Page 45 of Belgian Betrayal

“Come on, Madison,” Catya urged. “The sooner you’re safe, the sooner we can get your father away from these people.”

The girl looked once more at her father. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she staggered blindly toward Catya.

Catya aimed her gun at the men closest to her until Atkins’s daughter made it to her. Then she pushed Madison behind her and backed out of the square.

“Wait,” Middleman called out. “What about the disk?”

“The girl isn’t safe yet,” Catya called out. “I won’t leave my man behind. You’ll get your disk.”

Catya continued backing away until she reached the alley she’d emerged from what felt like a lifetime ago. Once they were out of range of handguns and a sniper’s rifle, she turned and hurried Madison away, stopping in front of a nightclub still open and blaring music.

Catya unsheathed her knife and cut through the zip-tie securing the girl’s hands behind her back.

“This is going to hurt you worse than it hurts me,” she told Madison as she peeled a corner of the tape from her cheek and pulled it across her mouth.

The young woman gasped, her eyes filling. “My father?—”

“We have to trust the others to keep him safe. Right now, you’re the one we need to secure.” She nodded toward the door of the nightclub. “Let’s get inside.”

As she cleared the door, Catya said into her mic. “She’s safe.”

“Thank God,” Atkins breathed.

“Time to give them the disk,” she said.

Madison touched her arm, her eyebrows forming a V. “He doesn’t have the disk,” Madison said. “They searched him and didn’t find it.”

“They didn’t look everywhere,” Catya said. “Atkins, the disk is in the collar of your jacket. I slipped it through the seams while we were on the train between Brussels and Bruges. Give it to them and get the hell out of there.”

“Roger,” he murmured, his voice barely audible against the loud music. “For a moment, I thought I’d lost it.”

Catya cupped her hands over the radio headset to block out the music.

“My partner tells me my daughter is safe.” Atkins’s voice sounded in Catya’s ear as the MI6 agent let Middleman know his daughter was safe.

“No,” Atkins said. “My partner is not coming back. She doesn’t have the disk. I do.”

“Be ready,” Ace warned the others.

“Ready.” Fearghas’s lilting Scottish accent reassured Catya that he was still there and not being held hostage. She wanted more than anything to go back out to the square and join the fight, if there was to be one.

“They want to test the disk to make sure we didn’t give them a phony,” Atkins reported. “They’re pulling out a laptop and loading the disk.”

Silence stretched in Catya’s ear.

“They’re satisfied,” Atkins whispered. “So, now, you can go your way, and we’ll go ours.”

“Not so fast,” Middleman’s voice sounded at a distance.

“Fuck,” Ace said. “They have a gun to Atkins’s head. Looks like they’re going to use him as a shield to get out of the square.”

Catya cursed softly.

“What?” Madison leaned close. “What’s going on?”

Catya held up a hand for silence as she strained to hear what was happening.

“Moving closer,” Jasmine said.

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