Then I go back to the kitchen.
I add ‘call mom back’ to a list in my head that has nothing else on it.
? ? ?
11:23 AM. Lex pings me.
‘Working it. I'll call you when I have her.’
I type back: ‘Okay.’
I do not say ‘I love you.’ I do not say ‘be careful.’ I do not say ‘come home.’ I say ‘okay,’ because in the days I have known the man, I have learned that what he needs from me when he’s in the field is not the maintenance of our emotional connection. What he needs from me is the knowledge that I am where he left me, that I am holding the line at the brownstone, and that I am not going to demand anything from him until he calls.
I open my laptop, but I don’t work. The laptop is open because if I close it, I will start screaming.
? ? ?
3:08 PM. Lex calls.
I pick up before the second ring.
"They are trying to negotiate," he says.
His voice is the voice he uses when he’s about to do something he doesn’t want me to know the details of. The voiceis calm. and the voice of a man whose discipline is the only thing keeping him from saying the version of this sentence he wants to say.
"Negotiate for what?”
"Money. The men who took her were Reznikov contractors, but they have gone independent. This was not sanctioned from above. They decided my daughter was worth more to them than the job they were hired for, and now they want me to pay to get her back."
"Pay them."
"I would. They are not asking for money I can wire. They want a face-to-face."
My chest tightens. "Don't go alone, Lex."
"I won’t. Cormac is with me. Declan is on the way."
"Lex."
"Yes."
"Bring her home."
"I promise I will."
He hangs up.
? ? ?
Six o'clock comes. Then seven. Then eight.
Eleni has fallen asleep against the arm of the couch. Theodoros came back at 6:30 and gave her a second mild sedative because she had not slept and her blood pressure was that of a sixty-eight-year-old Greek woman whose granddaughter is missing and whose son is in the field.
He carried her gently to the guest room and put her in the bed in her clothes because she was already asleep whenhe picked her up. The Konstantinos family doctor, of thirty-seven years, is carrying his patient down the hall with the grave reverence of a man who has watched her bury a husband and is not going to let her bury anyone else today.
Now I am alone in the kitchen.
My phone is face down on the marble. I have not heard from Lex in three hours and seventeen minutes. The last text was at 4:51 PM. ‘Closer.’ One word. The word came in, and I held my phone, read it, and put the phone face down again.
