her hand. “Let’s go.”
They stepped into the darkness.
22
Julia rose through the water, her breathing regular and even, Ronan’s face, covered by his face mask, a few inches from hers.
After two weeks of diving, she was finally used to the muffled silence of being underwater, the rhythmic sound of her breath working its way through the hoses attached to the oxygen tank on her back. After her initial panic, she’d even come to look forward to it thanks to the hours she’d spent underwater since they’d arrived in Greece.
She emerged at the surface a moment before Ronan and looked up to see Nick peering over the edge of the boat.
“Good job,” he said. “That was a half hour.”
She removed her face mask — a specialty mask that allowed them to communicated with each other under water — and grinned. During her first dive, she’d been overcome with claustrophobia, convinced she couldn’t breathe even though her tank had been delivering oxygen to her lungs exactly as it was supposed to. She’d stayed under for less than ten minutes.
It wasn’t enough. She needed to be under for at least a half hour, and she’d spent almost every day practicing with Nick and Ronan while Braden and Nora worked their sources for information about Manifest’s next move.
“How’d it feel?” Ronan asked, treading water next to her.
“Good. I think I could have stayed down a little longer.”
Nick reached a hand over the side of the boat. She reached for it and let him help her aboard, then started shedding her equipment while Ronan followed suit.
The boat swayed under her feet as she peeled off her mask and dropped her tank. They were so far out from the beach in Santorini that there was nothing but an azure stretch of sea in every direction, glittering like a blanket of diamonds under the afternoon sun.
She’d been despondent when they’d left Florence without Elise, but the weeks in Greece had been healing. Ronan had figured out that DOS on the sheet she’d found with Elise’s picture in the villa in Florence stood for Date of Sale.
Julia had been sick afterward, the idea of her sister being sold like cattle at an auction striking a new brand of terror in her body. It had made everything real. Elise’s abduction had been intentional, part of a trafficking ring with so much money and power that they were sure they’d be given a free pass.
But it hadn’t taken long for her fear to turn to anger. At least they knew where Elise would be next. The coordinates had pointed to the waters off the tiny Greek island of Kos, and Ronan, Julia, and Nick had promptly left for Nick’s house in Greece while Declan had gone back to Boston to handle the day-to-day running of MIS and to help coordinate information with Clay and his team.
They assumed the coordinates meant the girls would be brought to one of the many multimillion-dollar yachts that routinely cruised the waters off the coast of Greece, and they’d spent hours on the boat and in the water, preparing Julia for a breach that would require them to dive to the yacht in order to avoid detection.
It had felt perverse at first — being in such a beautiful place, learning to dive like she was on vacation, walking the beaches with Ronan and wishing Chief was there with them — but she’d reminded herself again and again that it was for Elise, that this time she would not leave without her sister.
“I think I’m ready,” Julia said when Ronan had shed his gear.
“I think so too.” He bent to kiss her and she tasted salt on his lips. “You did good.”
She knew what the words cost him, knew he didn’t want to admit it, that he didn’t want her to be ready for what was coming. Somewhere along the way he’d stopped arguing about whether she would come along, understanding that one way or another, she was going to look for her sister.
“Maybe we can go one more time before Saturday,” she said, wanting to reassure him. “Maybe a night dive?”
His brow furrowed with worry as he unzipped his wetsuit. “Maybe.”
There would be security aboard the boat carrying Elise, although they had no way of knowing how much. They wouldn't even know who the boat was registered to until it appeared at the coordinates listed on the sheet with Elise’s picture.
They would have to breach it after dark, when they had a better shot at getting onboard without detection. It was always darker underwater, but so far they’d dived during the day when at least some of the sunlight managed to turn the water a soft watery blue.
It would be different the night they staged Elise’s rescue, harder to keep an eye on Ronan and Nick, and on Braden, who would be diving with them while Nora stayed on the boat far enough away to avoid suspicion by the crew of the Manifest yacht but close enough to offer an assist or call in the authorities if it came to it.
They would have to play it by ear once they were on board the yacht, roll with the punches based on the number of guards and the layout of the vessel, which they hoped to get a better idea about once it moved into position. Nora had a satellite cam watching the area, waiting for it to arrive. Once it did, they would fly a drone overhead to try and get more information.
They could only hope it was far enough in advance to give them time to factor new information into their plans. It was the thing that kept Ronan up at night, the thing that forced him from their shared bed in the house on the cliff over the ocean, and she often woke to find him sitting on the terrace, his eyes frozen on the water below, like it might hold the answers to what would happen when they finally boarded the boat holding Elise.
Julia didn’t try to allay his fears. That would be patronizing when his fears wer
e all too real. Anything could happen: they might not be able to rescue Elise at all, something could happen to one of them during the rescue, none of them might make it out alive.
On those nights, she’d take the lounge chair next to him instead, reaching for his hand and sitting next to him until he was ready to return to bed. Then they would lose themselves in each other’s bodies all over again, trying to forget that the hourglass on their time together might already be running out of sand.
She was pulled from her thoughts by the rumble of the boat’s engine under her feet.
“Stow that gear,” Nick said, lowering the dive flag. “I’m starving.”
Julia shoved her tank and mask under the boat’s seats and held onto one of the benches as the boat picked up speed. She looked at the water unfurling around them, wondering where Elise was at the moment. Was she out there somewhere, already aboard the yacht that would bring her to Greece? Had she given up being rescued?
Julia willed her thoughts to her sister, sending them out over the water like a message in a bottle.
I’m coming, Elise. Don’t give up. I’m coming.
23
Ronan’s heart dropped when he saw Nora pacing the dock as the boat slowed down on its approach. It could only be bad news if she was waiting for them: god knew they hadn’t gotten a break yet.
Nick had barely cut the boat’s engine when she started talking.
“There’s a new boat moving into the area,” she said.
Ronan tied the ropes onto the dock’s cleats and stepped off the boat. “Off Kos?”
“Not yet,” she said, “but it looks like that’s where it’s headed.” She looked at Julia as Julia stepped onto the dock. “How’d the dive go?”
She’d taken to Julia like they’d been friends forever, falling into an easy camaraderie that made Ronan’s heart swell. He’d been so wrapped up in his own grief after Erin’s death that he hadn’t thought about what it must mean for Nora to lose her only sister, to be stranded in a houseful of men without her mother or her sister, both of whom had died before their time.
Murphy's Wrath (Murphy's Law Book 2) Page 9
