Page 81 of Keep Me Safe
“Kara would not knowingly lead you into a trap,” L said. “And if she was forced, she’d do everything she could to warn us.”
She’d escaped.She was still in Germany. Kara could be waiting for me right this second, holed up somewhere safe. I just had to get to her.
I started thinking aloud. “It’s five hours from here.”
“We won’t take the plane. It’s not faster and too visible,” Jason said.
I nodded. I’d drive—faster than I’d ever driven.
“This could be a trap just as easily,” Ethan remarked, hesitant.
My email chimed again. Same fake email address, a different subject this time:For Laurel.
My knees collapsed me into a chair. In this picture, Kara looked unconscious. She was dressed in a pair of muddy pants and a drenched, bloody shirt, her body curled up on a rug covering a white tile floor. If this picture was recent, she’d been recaptured.
The swing from high to low was devastating. Everyone in the room sensed the shift in me, and movement ceased.
“What is it?” L’s fearful whisper broke the quiet.
“Juric,” I said, scanning the rest of the email, trying to stay detached, “has instructions for you.”
“For me?”
“There’s login information for a video conference. He wants to talk to you, and only you, at nine tomorrow morning.” My stomach bottomed out as I read the next part. “He’ll kill her if you’re not alone in the room.”
L’s shoulders drew up sharply, and she blinked a few times. Her gaze went to her husband, her bright blue eyes determined. “You need to prepare me for what he might say. I don’t want to do anything that might set him off.”
She was scared to see Juric again but wasn’t going to let that fear stop her.
He went to her, seizing her face in his hands. He didn’t like this idea any more than she did, but what choice did they have? “We’ll set it up so we’re watching from the other room. I’ll be right next door.”
As I watched this exchange, I was vaguely aware of Ethan tugging the phone from my hand, anxious to read the email and put his people on it.
A quick evaluation said the picture was recent. My heart thudded slower again, the hope dwindling somewhat. But I had a location. She’d been in that shop in Trier this morning, which meant wherever she’d escaped from had been close by. She’d been barefoot, after all.
Ethan was handed the keys to the Range Rover that was kept at the safe house and said he’d follow us.
I drove while L and Jason sat in the back seat of my Audi, her helping her husband search for possible locations Kara could have been hidden. We were eighty kilometers outside Trier when Jason called Ethan and put the phone on speaker.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “This house was rented last week, but the renter only exists on paper.” He rattled off an address. “What can you find out about it?”
“I’ll put in a request for satellite surveillance,” Ethan said. “If I’m granted permission, it should take a few hours to re-purpose.”
Jason’s startled gaze met mine in the rearview mirror. “Christ,” my brother said, “you weren’t kidding about resources.”
The thought gripped me suddenly. Juric was the asset the CIA was interested in, not Kara. “Don’t cut us out, go after Juric, and fuck it all up,” I snarled.
There was a tense pause. “You don’t have to worry about that. I’m not on a sanctioned op here.” Ethan’s voice was tight and strained. “Only my director knows what I’m doing, and he’s looking the other way. I may not have let the dog off the leash, but I’m part of the hand that did, so that’s on me. I’m going to see this through to the fucking end.”
He hung up.
Was the end Juric’s death, like I hoped it would be? Which I was sure Jason wanted it to be?
It was night outside, and the pavement was damp from the rain. For a long time, the only sound was the windshield wipers streaking across glass. L had fallen asleep, her forehead against the crook of her husband’s neck.
I didn’t expect Jason to have any answers even though he’d been where I was now, but I asked it anyway, my words low. “How did you do this?”
How had he endured knowing the woman he cared deeply about was in Juric’s hands?
