Ultimate Weapon (McClouds & Friends #6)(54)

Janos arched and shuddered with a strangled groan for the entire duration of the nerve-scrambling electric zap that she gave him. It was a long one, not out of spite, but because she badly needed an extra margin to get Rachel and all their stuff into a cab and away before he was capable of pursuing them.

He toppled backward onto the bed. It made an enormous rattling crash as his big body hit. Rachel appeared in the corridor seconds later, her tights wound like soft shackles around her wobbly ankles.

Her face was woefully confused. “Val sick?” she asked anxiously. “Need medicine?”

So he was Val to Rachel already, was he? She gritted her teeth, stuffing the taser necklace back into her jewelry case. “Just taking a nap, honey.”

Val groaned and tried to speak. Shit. Her margin of safety was slim. The bastard was a tough one. Tam cursed, and hastened to tug up Rachel’s panties and tights and get her into her brand-new red winter ski jacket, also bought on Janos’s dime. A flurry of gathering shopping bags and scattered toys, babbling incoherent explanations to Rachel, and finally they were out of there. Tam held the wriggling Rachel with one arm and shoved the new stroller, which was heavily laden with bag, purse, potty seat and a cluster of shopping bags, with the other arm.

It started up when they were finally in the cab. Fat, hot tears, sliding right down through her undereye coverup, the cosmetic she could least afford to do without. Goddamn him for making her feel guilty. She dabbed, sniffed, cursed. Tried again to justify herself.

She couldn’t give him what he wanted. She could not trust him for a split second. If what he said was true, he had his nuts in a vise, which made him deadly dangerous.

And if he was lying, he was more dangerous still.

She could not expose her friends to him and his organization while they were drinking and partying and dancing, their babies toddling around their feet. She couldn’t let him see who she left her child with. He couldn’t expect her to. He would not have done so in her place. No one with a functioning brain would. He’d be stupid to take it personally. And Val Janos was anything but stupid.

Still, those tears kept sliding down, one after the other, bringing a gooey landslide of foundation and mascara along with them.





Chapter


11




The satellite phone in Val’s pocket vibrated. He counted the rings, twenty of them, but lay there, inert. Unable to coordinate his muscles. All he could do was twitch and fume and wait, furious with himself for letting her drop him. And with such humiliating ease, too. All it took was the short skirt, the long legs, the gleaming lips, the erect nipples.

He struggled until he managed to get his weak, trembling limbs to obey him, and hoisted himself up into a sitting position. He sat on the edge of the bed, hunched over. The phone rang again.

It took seven rings just to get his slack hand into his pocket and pull the thing out. The display informed him that it was Henry.

He answered promptly. “Sì? What have you got?”

Henry didn’t answer for a few moments. “Uh, Val? Is that you?”

“Who else would answer this phone?” he snarled.

“Your voice sounds strange.” Henry sounded suspicious. “What the f*ck is wrong with you? Are you drunk?”

“She tased me,” he grimly admitted, “and ran.”

“Oh.”

Henry said nothing, but Val could see his friend in his mind’s eye, trying not to grin. The image did nothing to help his mood.

“So, ah, you lost her then, I take it?” Henry asked.

“No. I put an RF transmitter into her diaper bag,” he said. “They are going to a wedding now. I will follow them there. As soon as I can walk.”

“Want me to monitor it for you?” Henry’s voice was a little too solicitious. “I’ve got nothing happening this evening, and this chick sounds like a real live wire…so to speak.” He chortled at his own wit. “Give me the frequencies, and I’ll—”

“No,” Val said curtly. “Thank you, but I will handle it myself.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Henry said. “So, did you want to know what I’ve got on Zetrinja? Or is this, you know, a bad time?”

Excitement welled up, energizing him. “Tell me,” he said.

“August 24, 1992,” Henry said. “Colonel Drago Stengl of the JNA and his secret police squad rounded up the Muslim men and boys in Zetrinja and shot them. Thirty-seven dead. The women and girls were loaded into trucks and taken to the concentration camp at Sremska Mitrovica.”

It was a familiar enough story. Val had heard countless versions of it. “Did you check the—”

“Yes, of course. I made the calls to the city hall, I checked the census records,” Henry assured him. “There were five girls between the ages of ten and twenty who were related to the men and boys who died that day. One of them was the daughter of Petar Zadro, the goldsmith. She was fifteen years old. Her name was—get this—Tamar.”

A shiver went up his spine.

“Don’t get excited,” Henry warned. “I personally think it’s just a random coincidence. A woman like her is not likely to use her actual given name, after all the aliases she’s used so far. And unless I go there in person and start tracking down school photographs, I can’t verify—”