An unwelcome sight greeted them. ‘Oh, great,’ Eddie said, seeing a sign on the elevator warning that it was out of service due to the renovation work.
‘You want to wait here?’ asked Nina.
‘No, I’ll follow you. It’s only one floor up. Just hope the lift in our building’s working — I don’t want to have to limp up eight flights of stairs!’
‘See you up there, Hopalong.’ She kissed him, then went to the stairwell and jogged up.
There was nobody in the hallway outside the nursery. Half expecting another reprimand for tardiness, she entered. No one was in reception either. ‘Hello?’
Penny Lopez emerged from one of the rooms. ‘Oh, hi, Nina. You’re back— oh!’ She saw the bruises and cuts on the redhead’s face. ‘My God, are you okay? What happened?’
‘I’m fine,’ Nina assured her. ‘We had a fender-bender.’ She saw there were no coats on the hooks. ‘Did Macy go with Holly already?’
‘Yes, about ten minutes ago. Holly said you were coming, but I assumed she and Macy went to meet you on the street.’
‘They weren’t outside…’ Alarm bells started to ring in her mind, worry rising. She went back into the hallway. ‘Holly? Macy?’
No reply from either, but Eddie responded from the stairwell. ‘What is it?’
Nina looked down over the railing to see him awkwardly ascending. ‘Penny said Holly already left with Macy.’
His brow furrowed with concern. ‘She knew we were on the way, she wouldn’t have left without us.’
‘I know. Macy! Holly!’
Her shout echoed from the walls — then a faint cry came from somewhere above. ‘Mommy!’
The couple regarded each other with sudden fear. There was absolutely no reason why Holly would have taken their daughter higher into the building.
At least not of her own volition.
‘Macy, I’m coming!’ Nina shouted as she ran up the stairs.
Eddie struggled up behind her, his crutch thudding off each step. ‘Fucking shit!’ he gasped as he stumbled. ‘Find her, don’t worry about me!’
Nina pounded up the staircase. Macy’s wail had come from one of the higher floors, but she didn’t know which one. She reached the third-floor entrance and pulled it open. ‘Macy!’
No answer. A wall sign told her this floor was occupied by an accounting firm. The door to its reception area was glass, a woman visible at a desk beyond. She looked up in surprise. Macy and Holly hadn’t been here.
She hared up the next flight. The fourth floor was vacant, the lights off. Nina tried the door to the offices. Locked. The next level was undergoing renovation work, piles of drywall panels waiting to replace old plaster and lath. ‘Macy!’
A reply came, another cry of ‘Mommy!’ from above. Not the next floor, but higher. Nina scaled the stairs even more quickly and rushed into the seventh-floor hallway. This too was being renovated, new glazing units propped vertically on a trolley waiting to be installed. The nearest door was open. She rushed through it—
And froze.
Fenrir Mikkelsson sat on a crate in front of the windows, Sarah standing beside him. He held the frightened and crying Macy on his lap with one hand and a gun in the other. It was not raised, but still pointed in the general direction of Holly, who stood trembling in a corner of the empty, half-decorated room. ‘Nina,’ said the Icelander with unnerving calm. ‘I am so glad to see you again.’
Nina had no time for pleasantries or subtlety. ‘Let her go, you bastard! Macy, are you okay?’
The little girl struggled against his unbreakable grip. ‘Mommy, I’m scared.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ said Holly, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘I was bringing Macy downstairs to meet you, he had a gun…’
‘It’s okay, it’s not your fault,’ Nina assured her. ‘What do you want, Fenrir?’
His cold blue eyes flicked towards the door behind her. ‘Where is Eddie? I would have thought he would be here to meet his daughter.’
‘He’s on his way.’
‘Then we shall wait for him.’ He leaned back slightly, watching her with what seemed almost like admiration. ‘I understand that you two achieved what years of diplomacy and military posturing could not by ending part of North Korea’s covert nuclear programme.’
‘You don’t seem too upset about that.’ She kept her voice slightly above its normal volume, wanting to give Eddie advance warning of the situation.
‘I got what I wanted from the North Koreans.’ A glance at a holdall on the floor. From its shape, it contained something spherical, about the size of a basketbalclass="underline" the Crucible. ‘Anything that happened subsequently is not my concern.’
‘You brought the Crucible with you?’
‘Having gone through so much to obtain it, I was not going to leave it behind. I hope you appreciate that I was correct about US hypocrisy, by the way: the Americans kept the warheads for themselves.’ He straightened. ‘But congratulations on your success. I am sure you returned to this country as heroes.’
‘How did you get into the country?’ she demanded, wanting to keep him talking. As long as he was engaging with her, he would be less likely to hurt Macy. ‘You should be on the top of the international most-wanted list.’
‘I have my ways. Similar to ones that I know Eddie has used in the past. All of which are considerably easier when backed by large sums of money.’
‘So why are you here? Why not just use that money to hide?’
Mikkelsson’s expression barely changed, a slight narrowing of the eyes and a tightening of the lips, but he became almost infinitely more menacing. ‘You killed my daughter.’
‘Our daughter.’ Sarah spoke for the first time, her voice barely above a whisper. Nina’s attention had until now been on Mikkelsson; she realised his wife was clothed entirely in black. A mother in mourning for her child. There was no anger in her words, only deep sadness.
Mikkelsson did not react to her, his attention fixed upon Nina. ‘So I am going to take your daughter from you.’
‘Don’t you dare hurt her,’ Nina hissed, filled with sudden rage but powerless to act upon it. If she made a move towards him, he would shoot her before she had gone two steps.
‘I am not going to hurt her,’ the Icelander replied. ‘I am going to raise her. As if she were my own. You and Eddie took mine, so I shall take yours.’
Surprise formed on Sarah’s numbed, blank face. ‘What?’
‘Did you really think I would hurt a child?’ he said. ‘I am not a monster; surely you know that after twenty-six years of marriage. No, I am going to give you a beautiful new daughter.’
‘You… you think you can replace Ana?’ she replied, the words quavering with rising emotion. ‘Like getting a new phone? It… it doesn’t work like that!’ The cry exploded from her, startling Mikkelsson with its intensity. Macy wailed, afraid.
‘Sarah, I am doing this for you,’ he said. ‘For both of us!’
‘Our family isn’t a machine — you can’t just slot in a replacement part! You… you haven’t grieved for Ana, you haven’t even cried!’
The accusation seemed to sting him. ‘I am grieving, Sarah. In my own way.’ Nina risked a small step closer, hoping he was distracted but his gaze immediately snapped back, the gun shifting away from Holly and towards her. She froze again.
Sarah did not register the movement. ‘You do everything in your own way, Fenrir,’ she said, eyes brimming with tears. ‘You never let me close, and you never know what I’m feeling! You have no idea!’
‘Of course I do,’ he protested.