Juska had kidnapped her, not killed her like he’d probably killed Richard Delaney and Karen LaGarde. That had to count for something. If he’d wanted her dead, he could have staged a hundred different kinds of accidents to make it look random.
He’d kept her alive for a reason.
She tried not to fear the reason, tried not to think about all the ways he might torture her just for the hell of it, just to mess with Nick, who’d gone all the way to Gibraltar to dig up information on Juska.
Had Erno Kovaks tipped off Juska? Was he doing this to exact revenge on Nick for chasing him down? Or was this always going to be the Walkers’ play? And if it was the Walkers, what did they hope to gain by kidnapping her?
The questions made her head pound harder. Her mouth was parched and there was a metallic aftertaste on her tongue.
She went to the sink, turned the faucet, and was relieved when water emerged from the spigot. She had no idea where she was or if the water was even safe to drink, but it wasn’t like she had a choice.
She let it run for a minute and then scooped some into her hands, comforted by the fact that it was relatively clear. It was cold on her tongue and she gulped until she retched over the sink. Whatever they had given her to knock her out left not only the headache in its wake, but a queasy feeling in her stomach she hadn’t noticed until now.
Then again, maybe she was hungry. For all she knew, she’d been here for days. The thought revived her panic, and she forced herself to push it aside. It wasn’t a productive emotion to have when she needed to think. Besides, she didn’t have to use the bathroom, and she would need to in spite of her dehydration if she’d been here for a long time.
She opened the cupboard doors on the old sink cabinet, hoping to find something she could use as a weapon — she was betting the door would open eventually, that they hadn’t kidnapped her only to let her die of starvation — but it was empty.
She eyed the plumbing and debated disconnecting the pipe running from the sink to the floor under the cabinet. She’d have to look for the shutoff valve if she didn’t want to flood the bathroom, warning whoever had her that she was asking for trouble.
It was an option, but not a great one. She tucked it away for later and turned her attention to the window near the ceiling halfway between the toilet and the tub. She stood on the toilet and leaned over the floor, trying to reach the window with her fingertips, but it was a couple of inches out of reach.
And that was for her fingertips. Getting enough leverage to reach it with the rest of her body was something else. She could maybe use the cabinet if she could disconnect it from the wall, but that would be noisy, not to mention the flooding problem.
She sat back down on the closed toilet lid. She needed more information before she made a plan, needed to know who would come for her — to check on her or otherwise. She needed to know how manyof them there would be, whether they would be big, whether they would have weapons, whether they would try to move her from the room.
She felt a spark of hope at the thought. If they moved her she would get a better look at where she was being held. That would help her formulate a plan. Escaping the room without knowing what she was dealing with on the other side wasn’t ideal.
Who was she kidding? None of this was ideal.
She thought about Nick. He would come for her. She knew it with every ounce of her being.
The only question was whether she would still be alive when he got there.
16
Nick knocked on the door and looked around the neighborhood in South Boston. Two kids wearing hockey jerseys were getting into an SUV, their sticks clanging together as they argued over who was going to get in the back seat first.
“Knock it off, you two,” a burly man with a beer gut said, hopping into the driver’s seat. “I’ll leave you behind if you’re not buckled in when this car starts.”
Nick smiled at the man’s Boston accent and tried to imagine he and Alexa in a neighborhood like this one, tried to imagine block parties and Christmas caroling and kids playing in the street, maybe even kids they would adopt or foster someday.
He felt the pang of nostalgia, the longing for something already passed, and pushed it away as abad sign. The future was still in front of them. He would find Alexa. He would make the Walkers pay and eliminate Juska. He and Alexa would build their future together, the future Nick had been seeing with more and more clarity in the months she’d been living with him.
The door opened on a woman with copper hair and sparkling green eyes. “Nick! I can’t believe you took this long to visit!”
“Hi, Ash.” He smiled and pulled the woman into a hug. “I know. I’m sorry.”
She pulled back to look at him. “You look good. And don’t be sorry. You’re here now.” She opened the door wider to let him in. “Kyle’s in back. I swear that man would grill if it were fifty below.”
“I think I remember a time when he did grill at fifty below,” Nick said.
“I think you may be right.” Ashley Duhamel, wife of Nick’s former partner, Kyle, led the way into a modest living room littered with video games, Legos, an open box of crackers, a half-eaten piece of string cheese, and one pink sock.
A little girl with curly red hair bounded down the steps. “Mom, Ethan is taking pieces from my new Lego set. He says they’re his.”
Ashley sighed and turned her daughter aroundto face Nick. “Katie, remember Nick Murphy, your dad’s old partner?” She continued without waiting for an answer. “Say hello and show him you have manners.”
The little girl held out her hand. “It’s nice to see you, Mister Murphy.”