Edward didn’t like the glint in Piet’s eyes. Piet was useful, but only to a point. However, he could make trouble and it was important there be no trouble, not now. Not when he was so close. So he said, “Because I don’t have to.”
Piet took the small sword away from the woman’s spine and walked out of the bathroom, Edward holding the gun at his side. Piet turned and smiled back at the young woman who looked away from him, covering her nakedness. Edward closed the door behind Piet.
The woman started to shudder, and Edward put a protective arm around her shoulders. “Did he? Did he?” He didn’t finish the question.
She shook her head. He inspected her back; a scratch, but the wakizashi sword that was Piet’s pride had not made a serious mark.
“It’s because you’re so important to me that he wants you,” Edward said.
“You’re not here all the time.” She spoke very softly.
“I’m everywhere. All the time,” he said, his voice cold. “I’m even in here.” He tapped her forehead. “Now clean yourself.”
He went downstairs. Piet sat alone in the kitchen. People always seemed to clear a room when Piet entered. It was time to get leverage over Piet so he made no further trouble.
“Your initiative inspires me,” Edward said. “Come along on the job. Since you’re curious.”
“Where are you going?” Piet sounded a bit nervous; Edward smiled.
“Centraal Station.” It was Amsterdam’s main train hub, on the north side of the city.
“Are you letting her go?” Piet asked. Demi, a thin Dutch blonde, stepped back into the kitchen, arms crossed.
“Don’t be silly; she doesn’t want to leave me. You will walk with us. Demi, you too. Go get the handheld camera. We have footage to shoot.”
Piet looked uncomfortable.
“I want you there. Because I trust you. And if you are there, I think she will do whatever I say.” Piet would be a spur to her to do what must be done. And Piet would then be in his power.
The woman came downstairs, slowly. She glanced about, uncertain, her hands trembling. She had not been left alone outside of the closet since being brought to the house three weeks ago. But she had made no trouble now, Edward thought, and he flicked a smile at Piet. The Hearst approach worked: break, tear down, and give her the barest bit of hope to rebuild.
She glanced once at Piet and her mouth trembled. “Are you making me leave?” she asked Edward.
“Of course not, Yasmin. You belong to us now, and we to you.”
“Yes,” she said, her voice small. She’d fought back hard the first two days. That memory of defiance in her face seemed distant now.
“Today is about your father.” Edward made a click in his throat. “He is dead to you. Do you remember, Yasmin?”
“Yes,” she said after a long silence. “He’s dead to me.”
“He’s a bad man, Yasmin. Your old world was very bad, isn’t that right? We’ve saved you from that evil.” He lingered on the last word. Evil wasn’t a word you got to use in every conversation. “But we are the ones who do good.”
“He’s a bad man. He needs to pay for what he’s done.” More strength in her voice. “He’s bad. Like you said. Very bad.”
Edward shot Piet and Demi a scowl of triumph. Then he gave Yasmin a smile. “You are nothing to him, and you are everything to us. Yes? This is true. This is your home now. We are your family. Forever.”
She didn’t speak.
“We are going for a walk, Yasmin, outside the house. You’ll be good, won’t you, Yasmin? Or I’ll have to put you back into the closet, for a week or a month or maybe a year. I’ll have to visit you there for a long time, play with you and my little knife. Maybe Piet would visit you, too.” He ran a finger along her jawline. She stared past his shoulder at Piet.
Then she nodded. She rubbed her arm and he could see the needle marks from the drugs he’d given her.
“You don’t need to be afraid,” he said. “I’ll be with you every step of the way. We’re going to use your expertise. You should be proud, us taking the bad you made and using it for good.”
She nodded again.
“We’re going where there are a lot of people, Yasmin,” Edward said. “All very bad people.”
“Very bad people,” she repeated.
“We’re going to the train station,” Edward said, and he held out his hand with a smile. With Piet and Demi watching, he put her hand in his. He could feel their gaze on him, like an audience in a darkened theater. And then he started to crush her fingers.
A slow moan escaped her mouth.
“I didn’t say you could make a noise,” Edward said, squeezing harder.
She went silent. He continued to increase the pressure. “Now you may speak.”
“When do we leave?” Yasmin gasped. But the best part was she didn’t try and pull her fingers away. She was broken.
Behind him, Piet laughed.
He released the pressure and interlocked her fingers with his.
“In a few moments. If you do as I tell you, you don’t have to go back into the closet. You can stay outside. All day. And tonight you could sleep in a bed, Yasmin. With me. Like man and wife.”
Her mouth moved like words might spill in a flood, but she was silent.
Edward put his lips close to her ear. “Will you do what I tell you, Yasmin?” But he already knew the answer.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I’ll do what you ask.” For a moment he saw the strong woman she had been, before her ordeal in the hellish closet, and then that sense of steel vanished as she glanced at Piet and Demi. Now she showed the others that she was a broken, desperate shell, trying to survive to the next hour. Just as he’d planned. Fear. He’d seen it in the faces of the men he’d killed in Hungary, in Sam Capra’s blind panic as he tried to find his wife in the smoke and noise of Holborn.
Fear worked.
He released her hand. “Everything changes for you today, Yasmin. Today, you’re the most important person in the house.”
Edward smiled. This was going to be so much better than London.
17
On Saturday I had a day off from Ollie’s. I had been careful to spend my days off at home, sitting quietly, watching TV or reading books that sharpened my mind. My only outings were an occasional jog or a trip to the library.
A typical trip to the library meant browsing for an hour, killing time in the stacks, checking out books that would not raise red flags (no nonfiction, no books on the Company; I usually picked thick historical novels). I would log onto the web and do a search on Lucy’s name; I felt sure Howell monitored the library’s Internet connection, since it was my only avenue to the web. Lucy’s name never resulted in any news. I would visit her abandoned personal page on Facebook and I lingered over the few pictures of her: our first Christmas in London, her walking on a beach during a long weekend in Majorca, us having coffee in Kensington Park during a glorious summer morning. I have no photos of her; nothing left from our apartment in London. The Company had taken and kept it all, for evidence.
In some of the pictures she smiled, in others she wore the intense competitive frown I’d seen in her. I stared at the old photos, looking for any trace, any sign, that she could turn traitor. As if it could be read in a face. She had not put up any photos since she became pregnant; most of her Facebook friends were from her college days at Arizona, and their wall postings remained unanswered.
So, no surprise to my watchers when, on Saturday at noon, I stopped by Ollie’s for a minute and then went to the library. I dropped my checked-out, unread novels into the return chute. I smiled at the librarian behind the desk, who ignored me as she spoke into a phone. I moved along the shelves for five minutes, determining the relative positions of the staff and the visitors. I took off the cover of the alarm system sensor-it was close to the door-and with a pair of scissors I snipped the wire that connected the back exit door to the alarm. I replaced the cover. No one looked at me; story time was going on in the children’s section, a hearty reading of Where the Wild Things Are.