Page 48 of Take the Sub and Run

Twelve

They came in the night.

Sofie half woke to the faint beep of her alarm system being disabled, but after her sleepless night the evening before and her difficulty falling asleep tonight, she merely rolled over in bed, pulling her pillow over her head.

She didn’t realize the danger until the covers were ripped from her body and she was dragged from the bed by one ankle.

She screamed, but it was a high thin sound that cut off when she hit the floor with a thud.

Adrenaline flooded her system as she stared up at three entirely black figures—black clothes, black hood, black full-face masks without eyeholes. One still held her ankle, his fingers tight and hard.

She opened her mouth to scream again, but another of them leaned down and slapped her. It wasn’t the first time she’d been slapped, but every time, she was surprised by how much it hurt. Her cheek stung, her neck twinged from being jerked, and her ear was ringing.

“You want to come out and play?” One of them snarled in Dutch.

Sofie shook her head, hair whipping around her face. She hated that she was flat on her back with them above her. She braced herself on her elbows, only for the man holding her ankle to yank, forcing her to fall flat again.

The man who’d slapped her put a booted foot on her stomach, holding her down.

“Our boss wants you. If you’d stayed at the museum even an hour longer, we’d have taken you.”

“Is that why you’re here? To kidnap me?” She was proud of herself for speaking, but the words trembled.

Two laughed at her fear, while the third merely stared at her, the featureless mask terrifying.

“I want to.” He leaned into the foot on her stomach, until it was hard to breathe. “Our boss is pissed at us for not taking you when we had the chance.”

Sofie knew she shouldn’t have gone with Colette. She knew the rules. The danger.

“But we can’t take you if you’re here.”

He removed his boot and leaned down, hauling her up. At the same time, the man holding her ankle let go, and her heel cracked against the floor. She yelped in pain, but the man now holding her by the upper arm slapped his gloved hand over her mouth.

He leaned in, and her eyes had adjusted enough to see the mesh eyepieces in the mask.

“The next time you leave, you’re ours,” he whispered.

Sofie could only stare into those mesh panels, trying to see the man behind the mask, and hopefully the humanity within the man.

“You could make it easy for us. You could come to the Tulip Museum tomorrow at noon. You do that, we’ll let you ride in a seat in the car, instead of the boot.”

Sofie closed her eyes, vowing to be good. To never, ever leave her house except to go to the market at the corner, or the Basilica of Saint Nicolas. Her father had made sure those three places were safe—her house, the store, and a church so beautiful that she almost believed in the power of the divine when she walked inside. As long as she kept to those places, kept her life small, she was safe.

“We’ll see you tomorrow.” The man shoved her back, her calves hitting the edge of the low bed before she fell back onto it. For a moment, a different kind of fear gripped her, but the men merely turned and jogged down the stairs, leaving her sprawled on top of her rumpled duvet, heart racing as tears of fear started to slip down her cheeks.

Rage like he’d never known gripped Andrei as he watched three masked men abuse his angel.

Rage and fear.

The message from her father had bugged Andrei all day. He’d tried to shake it off but ended up going in to the Interpol offices in Amsterdam, despite being on vacation. He’d had no luck looking up a forger named Sofie, so her name might be another thing she’d lied about. He should have gone back to the club to talk with the construction crew about the progress, or to help Landon install some of the more unique pieces they didn’t trust the construction crew with.

Instead, he’d stayed in the city, and as night fell, he made his way back to the Jordaan District. The buildings on the exterior of the block were a mix of businesses and residential. One building had a café on the top floor with a tiny rooftop patio. There was a nice view of the canals, and the tops of several church spires, but what he cared about was the view of the lone building on the interior of the block.

Given the lush trees that filled the space, Sofie’s home wasn’t really visible. Luckily he’d picked up a few things at the office, including a wall-crawling camera that wasn’t illegal for law enforcement use only because it was too new for laws to have been passed about it. He’d been able to stick the remote-control device to the exterior wall of the café and then pilot it along the back of the buildings until he had an only partially obstructed view of Sofie’s home.

The camera on the crawler was advanced enough to zoom in and use AI to fill in blanks in the image where the tree blocked the shot. He’d watched on his phone as Sofie climbed into bed, only to toss and turn for hours before finally falling asleep.

A flash of his badge and some money had convinced the café to let him stay up here after they closed, and he’d called himself ten kinds of fool as he sat, shivering, in a cold metal chair in the middle of the night.

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