Liridona, her eyes squeezed shut, interrupted her prayers to whisper, “What was that?”
Alli was too busy to answer her, and Liridona did not ask again. A fist of ice had formed in the pit of her stomach and she fought down a wave of panic. She thought of Jack and took deep breaths to calm herself, but the streetlight still looked as if it was a football field away. For a long, gut-wrenching moment, they swung above the narrow concrete walkway between buildings. If they fell, there was nothing soft to break their landing. Gritting her teeth, she returned to crabbing her way across the network of vines. One step at a time, she told herself. One step at a time.
They were still several arms’ lengths from the streetlamp when the vine gave way. Liridona shrieked as they began to fall.
Kicking out against the wall, Alli swung them back and forth like a pendulum. At the apex of the arc nearest the streetlight, she let go with fingers and toes. For a moment they flew through the air. Then the streetlight smacked her in the stomach and they slid down until she could get her arms and legs around it. She hung there for a moment with Liridona shivering on her back. Then she inched them down. When they reached the cement, Liridona continued to cling to Alli, sobbing with relief and shock. Alli rocked her for a moment, then pushed her gently against the side of the house.
“Stay here,” she whispered.
Liridona’s eyes went wide. “Where are you going?”
“I can’t leave Thate and Vasily behind.”
She went quickly along the side of the safehouse until she reached the front corner. Peeking around, she saw Xhafa’s men drag Thate’s body out the front door and pile it on Vasily’s corpse.
PART FOUR
BLOOD TRUST
THIRTY-TWO
ALLI WAS in the middle of the student riot in the city plaza. The fog, a metallic brown from gunpowder, garbage, and the grit of the streets, thrust itself like a living thing against her. She was buffeted by the currents of running people. Screams found her, as insistent as the tolling of bells from the cathedral, which seemed to watch indifferently with its elongated El Greco face.
In the melee, Alli lost sight of Liridona altogether, and her heart beat even faster in her chest as she plowed her way through the mob, nearer now to the mass of truncheons lifting and falling, to the sprays of blood and bone, to the tilted bodies, to the cries of pain and terror.
Then she spotted one of Arian Xhafa’s men, his tall frame sinister as a bat, rising for a moment above the heads of the students. Her way lay directly in the path of the militia. She calculated that there was no time to circle around, so she plunged ahead until she was close to the line of truncheons, advancing en masse like a phalanx of Roman soldiers. On hands and knees, she made herself inconspicuous, crawling through the churning legs of the militia until she eeled her way to the other side.
Scrambling to her feet, she looked around and spotted the men pushing Liridona around a corner. On the fringe of the mob at last, she ran toward the corner. Running with her heart in her mouth, running toward the sudden roar of gunshots that spurted at her from around the corner.
“No!” she cried. “No!”
Hurtling around the corner, she was jerked off her feet. She stared into the monstrous eyes of the Syrian. The blue eye, the green eye. They regarded her as if each had a separate intelligence, both cold as permafrost.
From somewhere out of her sight, she heard Liridona weeping, and, like glass shattering against stone, she began to struggle free. But the Syrian shoved the barrel of his pearl-gripped .45 into her mouth.
“Once again, quiet.” His voice a constricting iron band. “Before the end.”
The air shivered as Edon, appearing out of nowhere, swung a tire iron into the Syrian’s back. His body arched forward and he let go of the .45 as he fell. Darting down, Alli picked it up.
“How—?” She aimed the pistol at the Syrian, but she heard Liridona’s scream.
“There’s no time!” Edon shouted, turning and running down a dank back alley.
Alli sprinted after her. “Stay back!” she called. “Stay back, Edon!”
Catching up with the girl, Alli ran past her. She could see Liridona between the two men. On the run, she shot one of them in the shoulder. The other turned his handgun on her and she shot him dead. The first man grabbed his wounded shoulder, then, shaking himself like a dog coming in from the rain, ran straight at her. Liridona leaped, barreled into the back of his knees, and he stumbled down onto the filthy concrete. Liridona scooped up his handgun and, as he twisted his torso up and took a swing at her, shot him point-blank in the face.
THIRTY-THREE
“SHE’S REMARKABLE, you know.”
Annika, sitting next to Jack on the ferry from Vlore to Brindisi, on the eastern coast of Italy, looked over to where Alli was talking animatedly with Edon and Liridona. The first thing they needed to do when they reached Italy was to go clothes shopping.
Jack was dog-tired, and he ached all over. He wondered whether he had a fever. He’d lost his antibiotics somewhere during their strange and bloody odyssey. It would be good to get home.
“Is that what you meant to say?” His voice was soft.
Annika glanced at him for a moment. “I feel … I don’t know, I feel close to her.”
“She feels the same way toward you.”
This brought the ghost of a smile to Annika’s face. “I must get back to my grandfather.”
“Surely he has people taking care of him.”
She nodded. “Very good people.”
“Then come back to D.C. with us.”
Her eyes looked inward. “Maybe,” she murmured, as if to herself, “if only for a little while.”
Now it was Jack’s turn to look at the three girls across the companionway. “I saw you talking with Liridona.”
Annika was silent for a moment. The ferry rocked slightly from side to side. The great diesel engines vibrated through the decks.
“She told me the secret that cost Arjeta her life, and almost cost her hers. Arjeta had been in the compound in Vlore. Apparently, it wasn’t Arian Xhafa’s compound. It belonged to the Syrian.”
“The man Alli encountered at the safehouse and then again in the street.”
Annika nodded. “The Syrian had a woman with him in the compound.”
“A mistress?”
“Possibly, but from what I’ve heard about the Syrian I doubt it. No, this woman is a computer prodigy. She handles all of the Syrian’s international transactions.”
“A computer whiz.”
“A first-class hacker.”
Jack shook his head. “Okay, but why would the Syrian consider her a secret worth killing for?”
“Because,” Annika said, “her name is Caroline Carson.”
GUNN SAT in his car, smoking a cigarette. He was parked in the lot of a sleazy motel off a highway in suburban Maryland. From what he could see during the forty minutes he’d been parked, the motel was a trysting
