25

WE TOOK THE TRAIN TO AMSTERDAM, fifty-six kilometers away, and I watched the flatland of Holland unpeel before my gaze. I was back in Europe, where I had been happiest with Lucy, and imprisoned by the Company. I thought of the dead intruder and his own ticket to Amsterdam.

I leaned back against the train seat. I’d traded one chain, from Howell, to another from Mila. I watched the brief stretch of Holland pan out in silence. I’d had months to sit and think about what I’d do if I got the chance to find Lucy, and here it was, and my skin felt like lit matches lay under it. The possible truths—that Lucy and our baby were dead, or that Lucy had betrayed me—loomed large, the monsters I didn’t want to see and yet had to see.

Fine. I was going to find the man with the scar, force him to tell me where my wife and child were. Then I was going to be the last thing he ever saw on this earth.