by Jeff Abbott
Stavros kept calling out her locations. Mila’s fingers were bloodless on the grips of the motorcycle, adjusting as she doubled back when we needed to stay within range of her.
Finally, after forty minutes of wandering, Anna ran home.
She drove into an older neighborhood of small connected houses. Even having lived in London, I was unsure of what neighborhood we were in. Mila seemed to carry a detailed map of London in her head and I wondered: Did she live here?
Stavros yelled out the street name. “Short street, if I turn she’ll spot me.”
Mila doubled back fast, weaving through traffic. “We are maybe one minute away,” she told Stavros.
“We’ll take her,” I said. “Don’t let her make you.” If she’d marked pursuit, it would have been Stavros, who’d stayed behind her. Not the couple who shot past her ages ago on the motorcycle and had been hovering on a periphery, unseen for the past several kilometers. I wanted her. I wanted her and I would force her to tell me where my son was.
“She’s stopped! House at the end of the street. Red Toyota,” Stavros said into my earpiece. Like he hadn’t told us a dozen times already.
We shot past him on the road and turned onto Anna’s street. It looked like some of the homes were abandoned, or at least in need of serious upkeep. Saw her red car. I jumped off the motorcycle as Mila began to slow.
I ran up the steps. I didn’t bother with a knock. I kicked in the door.
Silence. No sound of a baby crying, no sound of a woman running out the back. Mila joined me. We swept the house, me on the ground floor, Mila going upstairs.
The house was still, heartbreakingly silent. The kitchen showed signs of recent use; dirty plates in the sink.
“Sam!” Mila called. I hurried upstairs. A bedroom. Three cribs. All were empty. I touched one of them, where a tangled blanket lay.
The mattress was still warm.
“Where is she?” I said. My voice sounded dead.
Mila glanced up. A trapdoor into the attic, and the string on it barely swinging, as though caught in a breeze.
But the windows were all shut.
Mila yanked the pull and the door eased down, unfolding into a ladder. She pulled it open.
I climbed the steps. I expected the attic to be pitch black but it was a long room, the dividing walls had been knocked out, a common connecting space along the block of houses, and another trap door six houses away lay open, thin light coming through like an eruption. I ran down the attic to the second trapdoor and dropped down into the house.
And even more than the first, that house was empty, barren, abandoned. I could see a woman’s footprints in the dust.
“Stavros?” I said into my earpiece. “Did you see her come out?”
“No, Sam, I’m sorry, I didn’t.”
I looked out the back window. Empty. She could have climbed the fence, gotten to another car, vanished again.
“Circle over to the street parallel, the one behind us.” I searched the house, all the achingly empty rooms, and when I was done Stavros said, “No sign of her. Sam, I’m sorry.”
I felt numb. My last chance—gone.
I hurried back to the first house, to the baby mattress that was still warm to the touch. Had it been Daniel lying there, or some other lost child she planned to sell? I heard Mila down in the kitchen.
“Tremaine,” Mila said as I entered. She stood hunched over the counter. “Her name, or her alias, is Tremaine.” She pointed at an answering machine, and we listened to a message she hadn’t had time to claim: “Yes, this message is for Anna Tremaine, this is Bell, I need to talk to you before you come here again. It’s urgent. I’ve a new cell phone…”
Anna Tremaine.
The number he left started with 212. That was a New York area code. A man named Bell, whoever he was.
New York. Come here again.
If Anna had taken my son to New York, then that’s where I would go, too.
New York City
The next afternoon, Mila and I walked out of the British Airways terminal at JFK. New York: the clouds sullen, lightning tracking the edges, rain coming down in a bleak curtain. I stood and waited and a few minutes later out of the downpour came a car inching toward us: I could see Bertrand, the manager of my Manhattan bar, driving an Escalade, waving at us. I hurried toward the car, Mila following me, the rain hard against my face. I held the door for her and we clambered inside, shivering from the drenching storm. We looked like wet cats but as always Bertrand, in a tailored suit, looked unruffled and impeccable.
A man named Bell was here, and maybe he knew how to reach Anna Tremaine. I would have to be far, far more careful than I’d been in Strasbourg or London. I could not lose her again. Anna Tremaine. I was going to find her. And maybe this would be my last chance to get my son back.
About the Author
Jeff Abbott is the New York Times–bestselling, award-winning author of thirteen novels, including Adrenaline, Panic, Fear, and Collision. He is a three-time nominee for the Edgar Award. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family.
An excerpt from Jeff Abbott’s new Sam Capra thriller
THE LAST MINUTE
Coming in July 2012
1
Upper West Side, Manhattan
I KNOCKED ON THE GREEN DOOR and knew that in the next five minutes I’d either be dead or I’d have the truth I needed.
The man opened the apartment door just as I raised my fist for the second, impatient knock. He did not look like a man who traded in human lives. He looked like an accountant. He wore a dark suit, a loosened tie with bands of silver and pink, and a slight air of exhaustion and impatience. His glasses were steel-framed and rectangular. His lips were greasy with takeout Thai, and the remains of a meal—maybe his last—scented the air.
He looked at me, he looked at the pixie of a woman standing next to me, then he looked at his watch.
“You and your wife are late, Mr. Derwatt,” he said. “One minute late.”
There were several misconceptions in his statement. First, my name was not Derwatt. Second, the woman standing next to me, Mila, was not my wife. Third, we were exactly on time; I’d even waited for the second hand to sweep past the twelve before I knocked. But I shrugged, full of graciousness, and he opened the door and Mila and I stepped inside. He looked her over. He did it all in a second but I saw it. She was glancing at the two thick-necked thugs who stood by the apartment’s dinner table. Then she cast her gaze down, as if intimidated.
Nice bit of acting, that. Mila could stare down a great white shark.
I offered the accountant a handshake. “Frank Derwatt. This is my wife, Lilia.”
“Mr. Bell.” He didn’t shake my hand and I let it drop down to my side. I threw in an awkward laugh for effect. I was wearing jeans and a navy blazer with a pink polo underneath. Mila had found a horrible floral skirt that I suppose approximated her bizarre idea of what an American suburban housewife would wear. She clutched her pink purse. We looked like we were more interested in a country club membership than an illegal adoption.
“I thought we were meeting alone,” I said. Mila stepped close to me, like she was afraid.
The accountant dabbed a napkin at the Thai sauce smearing his mouth. I wanted to seize him by the throat, throw him against the wall, and force him to tell me where my son was. But that would only get my son killed, so I stood there like I was the nervous suburban wannabe dad that I was playing.
“Face the wall,” one of the big men said. He was a redhead, with his hair sliced into a burr and freckles the size of pebbles on his face. “Both of you.”
We both did. I set down the small canvas briefcase I was carrying. I didn’t argue. I was supposed to be a nervous, law-abiding citizen and, although I have been those things in the distant past, I wasn’t right now. No wire, no weapons. Just me and my shining personality and a rage I kept caged up in my chest. The redhead searched me thoroughly. Then he did the same to Mila.
“Frank
,” she said, about halfway through, a tinge of fear in her voice. She was selling it.
“Just be patient, honey, it’ll be over in a minute,” I said. “And then we can get our baby.”
Mila made this soft hiss of assent, the patient sigh of a woman who wanted this deal to be her gateway to happiness.
“Mr. and Mrs. Derwatt are clean, Mr. Bell,” the redhead said. He stepped back from us. I took Mila’s hand for just a moment.
“Sit down, Mr. Derwatt,” the accountant said. “Excuse the mess. We decided on an early dinner. I don’t usually meet with clients at night.”
I knew that normally the accountant would now be on a commuter train back to New Jersey. I had checked into every nook of his life: a wife, two sons, a mortgage on a cozy little place to live, a life full of promise.
All the sweet elements I’d once had, and had lost.
The accountant and his toughs studied me. Let them, I thought. I’d been careful.
One opened the briefcase. He dumped the bricks of cash out onto the table and began to sort them.
Mr. Bell glanced at me.
“My wife and I,” I lied, “we’ve failed to conceive after three years of trying. It has nearly destroyed our marriage. I’m eager to give my wife a healthy, happy baby.”
“You could adopt through legit channels.”
“Yes. But, um, some of my business practices, I don’t care to have them scrutinized by well-meaning social workers. We simply wish to acquire a child.”
Mila moved close to me. “You have done our background checks, yes? We wish to make our selection and get a child.”
“It’s not that easy, Mrs. Derwatt.”
“I’ve brought the down payment. We select our child and then we go get him or her.”
He blinked at me.
“That was what was agreed,” I said.
“The money’s all here, Mr. Bell.” The redhead had counted with the precise quickness of a man used to handling banded stacks of cash. “Twenty thousand dollars.”
“There were some anomalies in your background checks,” Mr. Bell said.
“Anomalies. I do not know this word,” Mila said. She’d thickened up her eastern European accent.
“Um, questions, Mrs. Derwatt.”
I held my breath. We had been very, very careful in setting up these identities. Mila had worked on them while we tried our best to find any link to the one clue we had to my son’s whereabouts: a photo of a woman leaving a private clinic in Strasbourg, France, soon after my son’s birth. I had been told she’d sold my son. We still did not know who the woman was, but using Mila’s considerable resources we’d found a surveillance photo of her arriving in New York, a week after my son’s birth, walking out of the terminal with this man. Mr. Bell, whose face was in a criminal database maintained by the state of New York for having been convicted of embezzlement six years ago and had gotten parole. We matched him to the airport photo. Found out where he lived, where he worked and who his associates were. Slow, plodding detective work but it had paid off. We had sent out feelers as potential adopters of a child, provided background, gotten this meeting to pick out a son or daughter.
But now.
“We could not find a complete enough history for Mrs. Derwatt before she came over from Romania.”
Mila was from Moldova, but the languages are identical. She turned to me and said in Moldovan, “We will have to kill them.”
I forced a smile. “She doesn’t understand what you mean,” I said to Mr. Bell in English.
“You said you met Mrs. Derwatt through an online dating service that matches Western men with eastern European brides.”
“Yes. What does this matter? We’ve brought the money. We want a child.”
“She’s Romanian, why not adopt there?” Mr. Bell said. “You could just go to eastern Europe and buy yourself a kid like you bought yourself a wife.” Nice sneer at the end.
Somewhere, we’d left a hole in our story. Or, conversely, this was a test. I put on my outraged face. “We don’t care where the child comes from. I told you, I cannot use normal channels.”
“As many of our clients can’t, Mr. Derwatt. So you understand why we must be so cautious. Our potential parents are… dangerous people.”
“My business is my business. I’ve provided you with what you need to know about me. Anything more could be compromising.”
“For me or for you?” Mr. Bell asked.
“Darling, let’s gather up our money,” I said to Mila. “We’re leaving.” I continued to play the outrage card.
“Don’t touch the money, Mrs. Derwatt,” Bell said.
“We had a deal.” I pointed at the laptop on the table. “Pay a deposit, pick a baby from the list, pick him up, and pay the rest.”
“We can decline to do business with anyone who makes us uncomfortable.”
“What is problem?” Mila said. “Maybe you make misunderstanding, and this is easy to fix.” She tried a bright smile with him.
“You claim to be Lilia Rozan, from Bucharest, immigrated here three years ago.”
“No claim. Am.”
“That particular Lilia Rozan is currently in a cancer ward in New Jersey.”
Misstep. We’d used a bad identity. Mr. Bell stood a little straighter. He was nervous but he had the muscle here. “So, Mr. Derwatt, we want to know who you and the lovely missus are.”
“We’re wanted by the police,” I said. “We had to lie.”
Mr. Bell smiled. “Details, please.” The two men were on each side of him. They didn’t have their guns out but they thought they didn’t need to; we were unarmed.
I looked at Mila. “Look, our money’s good as anyone else’s. Please.”
The bald man moved behind Mila. She clasped a hand over her wristwatch.
“We want to know who you are. Right now. Or he starts in on your wife.”
Mila turned, hands clasped together as if in prayer. “Oh, no, please, don’t hurt me. We just want a baby. Please. That’s all we want.”
He shoved her into the wall. She kept her footing but tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh, please.”
I stayed very still. The bald man glanced back at me, frowning with disgust that I would let him manhandle my woman, and in that second Mila pulled the watch from its band. Connecting them was a thin steel wire. She leapt onto his back and looped the garrote over his neck, the watch and the band serving as handles so that she didn’t slice her fingers off. His yell became a gurgle in an instant.
I hammered a fist into Mr. Bell’s chest and he went heaving into the air and landed on my money. The redhead started to draw but he couldn’t decide, for one crucial second, whether to shoot me or save his buddy, now purpling under Mila’s wire. As he swung the silencer-capped Beretta 92FS back toward me—hello, self-preservation—I launched into him. I levered the gun down as he fired and he hit his own foot. He howled and I slammed a fist into his solar plexus and then into his throat. He staggered back and we fought for control of the gun. He was bigger than me. I wrenched the gun, pushing it back toward his chest. His eyes widened as he realized the barrel was going to slip under his chin. It did and I squeezed his hand and his own finger pulled the trigger. A spray of blood and flesh fountained as it carved a path into his face. He looked surprised before the bullet distorted his flesh.
I freed the gun from his fingers and whirled, aiming at Mila’s opponent. But that guy was already gone. She’s not big but still a hundred pounds, hanging on to a wire; a throat can’t survive the trauma. The bald man lay in a sprawl at her feet; she hovered over Mr. Bell, panting.
“You all right?” I asked her. She nodded. I felt a tickle of bile at the back of my throat and I swallowed it down.
“You killed them,” Mr. Bell said, gasping. People say the most obvious things when they’re in a daze.
“They sell people,” I said. “They’re worse than I’ll ever be.”
“Who are you?”
I didn’t answer. I’m just a m
an who wants his stolen child back. My son I’ve never seen, except on this video, being carried by a woman who sells human beings for profit. My child. I was much closer to finding my kid than I’d ever been. And I thought of the times I rested my hand on my wife’s pregnant swell, feeling the bubble of movement beneath the skin, knowing it was a baby but not knowing it was going to be Daniel, this unique and special person who I’d never gotten to see with my own eyes, hold with my own arms.
I’m coming, I told him, my breath like a prayer on the air.
Mr. Bell swallowed; his mouth quivered as he looked at the dead men. “Okay, you can have a baby. Whichever one you want.”
“I want one born on January 10th at a private clinic in Strasbourg called Les Saintes. His birth name on the certificate was Julien Daniel Besson but his real name is Daniel Capra. This woman took him from the clinic. All we’ve been able to find out is that she travels on a Belgian passport under the name of Anna Tremaine. Now, I asked around, and I found out that you work with Anna Tremaine.”
He gave a half-nod. He was scared to death, blinking at the bodies of the muscles.
“Where is my son?” I asked, very quietly.
“I didn’t handle that placement. Anna would know. Oh, God, please don’t hurt me.”
“Don’t lie to us.” Mila held up the watch-garrote, slicked with blood.
“I’m not lying. I’m not.”
I squatted by him, put the silencer—still warm—against his modishly unshaven cheek. “Did Anna know you were suspicious of me?”
“Um, no. We initially reject every adopter—we claim they aren’t suitable, that there’s a hole in their story. Our clients are normally so desperate, they will do almost anything not to be rejected. Usually we can pressure them into ‘qualifying’ by sharing information that is valuable—you know, insider info on a company, or they can render services to us that can be useful later.”
Extortion and blackmail, as if illegal adoption wasn’t enough. What charming people.
“So you meet us. We pass your test. Then what?”
