'I have to go now.'
Kusum turned his back and walked to the door. Jack had to admit the bastard had nerve.
He paused and faced Jack. 'But I want to tell you one more thing: I spared your life tonight.”
Incredulous, Jack rose to his feet. 'What?'
He was tempted to mention the rakoshi but remembered Kolabati's plea to say nothing of them. Apparently she hadn't told Kusum that Jack had been on the boat tonight.
'I believe I spoke clearly. You are alive now only because of the service you performed for my family. I now consider that debt paid.”
'There was no debt. It was fee for service. You paid the price, I rendered the service. We've always been even.'
'That is not the way I choose to see it. However, I am informing you now that all debts are canceled. And do not follow me. Someone might suffer for that.'
'Where is she?' Jack said, leveling the pistol. 'If you don't tell me, I'm going to shoot you in the right knee. If you still won't talk, I'll shoot you in the left knee.'
Jack was quite ready to do what he said but Kusum made no move to escape. He continued facing him calmly.
'You may begin,' he told Jack. 'I have suffered pain before.'
Jack glanced at Kusum's empty left sleeve, then looked into his eyes and saw the unbreakable will of a fanatic. Kusum would die before uttering a word.
After an interminable silence, Kusum smiled thinly, stepped into the hall, and closed the door behind him. Containing the urge to hurl the pistol against the door, Jack went over and locked it, but not before giving it a good kick.
Was Kolabati really in some kind of danger, or had Kusum been bluffing? He had a feeling he’d been outplayed, but still did not see how he could have risked calling the bluff.
The question was: Where was Kolabati? He would try to trace her. Maybe she really was on her way back to Washington. He wished he could be sure.
Jack kicked the door again. Harder.
Chapter Nine
Tuesday
1
With a mixture of anger, annoyance, and concern, Jack slammed the phone back into its cradle. For the tenth time this morning he’d called Kusum's apartment and listened to an endless series of rings. He’d alternated those calls with others to Washington, DC information. He’d found no listing for Kolabati in the District or in northern Virginia, but a call to Maryland information had turned up a number for a K. Bahkti in Chevy Chase.
No answer there all morning, either. Only a four-hour drive from here to the capital. She’d had plenty of time to make it—if she really had left New York. Jack didn't accept that. Kolabati had struck him as far too independent to knuckle under to her brother.
Visions of Kolabati bound and gagged in a closet somewhere plagued him. She was probably more comfortable than that, but he was sure she was Kusum's prisoner. It was because of her relationship with Jack that her brother had taken action against her. He felt responsible.
Kolabati...his feelings were confused at this point. He cared for her, but he couldn't say he loved her. She seemed, rather, to be a kindred spirit, one who understood him and accepted—even admired—him for what he was. Augment that with an intense physical attraction and the result was a unique bond that was exhilarating at times. But it wasn't love.
He had to help her. So why had he spent most of the morning on the phone? Why hadn't he gone over to the apartment and tried to find her?
Because he had to get over to Sutton Square. Something within had been nudging him in that direction all morning. He wouldn't fight it. He’d learned through experience to obey those nudgings. It wasn't prescience. Jack didn't buy ESP or telepathy. The nudgings meant his subconscious mind had made correlations not yet apparent to his conscious mind and was trying to let him know.
Somewhere in his subconscious, two and two and two had added up to Sutton Place. He should go there today. This morning. Now.
He pulled on some clothes and slipped the Semmerling into its ankle holster. Knowing he probably would need it later in the day, he stuffed his housebreaking kit—a set of lock picks and a thin plastic ruler—into a back pocket and headed for the door.
It felt good to be doing something at last.
2
'Kusum?'
Kolabati heard a rattling down the hall. She pressed an ear against the upper panel of her cabin door. The noise had come from the door that led to the deck. The clank of a lock. It had to be Kusum.
She prayed he’d come to release her.
An endless night, quiet except for faint rustlings from within the depths of the ship. Kolabati knew she was safe, that she was sealed off from the rakoshi; and even if one or more did break free of the cargo areas, the necklace about her throat would protect her from detection. Yet her sleep had been fitful at best. She thought about the awful madness that had completely overtaken her brother; she worried about Jack and what Kusum might do to him.
