She had no idea how much farther they had gone, her jeans soaked, dragging at her with every step.
Was Valentine somewhere behind her? What had she told them? Then they suddenly stopped.
There was discussion, but she couldn't hear what was said. She tried to see through the fabric of the hood. She could only make out when one of them moved, a dark shadow against the white glare of snow. Then she heard the sound of metal scraping over metal. The entrance to the quarry that Albert had described?
She was dragged forward, stumbled, then the cold was different. There was no wind, no glare of snow, only the echo of voices. She was shoved down onto a hard surface.
She listened for sounds, but heard only the distant sound of air moving in hollow places. She struggled to sit up, levering herself up until she fell back against another hard surface at her back. A wall somewhere inside the mine?
Nausea rolled in her stomach, that sweet taste still at the back of her throat. She took slow deep breaths, trying to clear her head, trying to think past the panic and fear that would have been so easy.
Unable to see, she focused on sounds. Where was Valentine? Had they taken her some other place? Was she alright?
She worked her hands against the cord that was tied around them, trying to loosen it, then stopped at a new sound and listened. Someone cursed in French, a man's voice, followed by a muffled moan.
“Put her there.” That same voice close now. “She may still be of use to us.”
Valentine?
Oh, God, she thought. What had they done to her?
Fear returned, along with James' warning.
“You don't know these people; what they do to women, children, anyone who gets in their way!”
Then the hood was suddenly yanked from her head. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the shadows.
Light spilled in through a gaping hole in the ceiling where a tree had fallen, taking the reinforcing timbers with it. She made out the shapes of at least a dozen cots, some sagging with decay, others crushed beneath limbs that had fallen with the tree, just as Albert had described.
Then she saw Valentine, slumped against the wall across from her. Her hood had been removed, her face bloodied and bruised, her head slumped forward.
“Unfortunate, but necessary.”
That voice, the sense of familiarity from the van.
Kris stared at the doorway and the man outlined there in light that spilled through from the passage. He was tall and slender, with silver white hair and light blue eyes.
CHAPTER
FORTY-SIX
Marcus Aronson slowly crossed the chamber. He pulled a chair from the shadows and sat across from her. It took several more seconds more for her brain to catch up.
Marcus? He was alive?
“You have questions,” he said. “It is understandable.”
Questions? At the moment all she could do was stare at the man seated across from her. She was still struggling with the fact that he was obviously part of all of this.
“Why, you ask,” he finished the thought for her. “The same question she asked.”
Whom was he talking about?
“She knew,” he replied. “She even spoke of it when she came to Paris and asked for my help. After all those years, after Sinai, then Beirut, Berlin, then Afghanistan. She wrote about it, thinly disguised, of course, in her first book.”
He was talking about Cate.
Kris pushed past the drugged haze. She thought back to that first book Cate had brought to her, that had skyrocketed onto the bestseller lists, that glimpse behind the events when the Six-Day war blew up in the Middle East; people behind the scenes who could have prevented it; the powerful people; politicalgamesmanship; and someone who had uncovered a deception that ignited everything, but was persuaded against speaking out about it; a burned-out journalist who ended up hiding out in a Paris hotel as people died; and the other one, a one-time lover, who exposed it all, but too late. All of it disguised by fictional names, dates, and places, to protect the innocent.
