“She just …” he stammers, like he saw a ghost. “She disappeared.”
AXEL
Like a plume of smoke.
We scoured the grounds, and it’s as my guard suggested. Zara vanished. The assailant she’d chased was found dead, so I would assume she had the honor.
Maybe there were more men outside. Maybe she was too outnumbered. They must’ve taken her.
I can’t wrap my head around that either though. The way she fought inside the church, it was apparent that she could have neutralized all two dozen men on her own.
Both her bracelet and her collar have tracking devices in them. She was aware of the bracelet and elected to keep wearing it. We followed her moving dot all over the island, but she was in the air before we reached her. The listening capability the bracelet generally provides isn’t working, which could mean it was smashed or tampered with or disabled on purpose.
Wrath and anxiety war within me. Acid jostles in my stomach. The uncanny notion that answers will only deepen my fog slams into me, threatening to mow me over. It’s like my subconscious is clinging to a trail I’m unwilling to pursue.
My CIA contacts are cleaning up the church mess as my two remaining guards and I fly back to Louisiana. We’re a little over two hours behind her, so from what we can discern, whoever has her is headed back to North America with her now.
My phone lights up as I’m boarding. It’s one of my CIA guys.
“Tell me you have something.”
“We accessed the security cameras,” he begins.
“Thank fuck.” I make my way to the bar to pour myself a drink rather than waiting for a member of the crew to bring me one. “What did you find? Any identity?”
“Nothing. They were wiped already.” He stalls, a laden pause filled with the kind of haunting anticipation that is sure to slaughter. “We obtained identities from several of the dead—all for-hire hit men, so nothing to point to whoever had ordered it. Who the hell did you piss off? These are pros. They even wiped footage from halfway up the hill. Who knew your location?”
My family. KORT. Possibly Zara’s father.
Kratos.
An ambush wouldn’t be part of Zara’s KORT loyalty test, even if they structured it like a trial, as Ivy suggested they might. Under no circumstances would the chairs orchestrate something that included either one of us being shot in the setup.
I end that call and dial Wells, determined to make him straighten this the hell out. I don’t wait for him to speak; I simply launch into the crisis when the ringing subsides. I brief him on what happened, leaving out small details in the hope that if he’s hiding something, he’ll fuck up and divulge it. All he offers is a sling of curses that matches the nightmare I’m relaying.
Finally, I’ve had enough dancing around. “Zara was your asset, right?”
“My asset?” The varnish of puzzlement on that parroting is alarming.
“Don’t fuck with me, Wells. Your hire for KORT to infiltrate La Lune Noire—it was Zara.”
He sighs—a wounded sound of conflict and exasperation. “I did not hire Zara to infiltrate La Lune Noire, no. What’s going on? Is that what she told you?”
This can’t be happening.
Kratos.
My ears pop as the jet reaches a new altitude and we hit some turbulence. The flight attendant and guards glare at me, somewhat sheepishly, but I sit like they’re silently requesting and order them all to get out of my sight before returning to Wells.
“Zara didn’t … I assumed she was the agent you’d brought in. She showed up around the same time. Is this her loyalty test or trial—her missing right now? Is that what’s going on?”
“Her trial was going to be …” He trails off, probably struggling with whether he should share it, or maybe he’s thinking my wife is a goddamn traitor. “We had nothing to do with her being taken or disappearing. Nothing to do with the attack. We don’t know where she is right now. I’m sorry, Axel.”
She left me? She betrayed me and left me. Fuck.
I’m stuck on this plane, and all I want to do is blow something up.
“Mark my words: when you least expect it, the roles will reverse.”She professed that the day we faced off in my office, the day I foolishly laid out a plan to marry her off to someone else when the very thought made me sick.
