AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"It's a synthetic compound developed by the Iranian military. A ketamine base with some other elements. Very fast-acting. They use it for abductions when they want no noise, no fuss."
He nodded, accepting and absorbing that. He licked his dry lips and sucked enough spit from his cheeks to allow himself to swallow. It helped, but only a little.
"Why?"
Aayun shrugged. "You don't know? Haven't you figured it out yet?"
"Sorry, but no. Why would I understand anything about something like this? You drugged me and brought me . . . where?" The room was a concrete box, big and dark, with bare walls but crowded with packing crates of all sizes. The stencils on the closest crates indicated that they were machine parts from Canada. "Am I still in America?"
"Maybe you're in the last place you'll ever be, Toys," she said.
Toys.
There it was. She knew who he was, and suddenly the fragile construction of their chance meeting cracked and fell to the ground, leaving behind a lot of possibilities. All of them were ugly.
He straightened and reappraised her, and as he did so, the chair to which he was bound creaked. The tape held him fast to it, with his hands behind the back slat and his ankles tight to the front legs.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Who do you think I am?"
"A wicked bitch who needs her throat cut. But that's just my wishful thinking."
She got up and walked over to him, smiled, and then slapped him across the face. She did it forehand and backhand. Hard blows that tore his lips and rattled his head. She knew how to hit and how to hurt.
Then, still smiling, she went back to her seat. "Try again."
He spat blood onto the floor between them. "Is Aayun even your real name?"
Her dark eyes glittered with strange light. "Yes. Does it ring any bells? It should."
Toys thought about it. Over the years he'd met a lot of people, and a fair number were from the Middle East. Sebastian Gault and Hugo Vox both had extensive dealings throughout that part of the world. How many women named Aayun had he known? One? But she was an old woman and probably dead. How many had he known of? That took more thought, and he could come up with only two. One was the young wife of an antiquities broker in Cairo. He'd seen her only briefly once, and this woman was the wrong physical type. Who was the other? He had to fish for it. A niece of someone? No . . . a younger sister. Seen only once in a family photo but spoken of often. The sister of . . .
He froze and felt the blood drain from his face. Aayun was watching him, and she nodded when she saw that he remembered.
"You're her sister?" he said.
"Yes," she said.
And then all of the memories that had tugged at him whenever he'd looked at Aayun clicked into place. If he had seen her somewhere other than a Catholic church, if they'd met under any circumstance that might have tied her more firmly to her family, then he might have understood sooner. Now he felt like a fool, and very possibly a suicidally stupid one.
"You're Amirah's sister," he breathed.
"Yes," she said again.
"Dear God . . ."
"I've looked for you for such a long time, Toys," she said. "First I chased rumors, and twice I thought you were dead. People have been saying that you went soft. That you found God. That you lost your nerve."
"Is that what people say?"
"They do. People have been looking closely at you. You used to be a careful person, but now you've become predictable, even clumsy. You live at that resort, you eat in the same diner every day. You go for long walks on the beach. You go to church nearly every day. You make no ripples. So . . . yes, the people who file reports on you say that you've lost your nerve, that you've become weak. That you're no one."
She paused, but Toys said nothing.
"So I had to come and see for myself. I had to know for sure."
"Know what?" asked Toys.
