Page 48 of Belgian Betrayal

Peter Atkins’s eyes blinked open. “It’s okay, baby,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, and then he passed out.

Sirens wailed in the distance, moving closer.

“That’s our cue to leave,” Ace said. “When you can, get back to Brussels. We’ll regroup at Lucie’s.”

Fearghas nodded. He had to stay until the ambulance arrived and keep pressure on Atkins’s wound. His gaze met Catya’s. “You should go with the others. Madison and I will make sure her father gets the care he needs.”

Catya shook her head. “I’m with you. You need someone to have your back.”

“Then you’d better give Ace your weapons.” Fearghas nodded toward his boss. “We can’t afford to end up in a holding cell.”

Catya handed over her handgun and the knife and sheath she had clipped to her belt.

“We can stay close by until you’re on your way to the hospital,” Ace offered. “Is there anything we can do for Atkins?”

Fearghas shook his head. “All we can do until the ambulance arrives is keep pressure on the wound. As for the men who did this, they’re long gone. They were after the disk. They wouldn’t have stayed around, nor would they have wanted to be around when the police arrived.”

“Then we’re out of here,” Ace said. “Hopefully, Lucie has made headway on decrypting the data she copied.”

“Let’s hope she did,” Fearghas said. “I didn’t recognize any of the men sent to fetch the disk.”

“Even so, I’ll see what our computer guru can do to track them.”

Ace, Jasmine and Dmytro hurried away.

“It might be best if we tell the doctor your father was attacked on his way to the train station,” Catya said. “If we go into too much detail, we could be held for questioning, and we don’t want to say anything about the gunfight in the market square. The police could already have had reports of shots fired and are probably on their way there as we speak.”

“I hope Ace and the others don’t run into the police,” Fearghas said. “They need to get back to Brussels.”

Catya nodded. “We need to know what’s on that disk and who the people are who want it so badly.”

The wailing sirens grew louder. An ambulance rounded a corner down the street.

Catya waved to direct them to where Fearghas held his hand to the wound in Atkins’s belly. The MI6 agent was still breathing, but he was unconscious.

The medics took over and transferred the man into the back of the ambulance.

They allowed Madison to ride in the front of the ambulance to the hospital.

“Don’t worry,” Fearghas told the traumatized young woman. “We’ll be right behind you.”

Catya had called a cab, which arrived as the medics closed the back of the ambulance and drove away.

Once in the cab, Fearghas and Catya followed the ambulance to the hospital, where they made sure Atkins would be cared for.

The agent was taken into surgery shortly after arriving at the hospital.

Catya and Fearghas wanted the emergency room doctor to check Madison.

The young woman refused, afraid to draw attention to herself. When the doctor had asked how her father had been shot, she’d told him someone had attacked him when they’d been on their way to the train station.

Fearghas and Catya sat with Madison in the waiting room. Fearghas asked Madison about her time in captivity. The men who’d held her hadn’t done more than give her water and some bread. Although they hadn’t physically assaulted her during that time, they had kept her locked in a room the size of a closet, only letting her out to use the toilet.

Fearghas found a vending machine with bottled water and another with snacks. He used his credit card to purchase items for Madison, urging her to eat. He’d find her better food in the morning when restaurants opened.

Madison nibbled on a packaged apple strudel, too distraught to manage to eat very much.

A couple of hours after her father had gone into surgery, a doctor came into the waiting room looking for Madison.

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