The Pact (A Sarah Roberts Thriller Book 17)

by Jonas Saul

  The interior of the car warmed enough that his fingers weren’t so cold. He probed his ears to get at the rain water and winced when he bumped the new black helix ear piercing. He had wanted an industrial piercing, but felt his Danish government colleagues would frown on it. A rook or an anti-helix piercing was on the list, but Anton ended up with one helix on his right ear for now. As an openly gay man in government, he monitored how far he pushed his superiors. One never knew when they would reach their limits.

  Marriage hadn’t worked. As much as he tried to be a heterosexual man, he and Clara’s mother didn’t see eye to eye. They divorced when Clara was eighteen, and a year later, Clara’s mother died of an aneurism. It was so sudden, neither he nor Clara had made it to her bedside before she died.

  Maybe that was why Clara still lived at home. She wanted to remain close with her one remaining parent.

  He tried Clara’s cell number and got the recording again. He flicked on the wipers and started out of the parking lot, the pit in his stomach getting heavier.

  Where was she? Why wasn’t she answering? This was so unlike her. He avoided thoughts of what could have happened to her. They were baseless and a waste of time. Refusing to consider the worse, he still worried for her. What if something did happen to her? What if she was hurt somewhere, or worse? He was her sole protector. He should have done a better job.

  “Where are you, Clara?” he asked aloud in the empty car. He glanced at his expression in the mirror and looked away to watch the road.

  To access the E20, he changed lanes and headed out of the city. Work brought him to Copenhagen only a few times a month now, being able to do many of his parliamentary duties from his home in Skanderborg and his office in Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark. From Copenhagen, it was at least a three-hour drive back to his house in Skanderborg. Three long hours to ponder where his daughter was.

  Yesterday morning when they drove to Copenhagen together, Clara had told him she would take the train back to Skanderborg later that night. The trains in Denmark were efficient. Clara could take the train from Copenhagen and get off right in Skanderborg, then walk ten minutes to their house on the water by Skanderborg Lake. She was probably there now, reading in the living room by the fire as this spring hadn’t brought warm weather with it yet. Only rain. Too much rain.

  Anton rationalized that his daughter’s cell phone battery must’ve died. Nothing else made sense. Denmark was a safe country. They were rated the happiest people on Earth. What could go wrong?

  Yet the pit in his stomach grew with each passing kilometer. No one had answered the house phone either. He was sure Clara wasn’t home and that something had happened to her. The nagging feeling scared him to the marrow.

  Denmark did have its fair share of problems. Anton Olafson was the director of the Danish National Cyber Crime Center (NC3) which had only been established a couple of years ago. Olafson was transferred to NC3 six months ago to liaison with the Danish Data Protection Agency (DDPA) on a case where a hacker had published stolen information from the Danish Land Registry. Because the hacker made the stolen information public, the cybercrime unit deemed it a breach of intellectual property, which broke Danish data protection laws.

  As director, Olafson’s job was to keep the agencies working together to come to a common ground—which they did. The hacker known only as PAIN was shut down. His IP addresses—several hundred of them from around the world—had been monitored closely to ascertain they were his, and then their access severed from Danish government servers.

  After receiving praise from several government parties at different levels, Anton Olafson was appointed to a full-time position with the NC3 as director, and placed in the Aarhus office, which worked wonderfully for him as he lived in Skanderborg, a twenty-minute drive from Aarhus.

  He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, rotating his hands around the thin wheel.

  Where could she be?

  He shook his head and rubbed his face. Everything would be okay. Clara was an adult. What could possibly happen?

  Olafson turned the heat down and slowed the wipers as the rain had abated south of the city. He would stop for coffee soon, then relax for the last couple of hours on the road. He would hear from Clara tonight or he would call the authorities. What would any other parent do?

  In the middle of a lane change, his cell phone rang. He punched the answer button on the dash.

  “Hello? Clara?”

  Someone breathed into the phone.

  “Hello?” Anton checked his mirrors and signaled to pull off the highway. On the shoulder, he slowed the Tesla quickly and turned on his four-way flashers.

  “Hello?” he asked again, a worried, sinking feeling coming over him as he thought this call would be about his daughter. “Who is this?”

  “Who I am is not important.” The voice was metallic. It reminded Anton of the kind in horror movies where the stranger covers the mouthpiece with an electronic device to mask his voice. “Why I’m calling is of the utmost importance, though.”

  Anton checked his rearview mirror out of habit. He glanced to the right and stared out at a row of large white turbines in a field, their arms spinning slowly with the wind, waiting for the caller to tell him why he called.

  “Clara Olafson, your daughter, is with me.”

  Anton jerked at the mention of his daughter’s name. He blinked, stared at nothing for a brief moment, then gasped.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  “With me. Fulfill one condition, then she’s yours again.”

  “What?” he nearly screeched. “What are you talking about?”

  “Come on, Mr. Olafson. How many children have you hurt?”

  The question startled him. No one knew what he did in his private time. No one knew who he really was. There was no way Clara knew anything. The guy was fishing. That’s all this was, a fishing expedition.

  “Who are you?” Anton asked again.

  Ignoring the question, the caller said, “Your private dealer in the use of young flesh, Damien, is finished. Call his number. Email him. Or read about it in tomorrow’s paper. You have to find someone else who deals in your specific kind of fantasies.”

  “You’re mad,” he shouted, barely recognizing the pitch his voice had taken on. “This is ludicrous.”

  “For Clara’s life, do one thing.”

  He swallowed, then spun in the driver’s seat and watched cars race by. How much did the caller know? How much could he know? Damien arrested? Impossible.

  “If you touch one hair on Clara’s head—” he started.

  “Temper, temper, Mr. Olafson. Be careful. Do not threaten me.” There was a clicking sound on the line. For a brief second Anton thought the caller had hung up. “Check your email. I will wait.”

  Anton grabbed his phone and hit the email icon. Four messages. Two from colleagues at NC3 and one from a friend. The fourth was a strange email address made up of numbers and letters. He tapped on the email and a picture began to download.

  It was Clara. She was at an airport.

  “There are two pictures,” the caller said. “One picture is from yesterday, when Clara departed the Copenhagen Airport. The other is today as she landed at Toronto’s Airport.”

  Anton scrolled down and saw a sign behind Clara’s head that said welcome to Toronto. He turned off the hands-free option and put the phone to his ear so hard he winced at the pain.

  “What have you done?” he breathed into the phone, anger rising in him, crowding out the fear and worry.

  “She is with me. In Canada. She is mine until you do one thing for me. I’ll give you a week. Do this or you will never see Clara alive again.”

  “And I will hunt you down and kill you myself,” he shouted into the phone. “I’ll fucking kill you.” Furious anger seethed out through his teeth as he tried to cope with what was happening.

  “Threats only make me want to hurt Clara more. Like you’ve hurt so many of Damien’s underage bo
ys. Don’t threaten me, Mr. Olafson. Just do as I say and all this goes away. Clara will be safe for another week.”

  A large rig passed the Tesla, shaking it, the name BILKA on the back of the trailer in big block letters. Anton watched it moving away until BILKA was barely legible.

  “What happens in a week?” Anton asked, using every ounce of will to remain calm.

  “If you do as I ask, Clara is free to leave. She can fly home to you if she wishes.”

  “If she wishes?”

  “The choice will be hers and hers alone. Don’t make me tell her who you really are.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “To make things right, I need you to murder a random girl.”

  Anton heard the words but didn’t put them together.

  “What? How does murder make anything right?” Even though the caller couldn’t see him, Anton was shaking his head. “There’s no way I would kill anyone.”

  “Like you’ve killed those little boys you take to your hotel room?”

  “I never kill them,” he screamed into the phone. “We talk. That’s it.”

  “You kill their hopes, their dreams. You kill them on the inside.”

  Anton wiped the tears from his eyes. This call had turned into a nightmare.

  “What’s this about? Are you recording this call? Just tell me where Clara is.”

  “One week, Mr. Olafson. A girl. Video it. A small mirror under her nose will be all I need as proof. A stranger’s life for Clara’s. Your daughter’s life is truly in your hands, Mr. Olafson.”

  The line clicked, then died.

  Anton pulled the phone from his ear and stared at it like he held a chunk of contaminated plastic in his hand.

  He moaned as the conversation ran through his head.

  “Clara …”

  He couldn’t drive. The vibration in his hands scared him. His eyes were glazed over. All he could do was hunch over and wheeze until the panic attack ebbed.

  What was he going to do? He would never kill an innocent girl. He wasn’t a murderer. Sure he had a little fun once in a while, but the little whores didn’t mind. Damien assured him the boys he hired were into it. Anton never hurt anybody. And he would never kill anybody.

  Unless this was a trap. He was untouchable with the Damien business. Money transfers were from ghost accounts in false names. Damien helped him set things up so no one could ever trace it back to an NC3 man. Even NC3 couldn’t track their transactions.

  So that’s what this was. Damien got himself arrested and now someone was trying to get Anton on murder charges because they knew Anton was untouchable.

  But whoever they were, they had Clara. Unless the pictures sent to his phone were doctored. But if they were, why wasn’t Clara answering her cell phone? And how did Clara get to Toronto? The time since she last texted him fit with a sixteen-to-twenty hour flight to Canada. But why? Who was in Canada? How was she drawn there?

  He turned off his flashers, dropped the Tesla in gear, and kicked up dirt as he slammed the accelerator to get back on the highway. In moments, he was traveling thirty kilometers over the speed limit. He needed to get home. He needed to see if Clara had left any clues for him. Maybe he could access her computer. Maybe she’d left her iPad behind.

  Or perhaps she’d left a note for him.

  He could only wish.

  Worst case, he would check flights and airlines and see if his daughter’s passport was used recently. He had colleagues in high places that could help.

  He’d get to the bottom of this immediately.

  Anton Olafson screamed in frustration behind the wheel of the Tesla as the comfortable world he had enjoyed for decades crumbled.

  Wherever the pieces fell, he would be ruined unless he found Clara.

  It slowly dawned on Anton that this could be the beginning of the end of his life.

  Chapter 4

  Sarah plopped down on the couch. “You guys got letters, too?”

  “They were addressed to us,” Caleb said as he took a seat in the easy chair across from her. He raised his right eyebrow. “Accurately too. It would be hard to believe that if I didn’t open the time capsule myself. And even harder to believe if I didn’t know what you’re capable of.”

  Sarah looked at Parkman. “What about Aaron? Has anyone told him what Vivian said? We have to save his life.”

  Parkman nodded. “He got a letter. It’s taken care of.”

  “I have to call him. Warn him. Vivian said something about him dying because of time. It didn’t make much sense.”

  Parkman shook his head. “Leave it. It’s all handled.”

  She glanced at her mother, then back to her dad. “Okay, then. Will someone tell me what these letters say? I’m at a loss here.”

  Parkman shook his head. “Can’t. Not this time. We have to trust Vivian.”

  “What?” She nearly leapt off the couch. “Trust Vivian? Isn’t that what I’ve been doing for the past decade?”

  “Sarah,” her mother whispered, her tone almost condescending. Her mother got a pass, well, because she was her mother.

  Parkman crossed his legs and leaned back on the couch, his hands clasped together. His attempt at nonchalance wasn’t selling her. He was itching to spill the beans but knew he wasn’t supposed to. And he didn’t have his trademark toothpick sticking out of his mouth. That told her something.

  “It’ll alter the future, Sarah,” Parkman said. “We can’t tell you more than what was on those pages in the other room. Everything is flipped upside down. We hear Vivian now, through her letters, not you.”

  “Alter the future?” she gasped. “Isn’t that what I’ve been doing all this time?” Sarah nearly screeched. “Altering the future because of something Vivian told me about the future?”

  “This is not like that. This is different. Others are involved. It’s for your own safety.”

  Sarah slapped the couch open-palmed in frustration. “Why is this so maddening?” She took in a deep breath. “Don’t we need to talk about it? Read what Vivian was trying to tell you guys? Work it all out together?”

  “In time, Sarah,” her father said. “In time. For now, you need rest. Then tomorrow, you need to go to Toronto and after that, Denmark. I’ve already bought your plane tickets.”

  “You what?” Now she did screech.

  “My letter from Vivian told me what plane, what time to book it for, and where to send you. I was instructed by Vivian that this was the only way. I need you to trust us. Trust Vivian.”

  Sarah stared off into space for a moment. Details began to slip away from her. Trust Vivian? She had based her life on that. Trusting her dead sister had become the only way to stay alive. But now she was being asked to trust a girl who lived twenty-five years ago. A girl who sent letters to people Sarah knew. Parkman wasn’t in Sarah’s life until Sarah was twenty-two years old. How could Vivian have known to send him a letter? How could Vivian have known about Aaron?

  The answer to all her questions was obvious, but for some reason she seemed unable to handle it. Vivian had been psychic in her own way as Sarah was now. But the dynamic had changed. The rules were different. Others were involved in the prophecy and Sarah had lost the voice in her head.

  She knew she would go forward, carefully. There was no other way. This wasn’t about her. It never was. This was about the lives of others, keeping them alive, and doing what she could to stop violence and crime.

  Vivian had said in her letter to Sarah that if she stopped the pain, everyone would live. But even then, the boys would continue to be violated.

  What the hell could that mean?

  Everyone had stayed quiet for the last minute, allowing her time to think, to absorb things. They were waiting for her to say something, letting her put her thoughts together.

  She studied her parents’ faces for a brief moment, then asked, “Have you talked directly to Aaron?”

  Caleb said, “No. I overnighted his letter to him.”

&nb
sp; “Why? I mean, it’s fine, but why? Was there an added note from Vivian? Is there anything you can tell me?”

  Caleb exchanged a glance with Amelia, then met Sarah’s eyes.

  “We know how you feel about him. Whatever was in that envelope, we’re confident he’ll respond in the right way. But the letter was for him. Not us. Not Parkman. And not you.”

  “Did you read it?”

  Caleb shook his head. “No. We did exactly as Vivian directed. You have to remember something, Sarah. We’re talking about Vivian here. The notes and the letters brought up memories for us. We recalled the odd things she did when she was alive. When we opened the time capsule and read the letter to you, which I admit we shouldn’t have done, it brought back a lot of the things she used to do. When we saw, in her own handwriting, that she chose to leave your mother at the mall that fateful day, we went through a series of emotions.”