Her silence made Andre speak again.

  “I know a guy. He’s dope it at these art things. He owes me a favor. We get him to do a fake and use that to get Ben back. He’s good, Gigi, really good.”

  “It won’t work. Artem Sokolov is no fool. He will have a top appraiser check the painting first, believe me.”

  Andre switched gears. “Where you at, fam?”

  “Geneva.”

  “And Ben?”

  “I don’t know for sure. They blindfolded me when they took me away, but it’s about fifteen minutes out of the city. I’m to make contact once I have the painting. He kept my passport so I can’t get any money from the bank.”

  “I’m on it. I’ll text you a drop-off point. I’ll have a new passport there before the sun rises tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Andre, and I’ll need one for Ben too, for when I get him out.”

  “Georgina, whatever you need, just say the word, okay? And watch your back.”

  “I will.”

  They ended the call and she swigged the last bit of coffee then dumped the empty container into the nearby garbage can. From the play set, she took the toy compass, buried it inside her pocket, and tossed the rest of the toys in the trash. The compass wasn’t as good as the real thing, but it seemed to work when she’d quickly tested it. Pausing for a moment, she surveyed her surrounds, carefully searching for a mode of transportation. On the opposite side of the road, a few youths stood around chatting. Behind them, she spotted a couple of bicycles and a moped. Too slow and too much effort, she thought, and walked further along the road towards the center of the old town. It didn’t take long before she spotted a faster motorcycle parked along one of the quieter side streets. That’ll do. She smiled as she walked toward it.

  With no one around it was an easy target and it took all of five seconds to bypass the ignition before she made away with the motorbike. A rush of energy flooded her body as the old familiar thrill of the game overtook her. Then, as quickly as it came, guilt set in and she realized theft wasn’t only against worldly laws, it was also against God’s law. A law she was now desperate to follow. Conflict as to how her newfound beliefs could coexist with what she’d been forced into doing settled in the back of her mind. Would God forgive one more transgression if it meant she’d save Ben’s life?

  Her thoughts occupied her mind as she raced through the streets and set off toward Gustav’s house.

  Chapter Five

  The hour flew by quickly and she relished the scenic drive along the lake to where the road eventually snaked between rows of tall trees before it ended at Gustav’s house. She stopped under the trees several yards away, taking a moment to stake out what was left of the dwelling. It seemed quiet, so she approached with caution.

  Across the grounds in front of the house, debris from the shootout still lay scattered all over the grass and deck. Bright yellow police tape spanned the front of the house and across the barely-there entrance. The door was charred and a thin film of soot covered the shattered windows and parts of the exterior walls. Recalling the fire-bomb Sokolov’s men had thrown inside the house, she suddenly questioned if it was safe for her to enter, and if the secret passage she’d come there to find was still intact. She quickly brushed away the thought, concluding that, having known the way Gustav operated, he’d most likely have made certain the hideaway was built into a firewall.

  Shards of glass crunched beneath her shoes as she entered the house. She moved quietly, her feet light as she stepped over pieces of burned furniture that were damaged by the fire and bullets. Chalked body outlines lay in wait along the way and she sidestepped them, feeling unsettled to be walking over them.

  The house was silent, causing her every step to echo through the large space. From across the room, she spotted the wall that housed the hidden doorway and swiftly moved toward it. Remarkably, the fire hadn’t touched the wallpaper and the hidden alcove had remained perfectly intact. When her fingers found the push-release latch of the hidden door, she paused, certain she had just heard footsteps walking over the scattered glass that lay inside the entrance of the house.

  She froze and listened more intently. There it was again. Someone else was definitely inside the house. She stood in place, careful not to give away her position. Footsteps moved slowly across the scattered glass, deeper inside the house. As far as she could make out, it sounded like only one set, but there was no way of knowing for certain.

  She thought of making her escape through the hidden door but recalled the elevator that was hidden behind it. The house was too quiet and the noise of it traveling down the shaft would undoubtedly give her position away in an instant. So, instead, she took cover around the corner of a nearby wall, waiting to catch a glimpse of whoever was snooping around in Gustav’s house.

  Or, had followed her there.

  Armed with only her wit and a few rusty combat moves, every hair on Jorja’s body stood on end as she waited for the intruder to make himself known. Her heart thumped loudly in her ears, but she held her position. The footsteps grew closer, paused, turned, then continued in her direction. She fell back against the wall behind her, pressed her head firmer against it. Her body was rigid, alert, ready to attack. The footsteps suddenly stopped mere feet away from her.

  He had sensed her presence.

  She held her breath, tuned her senses toward whoever was on the other side of the corner. Neither of them stirred as each waited for the other to make the first move. She held back the urge to play into his tactical maneuver, baiting him to doubt himself. It worked.

  His feet shuffled ever so slightly on the floor as his weight shifted into a position of attack.

  She was ready, pinning her sights on the bend where the two walls met.

  With every sensory input in her body at its peak, the tip of his gun appeared from behind the wall, slowly revealing the imminent danger behind it, one inch at a time.

  She barely breathed, waiting for him to move forward a bit more.

  He did and she seized the moment.

  Her hand closed around his wrist, using it to thrust his arm back into the edge of the wall.

  He fought back and came at her with his free arm.

  She blocked his punch, pounded his armed hand harder against the wall until the weapon fell to the floor between them.

  His body thrust toward her, spinning her around, then pinning her back against the wall, holding her in place with his strong forearm across her neck. The black mask on his face revealed nothing but his eyes. Hazel eyes under thick, blond brows. She fought back against his strength and tried pushing her weight against his. Her strength surprised him, evident also by the soft groans that now escaped from beneath his strained breath that puffed out the thin fabric over his mouth.

  She freed an arm and curled her hand toward the back of his head in an attempt to yank the mask from his face.

  But he was too quick and stopped her from doing it, gripping her wrist harder and pinning her arm against the wall above her head.

  Still in his overpowering grip, he left her no choice and she did what any woman in her position would do: she thrust her knee into his groin.

  The power move had the desired effect and instantly forced him to release the grip from her neck. He doubled over, panted for air.

  Once more, she used her knee and delivered a forceful blow to his face. He fell back onto his spine, spitting a few words in French at her as he fought to catch his breath.

  She turned around to find his gun on the floor behind her but when she spun back around to aim it at him, he had already bolted for the exit.

  “Stop!” she shouted and ran after him.

  He ignored her and kept running until he made it outside and onto the front of the house.

  “I said, stop! Who are you? What do you want?”

  She followed him down to the water’s edge but he was too fast and jumped aboard a speedboat that lay in wait for him. No wonder she hadn’t heard him coming, she thought, as she reached the water. The masked man mockingly saluted her as he joined an accomplice before they sped off across the water, as if to say he’d be seeing her again. It puzzled her. How did they know she was there? They had arrived in a boat, which meant they couldn’t have followed her by road.

  Tucking the gun inside her waistband in the small of her back, she walked back up to the house, her mind racing through the chain of events. Then it dawned on her. Perhaps they hadn’t come there for her after all. Perhaps she had surprised them instead. And if that were the case, what were they looking for?

  She paused, her thoughts once she reached the hidden passage. She’d figure it all out later. For now, she needed to stay focused and on track.

  * * *

  The door released quickly, just as she recalled seeing it doing when Gustav did it. As before, the elevator took her underground and stopped once it delivered her to the subterranean tunnel. Retrieving the cheap compass from her pocket, she stepped forward, counting each pace she made, taking note of the changes in direction each time. Fifty-three paces south, then ninety-seven south-west, and so on, until she reached the end of the tunnel where Gustav’s pupils would be needed to unlock the retina scanner to open the exit door. With it being what she had already anticipated, she made sure she had logged the map points in an unsent text message on her phone, using the phone as a notebook instead.

  Satisfied her tracking method would work above ground, she headed back along the hidden tunnel, up the elevator and out into the house. Her hand went to the small of her back where she had placed the gun she’d seized from her attacker earlier. Firming her clasp around the grip, she re-entered the home. When she found no evidence of a threat, she relaxed then took note of the elevator’s positioning in relation to the space outside the house. Feeling as if danger was imminent, she moved quickly, exiting the rear of the house where she’d be better aligned to follow her make-shift map. Counting the paces, she tracked the direction with her toy compass, which now proved to be unaligned with the actual polar orientation points.

  She tapped her finger at the glass, but the needle remained in place. It didn’t matter if south was true south or not. As long as she followed the compass bearings, she should be fine, she assured herself.

  Chapter Six

  Conscious of her attacker returning to finish what he’d started, she navigated the terrain with ease until the woods behind the house grew so dense that it made counting her paces much harder. Several times she slipped on large exposed roots, once nearly twisting her ankle in the process. She told herself to go at it slower, to not let the time crunch faze her too much. But all she could think about was Ben, locked up in that dank underground space by a vicious murderer. She forced her mind back to the task at hand, reminding herself that losing count would only delay matters further.

  It took nearly two hours through the thick forest before her tracking maneuver delivered her to a dirt road that snaked between the tall trees. Rotating in all directions in search of Gustav’s secret hideaway, she found nothing but more trees. Annoyed with herself for allowing herself to get distracted and messing up, she cursed herself.

  “Stupid woman! What were you thinking?”

  Frustration soon made space for fear and she collapsed onto her knees, fighting hard not to lose total control of the situation. God, if you can hear me, help me, please? I can’t let him die too.

  She sat there on the ground, her legs folded beneath her body, desperate to take charge of her raging emotions and remedy the helpless situation she now found herself in. Drawing a few deep breaths, she shook her head as if to shake all the negativity from her mind and off her shoulders.

  “You can do this, Jorja. It’s okay. Just keep going,” she spoke encouraging words to herself and wiped at the droplets of sweat that had mixed with her tears.

  Back on her feet, she looked over at the spot between the trees where she’d left the forest then, walked back to it. Checking the notes on her phone she tried to orient herself. Once again, she tapped her finger on the glass of the compass and saw the wonky needle change direction twice before it swung back to its original direction. She walked back out onto the road and decided to take a chance by picking one of the directions. She glanced up at the sun, taking note of its polarity and decided to turn west when she suddenly recalled a silly rhyme she once had to say in a school play. ‘West is best when you go on a quest. East leads to strangers that spell nothing but danger.’

  “West it is, then,” she decided.

  The road was straight, slightly overgrown, and just wide enough to allow a single vehicle through. As far as she could see, there were no tracks in the sandy bed to indicate any recent activity on the road. That was a good thing, she thought, since it supported her hope that it was a private road that might, by some miracle, lead to Gustav’s hideout. Concluding that her bearings couldn’t have been too far off, she continued.

  Hope filled her and made her step lighter. But as she neared the half hour count along the road, doubt settled in. When she was once again moments away from giving up, she spotted the entrance of a barely visible path that turned up between the trees. She ran toward it, suddenly not thinking twice to follow the uneven turf that was nearly entirely covered by overhanging foliage that flanked its sides. The crooked footpath ran along an upward slope before it suddenly stopped outside a wrought-iron gate. Similar in size and shape to that of a door, its hinges were busted on both sides where it had once been bolted into the wall. Made of unevenly shaped stones that looked like they might have been there forever, the wall was overgrown with moss, blending seamlessly with the foliage surrounding it.

  Her heart skipped several beats as she pushed her way through the broken gate, concluding that it must have been how Sokolov’s men had entered Gustav’s property to ambush them on the other end of the tunnel. This was it. She had found Gustav’s hidden fortress and God had helped her—she was certain of it.

  The speedboat raced across Lake Geneva until it reached its destination a quarter of a mile south. The two men hurriedly tied its ropes to the mooring then made their way up the jetty toward the house. Speaking French, they argued with one another, each blaming the other for failing their mission.

  Anxious about having to deliver a report to their employer, they made their way past the two armed men who were posted at the front entrance of the stately lakeside house. When they entered the private study to face their fate, fear lay deep in the etchings of their faces.

  “I assume you acquired it.” The sophisticated female voice came from behind the antique desk where she was seated in a large red button-leather chair, its back turned toward the two men.

  “No, madame, it was nowhere to be seen.”

  The chair slowly swung around and they were greeted with their commander’s cold stare.

  “We ran into some trouble, madame.” The other man quickly continued the report, intentionally withholding that they were scared away by someone of the opposite sex.

  The woman’s bright red lips pouted before her bejeweled fingers with matching red fingernails brought a slim cigarette to her mouth. She drew in the tobacco and slowly puffed a strong cinnamon scented cloud into the air above her head.

  “So you failed,” she said, her voice bearing almost no emotion before she reached to pick up her cup of espresso.

  “We’ll find it, Madame Bouvier.”

  She threw her head of thick, pitch-black hair back as she bellowed a sarcastic laugh. But her forced smile soon transformed into the same cold stare they were greeted with.

  “You failed.” Her black-lined eyes were angry from beneath her blunt bangs that lightly touched her long eyelashes every time she blinked.

  She killed the cigarette and immediately drew a new one from the chocolate-colored Davidoff cigarettes pack on her desk before the man to her left leaned in to light it for her. Up until now, the man had stood to one side, looking out the window, his back facing the room. Well-groomed in an expensive gray suit, he was tall, dark, and dashingly handsome, the type of man Madame Bouvier enjoyed being seen with. As soon as he lit her cigarette, he turned away and continued staring out the window behind her.

  “Madame, we looked everywhere. The house is in ruins; there was nothing there. Züber must have it somewhere else.”

  She launched to her feet. “You imbeciles! Gustav Züber is dead. His body was found early this morning under the bridge by the river. All the pair of you had to do was find out where he kept my painting. Simple, yet you failed miserably. Do you have any idea what that painting is worth to me—to my family? It has been in my family since Da Vinci painted it! Züber was the only man on this planet who gave us any chance of getting it back on these walls where it belongs. You were in his house, the very place he lived and worked, and you’re telling me you couldn’t find a single piece of paper bearing a name or an address.”

  “Like we said, madame, the house was destroyed.”

  Madame Bouvier flicked her long black hair behind her shoulders before she sat back down in her chair. “My father would turn in his grave if he knew you had failed him. If he were still alive, I am very certain he would have fired you on the spot.”

  “Yes, madame,” the men answered in unison.

  “I suggest you go back to the house and keep looking until you find something that will tell me where he kept that painting. If Züber had it, and I believe he did, it’s around here somewhere.” She looked over her shoulder to the man at the window. “Isn’t that right?”

  The man twisted the upper half of his body and spoke over his shoulder, his hands neatly placed behind his back. “I would agree with you, Gabrielle. In my experience, it is very difficult moving a painting of that magnitude out of any country. In our last meeting with Mr. Züber, he had indicated that the painting was within easy reach, so I am assuming he had it in his possession, or at the very least, somewhere here in Geneva.”