Breaking Point

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Into the shower tent?

  The girl’s anxiety was palpable, and Gina nodded. “Of course.”

  The sign outside the tent was flipped to “Men,” but the camp would stay asleep for another solid hour. Besides, the generator was turned off at this time of day. Anyone showering now would get only tepid water at best.

  The girl opened the wooden-framed door. “Hurry,” she urged Gina, which was kind of a sick joke, considering she moved the way far too many local women moved—slowly, with careful, pain-ridden steps.

  It was also obvious as she moved that she wasn’t just pleasantly, healthily plump as Gina had assumed. She was pregnant.

  “Do you need a doctor?” Gina asked her. “Or a nurse?”

  Many women in this region of Kenya refused treatment from male doctors. Or rather, their husbands refused it for them.

  Both Father Ben and AAI had been trying, for years now, to find a female doctor for this camp. The nuns had gone so far as to start raising money with a plan to send Sister Maria-Margarit to medical school. Although at this point, Gina was pretty sure that Sister Double-M could teach the OB/GYN instructors at Harvard Med a thing or two about providing pre- and neo-natal care to women in third world countries.

  “We have a very good nurse practitioner here,” Gina continued, trying to reassure her.

  “Oh, yes, I know,” the girl said. “We came here—my husband and I, to visit your nurse. But my husband, he’s enlightened, you see. He’s decided I should see the doctor, which unfortunately means he’ll be with me during the examination and . . .” She opened the door a crack and peeked out. “I don’t have much time. I’m supposed to be resting right now. They brought me to a tent and . . . You are the American woman I’ve heard so much about?”

  “I’m an American,” Gina told her. “Yeah. But—”

  The woman took her hands. “I need your help,” she said. “My sister, Lucy, will turn sixteen in a few weeks. And when she does, they’ll claim she gave consent and they’ll do to her what they did to me.”

  Oh, crap. “But that’s illegal,” Gina said, and immediately felt like an idiot. What a stupid thing to say. Of course it was illegal.

  “Yes, isn’t it?” the girl agreed. “Try prosecuting, though, in a town like Narok. That’s the big city, out where my uncle has his farm, where Lucy still lives. She’s visiting me now, but she and my aunt will be going back a week from Wednesday. So you see, we’ve got to do this very soon.”

  “Do this?” Gina echoed lamely.

  “I’m going to create a diversion,” the girl told her. “Some time in the next few days. I’ve already given Lucy what little money I have, some jewelry . . . We have a friend up north in Marsabit who’ll help her get to London. We lived in Great Britain for a year, before my father died. We have friends there who’ll care for her. She’s ready to go, Miss. Please say that I can tell her to come here, to you, that you’ll help her get to Marsabit.”

  “Of course,” Gina said. Holy shit . . .

  “Thank you.” The girl started to cry. “Bless you. A woman who works in my mother-in-law’s kitchen told me you helped all seven of her daughters flee—that you are an angel to have risked so much for her children. She said there are people angry enough to make you vanish forever if you dared step outside the boundaries of this camp, but that you still would help me.”

  And there it was.

  The reason why Molly—the only other American woman in camp—repeatedly turned down opportunities to go on safaris and trips into the Kenyan countryside. Because she was targeted for running a twenty-first-century version of the underground railroad for Kenyan girls.

  “Go back to your tent,” Gina told her, leading her back to the door. “I’ll find Molly, okay? She’s the woman your friend told you about—I’m just her . . . assistant.” At least she was from now on. She checked to make sure no one was outside the tent. “Tell Lucy to ask for Molly or Gina when she comes, all right? Tell her that we’ll be ready for her. We’ll get her safely to Marsabit.”

  With a nod, the girl—shoot, Gina hadn’t asked her name—was gone.

  Gina shook her head as she waited there in the tent. Just in case someone was watching, she didn’t want to follow the girl right outside. Although, if someone was watching, counting to ten or even ten hundred before she left wasn’t going to make a difference. It was obvious, since this tent didn’t have a back door, that if two people came out within a few minutes of each other, they’d been in there together.

  So why bother to wait at all?

  She was only doing it because that’s what spies did in the movies. Which was a pretty stupid reason.

  Of course, she was the world’s worst liar. Subterfuge was not one of her strengths.

  Molly, on the other hand, apparently excelled at it.

  All these months they’d been close friends, and Gina hadn’t had a clue.

  What other secrets had her tentmate been keeping from her?

  Gina peeked out the door and—oh, crap! Leslie Pollard was heading straight for this tent, towel over his shoulder.

  It seemed that he’d chosen today for his monthly bleaching.

  Instinct made her back up. Instinct made her duck and hide in one of the partitioned changing areas.

  Her instinct sucked. In retrospect—a very quickly occurring retrospect, which bloomed instantly to life behind that canvas curtain—she realized that instead of hiding, she should have pushed open that door and breezed out. She should have waved cheerily to Humor-Les Pollard and announced loudly—in case he cared—that that plumbing problem was definitely fixed.

  Of course, that was still an option.

  And then the sound of a zipper being pulled down seemed to echo in the tent.

  Oh double crap.

  Except that was a good thing—right? It meant he was safely ensconced in another of the changing areas, doing whatever meditations were required to enable him to allow soap and water to touch his body.

  All she had to do was slip quietly past this curtain and tiptoe toward the door and . . .

  Screeeee! If her life had a soundtrack, the noise of a needle scraping across an old-fashioned LP would have woken up the entire camp.

  Because apparently Leslie Pollard didn’t feel the need to step into the changing area when he thought himself alone in the shower tent.

  He seemed as stunned to see her as she was to see so very much of him. That was good news, since he didn’t find his voice to ask her what she was doing in the shower tent when it clearly said MEN on the sign on the door.

  But one of them very definitely had to say something, so Gina said, “Hi,” because, shit, Leslie Pollard in his tightie-whities was . . . Way not as skinny and raw-chicken-skin pale as she’d imagined.

  Not that she’d spent a whole lot of time imagining, because she honestly hadn’t.

  But the man was a whole lot younger than she’d thought, too—far closer to thirty than fifty.

  He was also ripped. Six-pack ripped, with a tan that was fading, but still quite dark. No doubt about it, there was not a bit of chicken skin in sight. Although his tan faded away completely to pale at the very tops of his thighs and . . .

  And shee-yit.

  He could’ve turned his back on her. Instead, he reached for his towel, wrapping it around his waist in one smooth motion. Which made the muscles in his arms and upper body flex and ripple like those of an action-hero in a movie.

  Leslie Pollard Saves the Day.

  Gina laughed at the idea of that movie poster, which was wrong, very wrong, to do. God forbid some strange man burst in on her in her underwear and break into giggles, so she turned it into a cough.

  “Sorry. Dust in my . . . Ignore me—I was just checking the . . .” Plumbing, she was going to say, but she stopped herself, because, oh my God. It was a double entendre. Check the plumbing as in checking your plumbing. Which she really hadn’t meant to do. At all. Except, pretowel, when she was noticing his tan, or lack thereof in certa
in areas, it was just so . . . there.

  “Water pressure,” she said instead. “Good news. There’s water pressure. It’s very . . . waterlike and pressure-ish . . .” Somehow she managed to stumble to the door. “Have a nice day.”

  Well, okay.

  Most of the camp was still in coma-mode, and Gina managed to make it back to the tent she shared with Molly without seeing any other of her coworkers nearly naked. Sister Maria-Margarit, for instance. Yeeks.

  As she burst through the door, Molly knocked over a bottle of nail-polish, clearly startled. “Shoot,” she said crossly, trying to contain the mess.

  She was wearing her silk turquoise robe, a towel wrapped around her head, some of Gina’s mudpack on her face.

  So, this afternoon was getting weirder and weirder. Instead of grieving, tears soaking her pillow, Molly was giving herself what Gina called a “spa day,” complete with painting her toenails red.

  Of course, everyone grieved in their own way.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you,” Gina told her friend, “but this can’t wait . . .”

  HOTEL ELBE HOF, HAMBURG, GERMANY

  JUNE 21, 2005

  PRESENT DAY

  Max was wasting his time, trying to talk the administrative staff at the American Medical Clinic into violating the rules of their patient privacy policy.

  He knew that they couldn’t give out Gina’s personal information, especially not over the phone, but he couldn’t not try.

  As he started to explain who he was, why he was in Hamburg, his discovery of both the receipt and the letter from A.M.C., the woman who’d answered the phone interrupted him.

  “Hold please.”

  So he held. And held. He knew this was meant to discourage him, but he had so few leads to go on.

  As he waited, he spread Gina’s receipts out on the bed, arranging them according to date.

  He discovered, upon closer perusal of those very receipts, that Gina had paid for her friend’s lunches, breakfasts, and dinners.

  Unless, of course, she was literally eating for two.

  So great. Now he had a good sense of where and what Gina had eaten during her visit to Hamburg, as well as where she’d shopped for books—all within close proximity of this hotel—but little else.

  His survey of her trash had told him nothing. And his careful search of the rest of the hotel room hadn’t clued him in as to the identity of Gina’s traveling companion.

  It was freaking weird—as if she were traveling with Jane Anonymous. Or maybe Jane Bond. Whoever this woman was, she was better sanitized than some of the top No-Name Agency field operatives Max had come into contact with during his career.

  What were the chances of such a lack of identifiers being unintentional?

  While he waited, on hold, he checked her clothes a second time for laundry markings, and discovered that she’d once had what looked to be name tags sewn into just about every item. Two little bumps of extra fabric.

  Name tags that had been cut out.

  The woman with the crisp German accent came back on the line. “I’m sorry, sir. Without a release form signed by the patient—”

  “I’d like to make an appointment to speak to the doctor who examined her,” Max said. He squinted at the receipt. “Dr. Liesle Kramer.”

  She was silent for a moment, then said, “How’s September? The seventh. It’s a Wednesday—”

  That was three months away. “I’m sorry, you don’t understand. I’m with—”

  “Yes,” she cut him off. “I do. You’re with the FBI—or so you say. Your story is not very original, I’m afraid.”

  “What?”

  “We get quite a few calls each week from the FBI, the police, the CIA. As if they are magic words that will make us hand over private information.”

  His phone beeped—he another call coming in. He glanced at the number. It was Jules.

  “Yeah,” Max said to the A.M.C. administrator, “but I’m really—”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I suggest you speak directly to your friend, if you wish to inquire about her health. We do not give out information without a release form signed by—”

  “Look,” he said. “She’s missing. I’m trying to find her. I want to talk to Dr. Kramer to see if Gina was with someone or by herself when she came to her appointment.”

  “I’m sorry, sir—”

  “Is Dr. Kramer in tonight?” He saw from the letterhead that A.M.C. had evening hours today.

  “I’m sorry, sir, we do not reveal information about our staff.”

  To potential lunatics. She didn’t say the words, but Max knew she was thinking it.

  “Good-bye,” she said, and hung up on him.

  Damn it.

  Jules had given up on him. Max called him back.

  “What have you got on the woman Gina’s traveling with?” he asked as Jules picked up.

  The younger agent wasn’t fazed by the lack of a more traditional greeting, such as hello.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Yet. Although I am expecting a call from George. He’s contacted an operative in Nairobi who’s actually going out to the camp so we can talk to the priest who runs the place. Communication is spotty at best out there and we haven’t been able to reach him any other way. His name’s Ben Soldano. The priest, that is. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything from George.”

  “What else have you got?” Max asked.

  “We’ve been in touch with Gina’s credit card company. There’ve been no charges since the day of the bombing.”

  “Shit,” Max said.

  “Yeah, sorry,” Jules said. “And you’re going to hate this even more. On that same day that the bomb went off, there was a charge made for a one-way plane ticket to New York City from Hamburg—departing late that afternoon. In Gina’s name. Even earlier that same day, there was a very large charge—twenty thousand dollars—to a company called NTS International, that oddly doesn’t seem to exist anymore.”

  Jesus.

  “We’re trying to trace it,” Jules said, “but no luck so far.”

  “So the credit card was stolen,” Max said. He didn’t want to think about what that might mean. If Gina’s passport and wallet had both been stolen . . .

  “That’s what we’re thinking,” Jules said. “Although, wait, there’s more. This is extra freaky. Gina had a second card with a different company. She took a major cash advance—ten thousand dollars—on that card ten days before the bombing, at a bank in Nairobi.”

  “What the hell?” Max said. Ten thousand dollars in cash?

  “Ooh,” Jules said. “I’m getting that call from George. Let me call you back. It might be a few minutes—”

  He cut the connection, and Max shut his cell phone. Goddamn it—what was Gina involved with?

  Some lowlife scum who not only got her pregnant but extorted large sums of money from her, then stole her credit card and passport and . . .

  And killed her.

  No.

  Please God, no.

  Gina’s digital camera was lying there on the bed, and Max picked it up.

  Come on, Cassidy. Call back.

  And report that they’d reached the priest from the Kenyan camp only to discover that Gina had returned there, safe and sound—

  Leaving all of her belongings behind?

  If it was just her clothes and makeup, Max might’ve let himself hope.

  But no way would she leave all those books.

  His phone didn’t ring, and it still didn’t ring, so Max turned on the camera’s power—as usual, Gina had dozens of photos saved—and . . .

  The very first picture that came up on the camera’s little view screen was of him.

  What did that mean that she’d kept this picture of him?

  Was it because she still cared?

  Or had she saved it as a warning? Like, “Never forget how completely screwed up your relationship was with this loser . . .”

  It wasn’t a particularly good picture. In fact,
it was pretty embarrassing.

  Sitting up in his bed, Max was in his room at Sheffield. It was the photo Gina had taken the day after he’d arrived there. He looked like crap warmed over after his very first physical therapy session, and he was glowering into the camera because he goddamn didn’t want his picture taken.

  He hadn’t wanted her in his room, either.

  As if that had stopped her from coming in . . .

  You know what you need? A happy ending . . .

  He toggled the switch and moved to the next picture.

  It was another shot of Max. With Ajay this time.

  Ah, God.

  They were at a table in the rec room at the physical rehab center, playing cards—Ajay with a big smile on his face, despite the fact that he was sitting there in a wheelchair, despite the fact that the scar tissue on his badly burned hands had turned them into frightening-looking claws.

  It was Christmas, and decorations adorned the room. Max was cracking up at something the boy had just said—no doubt some ridiculously silly fart joke. The kid had learned, right from their very first card game, that potty humor made Gina laugh. And that when Gina laughed, Max laughed.

  The next photo was one that Ajay had taken of Max with Gina. She was sitting on his lap, at that same table in the rec center, arm looped around his neck, wearing the reindeer antler hat she’d brought for Ajay.

  Max’s smile was forced, and he looked like he was afraid to touch her.

  Afraid to let her know how much he loved touching her. Afraid to have it recorded on film, afraid . . .

  Goddamn it, but he wanted to step into that photograph. He wanted to slap himself upside his head and tell himself . . . What?

  Enjoy this moment. Take your time with it. Savor it. Treasure it.

  Because it sure as shit wasn’t going to last.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  SHEFFIELD PHYSICAL REHAB CENTER, MCLEAN, VIRGINIA

  JANUARY 6, 2004

  SEVENTEEN MONTHS AGO

  It had become a game.

  Max would try to keep Jules or Ajay around, Gina would gently try to get rid of them. To be alone with Max.

  Although, truth be told, Max didn’t try very hard at all. Every other day or so, he gave in.