Ultimate Weapon (McClouds & Friends #6)(134)

Besides, his clothing fit the car. The ragged wool sweater with the cigarette burns and the brownish-yellow underarm sweat stains, the pilled, threadbare pants that did not succeed in covering his ankles though they did threaten to slide off his ass. All that could be said for them was they were dry.

The signora must have laughed up her sleeve when she picked them out of her rag bag. He would have been amused at her little joke, if he hadn’t been so angry and miserable.

And in pain. Everything hurt. Most of all his shoulder, but there wasn’t a centimeter of the rest of him, inside or out, that did not sting, ache or burn in sympathy. His head throbbed like a rotten tooth. Hung over from whatever drug Tamar had zapped him with, no doubt.

He felt humiliated. Betrayed into confessing his love, and she’d f*cked him over to reward him for his idiocy. Served him right for being such a fatuous dickhead.

So why was he following her? He could turn his back and go.

He could not answer that question. He couldn’t stop himself, either. Burning stubborness, that was all it was. He hated being bested.

He stared at the ring on his finger. Tamar’s ring. What the hell she had meant by leaving it with him, he did not dare to imagine.

But he had not taken it off.

Tamar’s cell phone beeped from his pocket, as he finally came into an area of coverage. Val pulled it out and glanced at it.

He glanced again. Twenty chiamate non risposte. Twenty unanswered calls. He ran his eye over the numbers visible in the display. All the same number, all with a Seattle area code. Someone in the Seattle area had been desperately trying to call her all night long.

That could not be good news. He thought suddenly of Rachel. The bars of the prison Imre had tried to free him from closed in on him again, along with the chill of fear.

No, please. Not that. Not her baby girl.

He’d just poised his thumb over the callback option when the phone rang. The phone registered an unknown number, and in a moment of wild, irrational hope, he thought it might be Tamar.

He stabbed the button to answer. “Sì?”

There was a suspicious pause, and Connor McCloud’s voice rasped through the line. “Who the hell is this?”

“It’s Val Janos,” he said. “What happened?”

“Rachel,” Connor said. “They got Rachel.”

The creeping dread solidified instantly into horror. He flash froze it and put it aside. No time for it. No time for anything now but action.

“Who?” he asked. “When?”

“How the f*ck do we know who? She was playing with Sveti in the park right outside the house. A black sedan with three men in it pulled up. They roughed up Sveti, took Rachel, and took off. It was six PM.”

“Cazzo,” Val whispered.

“Yeah,” Connor agreed. “Where the f*ck is Tam? And why doesn’t she have her f*cking phone?”

Val let out the tension with a sharp, gusty breath. “She’s off to assassinate someone,” he said grimly. “We disagreed about it. She handcuffed me to a bed and drugged me. I just got free. I’m hoping to catch up with her before she gets arrested. Or killed.”

“Ah.” There was an uncomfortable pause. “Well, there you go. That’s our Tam for you. Are you having fun yet?”

“Fuck you,” Val said.

“Sure. Whatever. Moving on. I was hoping you two might know—”

“Novak,” he said flatly. “Check the RF tags for Rachel’s position.”

Connor sucked in a sharp breath. “Holy shit. I can’t believe this. You tagged Rachel? With what?”

“SafeGuard beacons,” Val said. “One in her bear, one in her stroller, one in her blanket, one in her coat. That red puffy one.”

“She might still have the coat with her.” Connor’s voice vibrated with excitement. “Frequencies?”

“I don’t have them on me,” Val said. “The paperwork was lost when we had to run from our hotel two days ago, but you can get the frequencies from your own database. I ordered them online two weeks ago under the name Robert Perkins. They were shipped to a Tacoma address. I used the second smallest ones for her. Four of the burr beacons.”

“You’re a man after my own heart, Janos. I’m calling from the airport. We’re booked through to Paris, since it was the first flight we could get to anyplace in Europe, but we didn’t know where we needed to go from there.”

“Almost certainly Hungary. Call me again if you find a signal for Rachel,” Val said. “I’ll get Tamar, if I can, and meet you in Budapest.”

He hung up, pressed down hard on the accelerator, ignoring the car’s freaky whines, shudders and shimmies of protest.

For Rachel’s sake, the f*cking car could make one last effort.



Her timing was spot on. Ana’s eyelids fluttered as Tam parked the Opel in front of the clinic. She circled to the passenger’s side, jerked the door open, unbuckled Ana, and swatted her sticky cheeks.

“Wake up,” she said crisply. “Showtime.”

Ana groaned, her eyes dim and foggy. “What?”

Tam handed her a handful of makeup removal pads and a compact mirror from her purse. “Fix your face.”

Ana glanced at herself in the mirror, gasped in horror, and woke right up. She spent the next couple of minutes repairing her mask. When Tam sensed that she was starting to stall, she yanked Ana’s elbow and dragged her up and out of the car.