Джеймс Паттерсон - The 18th Abduction

The ones who learned fast, did as they were told, they didn’t even talk to the other women about what they’d endured. What good was it to complain? They had to live another day and hope for an opportunity to get away.

By being smart, she and Dalila and a few others had survived and gotten out at the end of the war. But this was America. There was no war here. And yet here she was in a rape hotel.

Anna washed her face with hot water, and kept washing as she remembered the hotel in Djoba. One indelible memory looped in her mind. The men berating Uma before they shot her to death. Uma hadn’t cried or even put up a hand. She had wanted to die.

Anna’s own hands shook as she dried off with the towel.

Then she peeled the note from the mirror and looked into her own eyes. She had gotten older since she’d last seen her face.

Her eyelids drooped, and the corners of her mouth sagged from fear and pain. She moved her hair back. The scar was livid, and there was blood behind her ear.

She released the sheaf of hair, and for a moment her younger self was reflected in the glass. Her radiant smile as she dressed for her wedding, patted powder on her unblemished skin.

Tears jumped into her eyes, and she ran the hot water again and cried into the stream, scrubbing hard, trying to wash all of this away, at the same time listening for the boot kicking in the door and the beating.

What kind of God would allow her to be taken again?

She thought about Joe’s many stern warnings and the height of her arrogance.

She’d maneuvered around him, followed Petrović, refused to wait for the men with guns to do their job.

She had brought this down on herself.

Anna was so agonized by her own behavior that she couldn’t stand to look at herself anymore. She opened the medicine cabinet and found a bottle of drugstore painkillers. She spilled tablets into her shaking hand, swallowed down the maximum dose, and put more pills in her pocket.

She turned off the light and quietly opened the bathroom door. There was another door at the end of the short hallway and also an opening, an entrance to another room.

Anna tiptoed on bare feet to that entranceway, and even though she didn’t know what she was walking into, she stepped over the threshold.

Chapter 92

Anna was only looking for an exit, but stepping into the living room, she was taken by the size of it, the high ceilings, light coming from a large, muted TV near a fireplace.

A news show was on, an international channel, with the times in major cities displayed in the lower corner of the screen. Anna watched until it read San Francisco, 3:15.

She couldn’t be sure, but as best as she could remember, she’d lost herself on Friday night.

She’d been in the Tesla outside Petrović’s house, prepared to follow him to whatever mysterious places he went when he wasn’t at home or at the restaurant. The rear-end collision had entirely shocked her, throwing her into the steering wheel and out of the seat. She’d been furious when she’d gotten out of her smashed loaner, and then stunned to see the Serbian soldier in the blue Escalade.

Anna remembered him clearly now from the hotel in Djoba. He had beaten her with a chair leg and then…she didn’t want to think about it.

He was probably here now.

Anna felt suddenly light-headed and her knees buckled. She grabbed at the wall, slipped down to the floor, and stayed there until she felt she could stand.

Where was he? Was he watching her now?

She had to leave this place. She had to get out.

Anna looked around the dimly lit room, past the clumps of furniture, to the shuttered windows, back to the sofa, where she noticed the dark shape of a person sitting there with arms around tucked-up knees.

God, no. Was it him?

No. It was a woman.

Another prisoner.

Anna spoke in a whisper. “Hello?”

The woman on the couch beckoned her to come over.

“I’m Susan,” she said. “Talking together is against the rules, so we have to speak softly and fast.”

Chapter 93

Anna sat down beside Susan, and for the next three hours they barely moved, their bodies touching from shoulder to hip to thigh. They spoke like sisters.

Susan said, “This is important, Anna. We have to play it cool.”

Anna said, “I know. Buy time.”

Susan told her about the routine, the names of the men who watched, cooked, used her, and Anna asked about Petrović—did he live here and how often did he come to this place?

“Petrović? I don’t know that name. Tony is the boss. Antonije Branko.”

“That’s him. Tony. It’s a fake name. Susan, he’s a war criminal. I know him from Bosnia. Do you know if he was with me last night?”

Susan said, “No, it was my turn. He went to your room, but you were out cold. He said he likes it better when the girl has a little fight. You got Junior. He doesn’t care if you’re already dead.”

Tears rolled down Anna’s face, but she talked through them. She told Susan that she had known Tony as Colonel Slobodan Petrović and that he had decimated her town in Bosnia.

Susan grabbed her hand as Anna spoke of her losses and the months she had lived at the rape hotel. “Like this, only with shootings and bombs. I’ve seen a man who works with Petrović at the steak house. He has a short gray beard. He…”Anna stopped to get control of her tears. Then, “He knows me from Djoba.”

“Marko,” Susan said. “He’s a sadist. Well. They all are.”

Susan told Anna about the night two weeks ago when Tony and Marko had abducted her and her friends, how Carly had gone crazy and Tony had killed her.

“An ‘object lesson,’ Tony called it. Oh, it got through to us, all right,” Susan said. “Then Tony said he was letting one of us go on an outing. He flipped a coin and Adele won. I wanted desperately to go, but I couldn’t be mad at Adele.

“Tony brought her new clothes and then, presto, drove her away. They let her leave.”

Anna asked, “Do you mean Adele Saran?”

“How did you know?”

“I’m sorry, Susan. Be glad you didn’t go.”

Anna told Susan what she’d seen on the news, that Adele had been killed and hanged from a tree. Susan clapped her hands over her mouth and cried. Anna put her arms around her new friend, and they clung to each other, grieving without making a sound.

When she could speak again, Susan said, “I don’t know why I believed Tony. I thought if I was sweet to him…I was so stupid.”

“You had hope,” Anna said. “They hadn’t destroyed it.”

Anna wondered if it was safe to have hope now.

In the dark, while the men slept, Susan and Anna discussed what they had to do to escape. Nothing was off-limits—violence, tricks, charm.

Together they checked the front door, as Susan had done before. Maybe this time the bastards had forgotten to lock it. No such luck. The shuttered windows were also locked. Their search in the foyer for cell phones in jacket pockets turned up nothing. Knives were locked in drawers.

At seven in the morning Susan and Anna went to their bedrooms and got into bed with their captors.

Chapter 94

At just before noon, Conklin and I paid a call on Taqueria del Lobo to let Mr. Martinez know that the lab had impounded his vehicle again.

Conklin opened the door and we walked into a shit-storm in progress.

Martinez was yelling at Lucinda Drucker in the front room, which was packed with customers.

“I told you, Lucy. I warned you. And now you gave my car to that asshole boyfriend of yours and the damned thing is still missing and now you’re fired. I’m calling the police—oh. Hola, Officers. Here they are.”

I handed him the warrant and told him the bad news.