Song smiled shyly. It was a look that Quinn hadn’t seen on her before, but it suited her well, making her appear more like an actual human being.
“One more,” she shouted back over the crowd.
“Two more!” the people pled.
She actually blushed. “One more.”
Quinn found himself grinning. He looked at Bursaw and said, “She’s with me.”
The crowd fell silent, watching, leaning in toward the music as Song’s bow coaxed out a haunting tune that Quinn didn’t recognize. It sounded like a cross between Mannheim Steamroller techno and Old World folk. The locals in the crowd launched into a frenzy of cheers. When she finished, Bursaw’s father-in-law tried to convince her to join the band.
It took Song almost two minutes to wade through her new admirers and work her way back to Quinn. She gave him a good-natured jab in the ribs with her elbow, in a much better mood than when she had left.
Bursaw looked at her with a gaping mouth. “How did you know how to play ‘Croatian Rhapsody’?”
“Is that what it’s called?” Song shrugged. “I heard it at the airport when we arrived.” She looked at Quinn as if she wasn’t some kind of musical genius. “We have an early day. I think I’ll go to bed.”
“I’ll be up in a minute,” he said. “Don’t lock me out.”
“Why, because you made me play in front of everyone?” She smiled.
He watched her walk away, still trying to get a handle on what made her tick. As soon as she made it inside, he turned to Bursaw. “Do you have a phone I can borrow for a couple of international calls? I’ll pay to cover the cost.”
Bursaw reached in his pocket and handed over his smartphone. “Knock yourself out,” he said. “I have to call my parents every other day or they flip out. I got an international plan.”
Quinn took the mobile and walked beyond the beech tree, away from the noise of the crowd. The moon was nearly full and each stone and shrub cast long shadows on the silver limestone of the hillside. Far enough away that he felt he could speak freely, he punched in the prearranged emergency number for Palmer. If the Fengs had something planned for Seattle, he had to tell someone. It would take him nearly twenty-four hours just to get there, and though the Fengs were apparently traveling commercially as well, they had a good ten-hour head start — and a lot could happen in ten hours.
There was no answer, so Quinn ended the call and tried again, mentally willing his old boss to pick up. He gave up after ten rings, immediately punching in the last number he had for Garcia. They hadn’t spoken in almost a month, and though Quinn told himself he needed to get in touch with Palmer through whatever means possible, he had to admit that he was glad to have an excuse to check in with her. She was the most low-maintenance girl he’d ever even heard of, but he’d learned from the wisdom of Jacques Thibodaux that low maintenance didn’t mean no maintenance.
He tried her twice as well, getting nothing but empty rings both times. He tried both Miyagi and then Jacques next with the same result. Everyone had gone dark. He needed to get word to someone on the West Coast and thought of calling Bo, but decided to wait on that. Great to have around as backup, Bo and his club were just as likely to start World War III as prevent it if sent in unsupervised.
A sickening realization that something was very wrong began to creep over Quinn. He’d found himself in some very lonely spots over the course of his life — remote hunts on the barren Alaska tundra, outside the wire at forward operating bases in the Middle East — but here, standing on this moonlit hillside in Eastern Europe, the aloneness was oppressive. He worked for the most powerful nation on earth — or at least he had — a nation with the fastest aircraft, the most advanced satellites, and the most sophisticated war-fighting apparatus on the planet, and still, he found himself waiting for a seat on a commercial airline and dependent on a mercurial enemy agent to complete his mission.
A sudden commotion at the party drew his attention back toward the lights. The sound of a revving engine grew louder. Gravel crunched in the darkness as a vehicle ground to a quick stop. At first he thought it might be Bursaw’s nephew showing off the muscle car, but the engine sound was more mewl than roar. The unmistakable sound of a scream rose above the noise of music and dancing.
Out of habit, Jericho stuffed the phone in his back pocket to free up both hands and began to trot back toward the party — toward the sound of danger. The band’s Croatian folk song came to an abrupt stop. As he reached the beech tree, he realized everyone had turned to look toward the back of the inn where the browlike taillights of an Alpha Romeo Giulietta sedan flashed in the darkness. Quinn saw Stilvano, the violinist, run toward the sedan, and then crumple under the pop of gunfire. Kevin Bursaw, who had already drawn a pistol, ran toward the house where his twin daughters were sleeping. The Giulietta’s tires squealed as it sped away in a rooster tail of spraying gravel.
Quinn, who’d come in diagonally from the tree, intercepted Bursaw and they reached the back driveway at the same moment. Bursaw stopped in his tracks, pistol in hand watching the taillights flash between the trees down the road to the highway and Dubrovnik.
“They took her,” he said, panting.
“Took who?”
“Song,” Bursaw said, nodding toward a lifeless body that sprawled along the gravel drive. “Looks like she killed one of them, but I saw her face in the back window of the car as they pulled away. They got her.”
The fleeing car was too far away to chase on foot, so Quinn spun on his heels immediately, running for the stable of motorcycles out front.
“It’s probably a trap,” Bursaw panted, struggling to keep up.
“Of course, it’s a trap,” Quinn said.
Bursaw dug in his pocket as they broke through the crowd and nodded toward a blue GS, gleaming under the red and white lights. “That one is mine. It’s plenty fast.”
“Fast isn’t enough.” Quinn shook his head, going straight for Bursaw’s nephew. “Sorry, Craig,” he said, snatching the astonished man’s car keys from his hand and sprinting for the Hellcat. “I need fast and brutal.”
Chapter 35
Camille Thibodaux nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of the doorbell. The boys were down in the basement watching cartoons with strict instructions to stay there. She snatched a five-shot Ruger .357 revolver Jacques had given her from the gun safe above the medicine cabinet in her master bathroom and held it behind her right thigh while she went to answer the door. She was fairly certain she knew who it was, but considering the fact that she had a government agent tied to her bed, the gun seemed a prudent measure. Hand on the knob, she rehearsed the lines she’d played over and over in her head since making the call, then took a deep breath and opened the door.
“Hi,” Kimberly Quinn said, her voice perkier than her face said it should be. “Sorry it took me a minute to get here. My physical therapist was busy torturing me.”
It was easy to see what had attracted Jericho to his ex-wife. She was petite and pretty — Jacques called her “pretite”—with flaxen hair and blue eyes that were large and round, if a little on the accusatory side. She wore a loose black T-shirt that said: I FIGHT LIKE A GIRL! in bold pink letters. Her khaki capris said she didn’t care about hiding the above-the-knee metal prosthetic that had replaced the leg she’d lost to a sniper months before. She carried a large purse slung over one shoulder and a metal cane in the opposite hand. Camille knew she’d been able to walk without a cane until a kidnapping attempt on her daughter in Crystal City had reinjured her leg and sent her back to physical therapy. The same incident had also made it impossible for her to travel with her daughter, who was now stashed with friends in Russia to protect her from the present administration. The fact that she was separated from her child pressed Kim Quinn down more than even the loss of her leg. Camille could not imagine how she’d react if she had to give up her kids, even for a week. Mattie Quinn had been gone over a month.