The Power Couple Read online

  “I promise. Is everything cool?”

  “Kira’s about to get grounded for the rest of her life,” Brian said. “But it’s fine.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you—”

  “It’s fine, Tony.”

  The tension in Brian’s voice suggested he feared otherwise.

  * * *

  As they left the apartment, she pulled out her phone—nothing, ugh—and found The Mansion on the map. “You think she’s there.”

  “Of course she’s there. Don’t get too mad at her, Becks.”

  “Just a little mad.” She saw neither of them wanted to consider the possibility that Kira had left the bar without telling them. Because Jacques might not be an Islamic terrorist, but he was still a guy…

  5

  Kira knew it wasn’t cocaine as soon as it went up her nose.

  She felt no acceleration. No rush. Only the sweetest pleasure imaginable, an orgasm, five, ten, her body loose and soft. Like staring into the sun. Only instead of blinding her the light made her so very warm.

  What, she tried to say, but her mouth didn’t work. She flopped back against the couch, her head dropped, tongue lolled.

  She knew she should care but she couldn’t think at all, the words melted into a silver sea. Her mind slid into neutral; she couldn’t follow the strobes or the music, the lights and noise were a million miles away and in her fingertips all at once.

  Someone grabbed her, arms under her, pulling her up.

  No wait—

  But she couldn’t speak.

  Anyway, it didn’t matter. She wanted to feel like this forever.

  Even breathing felt like too much work—she had to pull the air into her lungs, and she couldn’t figure out how.

  The hands held her and, unknowing, she moved through this place to another.

  A long, dark hallway, a door open…

  A car.

  Inside it.

  Her eyes closed and she knew she was going to die; the dark rose in her. She couldn’t breathe at all; the air was thick as cotton.

  She fell.

  Into the black…

  * * *

  Her eyes sputtered open.

  Her nose. Something jammed in her right nostril. Her head back. A puff of liquid spurted into her.

  Her shoulders shuddered. Her head twitched. She opened her mouth to breathe again—

  Another squirt of the spray and another.

  The seconds passed and the ecstasy faded; her first thought, how badly she missed it. But slowly she came back to life, the pieces fit.

  She was in a car. Moving. A city at night, barely visible through dark tinted glass.

  Men on either side, squeezing her.

  Her wrists cuffed together in her lap. A big hand on her right forearm, gripping it.

  “She’s coming to,” the man on her left said. She knew his voice.

  Barcelona. The club. Dancing.

  The cocaine that wasn’t cocaine.

  And one final squirt up her nose. What was left of the pleasure fled her body. In its place, fear. Nothing made any sense. Maybe she’d fallen and hit her head. Maybe she was dreaming.

  She didn’t feel like she was dreaming. She tried to raise her arms. Jacques held them in place. She didn’t speak. As long as she stayed quiet she could pretend nothing was real, nothing was happening.

  * * *

  “Kira. Nod if you can hear me.”

  She opened her mouth to scream, but the man on the other side put a hand over her lips.

  Jacques jammed something into her belly. An electric pain stabbed her. She tried to writhe away but they were too strong, they held her as the fire coursed through.

  Jacques lifted his hand. The agony ended. Tears jumped to Kira’s eyes. The other man’s hand stayed on her mouth. The strange smell of nail polish on his thick fingers. Rodrigo. The car turned left, picked up speed.

  “Stun gun.” Jacques’s voice was flat, almost robotic. Nothing like the man she’d met in Paris. “Understand? Make a fist.”

  She tried to look at him, plead with her eyes. The palm over her mouth kept her still.

  “Make a fist if you understand.”

  She squeezed her left hand into a fist. The tears kept coming. Stop crying stop crying stop. Her own voice, no one else’s.

  “You’re ours now. Behave, you’ll be fine. Don’t, I’ll hurt you. Make a fist if you understand.”

  She made a fist.

  “That powder you snorted was heroin. A little fentanyl for kicks.”

  Now the pleasure made sense.

  Sophomore year, soccer, she’d run full-out on a breakaway, tripped on a muddy patch, broken her left ankle and tibia. She had never known what pain meant until then. The orthopedist had prescribed her Oxycontin. I’m only going to give you ten days, be careful with this stuff, what you hear is true. The pills put her on a cloud. This stuff had sent her straight into space.

  “We gave you naloxone as an antidote.” Jacques sounded like a doctor now, not a graduate student. He was probably neither, she realized. She had no idea what he was. “We were gone from the club in less than a minute. No one noticed. If they did they would think you overdosed and we were getting you help. Happens all the time. Make a fist if you understand.”

  She made a fist. And thought of the text she’d sent her mom, her parents would be at Helado soon enough.

  “My phone was rigged.” As if he could read her mind. “The text you sent didn’t go through. Your phone is gone. Even if your brother told your parents about The Mansion, they won’t find it. Or you. Your parents have no idea where you are. No one does. Make a fist if you understand.”

  She looked for a hole in what he’d told her. Couldn’t find one. She didn’t make a fist this time. He didn’t seem to care.

  “This car, the doors are locked. If you scream we’ll punish you. We’ve done this before. Make a fist if you understand.”

  She hesitated, made a fist.

  “Good. No screaming. Rodrigo—”

  Jacques nodded, and Rodrigo lifted his hand.

  Immediately a scream rose in her.

  She swallowed it down.

  Her first test, her first decision. They were still in the city. If she screamed loud enough maybe someone would hear. But probably not. Jacques and Rodrigo were far stronger than she was. She couldn’t fight her way out. Be good. Do what they say. Watch and wait.

  “Why?”

  The only word she could manage.

  “Pourquoi? Only an American would ask. For money, of course. Why else?”

  “Money money money money,” Lilly said from the front seat. “Bitcoin, gold, diamonds, pearls. Makes the world go round. An American should know that.”

  “Bitch,” Kira said, before she could stop herself.

  Jacques punched her in the stomach.

  She gasped, bent over, desperate for air. In the front seat Lilly laughed.

  * * *

  Back when the Unsworths lived in Houston, Becks had helped out on a serial killer case the bureau investigated in South Texas. Kira was ten or eleven. Old enough to understand the snatches of conversations she overheard.

  The Border Bandit, the killer was called. A cute name, a not-cute-at-all case. He stuck mainly to undocumented immigrants and first-generation Mexican Americans. No one put the murders together until a rancher’s plane in Dimmit County crashed practically on top of a grave where he’d left three new victims. All with bullets in their skulls, all raped. The local cops asked the FBI for help.

  Her parents hadn’t been good at the time. The case had made them worse. It had pulled Rebecca out of the house. Maybe made her hate men a little. Brian had been angry, too. You want to spend weekends working for free.

  He’s killing women. For fun. Cool with that, Bri?

  Maybe don’t talk about it in front of the kids.

  Maybe Brian was right, Rebecca should have tried to keep Kira innocent. But later, Kira realized Rebecca wanted her to know, women
really did disappear. Defenseless women. Mexican girls crossing the desert to work at chicken plants. Runaways selling themselves, meeting truckers at gas stations in the night. Some vanished for years before anyone even noticed.

  They weren’t always poor. Sometimes they were middle-class secretaries who’d gotten pregnant by a married boyfriend who hated kids as much as child support. Who went out for runs and never came back. Those women were reported missing right away. Volunteers trampled forests for them. But their bodies never turned up. The suspects had carefully concocted alibis the police couldn’t shake. Eventually everyone except the victims’ families forgot.

  Years later, Kira had asked Rebecca about the Border Bandit case. No joy, Rebecca said. The FBI never found a plausible suspect, never even figured out how many victims he had. Eventually the murders ended. Maybe because the killer had gone to prison for some unrelated crime. Or died. Or maybe he’d moved to a new state, started a new spree. Serial killers rarely woke up one morning and said, Hey, this is wrong, better stop.

  * * *

  A single thought: I’m going to die.

  Jacques would kill her. Or sell her to someone who would. A super-rich psychopath who had decided he wanted something different, something fun, an American girl.

  The idea seemed impossible. But here she was, vanishing into the night, Barcelona falling away as they came to a more American-looking stretch of road, strip malls on either side. The airport was around here somewhere, she thought. Minute by minute, mile by mile, she was leaving her mother and father and brother behind.

  Then what? Would they take her to the coast? Throw her onto a yacht?

  No. She couldn’t think that way. Rebecca and Brian would be looking for her even now. They’d wonder why she hadn’t texted. They knew her, knew disappearing wasn’t her style. They wouldn’t waste time. Rebecca was a senior FBI counterintelligence officer. She’d get the whole United States government on the case. These idiots would find out they’d kidnapped the wrong dumb American girl.

  But Kira better try to make her own luck, too.

  If it ever gets rough, Rebecca had told her a couple of years before, the last time Kira asked about the Bandit, don’t show him any mercy. Because he sure AF won’t show you any.

  Kira would have plenty of time to be terrified. Beg for pity. Right now she needed to think.

  6

  At 1:50 a.m., the line outside The Mansion was a United Nations of the cool. Tall Nordic women, a stick-thin girl with blue-black skin, a Japanese couple in matching white silk shirts. Even a few Spaniards.

  At the front, a man in a black T-shirt guarded the wooden front doors.

  “Excuse me,” Rebecca said.

  “Line starts there.”

  His English was unaccented American, mid-Atlantic. Maybe they’d caught a break. “You from D.C. too?”

  “I’m a citizen of humanity.”

  You’re an idiot. “We’re looking for our daughter, she’s not answering her phone—”

  “Probably just can’t hear it.”

  “Please, I’ll leave my driver’s license if you like.”

  “Line starts there.” He gave Rebecca a you are dismissed look.

  Pissant. Rebecca reached into her purse for her FBI badge, then stopped. In the United States, flashing it would have gotten them in, no questions asked. A century of branding had given the three letters an almost magic power. Rebecca doubted they carried the same weight here. They might even put the guy’s back up.

  Step two: lying. “She has diabetes. She sent this weird text, it didn’t make sense, we just want to be sure she’s not passed out in a bathroom stall.”

  “For real?”

  “We’re not here to harsh your mellow,” Brian said.

  “Harsh my what?” The guy smirked, nothing funnier than old people saying uncool things. As Brian had known, Rebecca thought. “Okay, ten minutes. Give me your licenses.”

  * * *

  Inside, the place looked like a tornado of hipness had hit it. A make-out session at the bar. Three shirtless boys dancing on a table. A confident beat backed a reedy voice: So let’s set the world on fiiiiire / We can burn briiiiiighter than the sun… The song had been in a Super Bowl commercial a few years back, Rebecca remembered. Taco Bell. Old people dancing crazily.

  The place was fifty feet deep, twenty feet wide, a second smaller room at the back.

  “I’ll go back,” she said to Brian. “You stay here.” Clear the room, box the target.

  The FBI agent in her calculating. But her motherly sixth sense already told her Kira was gone. If she’d ever been here. Cologne and perfume mingled with sweat and beer. Girls sat on boys’ laps, boys whispered in girls’ ears, all swimming in the endless present. Rebecca wanted to be twenty again.

  But the feeling passed even more quickly than it came. If she’d been here with Kira she could have afforded sentiment, nostalgia, even jealousy. Not now. Now she wished she could send all the revelers home, clear the room to see Kira more easily.

  She swiveled her head left and right. SIPDE: Scan Identify Predict Decide Execute. Another bureau acronym. Her fingers brushed her hip for her Glock. A reflex. But it was back home. She missed it. Even FBI agents couldn’t bring weapons to Europe without diplomatic bags. Uncle Ned had told her when she joined the bureau, You’ll be surprised how used to it you get. After a while it’s like it’s part of you. As usual, he was right.

  Rebecca stepped into the back room, saw Kira’s head, her honey-brown hair.

  No. As the woman turned, Rebecca saw she was ten years older than Kira.

  The bathroom next. Rebecca pushed by the women waiting outside, ignoring their complaints. Two stall doors swung open simultaneously, revealing women who weren’t Kira. The third stall, the one in the corner, stayed shut until Rebecca rapped on it.

  “Kira?”

  “Uno momento!” a female voice said. Not Kira. Rebecca turned and left.

  She worked her way carefully back through the bar. Just to be sure. Because as soon as she reached the front door, she would no longer be able to avoid the fact that her nineteen-year-old daughter was missing in a foreign city after meeting a man she’d known barely a day.

  Forget the strange couple she’d seen in Paris; forget the terrorist chatter. Kira wasn’t the type to vanish that way. She just wasn’t. Rebecca knew her daughter.

  But then didn’t parents always think they knew their kids?

  Brian stood at the front door, scanning the room. They shook their heads simultaneously.

  “Okay, find the manager, someone senior has to be here on a night like this,” she said. This bar would make thousands of euros tonight. Someone had to make sure the employees didn’t steal too much. In fact—

  She looked at the ceiling. Yep, the place had a bubble camera behind the bar, another over the door. She pointed to the cameras and Brian nodded. They pushed to the bar. A couple of kids gave them rough looks, but Brian shook his head and something in the set of his jaw must have warned them off.

  The bartenders were less accommodating, avoiding eye contact. If I just keep my head down, I’ll be safe from the oldsters. After a minute Rebecca had waited long enough. “Grab one.”

  The next time a bartender walked by Brian locked a hand around his wrist, reeled him close.

  “We need the manager,” Rebecca said.

  “He’s busy.” The guy tugged his arm but Brian held fast. “Let go.”

  “Get him,” Brian said.

  “Fine. I’ll text him. His office is upstairs. There’s a door by the bathroom, locked.”

  * * *

  When the door to the stairs swung open, Rebecca expected a rock star, hollow-cheeked and coke-twitchy. This guy looked more like an accountant, khakis and rimless glasses. He led them upstairs to a white-walled, air-conditioned office. A cabinet stocked with energy drinks sat against one wall. The sounds of the bar were muffled in a way that suggested music-studio-level soundproofing. She didn’t see video screens or
laptops, much less a safe. Those must be in the inner office.

  “You have problem?” Decent English, not great. The question was directed to Brian. Rebecca answered.

  “Kira—our daughter—came here to meet a guy. Now she’s missing.”

  “Okay.”

  “She’s nineteen. She was by herself.”

  “Nineteen, legal to drink in Spain. And other things.”

  “The guy’s older.”

  “How much?”

  Twenty-six wasn’t going to impress him. “Obviously you run a tight ship, but things happen—”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Drinks get drugged. Incidents. You have cameras. All we want to do is get a look at the guy. See how they interacted.”

  The guy didn’t deny the surveillance. “Maybe she doesn’t want you to know. Why don’t you go downstairs, have a cerveza. See if she comes back.”

  Rebecca stared at the guy and he stared back. She felt her temper rising, the fury unexpected. After fifteen years in the bureau, she’d grown used to the power of her badge. Maybe too used to it. The people she talked to might lie to her, but they never disrespected her. “She said she’d be back by midnight.” Close enough to true.

  “Then she must be busy.”

  “Just take a look,” Brian said. “Please.” His voice cool, collected. His face a mask. Open anger wasn’t his style. During the bad years he’d retreated into himself, gibed at Rebecca so subtly that at times she wondered if she was imagining his feelings. Just tell me what you’re thinking, she’d said more than once.

  Now she appreciated his calm.

  “Show me her picture.”

  Rebecca tilted her phone to him.

  “We close at four,” he said. “If I have a chance, I’ll look before then. Give me your numbers.”

  * * *

  Downstairs Rebecca took one last survey, confirming what she already knew. Kira was gone. The bar seemed actively malign to her now, its excitement cloaking a deeper chaos. A flytrap.