The Storm (NUMA Files 10)

With great effort he signed I … am … a … friend, hoping he hadn’t misspelled the last word and told her he was a fiend.

She seemed puzzled but her eyes were hopeful. On the chance he’d messed up the whole sentence, he signed something she would have to understand: N … U … M … A …

Her eyes grew wide and he held a finger to his lips again.

He nodded toward the guard, pulled the pistol from his pocket and cocked it. The man’s eyes opened at the sound.

“Don’t move,” Kurt said.

He held the pistol with his right hand and grabbed the man’s own pistol. The guy didn’t flinch.

Kurt pointed toward the back of the plane. When the guard looked that way, Kurt whammed him on the side of the head with the pistol. The guard dropped like a sack of flour, but he didn’t go out. A second blow did the trick.

By the time he woke up, he was bound and gagged and tied to the floorboards of one of the boats near the tail end of the aircraft.

As Kurt finished tying him down, Leilani spoke. “Who are you?” she asked.

Kurt smiled. “Can’t tell you how glad I am that you don’t know.”

Of course she had no idea what he was talking about, but Kurt was making a mental note that from now on he’d be suspicious of anyone who knew who he was before he’d introduced himself.

“My name’s Kurt Austin,” he said. “I knew your brother. I’m with NUMA. We’ve been trying to figure out what happened to him.”

“Did you find him?”

Kurt shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She gulped back a wave of emotion and took a slow, deep breath. “I didn’t think anyone would,” she said quietly. “I could almost feel that he was gone.”

“But the search led us to Jinn and by accident to you,” he said.

She glanced nervously toward the cockpit door.

“Don’t worry,” Kurt said, “they’re not likely to come back here anytime soon. And if they did, all they’d see is you and one of your guards.”

She seemed to accept that.

“When did these guys grab you?” he asked.

“In Malé. As soon as I checked into the hotel,” she said.

It seemed as if a tremor of fear swept over her as she thought back to the incident, but she stiffened. “I kicked one of them in the teeth,” she said proudly. “The guy will be eating soup for weeks. But the others threw me down.”

She was feisty, but far different from the way Zarrina had portrayed her. She was less worldly, more like a twenty-five-year-old should be. Kurt wished he’d seen her before.

“I woke up in the desert,” she added. “I couldn’t escape. I don’t even know where I was. They interrogated me and got everything—passwords, phone numbers, bank accounts. They took my passport and driver’s license.”

All of which explained how the impostor knew so much and why the American Embassy confirmed for NUMA that Leilani Tanner was in Malé.

“You don’t have to feel bad about that,” he said. “You’re not some hardened operative who would be expected to resist interrogation. Besides, you must have done something right, you’re still alive.”

She looked ill. “I think that Jinn looks at me like some type of horse to break,” she said. “He’s always touching me, telling me how I’ll enjoy being with him.”

“He’s never going to find out how wrong he is,” Kurt said. “I’m getting you out of here.”

“Off the plane?”

“Not exactly,” he said, then switched subjects. “Any idea where we’re going?”