Hunting Zero. Джек Марс

continued his conversation in the foreign language, chattering in short, punctuated sentences. He turned and parted the thick curtains slightly, only an inch or so, to peer out at the parking lot.

      His back was to her, probably for the first time since they had arrived at the seedy motel.

      Maya reached out and very carefully pulled open the drawer of the nightstand. It was all she could reach, handcuffed to her sister and without moving from the bed. Her gaze flitted nervously to Rais’s back, and then to the drawer.

      There was a Bible in it, a very old one with a chipped, peeling spine. And beside it was a simple blue ballpoint pen.

      She took it and closed the drawer again. At almost the same moment Rais turned back. Maya froze, the pen clutched in her closed fist.

      But he did not pay her any attention. He seemed bored with the call now, anxious to get off the phone. Something on the television caught his attention for a few seconds and Maya hid the pen in the elastic waistband of her flannel pajama pants.

      The assassin grunted a halfhearted goodbye and ended the call, flinging the phone onto the armchair cushion. He turned toward them, scrutinizing each in turn. Maya stared straight ahead, her gaze as vacant as she could make it, pretending to watch the newscast. Seemingly satisfied, he took his post on the chair again.

      Maya gently stroked Sara’s back with her free hand as her younger sister stared at the television, or perhaps at nothing at all, her eyes half-closed. After the incident in the restroom at the rest stop, it took hours for Sara to stop crying, but now she simply lay there, her gaze empty and glazed. It seemed she had nothing left.

      Maya ran her fingers up and down her sister’s spine in an attempt to comfort her. There was no way for them to communicate between each other; Rais had made it clear that they were not allowed to speak unless asked a question. There was no way for Maya to relay a message, to create a plan.

      Though… maybe it doesn’t have to be verbal, she thought.

      Maya stopped touching her sister’s back for a moment. When she resumed, she took her index finger and surreptitiously drew the slow, lazy shape of a letter between Sara’s shoulder blades—a large S.

      Sara lifted her head curiously for just a moment, but she did not look up at Maya or say anything. Maya hoped desperately that she understood.

      Q, she drew next.

      Then U.

      Rais sat in the chair in Maya’s peripheral vision. She didn’t dare glance over at him for fear of seeming suspicious. Instead she stared straight ahead, as she had been, and drew the letters.

      E. E. Z. E.

      She moved her finger slowly, deliberately, pausing for two seconds between each letter and five seconds between each word until she spelled out her message.

      Squeeze my hand if you understand.

      Maya did not even see Sara move. But their hands were close, on account of being cuffed together, and she felt cool, clammy fingers close tightly around her own for a moment.

      She understood. Sara got the message.

      Maya started anew, moving slowly as possible. There was no rush, and she needed to make sure that Sara got every word.

      If you have a chance, she wrote, you run.

      Do not look back.

      Do not wait for me.

      Find help. Get Dad.

      Sara lay there, quietly and perfectly still, for the entire message. It was a quarter after three before Maya finished. Finally she felt the cool touch of a thin finger on the palm of her left hand, nestled partially under Sara’s cheek. The finger traced a pattern on her palm, the letter N.

      Not without you, Sara’s message said.

      Maya closed her eyes and sighed.

      You have to, she wrote back. Or there is no chance for either of us.

      She didn’t give Sara an opportunity to respond. Once she had finished her message, she cleared her throat and said quietly, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

      Rais raised an eyebrow and gestured toward the open bathroom door on the far end of the room. “By all means.”

      “But…” Maya lifted her shackled wrist.

      “So?” the assassin asked. “Take her with you. You have a free hand.”

      Maya bit her lip. She knew what he was doing; the sole window in the bathroom was small, barely large enough for Maya to fit through and wholly impossible while handcuffed to her sister.

      She slid off the bed slowly, prodding her sister to come with her. Sara moved mechanically, as if she had forgotten how to properly use her limbs.

      “You have one minute. Do not lock the door,” Rais warned. “If you do I will kick it down.”

      Maya led the way and closed the door to the tiny bathroom, cramped with both of them standing in it. She flicked on the light—fairly certain she saw a roach skitter to safety beneath the sink—and then turned on the bath fan, which droned loudly overhead.

      “I won’t,” Sara whispered almost immediately. “I won’t go without—”

      Maya quickly held a finger to her own lips to signal for quiet. For all she knew, Rais was standing right on the other side of the door with an ear to it. He did not take chances.

      She quickly pulled the ballpoint pen from the hem of her pants. She needed something to write on, and the only thing available was toilet paper. Maya tore off a few squares and spread them on the small sink, but every time she pressed the pen to it, the paper tore easily. She tried again with a few fresh squares, but again the paper ripped.

      This is no use, she thought bitterly. The shower curtain would do her no good; it was just a plastic sheet hanging over the tub. There were no curtains over the small window.

      But there was something she could use.

      “Stay still,” she whispered in her sister’s ear. Sara’s pajama pants were white with a pineapple print on them—and they had pockets. Maya turned one of the pockets inside out and, as carefully as she could, tore it out until she had a rough-edged triangular scrap of fabric that had the fruity imprint on one side but was all-white on the other.

      She quickly flattened it on the sink and wrote carefully as her sister watched. The pen snagged several times on the fabric, but Maya bit her tongue to avoid grunting in angry frustration as she wrote out a note.

      Port Jersey.

      Dubrovnik.

      There was more that she wanted to write, but she was nearly out of time. Maya stowed the pen under the sink and tightly rolled the fabric note into a cylinder. Then she looked around desperately for a place to hide the note. She couldn’t just stick it under the sink with the pen; that would be too conspicuous, and Rais was thorough. The shower was out of the question. Getting the note wet would run the ink.

      An abrupt knock on the thin bathroom door startled them both.

      “It’s been a minute,” Rais said clearly from the other side.

      “I’m almost done,” she said hastily. She held her breath as she lifted the lid from the toilet tank, hoping that the thrumming bathroom fan drowned out any scraping noise. She looped the rolled-up note through the chain on the flushing mechanism, high enough that it wouldn’t touch the water.

      “I said you have one minute. I am opening the door.”

      “Just give me a few seconds, please!” Maya pleaded as she quickly replaced the lid. Lastly, she tugged a few hairs from her head and dropped them atop the closed toilet tank. With any luck—with a lot of luck—anyone who was following their trail would recognize the clue.

      She could only hope.

      The knob to the bathroom door turned. Maya flushed the toilet and crouched in a gesture to suggest she was pulling up her pajama bottoms.

      Rais