Sealed with a Lie (22 page)

Still, he jumps into the air and slams both feet into the stomach of another guard, who falls to the floor clutching himself. Evan crashes to the floor himself.

The first guard bashes him over the head with a heavy flashlight.

“You arseholes!” Evan shouts. He spots my parents. “And you—why the hell are you here? You should be lined up in front of a bloody firing squad!”

I couldn’t agree more.

“Kari—are you okay?” he asks, still choking on rage. He can clearly see that I’m not.

I still have the barest atom of energy for sarcasm. “Dude,” I manage. “Been a party down here. Balloons. Cake. Show tunes.”

“Christ . . .” His face is drawn, his lips flat. His eyes snap with fury. There’s a bruise on his cheekbone and his shirt is torn. The guards drag him to a cell.

Before they shut the door on him, I produce a smile. “Evan. Thanks for trying. Can’t believe you messed up your hair for me . . .”

I can’t imagine that things can get worse, but they do, after a brief respite. Rafe forgets the speakers are on as he demands an accounting of what happened, so we get the full story. Evan and Kale approached this ship on a smaller boat that they probably stole. They boarded using climbing equipment, and between them they took down six of Rafe’s men before they were simply outnumbered and outgunned. It was truly a heroic attempt, and I’m just thankful they weren’t shot.

“How in the hell did they track us here?” Rafe demands.

“We’re not sure, sir,” says the man briefing him. “Somehow they must have followed us.”

Rafe swears.

He can swear all he wants as long as they don’t discover our GPS chips. Even if we’re dead by the time anyone else locates us, I want Rafe and his buddies to pay.

I wonder where Matthis and Rita are at this point. I hope they’re safe.

“You can go,” Rafe tells the man. And his attention returns to extracting the information he wants.

My good buddy Anton returns and flexes his fingers in front of our cell.

My mouth goes dry, my mind blanks, and my nerves scream. Not again. I don’t think I can take anymore. I really don’t.

Rafe says, “Since we haven’t gotten results with her, let’s start with the little twerp.”

“No!”
My parents and I scream it simultaneously.

Charlie shrinks back into his corner, eyes huge. He shoves his hands under his bottom, and my heart breaks in that moment.

Anton opens the door of the cell and steps in.

My feet are tied to the chair, my whole body is in agony, and my right hand is useless. I lunge for him anyway, dragging the chair behind me. Of course I fall, the chair careening down on top of me, and Anton laughs.

I push backward desperately with my one good hand, trying to move my body between him and Charlie.

Anton simply steps around me, and when I grab at his legs, he kicks me off and stomps on my left hand.

“You’re not getting him!” I shriek.

But he does.

Charlie fights silently. He doesn’t make it easy. But in the end, he’s only seven years old, and his forty-two-pound body is no match for Anton’s two-hundred-pound one.

I sob on the floor as Anton ties him to a chair.

My mom is pounding her forehead against the glass of her cell, screaming to Rafe to take her instead.

My dad has scooted to the far corner of his and turned his back. His shoulders shake.

Everyone else in captivity just looks horrified.

“Tell him, you jerks!” I yell again. “Tell him where the list is! What is
wrong
with you? How can you let this—”

I’m interrupted by gunshots. There’s no mistaking it this time—these are high-powered automatic weapons being fired.

“Lock all the cell doors!” orders Rafe to Anton. “Then stand guard just inside the main door. Await further orders.”

I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m so relieved that Charlie’s not being hurt that I’m not sure I care. More shots sound just above us as I try to crawl to my brother. Gunfire erupts just outside the door as the pain threatens to overwhelm me in a blanket of trauma, but I refuse to pass out again.

Militants dressed in black stream down the stairs and rappel from railings everywhere. Rafe and Anton the guard vanish into the chaos.

Someone lets us out of our cell, and my parents as well. They rush to me. “W-why?” I croak. Bile and screaming do wonders for the throat. I sound like a three-pack-a-day smoker. “Why didn’t you t-tell them? Where the list is? Why?”

My mom’s face falls and my dad shuts his eyes tightly.

It makes me angry, fuels my sense of betrayal. “Look at me!”

He does. Then two of the military guys in black pull my parents away, and it seems to me that they don’t protest too much.

Another man, a guy who looks familiar, crouches next to me with a medical bag. He
tsks
and eases up my shirt, which scrapes and burns. I’m struggling to place him in my memory when he puts a hand on my ribs. Even though his touch is gentle, it’s agony.

While I’m focusing on just dealing with the pain, he injects me with something, and frankly I welcome it. I’m enveloped soon by a warm, fuzzy, floating sensation. I think maybe he shot me full of Demerol. Whatever it is, I’m intensely grateful for it as the guy—
where
have I seen him before?—bandages my ribs, then starts on my fingers. I can feel a dull throbbing in my left hand, the one Anton stepped on. But I can’t feel the right one at all because this medic has also given me a local anesthetic.

I turn my head toward Charlie, who’s holding my aching left hand. “Hey, Charlie Brown,” I croak. A shadow hovers over us. I crane my neck and roll my eyes upward to find that it’s my dad. He’s crouched right by my head.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” he says, smoothing my hair.

Maybe it’s the cloud of Demerol, but I can’t summon the willpower to hate him right now. “You came . . . to get us.”

He nods. There are tears in his eyes. “We love you. We love you and Charlie very much.”

“Then why . . .
why
, Dad?” I fight to push the happy cloud away. I want answers. “You owe us an explanation—at the very least.”

Just as he opens his mouth, gunshots explode above us again. I hear more heavy, booted feet pounding. And shouts.

“Interpol!” a voice thunders. “We have you surrounded! Drop your weapons!”

The guy bandaging me freaks out. He jumps up and glares at my dad, then spits something in Russian. And that’s when I figure it out. He looks familiar because this is the same guy who tried to kidnap me, with that woman, off the train. What the—?

My dad answers him, in rapid-fire Russian.

My brother understands it, but I don’t. “Charlie, what are they saying?”

The man gestures to us, shaking his head, and makes a chopping motion with his hand.

It’s not hard to interpret in any language, and Charlie gasps, clenching my hand. His own trembles.

My dad shouts something at the man, then tackles him. They both go flying, and Charlie winces as they start whaling on each other. My dad is the bigger and stronger of the two, though, and he quickly gains the advantage, knocking the Russian unconscious.

Dad wipes his face on his sleeve and comes back to us. “Kari. Charlie. Your mother and I have to go.”

Charlie sucks in a breath, then wraps his arms around his knees and rocks back and forth.

I stare up at Dad. “But—”

“You’ll be safe, all right?”

“No, not all right!” My tongue feels thick. “You tell me what’s going on—”

Dad looks at me for a second, then grabs the semiconscious
Russian by the belt and the collar, and muscles him out the door and up the stairs.

I’m so confused. And I’m getting angry again, despite the false sense of well-being that the Demerol provides. “Charlie, what was that all about?”

“That guy wanted to kill us. Before he and Dad left.”

This makes absolutely no sense. “Then why did the guys in black come to rescue us? Why was the Russian man bandaging me and giving me painkillers?”

“Um,” says Charlie. “I think it has to do with . . . well, if we were going with them, then it was fine. But if we weren’t, because they had to leave fast and you’re injured, then it wasn’t okay.”

The old philosophy of “kill the wounded so they don’t slow you down.” Nice. I’m still nowhere close to understanding, but I have a very bad feeling that the Russian and his buddies in black are KGB2 guys. “Okay, Charlie. I guess we’ll figure it all out eventually. In the meantime, I think that guy lying dead in the doorway is my buddy Anton the guard, and he’s got one of the key cards in his pocket. So why don’t you let our friends out of those cells?”

He nods and gets to his feet. He walks over to Anton and crouches down next to him, looking a little freaked out at having to touch a dead body.

“Just don’t think about it too hard, kiddo,” I say. “And he wasn’t exactly a nice guy.”

Charlie closes his eyes and digs into Anton’s pocket. He pulls out the key card and backs away quickly, almost sprinting to Evan’s cell.

“Thank you, little man,” Evan says as he steps out. He ruffles Charlie’s hair.

Then he rushes over to me and kisses me right on the mouth. I feel it all the way to my toes—unless that’s still the Demerol. I’m really glad that somebody wiped the blood, vomit, and bile off my face, but even so, I can’t possibly look or smell very good right now.

“Dear God, Kari,” he murmurs, pulling back and evaluating me. “You’re the bravest girl I know.” He takes my good hand and looks up at the ceiling for a long moment, his mouth working. I’m initially puzzled at the odd expression on his face, and then I realize that Evan—
Evan
, of all people—is struggling to hold back tears. For me.

I’m still surfing the wave of Demerol—which is doing its best to knock me out—so I can’t really take this in, and I don’t know what to do with the involuntary clench of my stomach in response. But it vaguely hurts. I can’t be clenching anything right now, not even my teeth.

“Crybaby,” I say provocatively.

His mouth works some more as he meets my gaze almost tenderly. “Shrew.”

I struggle to sit up, since we need to find out what’s going on. Boy, is that a bad idea, even on painkillers.

“Cut it out,” Evan orders. Then he gently slips his big hands under my arms and eases me up. He seems to know by instinct that sitting is too painful, so he pulls me straight to my feet. I wobble on them, then establish a better balance. “Okay?” he asks.

“Yep. Thanks.”

Evan looks as if he might kiss me again, but then his mouth flattens and he looks away.

Good thing, because there’s a clatter of more boots on the stairs and then a bunch of uniforms burst in, weapons at the ready. Rebecca Morrow is at their head, in full combat gear and with her long, black curly hair stuffed up into a helmet. “Interpol! Hands up!”

She casts a quick, evaluative glance at me, and I see shock roll over her face. “Oh, Kari,” she murmurs, her mouth softening. “Honey, I’m so sorry.” But she’s got a job to do, a team to run. She’s not going to take me in her arms and rock me to sleep—and I can’t expect her to. Within seconds, she’s distracted and barking out orders.

Charlie, meanwhile, has let out Kale and is headed toward the Duvernays.

“Hands up!” someone else roars, and my brother freezes in his tracks.

The four of us, along with everyone else, put our hands in the air—Kale and Evan help me with mine—until we’re told to relax. The Interpol team acknowledges that we’re GI, searches for anyone in hiding, lets out Gustav and his grandfather, and secures the rest of the ship.

“Where are Matthis and Rita?” I ask Kale.

“Rita was pissed, but we made them change hotels and stay in Salzburg in case something went wrong,” he says. “Neither of them has any combat training whatsoever.” He looks me up and down. “Jesus, Kari. We need to get you to a hospital. They can meet us there.”

I nod, since I can’t really argue with my need for
medical attention. I could have internal injuries, for all I know.

Evan and Kale help load me onto a stretcher that the Interpol people bring down.

As my eyes roll backward, I say, “Ha. Should be fun getting me up those stairs, guys. Sucks to be you.”

And then the fog closes in once again.

Big surprise that I wake up in the hospital with an IV stuck into my left hand. I feel like one big giant bruise. My entire torso appears to be bandaged and taped, and my right hand is a bouquet of splints. No karate for a while.

Charlie’s asleep at the very foot of my bed, curled into a little ball. Someone’s wrapped a blanket around him. Evan and Matthis are in chairs next to me. Kale and Rita are sprawled on the floor, sitting against the wall, another blanket wrapped around their shoulders.

“Look who’s back among the living,” Evan says softly. He leans forward and takes my hand, careful not to dislodge the IV drip.

“Hi.” My voice comes out in a rasp.

“Hey,” Matthis says. “Welcome back.”

“Water?” Rita offers me a cup with a goose-necked straw that bends down to my parched lips.

“Thanks.” I suck down about half the cup at once.

“Easy,” Kale cautions me. “Your stomach’s taken a beating.”

Sure enough, some of the water tries to come back up, and I struggle to keep it down.

I notice that they’re all looking at me as if I just escaped from the zoo. “What?”

“Nothing,” Rita says too quickly.

I squint at her. I put a hand up to my face and discover that a lot of it is puffy. Well, go figure. My good friend Anton had smacked me on one side of it, and then when I fell forward in the chair trying to protect Charlie, the other side had smashed into the floor. “Let me guess: I won’t be winning the Miss Teen USA contest today?”

Evan’s lips twitch. “Maybe tomorrow,” he says diplomatically.

Since I can’t change my face, I change the subject. “So what happened on the ship?”

“Hang on,” Evan says. “Let me get Rebecca and Stefan and Abby.” He gets up and goes to the door.

That’s when I hear Abby’s raised voice coming from the hallway, where she’s arguing with her parents. “There’s
no
reason why I shouldn’t go skiing with Cecily! She has a chalet at Klosters. That’s, like, one of the coolest ski resorts anywhere. And I can stay for
free
!”