Full Throttle (Black Knights Inc. #7)(48)
Shit a brick! If the maid had been a fanatical believer in the JI cause, it would’ve been so easy to hate her, so easy to hand her over to the Malaysian authorities. But Irdina wasn’t a terrorist bent on the downfall of all the infidels. She was simply a mother. A terrified, frantic mother who was willing to do anything she could to rescue her son from the savage jaws of illness. It was a goddamned Charlie Foxtrot if ever there was one. Dan scrubbed a hand back through his hair, trying, quite unsuccessfully, to swallow the lump in his throat.
I need a drink.
One day at a time…
“How do you say ‘I’m sorry’ in Malay?” Penni suddenly asked, her shoulders slumped down so low Dan figured she’d need a hydraulic hoist to lift them up again.
Do I go to her? Do I not?
He was still waffling, still ignoring the AA advice that went a little something like quit slackin’ and make shit happen, when Vanessa rattled off a string of syllables. Listening intently, Penni nodded and reached across the table to lay a gentle hand on Irdina’s arm. The maid glanced up, her face tear-streaked and swollen. Tapping a finger on Jaya’s photo, Penni repeated the syllables just as Vanessa had said them. Irdina’s face caved in on itself, and she lifted her hands to cover her eyes, wailing anew.
“I have to—” Penni’s voice hitched as she quickly pushed back from the little table. Her chair tipped over, hitting the tile floor with a loud crack! Then she was racing for the door.
Cock and balls! He’d been wondering when that would happen. Because for the last several hours she’d borne a striking resemblance to a suitcase nuke waiting to go boom!
“Hey guys,” he directed his voice toward the face-up phone, wincing when the door to the storage room slammed shut. The shelves stacked with stainless-steel coffee urns and rows of cups rattled with the impact. “I’m gonna need you two to find out how Irdina knew which beds to plant those incendiary devices under, because I suspect she had direction from someone here at the hotel. In the meantime, I’m gonna go after Penni. I need to make sure she’s okay.” Make some shit happen, indeed.
“Oui, mon ami,” Rock answered after a beat, once Dan’s cell signal had pinged to the other side of the globe and back. “But what if she decides to make a run for it—”
“We’re standing in a storage room just off a conference room,” he interrupted, understanding Rock’s confusion and concern before he finished the sentence. “Both can be locked from the outside.” He reached into his pocket to remove the universal keycard the hotel manager had given him.
“Right,” Rock said, but Dan was already opening the door, pulling it closed and securing it behind him.
“Penni!” he called. She was halfway across the vacant conference room, making a beeline for the hallway. Her ponytail flew out behind her as her long legs ate up the distance. “Penni, wait!”
She ignored him as she slammed out of the room. And the choked sob that drifted back to him hit his ears like a percussion grenade. He jettisoned after her, skirting the conference table and hopping over the trash can sitting beside a coffee service cart. Quickly pulling the door closed behind him, he scarcely registered the faint clicking sound of its automatic lock. Turning, he saw Penni disappear into the women’s bathroom.
Jogging down the deserted hallway—obviously the hotel manager had made good on Dan’s demands for privacy—he tried to think of what he could possibly say to Penni to bring her some small measure of comfort in this goddamned pisser of a situation. Unfortunately, like Eminem would say, I come from Detroit where it’s rough, and I’m not a smooth talker. But when he wrenched open the door to the ladies’ room only to have her instantly hurl herself into his arms, her nose buried in his neck, her hot tears wetting the fabric of his T-shirt, he realized no words were necessary.
Penni DePaul simply needed to be held. And, by God, he could certainly do that…
*
The river roared and thrashed over the rocks as Umar hung onto the rope he had strung across the watery expanse using an ancient technique his grandfather taught him. It basically consisted of attaching one end of the sturdy rope to a leader line, in this case some fishing filament, which was itself attached to native seedpod that was capable of floating atop water. Using a quickly constructed slingshot made of vines and palm bark, he sent the seed with the fishing line attached flying across the raging river. After a couple of failed attempts, the seed finally sailed over his target…the thick limb of a tree. Then, just as it’d done when his grandfather showed him how to do it twenty years ago, the weight of the seed caused it to fall to the ground, roll down the opposite bank, and plop into the water.
Then came the tricky part…
By carefully and patiently tugging, and subsequently letting out more and more slack in the lead line, Umar was able to make the seedpod dance across to their side of the river before it was washed too far downstream and he ran out of fishing filament. Then it was a small matter of sliding down the slippery bank without falling in, fetching the seed from the clutches of the seething water, and reeling in the line. Since the rope was attached to its opposite end, by reeling in the line, it forced the rope across the river, over the branch, and back to them. He finished the task by tying the two ends of the rope around the trunk of a tree. And, as the Americans would say, bingo! He and his men could now forge the volatile river by inching their way across the rope like silkworms. And even though the complicated maneuver had given his prey a head start of nearly two hours, it was far better than having to trudge the twenty or so miles down the trail to the next bridge.