“Just sit here,” he said, patting the seat kitty-corner to the driver’s, so he’d be able to see her without much trouble. “We’ll get you a real seat later, okay?”
She hesitated before finally moving over. Abraham pulled out the seat belt and buckled her into place. The shoulder strap was a problem. It cut right across the side of her neck and could easily choke her.
“Lean forward a bit,” he said, and then moved the strap behind her. “Perfect.”
The lap belt would have to do for now
As he started to close the door, she said, “Are the other people helping Mommy?”
“Other people?”
“They came right after Mommy got hurt and fell down.” The girl touched the center of her forehead. “They told me to wait in the kitchen. I go and…and…” Her brow was furrowed in deep thought for a second before she looked at him again. “And then I see you.”
Dear God, Abraham thought. He had no trouble picturing what had happened. The termination of the girl’s mother, a bullet to the head right in front of Tessa.
What the hell was going on?
It took all his will to smile and say, “Let’s go get that food, huh?”
They hid out in the small, isolated house in the hills above Miyazaki. Abraham had arranged for its use through a friend in the business who was not connected to Carter, so he and Tessa would have a place to stay while false documents were created by a woman he trusted in Seoul, South Korea.
Due to a concerted effort on his part to make Tessa feel safe, her fear of him soon began to fade. The food helped, as did finally getting out of the car and moving into the house. In one of the closets, he discovered an old checkers set. The game was missing several pieces, but a few stones from outside worked as acceptable replacements.
He had worried that Tessa might be too young to play — she said she was four — but she quickly picked up the concept, and they passed the rest of that initial day and nearly all of the second in an almost endless tournament.
At least once an hour, she would ask about her mother. Abraham would either tell her he didn’t know or try to distract her with the game. No matter what he did, though, he could feel his own sense of guilt building. Of course he couldn’t be sure the woman was dead, but he’d been in the business too long to ignore his intuition.
He couldn’t help but wonder what had triggered the events that now had him playing babysitter. At first, he thought Tessa might’ve been a pawn in some kind of high-powered custody struggle. Maybe her father had been in a position to use resources most people didn’t even know existed to retrieve his daughter and eliminate her mother. But Abraham quickly dismissed that theory when he remembered Carter saying the interested party would think Tessa was dead.
Perhaps, then, the girl had just been a byproduct of an ordered termination. Her mother damned for whatever reason, and the transporting of the girl was a mission to return her to where she belonged, minus one parent. Or had this been a purposeful kidnapping? Maybe the girl would now be used to influence a relative in some important position. Maybe the mother wasn’t meant to be killed but had gotten in the way, or maybe Abraham had incorrectly interpreted Tessa’s description of what had happened and the girl’s mother was still alive.
Stop it, he told himself.
No matter how distasteful the events that had brought him and the girl together, he couldn’t let himself get involved. He had a job to do. That was all.
I really am getting too old for this.
“Your turn, Abe,” Tessa said after she jumped one of his game pieces, tilting the balance in her favor.
“You are a tricky one, aren’t you?” he said as he studied the board.
She smiled. “Go, go, go.”
“Give me a moment.”
He picked up one of his pieces, knowing his intended move would open him up to losing in another three turns, but he wanted to see what she would do.
As he set the piece down again, she clapped and said, “Ha, ha,” and he knew she’d seen it, too.
Tessa was a smart girl.
A minute later, as she was making her winning move, the disposable phone Abraham had picked up before they’d arrived at the house began to ring.
“Moshi moshi,” he said, answering.
“Is this Mr. Black?” a male voice asked in Japanese.
“It is.”
“There is a package waiting here for you.”
The man didn’t need to say more than that. The package would contain the documents and Abraham knew exactly where to pick them up. “Thank you. I’ll be there soon.”
As he hung up the phone, he saw that Tessa had set up the board again.
“Me first,” she said, then moved one of the pieces.
“Okay. But we need to leave after this game.”
She looked at him, disappointed. “No. Not yet.”
“I’ll tell you what — we can take the game with us. How about that?”
She lit up. “Really?”
“Really.” He looked at the board and made a move. “Your turn.”
CHAPTER 2
Abraham arranged for a private plane to fly them from Miyazaki to Busan, South Korea. Tessa was fine on the drive to the airport, but once she saw the plane, she pulled to a stop.
It took Abraham another couple steps before he realized she was no longer beside him. He walked back and crouched down in front of her.
“You’ve been on an airplane before, right?” he said, keeping his tone light.
She hesitated before nodding.
“This one’s just a little smaller than those big jets you’re probably used to.” He held out his hand. “I’ll be right there with you the whole time.”
She didn’t move.
“Tessa, it’ll be fine.”
“Where are we going?”
“Someplace safe,” he said.
Her cheeks pinched up the way they did before she was about to cry. “Will…will Mommy be there?”
Hold it together, he told himself.
“Your mommy wants you to be somewhere safe. That’s why I’m here, to make sure nothing happens to you.”
Though it wasn’t an answer to her question, it seemed to keep her tears in check. She put her hand in his. The gesture was a simple one, but he could feel the weight of the trust behind it. Instead of making her walk beside him, he picked her up and carried her on board.
The flight took only an hour. Through the whole trip, Tessa squeezed herself against the edge of her seat, as close to Abraham as she could get. She did the same when they first boarded the train from Busan to Seoul. An older woman in the seat across the aisle finally teased the girl out of her shell. She smiled at Tessa and offered her a piece of fruit from a bag. After some prodding from Abraham, Tessa took it.
“Thank you,” Tessa said, her voice almost a whisper.
The woman replied in Korean and laughed good-naturedly.
Tessa was initially taken aback by the response, but soon she was smiling and laughing, too. Within minutes, she was sitting next to the woman, playing a game with a deck of cards the woman had brought.
Abraham took advantage of the situation to move to an empty area near the doors, where he could still see Tessa, and pulled out his phone. He hesitantly stared at the screen for several seconds. Since not long after Tessa had been put in his arms, he’d been telling himself he was a disinterested courier simply doing a job, but the fissures in his attempt at self-delusion had grown too wide to close. He wanted to know what had happened to the girl’s mother—needed to know. Because maybe then he could be sure he was helping Tessa, not hurting her.