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“You hear that, Wyatt?”
“Yeah. I’ll relay that to Crawley. Raffi will be fine. He and Crawley have been spending hours together now.”
“Let him call his friend, or Matty,” I suggest, thinking it’ll help the boy to feel at ease.
“Good idea.”
Wyatt arrives at the airport almost at the same time as Blake and me. After asking every aviation company around here, we know we’re running out of options.
We end up standing hopelessly at one of the piers in Lake Hood, staring at the rows of idle seaplanes around us. From what we know so far, where Isabelle may be taken to is nowhere near water.
Rob calls again. “They’re still on the move, Clay. And there’s a storm coming, so you know. You may be able to outfly it if you’re quick.”
“Okay.”
“And…” Rob pauses. “I’ve got a Thomas Matheson here.”
“Thomas?” Why the hell did that kid come to Rob?
“He’s Isabelle’s friend. Well, he claims to be, anyway.”
“Take a photo of him and send it to me.”
“His face is messed up, but here it is.”
Jesus Christ! He is messed up. His right eye is barely open as deep purple surrounds it, his upper lip is split, and his left cheek doesn’t fare much better.
“Let me talk to him!” I tell Rob.
“Clay!” Thomas’s calling my name is barely audible behind his heavy breathing.
“Where’s Don taking her? Tell me!”
“I don’t know, but I know that Don has booked a chopper from a company called Ilya-Pavel. Somewhere in Alyeska. You can’t find them in the Yellow Pages, but they’re there.
We speed up to Alyeska, and in the meantime, Rob shares with us the tracking data from HartTracker, overlaying it with a map of the terrains. Whoever did it is a genius.
With the terrain that we’ll be up against and the rescue that we’ll need to pull off, we definitely need a chopper.
“Hey!” I nudge Blake. “Recognize that man?”
The man in the suit hops out of a Land Rover, then prowls toward a small yard. If we were in California, he would blend in. But here, his figure sticks out like a sore thumb.
“Shit! That’s Don’s bodyguard!” Blake whisper-shouts.
The same man I saw in Kenya.
We follow him into a hangar.
I nod at Wyatt and Blake. “Gents, let’s keep this hijack quiet and quick.”
34
ISABELLE
The noxious face of the Grim Reaper greets me when the hatch lifts open.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Don glowers at the mess I made. He drags me out of the cargo space, pouring water all over my face and hair to wash off the remnants of my vomit.
