Holly didn’t say her goodbye to her old chief, the lovely Mr. Clayton. She didn’t say goodbye to anyone—except to the strange voice at the other end of the phone call. In the two minutes it took for her to rush out of the CIA building, Holly had continually challenged and then re-challenged the veracity of the call she’d just received. It was better to be cautious, of course, and believe the caller’s threats and act accordingly. In this case, their first request was that she leave the headquarters so as to continue their conversation “in private” somewhere else. A neutral site, as if one of those still existed post-9/11.

Still, she tried to do her best. And she took them at their word. The fear, at least, was real. While she jogged down the stairs from the mezzanine to the ground floor, and then rushed past the security guards and the main doors and into the low sunshine of an early Friday evening, Holly wondered, just a little bit, if the whole thing had somehow been designed by Johnson. A test or something. Or at least some sort of added stress to bog down her work performance. Then, standing on the sidewalk while staring at her phone, she realized that perhaps not every single negative element of the world could stem from her nemesis, Gary Johnson.

There were other dangers out there. Of course there were. As an intelligence expert, she was well aware of this. She knew that in college, hacking into and breaking up the various black-market rings that stretched around the world. And she knew that on her first day at work, when they revealed her first assignment: to infiltrate an online slavery ring. It wasn’t Johnson, though he’d always been on the periphery of the paranoia. On the outside looking in, observing, waiting. Now that he had a more prominent role, she almost welcomed a new outside threat to focus on. Perhaps something to bond together with—if she could ever tell him, or anyone. She was already instructed not to.

But if it was bonding, or something at all positive—and if it was real—it would come at a steep price. The price of Beth.

If it was real, then Beth would likely be tied up somewhere, or locked in some cell, guarded by who knows what kind of maniacs capable of who knows what.

“What the hell do you want with her?” Holly cried into her phone.

“Excuse me?”

“What are you doing with her?”

“Miss Adams,” the Russian voice on her phone said calmly, “it appears that you’re still not alone.”

“What do you mean, alone? Of course I’m alone.”

“It appears you’re not far enough away from the headquarters.”

Holly had consciously gone just outside the building, calling their number in close proximity to the high-tech instruments of the CIA. She had orders to go to a “secure location,” somewhere where their communications wouldn’t be listened to or messed with. But why?

“It doesn’t matter where we are,” Holly said. “Wherever we go, we’ll have the NSA listening in. You think there’s a place the NSA can’t reach us?”

“Keep moving,” the voice said. “And call us back.”

“Keep moving?”

“Go somewhere else and call back.”

She wanted to tell them to go shove it, but the idea of Beth muffled the spite from her words. She hurried to her car in the parking garage, jumped in, and started the engine. When she peeled out of her parking space and barely braked down the spiraling ramp to street level, it was toward Beth that she was headed. Driving and thinking as fast as possible to Beth.

“Is this fucking good enough?” she yelled a few minutes later, parked in a narrow alley behind a strip mall.

“Thank you, Miss Adams.”

“You feel safe now?”

“Yes,” the man said. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

“How about Beth?”

“Yes, she’s cooperating as well.”

“I mean, is she safe?”

“Yes,” the voice said. “She’s quite safe with us, for the time being.”

“What? For how long?”

“We want to make a deal with you,” the voice said.

“I know. How long do I have? How long does Beth have?”

“But you don’t even know what the deal is.”

“I don’t care what it is,” Holly said.

“You should you care. Are you taking this seriously, Miss Adams?”

“What’s the deal?” she said. “What do you want?”

“An exchange. A prisoner exchange.”

It sounded so simple that at first Holly was almost relieved. Then she thought a little further. Did they want her to kidnap someone? They had to be after information. Work information. That’s why she was targeted, why Beth was, for her CIA info. That, she could do. No secret file was worth even a second of Beth’s life.

The voice came back to her, as eerily calm and Russian as ever. “An asset of ours is in trouble with your people. And your cousin is currently in trouble with our people.”

“Who is it?” Holly wanted to know who everyone was, everyone and everything involved. But she would start with whomever they wanted off the hook. Start there and work her way back until she had her revenge.

She bit hard on her tongue, not wanting to say anything else.

“Do you know Andrei Godev?”

She didn’t.

“Godev. G.O.D.E.V.”

“No,” Holly said. “That name doesn’t sound familiar to me. Is there an anglicized version?”

“You would know him as Andrei Godev.”

“Well, sometimes I get case numbers instead of names. Or code words. Perhaps if you told me more, I could look into it.”

The voice on the other end said nothing.

“Are you trafficking Beth?” she asked.

“Are you going to look into him right now? Look into Mr. Godev?”

“When I’m at work I will,” she said, knowing it would be the first thing she’d do when she got home tonight. Forgo the liquor store and go straight home and get to work, this most horrible type of extracurricular work.

Should she tell anyone?

“Obviously,” the voice said, “if you speak to anyone, or if anything else happens on your end that doesn’t involve helping us with Mr. Godev, then Beth will not have a very pleasant experience.”

Her hands were shaking.

She wanted the whole thing to stop. She wanted the call to end. But with each new word from the kidnapper’s lips came another piece of evidence. She couldn’t hang up on that. Even if she wanted to, Holly doubted her fingers would work correctly.

“Are you still there, Miss Adams?”

She closed her eyes so tightly that it hurt. Beth’s agonized face was burned into the darkness.

“Yes,” Holly said. “I’m here.”

“I have someone here, too.”

“You have what?”

“I’ve got someone for you.”

“Yeah,” Holly said. “That’s what you keep claiming.”

“I’m not claiming. It’s true. She’s here.”

Her stomach sank, thinking of Beth actually being anywhere even remotely near that disgusting voice. “She’s where?”

“Here. Would you like to speak with her?”

“Put her on,” Holly said.

The man said, “You want to say hi?”

“Put her on the goddamned phone.”

After a moment of ruffling sounds, and what sounded like wind, she finally heard the worst sound in the world. The crushed and whimpered tone of Beth’s voice on the same end of line as the Russian. The voice going quieter, repeating, “Holly?” And then saying it not like a question, but a plea. And then a scream.

Holly squeezed the phone and cried, “Beth!”

She tried talking to her cousin, but the other voice cut in. “Okay, that’s it.”

“What!?”

“That’s all for today.”

“No!”

“Maybe more later.”

“No.”

“Goodbye.”

“Beth!”

And then nothing.

Tomorrow? He said tomorrow?

Holly couldn’t wait until tomorrow. She knew Beth couldn’t, either.