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!
“He is.” Dan nodded. “He’s being kept apprised of Steady and Abby’s position and northward trajectory by my HQ.”
She’d learned that when he and Steady were talking about “geeking up,” they were really referring to the tracking chips they’d both implanted in their wristwatches. Talk about state-of-the-art accessories. Not that she should be all that surprised. Because, if she’d guessed correctly, they were the commander in chief’s very own gang of merry current and/or former military men.
“Since you brought it up,” she said, her first order of business being Abby, always Abby, “are they still en route to the border?”
“At last check,” Dan assured her. “And as soon as the SEAL team gets here, they’ll fly over and pick ’em up.”
“Which means another unit couldn’t be mustered on such short notice.” She wished this suckass day would just end already. Wished Abby was back with her safe and sound so she could hide herself away somewhere and give in to the grief clawing inside her chest. “The president has to be beside himself with worry.”