NUMB by Judy Colella (tools of titans ebook txt) 📕

A small cry came from the cheap crib next to her mattress. She couldn’t afford a regular bed, and had been forced to put the poorly-made mattress on the floor.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” she whispered in Russian. It had occurred to her that a limited vocabulary would probably go unquestioned as long as her accent was right, so she’d made a point of speaking this unfamiliar language as often as possible, keeping in mind and practicing how the words had been pronounced by the few people with whom she interacted every day.

In his crib, Chasin was trying to sit up, using the bars for support, grasping them in his little fists. He was strong for his age, she thought. Every other infant she’d ever seen had been incapable of such strenuous movement until several months later than the age her son was now.

Smiling, she picked him up, and he began to make what she called “baby-joy noises.” Nuzzling him with her nose, she told him in badly-constructed Russian that she loved him with all her heart, that he was her little star, her sun.

Chasin grabbed a stray wisp of hair that had escaped her ponytail, and yanked on it, his sweet face split by a grin.

“Ouch!” She laughed, tugging the hair away from him. “You rascal!” That had been in English, but only because she didn’t know the word for it in her new tongue. “Are you hungry?” She sat on the edge of the mattress and opened her blouse. Breast-feeding him was one of the few things about her life that she honestly looked forward to doing. The feeling was indescribable.

As her child suckled, the fingers of his free hand grasping her wrist, his warm head soft against the cool skin of her arm, she thought about the glimmer she’d seen in that doorway. Someone was obviously standing there, unaware that light from the streetlamp that had switched on in the early twilight had caught a portion of what he – or she – was wearing. Or holding. Well, she certainly had no intention of going anywhere near the window again.

Because of all the years she’d lived with the uncovered windows of her studio in America, she rarely thought to close the curtains that had come with this apartment. She probably should, but would that alert whoever was down there that he (or she) had been spotted? Why was everything so bloody complicated?

When the FBI had contacted her, she had been on the verge of sending her husband a letter, similar to the one she’d sent Ondine. Of course, she didn’t know that her friend had gotten it until the U.S. agent spoke with her.

A week earlier, she’d been on her way home from her job as a dry-cleaner’s assistant, a place that allowed her to bring her son as long as he didn’t do a lot of crying. So far, Chasin had been wonderful in that regard, despite being in a place that smelled so heavily of the cleaning chemicals universal to that industry. On her way home that day, she’d paused in front of one of the fruit stands that was still up – most had shut down with the coming cooler months. As she had contemplated the practicality of indulging in an apple that would cost her a substantial percentage of her funds, someone had walked up beside her, picked up a piece of fruit, and said, “This is a nice one, don’t you think, Mrs. Kinsley?”

Forcing herself not to panic, she had faced the man, one eyebrow raised, and in Russian said, “What’s that?”

He had spoken in English, but now switched to Greek. “It’s okay, Atarah. Your mother, Chara Johanan, told us what happened, how you had been abducted by the Russian neurologist. We’ve been searching for you for quite a while now.”

Atarah had noticed the vendor staring, not even trying to hide his curiosity.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” she told the man, again in Russian, but as she did, she’d given him a small kick in the ankle.

He had smiled and in Russian, replied, “I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.” He put out a hand. “My name is Ilya, and that’s a beautiful little boy you have! Is he yours, or are you watching him for someone?”

He’d spoken rapidly, and it had taken a moment or two for her to process his words. She covered this lapse by smiling at him, looking down, stroking her son’s head. But then she’d gotten it all and said, “No, he is mine.”

“Well. I apologize again for my error. I, er, don’t suppose I could buy you a hot chocolate? It’s getting chilly out here and you seem to be turning blue.”

She had agreed, interpreting this a little more quickly and appreciating his cleverness. At the same time, she wanted to know exactly who he was, whether or not he had actually been sent by Kobienko. Because of that last thing, she insisted that they go somewhere crowded, public, abduction-proof.

They had settled for a café a few blocks away with outdoor seating. He had given her his coat – the one she owned was something she’d found in a trash barrel and wasn’t very thick – and she accepted it, admitting that she had, in fact, been borderline freezing. Before putting the man’s woolen one on, she had removed hers and draped it over the carriage to give Chasin an extra layer of warmth.

As they sipped their hot beverages, the man had told her he worked for the FBI, that they had been contacted by the Johanans and told the whole story of how Kyria had accepted the doctor’s terms out of desperation for her husband’s survival; how Chara had learned from another servant that Kobienko had taken Atarah with him when he’d left after his last check-up with Seth; how his movements had been traced to the hospital in Athens where he’d used their MRI and some other equipment to do scans on a patient who was with him. The man’s trail had been lost after that, but only for as long as it had taken him to get back to his clinic with this patient.

Atarah had asked if her mother knew of all these latest developments, was told that yes, they’d kept her informed, but that no one else had been contacted based on something her mother had said. When she asked what that meant, the agent had hesitated for the first time. She wouldn’t let it rest, and finally he told her that her husband had spent the better part of the year since her contrived accident in a mental hospital. He explained that, according to what Jett’s mother had told her, Chara had said he’d needed to go where he would be prevented from taking his own life.

At that moment, Atarah came as close to hating her mother as possible without actually doing so. Jett hadn’t been told?! He’d been living all this time with the belief that she was dead?! That fact alone had made up her mind for her that she would cooperate with anything the FBI wanted her to do. After revealing her husband’s ignorance about her survival, the agent had said they were trying to catch Dr. Kobienko anyway, who according to the CIA was suspected of having done a whole lot more than abduct Atarah, that he was possibly responsible for several murders. So Atarah had agreed to help, but asked if her son could be kept in protective custody until it was over.

“If we do that,” the man had replied, “and if Kobienko is watching you, which is entirely possible, he’ll know something has changed, that you might have become aware of him. As far as we know, though, he has no idea we’re here, or that he’s being sought. We can’t jeopardize any of that. Do you understand?”

“Of course I do. I’m not stupid. All right. But if my child is hurt or killed, I’ll do whatever it takes to destroy you. Just saying. As a mom. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mrs. Kinsley, I do – I’m a father. I’m so sorry we have to do it this way, but be assured we will do everything we can to make sure both of you come out of this unscathed.”

She knew this promise was not a one-hundred-percent guarantee of anything, but it was the best she had, and she’d agreed to cooperate. And then she told him about her letter to Ondine, warning him that the FBI would probably be getting a call from her. He’d advised Atarah not to contact her friend again, but said he’d inform the agency that Ondine would be trying to reach them.

Now, watching her son’s thick-lashed eyelids flutter as he fell asleep, still latched onto her breast, she leaned down and gave him a light but fervent kiss on the forehead. “We will get through this, sweet Chasin. Somehow. You’ll finally meet your daddy, and we’ll get back to the kind of life you should have been enjoying from the start!” She’d spoken quietly in English, not caring for the moment about languages, batting tears from her eyes with the back of one hand.

She got up and returned the child to his crib, covering him with the blue and yellow blanket a co-worker had given her a few weeks earlier. He sighed in his sleep, and she wanted to weep. How precious – how fragile he was! Damn that doctor! Damn him for eternity to the lowest, hottest, most excruciatingly painful depth of hell!

If the person standing in that doorway was, in fact, the great Doctor Kobienko, it simply meant that this drama was going to come to its conclusion sooner than she’d thought.

Good.

After further discussion and a lot of thought, Jett and Jax had agreed to hold off on getting the next flight to Russia. Instead, they purchased tickets to Washington, DC. There, they entered FBI Headquarters, explained their reason for being there, and – probably because of who Jett was – were given permission to speak with the man in charge of the investigation into Atarah’s abduction.

At first, the man told them that while he appreciated their zealous desire to help, there was no way the FBI could allow private citizens to participate in a foreign operation like this. Even in a domestic one, there would be a lot of push-back from the higher-ups, but then Jax reminded the man of his brother’s skills as an Olympic athlete, not to mention the fact that both he and his brother could probably out-shoot their best marksmen.

“That’s all very impressive, Mr. Kinsley.” The agent, who had introduced himself as Mr. Gilliard, leaned forward. “Believe me, I’m well-aware of your athletic prowess, having followed the Olympics with great interest. However, throwing a discus or a javelin, or any of the other track and field accomplishments you have, doesn’t amount to being a capable field operative. Besides, we have all kinds of International laws that say you can’t be part of this. Especially in a place