Full Throttle (Black Knights Inc. #7)(42)
She took no joy in the rounding of the maid’s eyes, no pleasure in the look of dawning realization on her face. Because all Penni felt in that moment was pure, undiluted rage. And since there weren’t enough vile words in the English language to accurately convey the ferocity of her feelings, she let her expression do the talking for her. Yes, you are totally busted, you crazy, vicious, murdering bitch!
Babbling in Malay, the maid plunged her hands below the table, reaching for something.
Penni dropped the tape in a flash. It fell onto the tabletop with a thunk just as she pulled her weapon and aimed it at the woman’s head. For the first time in her life, she knew what the phrase killing rage truly meant. It took everything she had not to squeeze that trigger. Dragging in a deep breath of the tear-and sweat-soaked air inside the tiny room, she saw that Dan had beat her to the mark. The barrel of his Ruger P90 was pressed securely to the woman’s left temple.
“No! No English!” The maid wailed, choking as she raised her hands and began waving around something that was the approximate size and shape of a postcard.
“What is it?” Penni asked, her voice breathless and thready. Her throat was scoured raw as New Jersey Turnpike road rash from the tears she continued to gulp down. Stay tough, kiddo. Her father’s familiar advice whispered through her head and bolstered her resolve. Putting some steel in her spine and her tone, she demanded again, “What does she have?”
Never lowering his weapon, Dan wrenched the object away from the maid, glancing at it. Instantly, his blond eyebrows formed a deep vee and Penni’s stomach turned one quick flip like the time she’d ridden the Coney Island Cyclone. She could tell by his expression that she wasn’t going to like whatever it was he thrust in her direction.
Holstering her weapon—Dan seemed to have everything well in hand, and her faith that her itchy trigger finger would continue to obey her was running out—she took the card and slowly, still scowling at the woman, allowed her gaze to drop.
Well…flippin’ hell…
It wasn’t a postcard. It was a photograph. A photograph of a black-eyed boy, probably no more than eight or nine, who was obviously suffering the effects of some sort of degenerative disease. His arms and legs were heartbreakingly skinny, his naked chest a xylophone of ribs, and his sunken eyes were nothing but dark pits inside his tragically angelic face.
“Jaya!” the woman wailed, pointing to the photo. “Jaya!” she moaned again, followed by a string of words in Malay that Penni didn’t begin to understand.
“We need a translator,” she told Dan, grabbing her chair and carefully lowering herself into it. She’d never in her life experienced this kind of exhaustion. Oh, wait. Yes, she had. In the days following her father’s death. Once again, she was forced to swallow the spiky lump of tears that tried to strangle her. Most definitely New Jersey road rash… “We could call the embassy and ask them to—”
“No.” He shook his head. Shoving his weapon into the waistband of his jeans, he held out his hands, palms down, and patted the air: the universal signal for the woman to calm down. It didn’t work. The maid continued to cry and wring her hands so hard Penni wondered how she didn’t snap off a finger.
“What do you mean no?” she demanded, scowling. Her ability to control her emotions was slipping, and slipping fast. It was bad enough that her colleagues’ deaths had already taken a baseball bat to her professional composure and left it bleeding out in the street. But ever since Dan informed her that Steady had made a play at rescuing Abby—all on his own!—and was even now headed north to Thailand, she’d been teetering on the edge of full-on panic attack.
When he didn’t immediately answer her, she snapped, “Okay, lookie here, Danny Boy. I don’t know what it is about me that makes you think I’m a wilting lily, ready and willing to sit by while you and Mr. Fly-By-the-Seat-of-His-Pants run this show. But I’m telling you right now that I want…” She frantically shook her head. “No. I don’t want. I demand a plan. So what is it? If we’re not calling the embassy for an interpreter, what the hell are we doing?”
And by the look on Dan’s face, she realized some of her panic had come across in that little diatribe. Blowing out a blustery breath, she squared her shoulders and deliberately wrapped her fingers around the Styrofoam cup of coffee Dan had placed on the table in front of her when they first entered the little room. But she didn’t raise the cup to her lips. The coffee inside was black, which she loathed. But that was her fault. She’d forgotten when she told Dan to make it a “regular” that most of the country equated “regular” with “black” as opposed to the liberal amounts of cream and sugar that made up an NYC “regular.” Still, just the ceremony of holding the warm cup between her hands managed to calm her. A little.
“The president doesn’t wanna involve the embassy if he doesn’t have to,” Dan said after having patiently watched her get her sorry self back under some semblance of control. “He’s trying to keep this as quiet as possible. In fact, he’d prefer it if Abby was already back in our custody before the press gets word of her abduction. And keeping a lid on this will be nearly impossible if we start hauling in a bunch of outside help.”
“And speaking of,” she said. “Is he aware Steady is currently, right at this very minute, in the middle of a solo rescue attempt?” She couldn’t stress the word solo in solo rescue attempt enough. For Christ’s sake!