“Keep walking!”
Kincaid had slowed to gauge the reaction. Very jumpy. A rogue cop, she thought. The woman had been or still was a cop, moonlighting. That would explain getting the gun through Security. And the case of nerves. Knowing her face could be recognized on security cameras or that she could bump into officers she was acquainted with, she had to have some kind of plausible story but damned well didn’t want to have to use it.
Kincaid picked up speed, though only slightly. “You got me,” she said. “Take it easy. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
“Walk ahead of me. Follow the signs to the car park.”
She had a van in the parking lot with no windows in back. Two more women were waiting inside. It smelled like they’d been drinking wine. The back cargo door was locked by steel bolts, and there were no side doors. A translucent sunroof let in light from the overhead street lamps, but it was not the kind that opened.
The woman at the wheel—the other “sister,” who must have handed off the kids to somebody—started the engine as soon as they got the doors locked. The third woman was a heavyset grinning maniac with a cocaine blizzard in her eyes, a prison matron’s mean mouth, and a pistol in her waistband.
They pinned Kincaid’s wrists behind her with a disposable nylon double lock flex-cuff—more cop stuff—and took her phone and her bag and shoved her into the cargo area, which was covered with a musty carpet. Blondie, the woman who had nailed her in the terminal, stole her gold bracelet and put it on. Kincaid pegged her as the leader of the trio. Cokie took the ring Janson had given her in Amsterdam, which pissed her off. The thievery was more confirmation of what she suspected. They were locals for hire—a crew of rogue cops and crooks who usually robbed pimps and drug dealers. Who had hired them to snatch her? Who but Securité Referral?
Blondie felt the slot under Kincaid’s bag and appeared surprised not to find a knife. Through airport security? Did she think Kincaid was nuts? But they did know to look for it. Proof positive they were working for the diver. Kincaid shifted internal gears in an urgent attempt to dampen panic. She knew she could not master panic, no one could, but Cons Ops had taught her ways to go around it, by concentrating step-by-step on questions and answers that might guide her toward action.
Clearly, she and Janson had underestimated Securité Referral’s reach. But what was this, revenge? The thought of being delivered, handcuffed, to the South African mercenary whom she had taken down and humiliated threatened to redline the panic.
What about the doctor? Wasn’t the doctor what Van Pelt wanted? But her capture was about both the doctor and revenge, she feared. That Van Pelt was hunting Dr. Flannigan didn’t mean he couldn’t spare an hour to give her a long and terrible death.
The only good news Kincaid could cling to was that the women were happy with her expensive bracelet and beautiful ring and didn’t bother stealing her cheap Swatch. They couldn’t see her hands behind her back. She worked her fingers past the cuff and pressed the Swatch’s stem to switch on her GPS asset-tracking signal that would allow Janson to track her location on Google Maps—God bless the Internet and the CatsPaw hard geeks and soft geeks who had tweaked a device originally marketed to parents to spy on their teenagers.
Wouldn’t it be nice if Janson was near enough to help? Wouldn’t it be nice if he otherwise arranged for a local CatsPaw contractor to help? Before the miniature device’s tiny battery ran down in two hours? Wouldn’t it be nice if pigs could fly?
The van was moving fast on a highway. She saw signs through the windshield for the Sydney Central Business District and the Harbour Bridge to North Sydney. “Where are we driving?” she asked.
“Luna Park,” called Sister at the steering wheel.
“What’s Luna Park?”
“Amusement park.”
“Haunted houses,” Cokie said. “Scary stuff.” She leaned close, leering at Kincaid, breathing wine in her face, mocking her fear.
Kincaid twisted her shoulder as though to relieve the stress on her pinioned arms. Her blouse puckered open in front, revealing glimpses of her breasts lit by the lamps arching over the road and oncoming headlights. Cokie wet her lips and glanced at the front of the speeding van. When she saw that Blondie had moved next to the driver, she plunged her hand into Kincaid’s blouse.
She slipped inside Kincaid’s bra and caressed her nipple. Kincaid tried to prepare herself for pain by separating thought from flesh, exiling her mind to a fog-shrouded beach where invisible breakers rumbled on the sand. Cokie positioned her thumb and index fingers like a pair of pliers.
* * *
PAUL JANSON DROVE a rental Volkswagen Golf out of Sydney Airport, fearing that he would never see Jessica Kincaid again. Despite the speed of the Thai jet, a privately registered craft that was allowed to land as a general aviation corporate plane, he had arrived moments too late to catch up with her before she had cleared Immigration. Suddenly his Iridium phone vibrated. It was not a phone call vibration but a distinctive on-off, on-off pattern. He stood on the brake and pulled onto the shoulder to read the screen.
Up came a miniature Google Map. His heart soared when he saw that it displayed the same airport highway he was on. A red dot that represented the current position of Jessica Kincaid’s Swatch was blinking fifteen miles ahead of him, nearing the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Janson floored the rental and tore back onto the road, weaving through light traffic.
All that the blinking red dot indicated for sure was that Kincaid’s fake Swatch was in a moving vehicle. It might be on her wrist. She might still be alive. Or it might be on the wrist of someone who had killed her after she activated the concealed GPS. Even if it was her, its battery life was short. It could stop signaling her position at any moment. But after twenty-four hours of no communication—and the undeniable evidence that Securité Referral had hacked her phone—it was a million times better than knowing nothing at all, and he homed in on it with hope and cool deliberation.
His was not the only vehicle breaking the speed limit at this late hour. He tucked the rental tight behind a big Mercedes, betting it would draw the highway patrol’s attention first. If not, if they came after him, they were welcome to follow until he caught up with her. Then they were welcome to help or get out of his way.
He glanced at the Iridium. The red dot had disappeared. The signal had faded, the battery dying or no longer strong enough to transmit from a location shielded by metal. He switched to direct mode, instructing the software to scan for intermittent signals that were too weak to power the light on the map continuously but possibly strong enough to spit out bursts of the map coordinates if only for a second at a time.
* * *
SLOWLY, SADISTICALLY COKIE dug her fingers deep into Jessica Kincaid’s breast. She gasped and allowed herself to whimper until she heard Cokie’s own breath quicken with vicious desire. Then Kincaid bit down hard and sank her teeth into the fleshy mound at the base of the woman’s thumb.
Cokie screamed. She jerked her hand away and slapped Kincaid in the face. Kincaid kicked her, further enraging Cokie, who hauled off and punched her with all her considerable strength. It hurt like hell and spun Kincaid around so hard that she caromed off the wall of the van and fell backward against her tormentor.
“What are you doing?” yelled Blondie. “Get away from her!”
Cokie punched Kincaid again. Kincaid tumbled like a rag doll against the back of the van. She’d have a black eye and a bitch of a headache, soon.
Six feet away, Cokie was boasting, “That’ll teach her to bite.”
Blondie was not so easily fooled. “Where’s your pistol?”