The chair leg had been ground down to about half its starting length and was now the size of a large chisel, which suited her fine. It was easier to handle, and she’d settled into a steady rhythm, scraping away millimeter after millimeter. The motion was almost automatic now, and her focus on the mortar bordered on meditative, but thankfully she retained enough connection to the outside world to register noise nearby.
“Get everyone set to go.”
She recognized the voice of Roman, the man who’d forced her to record the proof-of-life video.
“We’re moving out in twenty minutes. Make sure she’s ready.”
They were moving. Why?
Justine was filled with panic and despair. She was so close! If they took her somewhere else, there was no guarantee she’d get another chance to escape. She had to go now.
She dropped the chair leg and pushed against the stone.
It didn’t budge.
She heard movement outside. Footsteps coming closer. She listened, straining to discern what was happening. No, they weren’t coming toward her, but there was activity near the building. Footsteps and the sounds of gear being moved. The muffled chatter of multiple voices.
She didn’t have long.
Justine lay on her back on the dirty floor and placed her feet on the wall. She put her palms flat against the floor to either side of her and tried to find some sort of purchase before pressing against the selected stone with all her strength.
It didn’t budge. She looked up at the underside of the table and took a deep breath. She was running with sweat again and wiped her brow before pushing on the stone with renewed determination.
She felt the slightest movement and heard a cracking sound. A tiny shift in the stone’s position sent her heart flying, infusing her with new energy. The stone was moving now. She had no idea what it weighed, but couldn’t recall doing anything quite so physically demanding before.
She focused on the fact it was sliding away from her and kept up the pressure, ignoring the burning ache in her thighs. There was a sudden grinding sound and more movement as all the mortar fell away and the stone came completely free. She forced it out and pushed it to one side to create a gap in the wall she thought she could squeeze through.
Outside, there were voices and more footsteps, and these were definitely coming her way.
Her dress and heels had been taken so she was barefoot, but she didn’t care. She had to escape.
She moved to her hands and knees and then slid onto her belly to ease herself through the hole. She put her head through it, squinting into the bright sunlight that greeted her.
She heard a key in the padlock behind her, and forced her shoulders through a gap that was millimeters too small for them. The stone tore at her T-shirt and flesh as she wriggled through, but she didn’t care about the pain. The feel of the sun against her skin and the sight of a nearby treeline spurred her on.
She squeezed herself out as she heard the padlock clinking; got to her feet and took her first few free steps as she heard the door swing open and a voice cry out in surprise.
She sprinted across the cobblestone yard, onto dusty, rocky ground beyond, ignoring the stabbing pain of each step as her soft feet found jagged pebbles and shards of cracked stone. She kept her eyes fixed on the bushes beneath the trees and her mind on freedom.
She heard cries and men mustering on the other side of the building as she made it into the nearest undergrowth. She glanced back through the thick foliage and saw a man push his head through the hole in the wall. He scanned the yard but didn’t see her. He withdrew and yelled at his accomplices.
“Spread out and search the area. She can’t have gone far!”
Justine didn’t wait to hear any more. She pressed on through the scrub and, once she’d cleared it, started sprinting through the woodland on the far side.
Chapter 27
Duval had made some calls to his contacts in the Monaco police while we’d prepared for the expedition but had no luck pushing them to deploy faster. Cross-border operations took time, he’d told us with an air of frustration, so we took matters into our own hands and set out for Utelle. Duval drove us up the neighboring valley in his G-Wagen, which was more than capable of handling rough trails when the road ran out.
Sci and Mo-bot had brought three gear bags with them, and when the terrain got too steep and rocky for the Mercedes SUV, Duval parked and he, Sci and I each took a backpack before we all set out on foot.
It took us about thirty minutes to cross the ridge and we reached a decent vantage point shortly after midday. We were on a rocky outcrop surrounded by Aleppo pines, overlooking steep, sloping fields of recently churned and sown earth. Further down the mountain, to the west, was the first farm, and beyond it a forest of pine and cypress. The farmhouse was an early-twentieth-century rustic building constructed of yellow stone. There was a large cobblestone yard and half a dozen barns and outbuildings. It was the highest of the three properties we’d come to investigate, and I knew it was our target the moment I saw armed men in the yard and others fanning out into the surrounding woodland.
“What are they doing?” Duval asked.
I took a pair of field glasses from my backpack and scanned the scene more closely. I noticed a large stone beside an outbuilding that had a hole visible low down in its wall.
“I think Justine escaped,” I said, suddenly alive with excitement at the thought of her slipping away from her captors.
Mo-bot held out her hand and I gave her the field glasses.
“They’re certainly searching for something,” she said as she examined the farm and its surroundings. “I count sixteen men. Most are armed with pistols or sub machine guns. A couple of automatic rifles.”
“That seals it,” Sci remarked.
“I’m going to call it in,” Duval said, stepping away from us to use his phone.
Sci put his backpack on the ground and opened it to remove a collection of small flight cases. While he rooted around them, Mo-bot returned the field glasses, and I surveyed the scene. I spied the shaven-headed man, the driver of the van from the convenience store video, and noticed another man in the center of the farmyard. He was issuing instructions and appeared to be in command. He was slim and muscular with short black hair. He had a downturned mouth and sharp, pitiless eyes in a scowling face. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d met before or that he was somehow familiar to me. There was a great deal of anger about him and a slight air of panic, which supported my theory that Justine had escaped.
“Let’s see what this baby can find,” Sci said, and I turned to see him standing over a small drone.
He used a remote control to launch it, and I moved to get a better view of the footage being broadcast by the drone’s video camera, which was displayed on the screen of the controller.
He swept round the farmyard at high altitude, and I went over the outbuilding with the hole in the wall. The large stone looked like a perfect fit for the hole in the wall and there were scuffmarks that suggested it had been pushed from the outbuilding. I was thrilled at the possibility Justine had forced her way out, but now we had to find her before her captors did.
I scanned the mountainside with the field glasses, trying to figure out where she would have gone. The other farms weren’t visible from up here, but they might have been from further down the mountain. She could have headed south-west toward them, or maybe she’d opted for the more difficult task of going north-east, toward the summit, toward us. There was plenty of cover in the woods that spread across the mountainside in all directions. Justine was tough and resourceful, but I also knew she’d be frightened. Who wouldn’t be? These men looked like killers and they were heavily armed. At a guess, we had fifteen square miles to search, unless she had made it to a vehicle, which seemed unlikely given the response of her abductors. Her escape seemed recent because they were searching on foot, hadn’t gone far from the farm and weren’t making any use of the vans, pick-up trucks or SUV in the yard.