Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
Davos, Switzerland
Adam turned slightly as he went through the turnstile in the train station.
He resisted the urge to groan in front of a bunch of strangers going about their day in this mountain ski town.
Dan followed him through, bringing up the rear, more concerned about Adam’s physical state than any dangers that might be around them.
His phone rang.
Adam slid it out and put it to his ear. “Dubkowsky.”
“It’s me,” Ash said. “I’m at the hostel, waiting for contact.”
“Keep your head down. Something is going on, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of what it is.” Adam eased between two guys and headed for the platform.
“I will. Don’t worry.”
“We should be more worried about…” Kyle. Johannsen. Same guy, even if it amounted to two guys with two different problems.
“I’m thinking yeah. There’s scuttlebutt on the message boards that he went Stateside for something. No idea what. His orders were about protecting you.”
“He’s the one in danger.”
Ash said, “I’m all for finding him and checking in, but I’d rather be out looking for Kai.”
“I know.”
“If it was me, he wouldn’t rest until I was back. I’m out here…” Ash didn’t finish.
“I know. Jay is looking into it. You know he gets more results solo, and when he has something, he’ll check in.”
“What are you doing?”
“Getting Steph back. Ice dumped her off on a train because he didn’t like what she told him.
” Just saying it out loud made Adam angry.
He’d been so livid he busted half a dozen stitches open when Ice had told them over the phone.
Now he wasn’t even picking up? “I’m gonna knock the guy into next week when I see him. ”
Dan glanced over at him.
Ash said, “Because…”
“She didn’t deserve that!”
Dan smirked, but Adam ignored him. Ash said, “So you’re gonna go apologize for your friend, and make up for getting her burned.”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“And you’re gonna try and convince us all that you don’t have a thing for her?”
Adam said, “Let’s just focus on the mission, okay? She has skills, and we can use them to find Kai.”
Ash said, “I might not wait long. Not that I want to skip out on our duty to the Phoenix Network, but Kai is missing.”
“Jay will get a lead.”
“I might duck out on this and hook up with Jay to give him a hand. I don’t like sitting here when Kai is…”
“I know.” Adam couldn’t argue with the guy. “Do what you can to warn our friend. Then go help Jay get your boy. We’ll do the same.”
“Thanks, Nix.”
“As if you need to say that.”
“Shut up.”
“You shut up.” Adam hung up the phone, feeling wiped already and they hadn’t been away from the castle for more than two hours.
“Sure you’re up for this?” Dan had a backpack on and held a laptop to his front. Tech support and a medic all rolled into one.
“I’m fine.” Adam glanced at the sky, but the afternoon sun was a little too bright. Pain thrummed through his head, but only because he’d fallen asleep awkwardly on the short plane ride here.
“So we’re just ignoring your physical condition?” Dan shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking like a mother hen about to pounce and take his temperature.
“I wouldn’t say I’m ignoring it.”
“Just strategically avoiding the subject.”
Adam smiled at his friend. “Did you come with me just so you could be annoying?”
Dan opened the laptop and folded it back on itself. “The train is incoming.”
“And she’s on it?”
“That, or she’s walking down the track. And at the speed she’s going…”
“Fine, I get it.” Sure enough, the train came into view, heading toward this station on the tracks.
Adam didn’t think about how it felt to hear Ice explain what he’d done after Steph confessed her personal connection.
Or what drove him to find her and make it right.
Nor did he want to think about the team’s reaction and what they thought that meant.
He didn’t have a thing for her.
And if he did, it wasn’t like that was an option for him. She had a job, and he had a life. Those two didn’t mix.
Dan said, “Ice is paranoid about people lying, and I’m not sure I blame him.”
Adam shot his friend a look. “Even though he lies all the time?”
“He just doesn’t want the situation to become sticky with someone whose loyalty we can’t be certain of.”
Not something Adam would necessarily argue with. But when it was Steph? Yeah, reason had gone out the window. At least he could blame it on the pain meds.
Dan shook his head. “I get it. We all do. But can I just say, I don’t need your permission to look up this colonel you tussled with and have Marina worm her way into his entire life and then systematically destroy him for what he did to you.”
Adam said nothing.
“But you don’t want him destroyed?”
“If I go after him, the risk of me exposing myself to people who will lock me up again, or kill me, is too great. And I know I’ll only be getting revenge thinking it’s going to fix the problem. It won’t.”
“You’re sure he isn’t doing what he did to you to someone else?”
Adam shook his head while the train brakes squealed and it came to a stop. “He’s on a…watch list. I’m restricted from being involved, but there are people whose job it is to make sure he’s not hurting anyone. I get reports.”
“That’s how this thing you’re in works?”
“Yes,” Adam said. “I’ll get an assignment, and it will be on behalf of someone else. No one knows who they’re working to protect, but we all pitch in when we’re called.”
Dan said, “Do not fret because of evil people?”
“Something like that, I guess.” Plus, Adam didn’t want anything to do with Montrose, and would rather not go to prison for multiple counts of what would be labeled murder. Or wind up in a facility again.
Dan continued, “So we’re here, retrieving Steph, because no one retrieved you. No one saved you, and you can’t stand the thought of someone falling through the cracks.”
“Just as long as we get Kai back.”
A guy went ahead of them, pressing the button on the outside of the doors. They swished open, admitting the man and then Adam and Dan.
“Left,” Dan said. “She’s in this car.”
“Got it.” Adam scanned the seats, wondering how accurate this thing was. Checking every face. Making his way along the aisle. “Here we go.”
She sat slumped against the window, her eyes closed and a hood up over her hair.
He took the seat opposite her, and Dan sat across the aisle. Adam settled in, adjusting his jacket and trying to avoid tweaking the stitches on his chest. He lifted his foot and rested it beside her on the chair to hem her in. “Steph.”
She didn’t move or open her eyes. He reached over and squeezed her knee.
She woke a second later, her eyes glassy. Focused on him and sucked in a quick breath, looking around. She nearly fell out of her chair. After she’d caught herself and sat back, she reached for the necklace. “Where is it?”
Adam frowned. “I don’t have it.”
If Ice took it, he’d left that part of the story out in the telling. Which meant Adam needed to follow up about it. Their first priority was Kai. After that, the situation. Then they’d worry about her necklace/communication device thing.
“How did you find me?” She tipped her head one way, then the other. “What did Ice do to me? I feel like I’ve been asleep for a week.”
Adam reached over and took her hand, running his fingers over her wrist until he could feel her pulse.
She stared at their hands, her expression obscured, till he let go of her hand. “Whatever he gave you, there won’t be any lasting damage.”
“Oh. My pulse.” She nodded. “Right.” She spotted Dan across the aisle. “Hi.”
The big man said, “We come in peace.”
Steph stared at him for a moment. “So your buddy Ice drugged me and dumped me on a train, and he has my necklace. Did he tell you to come and pick me up?”
Adam shook his head. “Tracker. In your shoe.”
Steph frowned. “He dropped me off, and you’re picking me up? What is this?”
Adam shrugged his shoulder. “Far as I’m concerned, this is an all-hands-on-deck situation.”
“You look terrible.” Her head tipped to the side. “Should you even be up?”
Laughter bubbled up in his chest, and across the aisle Dan chuckled without looking up from the laptop.
“Ouch.” Adam didn’t rub his hand across his chest. “I’ll be good as new before you know it.”
Steph shook her head. “Is Kai okay?”
“We’re working that. The team will get him back.”
“Ice, and the team? Guess he didn’t need my help, so he got rid of me like I’m extra baggage.”
Adam said, “Forget about that. He and I will figure it out. What do you need?”
“What do you care?”
“Pretend I do.”
She rolled her eyes, then patted her pockets and found a wad of cash. “Two thousand Euros. Your friend Ice didn’t leave me destitute, so I guess that’s something.”
“He isn’t a bad guy.”
She didn’t respond to that.
“I asked what your plan is.”
“Because you care so much that you tracked me down to ask me?”
“Doesn’t mean I disagree with what Ice did. He had his reasons,” Adam said. “But it seems to me like working together might benefit both of us.”
“I can’t help you get your friend back.”
“Because you need the book to save your father?”
“Vesper doesn’t want anything to do with me. She thinks my entire existence is a joke, and she’s the last person I would ever give that book to. Even if it saves your friend.” Steph looked almost sad. “I know you have to be confident in your abilities, but you don’t know her.”
“I’ve gone up against people much worse than her.”
She bit her lip. Turned to watch the mountainside blur past them.
“You’ll just have to trust me.”
She glanced at him. “I need the book to get my father back. You need it to trade with Vesper for your friend. I think that puts us on opposite sides of this.”
Adam wasn’t convinced they would need the book in order to get Kai back, but anything he said would sound like too much bravado.
“I know you’re unaccustomed to working with other people, but we can help each other.
” He almost said, We’re good together but managed to keep it from slipping out.
“You won’t have to do this alone anymore. Not if you don’t want to.”
“Say I trust you, I let down my guard, and in a day or two you prove this is all just because I know where the book is. You steal it from me, and I end up unconscious on a train again—this time without the cash.”
“You think you’ll get burned by everyone?”
“No one has ever proven otherwise. It isn’t worth the risk.”
“It can be,” Adam said. “Sometimes trust is more than worth the risk, and I say that as someone who has been betrayed by people I should’ve been right to have faith in.
They took my allegiance and they tore it apart in a way that left me a shell of who I was.
It took me three years to put myself back together, and I’m still not certain I’m whole. ”
“I don’t need your help.”
“I know.” He recalled what she’d said to him outside the castle. “But you’ll take it.”
The train pulled into the next station.
“Come on.”
Steph got up and followed him. Dan stepped off first, and they disembarked the train after him. Stepping outside into the chill air, and the bright blue sky. Snow-capped mountains all around them, even this time of year.
“You good?”
Adam looked at Steph, wondering if he was. “I didn’t ask for any of this. All I have it in me to do is the best I can. That means trusting someone who has proven themselves to me and trying to make the world safer for good people.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“You were burned because of us,” Adam said. “If my team neutralizes Vesper, I figure that makes us even.”
“What about Earthnet?” Dan glanced between them. “You guys don’t have to keep score and make this about paying each other back for favors. We could all just work together. When it’s over, you go your separate ways, or you…don’t.” He shrugged, then looked at Adam. “I’ll call the pilot.”
Adam nodded, and Dan wandered off into the station office. When he turned to Steph, she had a curious look on her face. “What?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Maybe me getting my life back doesn’t matter.
Maybe my dad’s fate is sealed, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
” Tears gathered in her eyes. “Everything I’ve been trying to do for years.
All the good I thought I did in the world?
Doesn’t matter. In the end, none of it matters. It’s all too little, too late.”
“If all I manage to do is convince you that isn’t true, I’ll be satisfied.”
“Why do you even care?” Steph raised her voice, almost yelling. Drawing some attention to them. “I don’t understand it.”
“I know what it’s like to be alone.” He stepped closer and took her elbow. “I know what it’s like to be trapped and at the mercy of someone stronger than you, unable to get out. I wouldn’t wish that fate on my worst enemy. It was beyond…”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I’ve been where you are. No options. No way to fix what’s broken.
Someone stepped in at that moment and helped me out.
They saved my life and helped me save myself.
” Adam touched her shoulder, then slid his fingers to the side of her neck, his thumb tracing the edge of her jaw. “I’d like to do that for—”
Gunshots cracked across the platform.
A second later, chaos erupted as people ran screaming.