He spoke in a French accent. Kingsley, that was his name. Her aunt had told her about the handsome Frenchman who she called the bane of her existence. From her tante Elle it had sounded like a compliment.
She stared at him.
“She looked a little like you.” The man shook his head and he swore under his breath. He turned his back to the room. “But older,” Laila continued. “And angry. She was smiling but she looked very angry.”
“What did she say?” Her uncle brushed the hair off her face.
“She said awful things …” Laila returned to her Danish, not wanting anyone else to hear. She told her uncle everything the woman had said, everything her aunt said in defiance. And she told him about the choice they had to make. Laila buried her head against his chest when she confessed what her aunt had done and how powerless she’d been to stop her.
“Søren?” The redheaded woman with the freckles came closer. “What did she say?”
Laila only listened as her uncle recited her tale in English. He left out the part about the woman calling her tante Elle a “whore.”
“Marie-Laure made them choose,” he said, his voice low but steady. “She told Eleanor and Laila that one of them could leave and deliver a message to me. The other one had to stay behind as … entertainment. Eleanor …”
He paused to clear his throat and Laila began to cry again, sobbing silently against his chest.
“What?” Wes asked. “What happened?”
“Eleanor covered Laila’s mouth so she couldn’t volunteer. So Laila was allowed to leave with her message.”
He fell silent and no one in the room spoke. The confession of her aunt’s sacrifice had made mutes of them all.
“Dammit, Nora …” Wes was the first to speak. She winced at his words, felt her own failure to speak in time, felt more than anything shame over how relieved she was that she’d been allowed to go free.
“She gave me a note to give you.” Laila dug in her jeans pocket and pulled out the paper. “She said to tell you that she gave you her death as a gift and now she was taking her gift back. She said God had a message for you, too.”
Kingsley exhaled noisily and with great and very French disgust.
“And what does God have to tell us?” he demanded.
“She said that God says no more sinning. Time for atonement.”
No one said anything as Laila held out the note to her uncle. Without any show of emotion he read the words before handing it to Kingsley. Kingsley took it from his hand and opened the note.
“What does it say?” Wes demanded. Laila was grateful he’d asked. She hadn’t gotten to read it. “Is it a ransom note? I’ll pay whatever they ask.”
“Not a ransom.” Kingsley balled up the note. “And it doesn’t matter what it says because we’re not going to let her play us.”
“It does matter what it says.” Wes stood up and walked over to Kingsley. “I’ll play any game I have to if it means getting Nora back.”
“You’re not the one she wants to play with, Wesley,” Søren said, and Laila looked up at him. “Kingsley and I are the ones she’s angry with, the ones she’s trying to hurt.”
“So what are you going to do about it?” Wes faced her uncle with fury in his eyes. She’d never seen anyone look at her uncle like that.
“Whatever I have to.” Her uncle said the words simply and without a trace of fear. For some reason his lack of fear and the quiet determination in his voice scared her more than her own kidnapping had.
“And then what?” Wes asked.
“I get her out,” Kingsley said.
“You get her out?” Wes turned to Kingsley. “You and what army?”
“I don’t need an army.”
“What? Are you the French James Bond or something?”
“Of course not. James Bond is vanilla.”
“I feel so much better now,” Wes said as he scraped his fingers through his hair. “Kinky James Bond is going to rescue Nora. Thanks but maybe it’s time we get the cops involved.”
“Call the police if you want her dead. By all means, call them. They love to blare their sirens so the whole world knows they’re coming. Do you know how easy it is to kill someone like …” Kingsley raised his hand and snapped his fingers loudly in Wesley’s ear, so loudly Wesley flinched. “Like that. The speed of sound is 342 meters per second. The speed of a bullet is four times that. She’ll be dead before they can even knock on the door. I promise you, she’s guarded. Every minute of every hour someone with a gun is within shooting distance of her. One wrong step equals one bullet.”
“We have to do something. We don’t even know where she is,” Wes said.
“I do.” Laila sat up and wiped her face. “I know where she is.”
“Where?” Wes looked down at her and she saw hope in his eyes.
Laila reached up and unclasped her necklace. She flipped open the locket and passed it to her uncle.
“That room.”
“What room?” The redheaded woman leaned over her uncle’s shoulder and stared at the picture. Laila didn’t have to look. She’d worn the silver heirloom locket for most of her life, knew the photographs in it better than she knew her own face. On one side of the locket was a picture of her grandmother holding her mother as a newborn baby. On the other side of the locket was a photograph of her grandmother holding her uncle Søren as a newborn. Her grandmother had kept a box of photographs that she looked at from time to time. They all seemed to be taken in the same room—a library with a fireplace. Gold walls, green curtains. She’d asked her grandmother about it once and her grandmother had said she would rather not talk about her time living in America. All that mattered, her grandmother said with a sad smile, was that she gave birth to her son while in that country. He made up for everything.
“Are you sure?” her uncle asked.
She nodded. “I saw the pictures in Mormor’s box. There was one where she sat by a fireplace holding you. She wasn’t smiling. But it was that room in my locket, the one Tante Elle is in. I know it was.”
“Søren?” Wes’s voice prompted her uncle to look up from the locket.
“Eleanor’s at my half sister’s house. She’s at Elizabeth’s.”
“Your sister’s house?” Wes asked. “Is she involved in this, too?”
Søren shook his head. “No, I told Elizabeth to leave the country and travel, to stay on the move. I’d been afraid something like this would happen. She and her sons left last week. She’s not home. She’s not part of this.”
“We’re sure she’s at your sister’s?” Kingsley asked.
“Yes.” Søren looked at Kingsley, who nodded as if Søren had given him some kind of telepathic message.
“We’ll go, then,” Kingsley said. “I’ll call him right now.”
“Call who?” Wes asked. “Go where?”
“We have a friend who lives near his sister’s,” Kingsley explained as he pulled a phone out of his trouser pocket. “Only ten miles away. I’ll be able to plan better if I’m closer. I may have to come and go several times. I need a base. His house is perfect.”
“A friend of yours? Can we trust this guy?” Wes stared aggressively at both Kingsley and her uncle. For the first time she wondered who he was, what he was to her aunt that made him so deeply a part of this nightmare.
“We