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“I’m here,” said Seshat, an MI5 agent I knew from past missions was a physician’s assistant. I was relieved to see she’d removed her gear. Ehren, a member of the Swiss task force, entered the room seconds later. She was also wearing street clothes. While I had no knowledge of her specific training, it was evident she was either a PA, like Seshat, or a medic.
“We’ve got this,” she said, motioning us out of their way.
“Goddamn motherfuckers. She was an example,” Poseidon said once we were out of the room.
He was right. The woman who lay on that bed was a fighter, and they’d turned her into a sacrificial lamb. Bexli was a fighter too. Had she met the same fate?
God, I needed to fucking find her. “Where is she, Kai?” I practically cried.
“We need to keep looking,” said Poseidon.
Before we got to the next door, Zep approached. “All rooms been cleared. There’s no sign of Bexli.”
“What about upstairs?”
“They didn’t find her either, Cay.”
Everything inside me screamed at my idiocy. Why had I done it this way? Why hadn’t I followed my instincts and just bloody bid on her? God knew where she might be. I’d been so fucking close, and instead of rescuing her, I may have put her in greater danger.
I was on the verge of screaming and putting my fist through the wall when I heard Poseidon shout my name.
“Cayman!Over here. I’ve found something.”
8
BEXLI
Instead of men running in my direction, I heard a woman’s voice. She was getting closer, shouting at someone, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. A man responded, also in a raised voice. I had no idea what language they were speaking, but it sounded more like Arabic than Italian.
When the argument stopped and I thought I heard a door close, I moved the cardboard and gripped the stone wall behind me, trying to pull myself to my feet.
“Min hemm?”A woman standing in a doorway only a short distance from me shrieked when I stood.
I tried to run farther into the alley, but tripped and fell to my knees. She rushed over to help me up, still talking, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. Her tone, though, was laced with concern.
“Come,” she said in a heavy accent. I shook my head, knowing I should try to run again, but I didn’t have the strength. She put her arm around my back and led me to the open door.
What choice did I have? If I didn’t go inside with her, Moretti’s men would eventually find me.
Freedom was all that mattered. I hadn’t thought beyond escaping. Now that I’d gotten out, gotten away, I had no idea what to do next. Could I trust the woman not to tell anyone I was here until I could figure out a way to get help? Once I regained my strength, I could sneak out of here too. If there was one thing I’d learned, first from growing up in a house filled with physical and mental abuse, then from Moretti, it was that I could rely on my own wits and I could get the fuck away.
I let the woman lead me into what looked like the empty kitchen of a restaurant. I didn’t hear or see anyone other than her. When she switched on a light, I realized she was older. Maybe in her seventies.
“Come,” she repeated.
I looked up the steep-and-narrow staircase she’d slowly walked me to and shook my head. “I can’t,” I cried. Just uttering those two words had me stumbling. I fell to my knees on the second stair.
Rather than help me up again, she continued to the second level. She returned a couple of minutes later with a pillow and blanket.
I raised my head when she motioned for me to. She laid the pillow beneath it, then covered me with the blanket. I expected her to leave me there. Instead, she squeezed in beside me and stroked my hair.
My eyes drifted closed as I listened to her hum, wondering if maybe I’d died out in the alley and the old woman caring for me so tenderly was an angel.
“Cay,” I whispered again. If I were dead, he was the only one who would truly care. Not my parents or my brother. Maybe my mum would a little, but she was so wrapped up in doing everything she could just to survive from one day to the next that she would probably be thankful she no longer had me to worry about.
Winston—Cayman, as I’d called him since he took me there the year after we graduated secondary school—was the person who’d shown me, taught me about a life entirely different than the one I lived.
I was seven when I met him. My mother got a job working for his family, and she’d take me with her. If she didn’t, God knew what my father might do. Beat me would be the least of it when he came home from his job as a stonemason to find my mum gone. He wouldn’t remember or even think about the reason she’d been forced to find work. She’d gotten a job in order to feed my brother and me since my father’s paycheck was used mainly to keep him in booze.
