She shouldn’t have dared to do such a thing. The horror, the sheer horror of Bell taking Anjali, Jian, and dammit, Colleen, hostage to ensure that he paid up was enraging. “She gave a direct order to you to kidnap them to make me do what she wants.”
Magnus spoke through clenched teeth. “I am not at liberty to discuss privileged communications with clients, but the four of you need to leave the country immediately. We won’t take that contract, but others will.”
Tristan gestured vaguely toward the car. “Jian is injured. He needs a hospital.”
Magnus shrugged his shoulder and spoke into a mic there. “Charlie Team three, one of the targets requires medical attention.” Then he said to Tristan, “Aiden Grier is a medic. He can stabilize Mr. Laio until you can get him to a hospital. Was he shot?”
Tristan updated Magnus on Jian’s suspected injuries.
Magnus nodded. “Aiden can evaluate and stabilize him. It’s best if you guys leave the country somehow. We are pretty close to Mexico, though you will need passports at most entry points. Wherever you go, I recommend you go quickly.”
The medic confirmed that Jian did have broken ribs but that his lungs seemed to be uninjured, and he reset Jian’s dislocated shoulder back in its socket.
Aiden took Tristan aside afterward and told him, “He’s been beaten up, but I don’t see evidence of any potentially life-threatening injuries. After what Magnus told me, I think it’s more important to get all of you out of the States.”
Colleen drove.
First, they stopped by the hotel where Colleen and Tristan had been staying and cleaned their stuff out of the room. The clothes were less of a problem, but their computers were in there, too.
They made a quick stop at Anjali’s dorm. Tristan went upstairs with her to stand guard whilst she found her passport and threw some clothes in a bag.
Colleen stayed in the car with Jian. Tristan told her to keep the motor running and leave if she saw anything questionable.
Next, they went to Colleen’s apartment for some clothes, and predictably, the Butorins had not just invaded her home but also trashed it. Her mattress and office chair had been slashed and disemboweled of their stuffing, and her computer desk had been smashed. Her clothes were strewn on the floor and kitchen countertops. Takeout boxes and leftover food had been thrown on the walls and carpeting.
Her computer monitor, which Tristan knew was one of her few splurges that made her life better, was shattered.
Colleen sighed a heavy, gut-punch exhale.
Tristan wrapped his arms around her. “Is there anything you want from here?”
She sighed again and walked carefully across the broken glass and rotting food covering the floor to her dresser, where she grabbed scraps of clothing from the drawers that hadn’t been smeared with offal.
Tristan held out his hand, and Colleen took it and walked out of the apartment without a backward glance.
He asked her, “Did you get your passport?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have a passport. I’ve never gone anywhere.”
He hadn’t even considered that possibility, but he hadn’t had a passport before he’d been admitted to the Le Rosey school in Switzerland. No one he’d known growing up had one, either.
Tristan told her, “We’ll figure something out.”
When they were back in the car, they found Jian and Anjali holding onto each other in the backseat, nearly asleep because it was almost four in the morning.
Colleen asked him, “To your plane?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We’ll figure out where we’re going when we get there.”
43
Escape
Tristan
Tristen held Jian’s elbow and helped him up the ramp to the rented airplane.
In a tired voice, Jian said, “I have to liaise with the flight dispatcher and the Civil Aviation Authority. It’s still dark, and I don’t know how far we’re going. If it’s international, it has to be an instrumental flight plan. They take time to fill out.”
“I’ll do it,” Tristan told him. “Do you have a concussion? Did they hit your head?”
Jian shook his head, but he was looking at the ground as he did it. “I’m just exhausted. I need to sleep. I haven’t slept since they broke in over twenty-four hours ago, and honestly, I hadn’t slept much during the night before.”
“So, you’re just sleep-deprived,” Tristan said, confirming.
“I think so. And that medic gave me a pill he described as ‘the good stuff.’” He touched his side. “It is helping.”
Yeah, Tristan was going to keep an eye on Jian. “I can get the flight plan from the pilots and file it with the dispatcher. You are staying here on the plane.”
“If we leave soon, we won’t have flight staff, Mr. King.”
“Jian, we can manage without stewardesses.”
“The medic said I’m not to use this arm.”
“I wasn’t talking about you.” Tristan flipped back one of the recliner-style seats into a bed like he’d seen Jian and the other flight staff do. “I’ll arrange for food service. Colleen and I will manage. You and Anjali are going to take naps, and we’re going to land at Newark for you to see a real doctor before we continue onward.”
“But your breakfast—”
“Jian, for the love of God, I will take care of it.” Tristan ducked into the galley kitchen, which was picked over, and took three bottles of water back to Jian. “Here. Hydrate.”
With Jian chugging water, Tristan checked on Colleen and Anjali. “I’m going to get the flight plan from the pilots to file and arrange for food for the flight. Everything okay?”
“But it’s the middle of the night.”
Tristan shrugged. “Even at four o’clock in the morning, if you have enough money, things can be arranged.”
Colleen nodded. “Okay, then. Anjali is a vegetarian.”
He asked Anjali, “Vegetarian or vegan?”
“Dairy is fine. I do not eat eggs,” she said.
“I’m sure flight catering has figured that out before. Colleen, check who’s outside the plane before you let anybody in.”
“Right,” she said. “Peephole.”
He smiled at her. “Right.”
The inside of the hangar was hot as Tristan trotted through it, the corrugated steel roof holding the desert heat from the day before. The mechanical smells of heated metal and kerosene fumed in the silver cavern.
In the private terminal, arranging food service and pilots took half an hour on the phone. The rental jet company assigned pilots to them, who contacted the flight dispatcher with the flight plan. After that, he went to the flight desk where Jian had previously arranged flights and talked to them.
Talking was easy. Tristan could talk a used car salesperson into paying him to take a car off the lot.
While Tristan was negotiating with the Civil Aviation Authority and flight dispatcher for a place in line so they could leave, he watched over his shoulder for Butorin henchmen in ill-fitting suits as his brain churned.
Yes, they were flying that day to New Jersey in an attempt to get lost in the bustle of the United States, but ever since Mary Varvara Bell had sent Tristan that damned letter, he’d felt like he was navigating a rattlesnake den. As he’d crept through the tortuous tunnels of trying to procure the GameShack stock and yet keep his computer programs out of the wrong hands, every turn might reveal a rattlesnake.