The Interpreter

For one tiny instant, their gazes collided. As she looked into his cold eyes, she saw recognition flicker there—recognition of who she was and exactly what she must have overheard and understood.

She was likely the only person outside of those four men in the entire western United States who spoke Vandish, and in that cold gaze, she saw that her fate had been sealed.

Now, hours later, the lorry hit a deep bump suddenly and Jane gasped as the jarring movement smashed her against unforgiving metal. Her head connected with a crack and for an instant, pain and fear made her woozy. She blinked away the dizziness, then felt warmth trickle down her face. Was she bleeding? She had hit something sharp as she had been jostled against the lorry wall. A screw, perhaps?

She tried to rub her cheek against her shoulder but with her tightly bound hands behind her back, she didn’t have the range of motion necessary to staunch the dripping blood.

It seemed the last straw. The fear she had been trying so hard to contain growled and snapped at its leash.

She was utterly helpless in a crisis. Always had been. And this particular crisis was bound to paralyze her. All of this—the gag, the restraints, the awful fear—was too much like before, that terrible time she had fiercely tried to wipe from her memory, impossible though that task was.

Just as in her nightmares, she was fifteen again in a foreign country, in the midst of hostile, angry enemies, praying to whoever would listen to her pleas to extricate her. Then, as now, she was a pawn in a game much bigger than she was.

And then, just as now, she had been completely worthless, unable to focus on anything but the rampaging terror.

Oh, this was horrible. She wanted to curl up into a tight little ball and let the jostling of the lorry rock her to sleep. Dying would be so much less terrifying if she could only sleep through it.

Buck up, darling.

Though she knew it was only her imagination, she could suddenly hear her father’s voice in her ear, gruff and hearty and wonderful.

Be strong for me, Janie-girl. You know you’re clever enough to get yourself out of this.

She wasn’t strong, though, or particularly clever. Harry Withington had always been the brave one, the forceful one in their little family unit of two. She had so wanted to be like him, reckless and brash and bold. Even with the rest of the world exploding around him in chaos, Harry was inevitably a rock of stability and good sense in a storm-tossed sea. He thrived on those situations that tended to send her spiraling into panic.

Heaven knows, he spent his whole life seeking them out, traveling to all the world’s hotspots. She sometimes used to think he much preferred the tumult to the calm.

The thought of her father brought her once more directly to that memory she wanted so desperately to forget. The last time she saw him alive, he had given her much the same advice as he did now in her imagination. Buck up. Be strong for me. I’ll get you out, Janie-girl. You know I will.

He’d kept that promise as he did all his others—though in the end it had cost him his life, snuffing out all that strength and vitality forever.

She drew in a shuddering breath. She couldn’t think of that now, of her last view of her father while she ran for her life with a squadron of American and British commandos as Harry had been viciously attacked on all sides by her kidnappers.

If she couldn’t force that image from her mind, she would never find the courage to escape—and she had to get away, no matter what it took.

She didn’t want to die. Not here, not like this.

The lorry rattled across another bump and the door shook on its hinges, separating enough to let in a thin crack of moonlight.

Where were they? she wondered. They had started this journey on highway roads but some time ago her kidnappers had left the relative smoothness of pavement for this jerky, rutted dirt road. The stifling heat inside the lorry had abated somewhat, making her wonder if they had ascended into the coolness of the Utah mountains.

It would make a grim sort of sense. They would want to dispose of her body somewhere remote and isolated where she wouldn’t be quickly discovered.

She drew in another sharp breath through the acrid gag. Stop thinking about it and do something!

What, Harry?

Her mind raced as she considered her options. Another drop of blood tickled as it slid down her neck, and the sensation reminded her of the screw that had cut her head. If it was sharp enough to break through flesh, perhaps it could be used to sever the nylon cord securing her arms.

She rose on her knees as best she could, and with her bound hands she searched the general location where she had bumped the inside wall of the lorry. Long moments passed until at last the sharp edge poked the pad of her thumb.

Her heart pumping, Jane dragged her hands across it again and again. For what felt like hours, she fought the jostling of the vehicle until she felt the cord begin to fray. The minor success accelerated her efforts and a few frantic moments later her hands at last slipped free.

Sweet relief washed through her as she ripped away the gag and quickly worked the knotted cords around her ankles.

Good girl, her father’s voice in her head praised.

Now what? She sat back on her heels, considering her options. The lorry rattled over another bump and the rear doors jostled open again slightly, spilling that thin slice of moonlight inside.

Could she push them open from the inside? she wondered. It was worth a try. She had nothing to lose, after all.

She scrambled toward the doors, looking out that narrow window at the world outside. All she could see were trees—dark forests of evergreens and the spindly, ghostly trunks of aspens.

There were bound to be wild animals out there. Deer, elk, badgers. Did they have bears in this part of Utah? she wondered.

Jane gnawed at her lip. What a lowering reflection on her psyche that she found that vast, dark wilderness outside almost more terrifying than what inevitably awaited her at the end of this journey.

No. She was Harry Withington’s daughter. She couldn’t just cower and let these men kill her to hide their evil plans. For once in her cowardly life, she would force herself to draw on whatever tiny portion of courage and strength her father had passed on to her.

She knew nothing about cargo lorry doors but she had to assume these either weren’t bolted properly or the bolt had loosened from the rutted road, otherwise she likely wouldn’t be seeing this moonlight. At the next bump when the doors separated slightly, she threw all her weight against them. They quivered but held fast.

Come on, she prayed. To her everlasting relief, someone must have heard her. It shouldn’t have worked but by some miracle, it did. At the next rut, she pushed harder with her shoulder, pounding with every ounce of strength, and to her amazement, this time the bolt gave way and the doors flapped open.

Already in motion, Jane was unable to check her momentum. Newton’s first law—an object in motion remains in motion—and all that. Even Harry Withington’s daughter couldn’t fight the laws of physics. Her arms flailing for balance, she tumbled out the open doors of the lorry at an awkward sideways angle.

Nor could she catch herself in time to avoid the rugby-ball-size rock wedged into the dirt road.

Her head connected with a hollow thud and the terrifying Utah mountains faded to black.

For a man who had spent most of his adult life staring into the gaping maw of danger, dealing with two little kids ought to be a piece of cake.

So why did he feel as if every step he took led him further and further into a hazardous minefield of emotion? Mason Keller wondered as he gazed at the girl and boy in the seat next to him in his pickup truck, one so grave and quiet, the other fidgeting like he’d just sat in a nest of fire ants.

“English, Charlie,” he told the wiggler, trying his best to keep the weariness out of his tone at having to issue the too-frequent reminder to the boy again.

Charlie Betran sighed heavily, as if he carried the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders.

“Yes, sir. I forget,” he said, each word precise and carefully enunciated.

“I know you do. You’re doing great, though.” Mason’s smile encompassed both of them. Charlie smiled back but Miriam just gave him her usual solemn gaze.

Maybe he shouldn’t push the two so hard to learn English. He could speak their native language, if not fluently, at least conversationally. But he knew Charlie and his older sister Miriam would be in for a mighty lonely existence if they couldn’t communicate with their peers by the time school started in a few months.

“Why do we go on this road?” Charlie asked in English. “It is bumpy like a goat trail.”

“I told you earlier. We need to check on my cattle grazing up here and then we’re going fishing.”

“Why?”