Chapter One #3
“You're not going to fight your way through everyone here with a pen.”
“I don't need everyone.”
His gaze came back to her face.
Isolde tightened her grip. “Maybe I only need you.”
For a moment he simply looked at her, as if recalculating something.
Then he lowered himself into a slight crouch beside the open door, closer to her eye level without reaching into the car. “I'm not going to hurt you.”
“You'll forgive me for not finding that especially persuasive.”
“I don't expect you to.”
There was no polished reassurance behind the words, no insistence that this was a misunderstanding or that she should trust him. The bluntness disturbed her more than a lie would have.
“Then what exactly do you expect?”
“I expect you to get into the other car.”
“No.”
A siren rose faintly somewhere beyond the intersection.
Isolde's pulse jumped.
One of the men looked toward it. Taddeo did too, although only briefly.
“We need to leave.”
“That's your problem.”
“It's becoming yours.”
She lifted the pen slightly. “I'm staying here.”
Taddeo straightened and held out one hand, not exactly offering to help her so much as giving her a final chance to move voluntarily. “I'd rather you walk.”
“And I'd rather the police get here.”
“That may disappoint both of us.”
“I'll take my chances.”
For the first time, Taddeo exhaled as though she had become genuinely inconvenient.
“All right.”
The next few seconds collapsed into movement.
Isolde twisted toward the horn. A man reached through the passenger side.
Someone caught her forearm before she could bring her hand down against the center of the wheel.
She kicked backward, felt her boot connect with a shin and heard a curse, and then Taddeo was close enough for her to smell rain, cold air, and clean wool as he caught her around the waist and pulled her from the driver's seat without letting her head strike the doorframe.
“Stop fighting.”
“Let go of me.”
“Isolde.”
“You're fucking kidnapping me.”
“I know.”
The calm acknowledgment sent fury through her. She drove her elbow backward.
Taddeo caught her arm before it connected.
This time his voice hardened. “Enough.”
He didn't shout.
He didn't need to.
The men around them stopped moving almost immediately, and Isolde found herself half outside the car with Taddeo holding one forearm, his grip firm but not crushing, both of them breathing harder than they had been a few seconds earlier.
She looked directly at him.
There was no uncertainty in his face.
He was taking her.
She could keep fighting, perhaps get herself hurt, perhaps hurt one of them, and still end up in the car. The calculation was ugly but simple.
Isolde stopped.
Taddeo registered it immediately and loosened his grip.
“I'm going to let go.”
“Don't congratulate yourself.”
“I wasn't planning to.”
He released her.
The rear door of the dark sedan stood open several feet away.
Isolde looked down Mercer Street toward the siren.
It still sounded too far away and might not even be responding to her call.
Her hatchback remained crooked between the larger vehicles, driver's door open, headlights shining across the wet pavement as though she'd stepped away for a moment and expected to return.
The sight of it made leaving feel more real than the struggle had.
She turned back to Taddeo. “If you've hurt my brother—”
“I haven't.”
“If somebody in your family has—”
“I don't know where Corwin is.”
She watched his face.
The answer felt honest.
She hated that she was already learning the difference.
Isolde looked at him carefully, committing him to memory without bothering to hide it. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Faint scar near the jaw. Approximately six-two, perhaps a little more. Charcoal coat. Taddeo Malfatti.
His gaze sharpened. “You're memorizing me.”
“You didn't wear a mask.”
“No.”
“That seems arrogant.”
“Maybe.”
“Or stupid.”
“Possibly.”
“I'll let you know.”
Something shifted near his mouth, but he suppressed it.
The man holding her phone opened the sedan door wider.
Taddeo didn't touch her this time.
Isolde stood where she was for several seconds, weighing a situation that no longer offered a good choice. Four men that she could see. No phone. No meaningful weapon. No route around the vehicles. No reason to believe the police would reach her before Taddeo's patience ran out.
Walking into the car herself did not make the decision voluntary.
It meant only that she understood the difference between defiance and stupidity.
She got in.
Taddeo followed and took the opposite side of the rear seat.
The locks engaged.
As the sedan pulled away, Isolde twisted enough to look through the rear window. Her hatchback remained beneath the streetlights with the driver's door hanging open, shrinking behind them until the next turn took it from sight.
She faced forward again.
Corwin hadn't merely stopped answering his phone.
Whatever her brother had done, or whatever someone believed he'd done, had involved people organized enough to watch her workplace, follow her through Crownport, stop her in the street, interfere with a police call, and remove her before anyone could reach her.
Taddeo Malfatti sat beside her without speaking, apparently content to let her understand that in her own time.
Isolde folded her hands in her lap because they had begun to shake.
Then she looked toward the darkened window and started counting the turns.