Page 20 of What is Found

But that time was not now.

A glance at his watch, and then he sucked in a breath. Almost twenty minutes gone and already fifteen minutes too long.

Got to get us away from here, fast as I can.Lucky for them, there was a van whose owner, being kind of dead, was not going to object if he borrowed the thing. Sucked that the van was so rattle-bang, but better than nothing. They had to be gone, like, yesterday.

Except...I can’t just leave the kid.

Hurrying back to the van, he jumped onto the flatbed.Where are you, where are you?His gaze hopped over jugs of fuel and water zip-tied to one side, and then he spotted what he wanted slopped over a jumble of odds and ends in a cardboard box.

Jogging back to the kid, he extended his own hands—wrists together, palms up—to show the child what he wanted.

“Pozhaluysta,” he said. “I’m sorry, but...please...” He didn’t know the Russian forhand,orI need to tie you up, so you don’t kill me.

The boy regarded him for a long moment. He made no move to comply.

Oh, come on, kid.Despite the chill, sweat beaded on his upper lip. What would he do if the boy refused? What were his options? Knock the boy out? No, he couldn’t do that. Killing the child was a nonstarter, period.

Hecouldleave him, though. Except wouldn’t that only be killing the child in a different way? Where, exactly, was a boy like Matvey supposed to go? Odds were Matvey was far from or had no home to which he could return.

“Pozhaluysta,”he said, again. He didn’t want to order the child, even though Matvey had grown up in some very terrible ways and much too quickly.But he’s still just a boy stuck in a really bad situation.

And hadn’t he once been such a child himself? A kid in a desperate situation, forced to act because no one else could?

“Please, Matvey,” he said “just do this, okay? I don’t want to leave you, but I also have to be careful. Because we are in big, big trouble.”

For another long moment, the child was silent. But then, Matvey said something John didn’t understand and extended his hands.

“I’m sorry.” Signaling for Matvey to turn around, he pulled the boy’s extended arms behind his body and cinched a zip-tie around both wrists. There. He’d do a pat-down as soon as he squared Davila away. Guiding the boy to a boulder, he helped him to sit. “I’m really sorry. Be right back.”

The kid said something. He had no idea what, though he sort of hoped it was something likeno problem.

But probably not.

CHAPTER 2

HoistingDavila into the van was a nightmare. The guy had half a foot on him and about fifty pounds in hard muscle. One thing DCC had drummed into all of them was basic rescue skills, like the fireman’s carry, which he managed after a lot of huffing and puffing. The hard part was letting Davila, who was only so much dead weight, down gently. In the end, he fashioned a kind of pillow from a couple of plastic tarps then staggered over to the open slider, backed up until he felt the running board against his thighs. Bending at the knees, he lowered Davila onto the tarps where he sprawled in an ungainly tangle. After rearranging Davila’s limbs and quickly checking the man’s breathing and pulse, he piled on sleeping bags to keep Davila warm.

Got to get us somewhere safe.He thought he knew where to go, but he would have to be fast. He sniffed the air, caught that hint of aluminum, glanced upagain at a clot of leaden clouds. Snow, definitely on the way.

First things first. He patted the kid down, turned the kid’s pockets inside out, shook out the boy’s shoes, went through the child’s puffy black parka. He didn’t know why he thought that was a good idea. Of course, with a wounded partner and nearly ending up déjà dead himself...his trust in others was thin.

The boy’s apparel was ordinary except for a leather cord around the child’s neck.Interesting.By and large, Muslim men were not permitted to wear anything considered to be women’s wear. The only exceptions John knew about were for protective amulets containing verses from the Qur’an. Of course, given what he suspected Matveywas, perhaps a necklace of sorts would be part of the costume. Curious, he fished out the cord.

“What is this?” A thin, black-enameled cylinder with bronze accents dangled from the end of the cord. He bounced the cylinder on a palm.Got some weight to it.About six inches long, the cylinder reminded John of old-time pictures of items that might have hung from a woman’s fancy chatelaine: small pencils, eyeglasses, keys, scissors, thimbles. This was, however, much longer than anything he’d ever seen on a chatelaine.

He switched to his halting pig-Russian.“Cho?”he asked again. “What is this?Cho eto, Matvey?”

The boy said nothing. His dark brown eyes were void of expression.

Which, in and of itself, told him something about this thing was wrong.Might just be stolen.But then why clam up? Wasn’t as if the kid had taken this fromhim,and John certainly wasn’t in any position to report the kid.

Tracing the cylinder’s edges with a forefinger, he felt just the slightest hint of a bump at one end.Hunh. There was no corresponding bump at the other end.“Cho...”But then he couldn’t remember the words and switched to English. “What does this do?”

No answer.

Something wasn’t right here.If I didn’t know better...He applied a slight pressure with a thumb to the bump.If I didn’t know better, I’d say this is a toggle or a?—

“Whoa,” he said, as a thin stiletto blade jumped from its holder and snapped into place. “What the...” He looked at the kid then back at the steel blade: all six inches of it. The thing even had a thin blood groove running from the tip to the metal blade catch. “An OTF? For what?”

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