He gasped and looked up at Luther. “I saved Broch. He would have been in the house—”
Luther nodded. “It’s a problem, but it’s a problem that was supposed to happen.”
“Supposed to happen?” Sean hit the table with the side of his fist, making the beers jump. “So you’re saying my wife was supposed to die?”
Luther grimaced. “You know that ain’t how I mean it—”
“Then how do you mean it? And how do you know?”
Luther put out a hand to rest it on Sean’s. With his other hand, he pushed aside his ale and put a finger to his eye. He pulled down his lower lid.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Sean watched as Luther removed a contact.
“Since when do you wear—”
Luther looked up at him. His one eye was so blue it was nearly white. Sean had only ever seen eyes like that on one other person.
“Please don’t tell me you’re Rune’s brother.”
Luther laughed and replaced the contact. “Naw, you’re too funny.”
“So what does that mean?”
“Means Rune and I have been doing this for a long time. You ever notice your eyes getting lighter?”
Sean thought about it, picturing his own image in his bathroom mirror at home.
“I...no.”
Luther shrugged. “You’re only on your third go-round. Just a kid, really...”
“My third—” Sean sighed. “Luther, I can’t take much more of this today. Tell me what I have to do to get back home.”
“That’s easy.” Luther grinned and raised his tankard. “You have to die.”
Chapter Nineteen
Catriona felt someone grab her roughly by the shoulder and pull her from Volkov’s limousine. She pretended to stumble and rubbed her face on the man’s arm as he tightened his grip and yanked her to her feet. Her wrists were zip-tied behind her back, and her plan had been to push away the blindfold around her eyes against the man’s shoulder. Her scheme worked—at least well enough to peek out the top as she hung her head in apparent misery.
Not that she wasn’t genuinely miserable. It had taken her most of the drive to control her emotions over Broch’s assassination. It all felt so stupid. It had happened so fast. One second he stood by her side and the next she watched helplessly as—
The car door behind her slammed.
Stop it. You can’t think about him now.
She hung her head and tried to get a picture of her surroundings. From what she could see through the crack in her blindfold, it looked as though they were in a neighborhood. Not a particularly nice one. Row after row of tan, stained-stucco ranch-style homes. Toys. Metal fences around the front yards with signs warning of dogs. The kind of neighborhood where people knew not to call the police about two blindfolded and bound women being led into a house. People here kept to their business.
Luckily, the ball of fabric they’d shoved into her mouth shortly before stopping kept her from having to make the agonizing decision between scream-for-help-and-be-killed and don’t-scream-for-help-and-be-killed.
Catriona tilted her head to get a better view of the house the men pulled her towards. This rancher looked like all the others, except a man stood on the porch, looking as if he’d been expecting them. Tall, dirty-blond, coarse features, bit of a paunch—the sort of face only youth made attractive for a brief moment in time. Hopefully, he had a wife or would soon. Time was not this young man’s friend.
The man at her side steered her with the grip on her upper arm. Her toe struck the first step to the porch and she lifted a foot to feel for the next riser. Impatient, the man dragged her up the next two and pushed her towards Paunchy.
“Put ‘em in the room.”
No sooner was the pressure on her arm released than it began anew, slightly lower, closer to her elbow, as the new man took over duties. He led her inside and she caught a brief glimpse of a sparsely furnished, depressing living room before being shoved unsuccessfully through a doorway. Her shoulder clipped the frame and she grunted in pain.
Catriona heard the sound of a jackknife opening and felt a rush of panic before the pressure began on the zip-ties around her hands.
They’re cutting me loose.
Her hands sprang free and she reached up to pull the cloth from her mouth. She took a deep breath through her mouth as she slid down the blindfold.
The door clicked shut behind her and she found herself in a windowless room lit only by a dull bulb in the light screwed to the ceiling. Fly-shaped shadows littered the bulb’s opaque plastic enclosure.
Nice touch.
A blubbery cry brought her attention to Mo, the only thing keeping the room from being completely empty. The woman’s muffled sobs had been the only sound in the car for miles, and released from her gag too, she gasped in an attempt to catch her breath.
“It’s okay, it’s okay.” Catriona took a step towards Mo and rubbed the woman’s back with one hand.
It wasn’t okay. There was nothing okay about their situation, but the only thing worse than being held captive, was being held captive with a woman who couldn’t stop crying.
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” said Mo, sounding more defeated than panicked. It was a start.
“Your husband has been selling your leftover clothes to the Russians, or to Serbians, Albanians... whatever Eastern European hellhole these creeps crawled out of. That’s what happened.”
Mo squinted at her through already swollen eyes. “What?”
“It was Alain, Mo. You told him you’d sent me on an errand, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I was mad he sent you to win me back, but you were going to help—”
“Alain didn’t want me to solve your problem.”
Mo tucked back her chin as if the concept of someone not wanting to
