Gone Black (15 page)

Max Soquet was no doubt still waiting outside the plane's lavatory for Claire to emerge, probably pretending he really was a gentleman, with his nose still in what had to be the most fascinating book in the world. He loitered there, relaxed, but fully armed to the teeth and with his monster dog, Zeus, just waiting for the kill command. Claire helped the child go to the toilet, and then she took time to wash his face and hands. It looked as if he hadn't had a bath in a very long time. Jaxy probably wouldn't let him clean up. She washed his hair, too, as best she could in the tiny sink with soap out of the dispenser, finger combed it, and then dried it with paper towels. Through all of it, he never said a word, only watched her with his big, sad, expressive dark eyes.

After she had him looking halfway presentable, she told him to turn his back and close his eyes while she took care of her own needs. The boy acted as docile as a lamb and always grave of demeanor and did everything she told him to, but whenever she let go of him, even for a minute, he began to quake all over and moan, soft and pitiably and awful, down low inside his throat.

Claire took enough time to examine and clean with soap and water the two lacerations where they'd dug out the GPS chips with their big knife. They had been placed just under her skin, so the puncture wounds didn't bleed much. All it had taken was the tip of the goon's blade slicing a slit and pressing the chip out with his finger. But she knew only too well that she was now on her own with no GPS safety net. She just prayed Booker would follow Black's beacon, and if God was smiling, that's where they would take her, too. The fact they were in the air behind them was the only thing keeping her halfway calm and in possession of her flayed nerves. Otherwise, she just might lapse into a state of pure panic. She didn't want to do that. She didn't want them to see any weakness in her, for fear of what they'd do then. She had a bad feeling that Max was saving her hide for something special, special meaning horrible and awful and deadly.

Still, she could not let herself succumb to terror of the unknown. Black was depending on her. The team was coming to get them. She had to make sure they both stayed alive until they did. And the boy, too. She had to think everything through. Watch her step. Figure out how to manipulate her captors. The girl had turned out to be easy. Her brother, not so much. All she had to do was find a way out if the team should run into trouble and not show up, outsmart her captors, put them down, one at a time, and then find Black and get him out. She stared at her reflection in the mirror. She looked tired and pale and drawn, but she didn't look scared. Not yet, anyway. Thank God for that. But deep inside where she'd never let them see it, she was petrified for Black's life. Probably right now he was being beaten, abused in ways she couldn't let herself think about, and there was nobody there to help him.

Now, on top of all those obstacles, she was afraid for the little kid, too. He was so little, and he had no way to fight back. They were mistreating him, battering him, and shocking him with that damn collar. And she was well aware of her own danger. She was expendable, too, just like Max had said, or she soon would be. Once they got her to their destination, for whatever purpose Marcel Soquet had in mind, she was a
persona non grata,
a dead
persona non grata.
Truth? All of them probably only had a matter of hours to live. Her only hope now was that she and Black held some kind of importance to them. Or that they wanted to keep them alive for their own sick reasons. That was what would save their lives, at least temporarily. She had to hope for that, in any case.

When she heard the kid start sniffling a little bit behind her, she turned around and knelt down in front of him. She sat down on the floor, pulled him onto her lap, and spoke soothingly to him as she rocked him back and forth. “Hey, now, don't you cry. I'm not gonna let them hurt you, not if I can help it.” She had started to promise him that she would protect him but knew she couldn't protect him. If they decided to separate them, he would be back under Jaxy's cruel thumb and there was nothing Claire could do about it. It depended on Max and his mood. “We just need to stick together. Okay? And if we get pulled apart, we'll find each other again, okay? If that happens, we'll just keep trying to get away and go looking until we find each other. If they take you away, you try to find me, understand? And I'll try to find you. I promise you that.”

“Okay,” he said, finally speaking. He looked up at her, rubbing tears off his face with his fingers.

“What's your name, honey? We haven't even been introduced yet. I'm Claire. Who are you?”

The child kept his eyes lowered. His lashes were very long, thick, and dark. He was a handsome boy. “Rico.”

Rico? That was an Italian name, and he had a slight Italian inflection to his English. He sounded like an American. Italian American, maybe? What was he doing with French arms dealers and criminals? “What's your last name?”

The child nodded. “Torelli.”

“How old are you, Rico?”

“Eight. Almost.”

The child looked too small to even be seven years old. Not much larger than Zach had been when he died. Rico looked more like five or six. But his big brown eyes were wide now, and he had stopped crying. He seemed more alert and less afraid. He seemed older, just like that.

“Where are your parents, Rico? How did these people get hold of you?”

Rico looked down at the floor. His voice got thick. “They shot them and threw them in the sea. Now the bad ones live in my house. Mama and Daddy are dead now and eaten up by the fishes.”

Oh, God,
Claire thought. They murdered his parents and then took him as their pet? “I'm so sorry, Rico. But maybe your family's all right after all. Maybe they survived somehow. Maybe they're out looking for you right now.”

But Claire didn't believe that for a moment, and neither did the boy, judging by the tears welling up inside his eyes.

“I saw them get shot,” said Rico. “I tried to run away but they always catch me, every time.”

“How long have they had you?”

“A long time.”

Claire winced. He had to have seen some terrible things. No doubt about it. He wasn't ever going to be the same. Not ever. Poor baby.

“That man, Max? Is he the boss? Does he always call the shots?”

He shook his head. “They have a daddy. He tells them both what to do.”

“I am so sorry that this happened to you, Rico. Does Max always tell Jaxy what to do?”

The child nodded.

“Does she keep you on that leash all the time?” Claire was pretty sure she did. She had seen the dark purple bruise on Rico's neck when she'd washed his hair.

He nodded again. “She jerks it when I try to take it off. But she likes to shock me because then I cry. Because it really hurts.” His eyes widened, afraid again, and then he said, “Sometimes I do get it off when she's asleep and then I run away and hide. I have a good hideout.”

“Well, that's good. Is it a safe place?”

He nodded again.

“But they catch you when you come out again?”

Rico nodded some more. “They catch me when I get hungry and go down to the kitchen. Sometimes they don't. But I get really hungry. I've eaten almost everything that Mama left down in the storeroom.”

Okay, now came the important part. “Rico, Max said they used you to catch a man. His name is Nicholas Black. He's really big and tall and has blue eyes and black hair. Do you remember that? Is that true?”

He nodded, looked at the closed door, appearing to become very frightened again.

Claire inhaled deeply. She had to ask him, but she didn't want to. She had to. “Is he still alive? Do you know where they are keeping him?”

“He's locked up in this special room they made. It's all white and stuff. But I've seen him. Sometimes Jaxy takes me in there with her, on the leash. She makes me watch her hurt him. She says to watch how much it hurts 'cause she'll do the same things to me if I run away again.”

Claire felt absolutely sick to her stomach, but she was more hopeful now. “Can you show me where he is?”

“He's in that white room. That's where they put the ones they bring to my house and keep up there so they can hurt them. I can hear them screaming and yelling for help sometimes when I'm down in my hideout. But I can't help them. I'm too little. But I haven't heard that man named Nicholas Black screaming. He's been real quiet, even when Jaxy hits him.”

Claire shivered. “How did they catch him? Did they hurt him much?”

“They made me stand right out in the middle of this dark road at night, and he almost ran over me with his car. He had to swerve and throw on the brakes so he wouldn't hit me. It sure did scare me. But then he got out and talked to me and started to take off the collar. He was gonna take me away with him, he said he was but then they ran out and got him. He had a gun and he fought real hard, and he shot two of them, down dead, too, but they had lots of men and they finally got him down.”

He paused for a moment and searched Claire's face. “But I thought he was going to get away for a minute. He fought real hard. Then Jaxy hit him with that pink thing. He tried to get up, but all the men were holding him down. Then she gave him some kinda shot and after that he got all still and didn't move, not at all, not in all the time we were going back.”

“You sure he's still alive? You're sure about that?”

The child nodded again. Claire let out a relieved breath but jumped when a fist thudded on the door beside her. Then Max's voice came from outside. Calm, but slightly annoyed. “Get out here. Now. Both of you.”

Claire pushed herself to standing, lifted the child in her arms, and opened the door. But she felt better. Now that she'd splashed water on her face. Now that she knew they hadn't killed Black, she could breathe easier, unless they'd done it since Max and his sister had been sent to fetch her back for more of their father's sadistic mind games. The kid knew where he was, though, and he could show her. But she had to get away first, and she would. No matter what it took, she'd find a way to get to Black.

When she got back to her seat, she found a bit o' bad news waiting for her there. Psycho Jaxy was sitting where Max had been, staring belligerently at her. Apparently she was back on guard duty. She still had a red mark on her cheek from where Claire had slapped her, but it had faded some. Too bad. Claire had given that blow everything she had in her. Claire looked at the mark and smiled. Jaxy narrowed her eyes and made that same growling sound deep in her throat, sort of like an angry raccoon with rabies. Maybe she was an animal dressed up like a woman. But no—she was worse than any animal.

The good news was that there was a dinner tray sitting on the table beside Claire's recliner. It had a red plastic dinner plate with two ham sandwiches, a bag of Lay's barbecue potato chips, and two unopened cans of Coke. Okay, at least the cuisine was good. The boy was thin as a rail and he looked at the food as if he'd never seen any before, and he probably hadn't, not in a long time. Not as frail as he was. It didn't sound like Jaxy was feeding him regular, wholesome meals.

Claire sat down with him but she kept him safely on her lap, on the side away from his evil tormentor. Jaxy was not going to get him again, not as long as Claire was living and breathing and had some fight left in her. She picked up a sandwich and smelled it, and then opened the bread to make sure they hadn't put any poison or drugs in it. No mayo, no nothing. It was just ham and bread, so probably safe enough to eat. Rico ate his so fast that he almost choked on it. Claire couldn't eat a bite, she was too nervous and anxious, so she handed him her sandwich, too. She did eat some of the chips but gave Rico most of them. Then she popped the tabs on the Cokes. She drank hers, all the while partaking in one big-time serious, I-wish-you-were-dead glaring contest with Jaxy a.k.a. Jackal.

But her thoughts remained on Black. He was alive, thank God. He was holding his own under terrible circumstances, and according to his reports on the Soquets, it was only going to get worse for him. He had to hang on until she got there. He knew somebody would come after him, and he would fight for his own survival. She knew him well enough to know that much. He was tough and he was smart. He was a shrink. He knew his stuff. She couldn't do a thing until she found him, so she would just have to wait until they landed somewhere. She would have to remain patient, which was not one of her strong suits and never had been. Watch them, listen to them, find out as much as she could about them and the way they did things, and she had to protect the little boy. He knew where Black was, and Claire was going to keep him safely with her as long as she could. Jaxy was going to need a damn crowbar to get that poor kid out of her arms.

After a while, Jaxy got tired of staring daggers at Claire and got up and stalked off. One of the twin goons took her place across from them and resumed the eyeballing. He was the larger one, the one with the curly black ponytail and lion tattoo, the one she had heard Jaxy call Barto. The blond's name was Ronald, and he was racked out asleep on a recliner across the cabin. Barto was very alert and kept his eyes latched on Claire, and she hoped that she was never at his mercy. It was pretty clear what he would do if given the chance. His eyes kept sliding down her body, and then back up to her face, and then he'd smirk evilly at her. Jeez, this really was a freak show of gargantuan proportions. Everybody was nuts. Max didn't show his ever-mellow face; he had disappeared somewhere to read the rest of his book in peace probably. So there had to be other compartments on the plane, back in the rear, probably sleeping compartments used for rest between their criminal abductions and felony murders. They seemed to have kidnapping down to an art. They had gotten Black and her, and the two of them were not the easiest people to take down.