Chapter 302: Keep looking

The Don’s eyes narrowed. "They were on a second vessel. They came in fast, from the north. They blew the first ship up." The man swallowed. "We were still too far away to get close. We could only watch."

"And then?"

"And then a helicopter came." The room went quiet.

"It hovered over the place for a minute. Low. Black, with no markings. Then it fired on the Bandesh ship. One strike. The whole thing went up." The man’s voice dropped. "We tried to find out who was in the chopper. We could not. No name, no flag. It turned and was gone before we got a look."

The Don did not move. He sat with his good hand flat on the desk and his eyes fixed on the tracker’s face. For a long moment, nobody breathed. Carina saw the muscle in his jaw jump, once, and then again.

When he spoke, his voice was low and very calm. "Are you sure my daughter was on that ship?"

"We cannot confirm that, Boss."

"Cannot."

"There was too much smoke. The sea was rough. We found wreckage, and some bodies, but..." The man faltered. "Nothing we could say for certain."

The Don stood.

He did it all at once, so fast that the chair went rolling back and struck the wall. His hand came down on the desk with a crack. The coffee cup jumped and spilled across the polished wood, and nobody dared to wipe it up.

"Damn it!"

The word rang off the shelves.

He was furious. It poured out of him in a hot, shaking wave, and the tracker took a step back without meaning to. The Don’s face had gone red. His eyes were wild. He pressed his bandaged arm against his chest and drew a ragged breath.

Then, slowly, he got hold of himself. "Okay," he said.

He straightened his shirt with one hand and sat back down.

"Have them keep looking. All of them. Every man we have on the water. I want that wreckage searched, every plank of it. I want the bodies counted."

"Yes, Boss." The tracker did not leave. He stood with his head bowed, and his fingers worked at the edge of his map.

"Boss," he said at last. "When we find them..."

"Yes?"

"Alive," the man said carefully. "Or dead?" Nobody spoke. Carina turned her face away from the window and looked at the Don.

He did not answer at once. He only stared at the spilled coffee as it ran toward the edge of the desk, and for the first time that day, he looked old.

"Alive," he said finally. It came out hoarse. "Always alive." When the man was gone, the Don sat alone for a while.

He had thought of it. That was the worst of it. In the long dark hours after the garden, when he lay awake with his arm throbbing, he had pictured exactly this. A girl who did not come back. He had turned the thought over and put it away, and had told himself it would not happen.

It could be them, he thought. It could be them on that ship. He rubbed his forehead with his hand. Then he picked up a small black tablet from the desk and stood.

"Carina."

"Father."

"Stay here. Keep the men on the water. I will tell my wife." Helena was sitting by the window when he came in.

The room was the same. The same tall bed, the same drawn curtains, the same locked door. Two guards stood outside. A tray of untouched food rested on the table, and the tea had gone cold.

She looked up.

She saw his face before he said a word. She saw the way his shoulders were set, and the way his eyes would not meet hers, and every small, terrible sign.

"Tell me," she said. He told her.

He did it quietly and plainly. He did not soften it. The ship. The Bandesh men. The fire, and the helicopter, and the wreckage in the water. He said we cannot confirm three times, and each time it sounded smaller.

Helena listened.

She did not interrupt. She sat with her hands in her lap and her eyes on his mouth. When he finished, there was a long silence.

Then something in her face went.

It did not break or crumble. It simply ceased, like a lamp being turned off. Her lips parted. Her hands went limp. She looked at the wall, at a place just beside his head, and she did not seem to see anything at all.

"No," she said. It was a small, dry sound. "No. No, no, no."

She stood up. She swayed. She put out a hand for the chair and missed it, and the Don caught her by the elbow. She did not shake him off. She leaned against him, heavy and boneless, and he held her up, and for a moment they were two old people clinging to each other in a bare room.

"Helena," he said gently. "Sit. Please." She let him lower her into the chair.

She sat with her hands pressed over her mouth. Her whole body shook. A noise came out of her, thin and cracked, that was not quite a sob. It went on and on. The Don stood over her with his hand hovering in the air and did not know where to put it. It was a long time before she recovered.

She came back slowly, like someone climbing out of deep water. Her breathing eased. Her hands came down. She wiped her face with her sleeve, looked at the floor, and was silent.

The Don sat on the edge of the bed and waited. And somewhere in that silence, something changed in her chest.

It was small. It was almost nothing. It was a quiet, stubborn thing at the bottom of her heart, like a coal that would not go out. She felt it, and she did not understand it, and then she did. She is alive.

She did not know how. There was no proof. There was the Don’s report, and the fire, and the sea. But she was a mother, and she knew her daughter the way you know the sound of your own breathing. If Sienna had died, she would have felt it. A thread would have snapped. She would have known the exact moment it broke.

She felt nothing break. My girl is alive. She is out there somewhere. She is hurt, and she is afraid, and she is alive.

She did not let it reach her face.

She kept her eyes down and her mouth trembling. She let her shoulders sag, as if the news had flattened her, and she let the Don watch her do it.