Page 93 of Take the Sub and Run

Part of her wanted to cling to these papers as a different kind of excuse. That until she learned more, read more, and started going to therapy, she should just sink back into the life she’d been living before a heartbroken Colette showed up on her doorstep.

Then she wondered if this horrible hollow feeling in her chest was a broken heart. The fact that she ached to see Andrei again, even just hear his voice, made her think that it might be. She’d done an internet search for him, hoping she could find a picture, but Interpol didn’t post their agents’ pictures anywhere she could find.

Sofie put on water for tea, then carefully tucked the papers away. Therapy was on the to-do list, but she wouldn’t use it as an excuse to avoid taking action.

She had to fortify herself with several cups of tea before she was brave enough to pick up her phone.

She called her father.

* * *

“Hallo, Sofie.”

After decades living in Rome, he had a faint accent when he spoke Dutch, though it was his native language.

“Hallo, Vader.” She sank down onto a box of canvas, hunching over as nerves jangled through her.

“It’s late, is there something wrong?”

“I have a question. Do you know where my paintings are?”

He made a tutting sound. “Sofie, that’s not something we talk about like this.”

He meant over the phone.

“My original paintings.” She stressed the important word.

There was a long silence.

Sofie moved the phone from her ear to check the call hadn’t dropped. It was still connected.

“Vader?”

“Yes?” he said in the same smooth, kind voice he always used.

Apparent that long silence was his answer. Disappointing, but not surprising.

“Where is my passport?”

“Passport?” Now, he sounded genuinely surprised.

“I want to go to London.”

“Sofie, it isn’t safe?—”

“It’s not safe here anymore anyway. Men came into my home. They hurt me.”

He sounded genuinely shocked and worried as he asked her what had happened, and for a moment, she doubted what Andrei and Rolf had said. Maybe he really did have enemies who respected and feared the church enough not to do worse than scare and slap her as long as she stayed at home.

He was assuring her that he would have her security fixed when she interrupted.

“Do I have a passport?”

She felt rather than heard his disapproval at her interrupting him. “Yes.”

“Can I have it?”

“Is there something important in London?”

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