The Ninth Dominion (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) by Jon Land Page A

whose life depended on it.
    She decided at last to inject him with a sedative. This done, she readied both her killing knife and strip of garroting wire. The kills would have to be fast and silent. Hedda left the boy cloaked by the brush and flowed into the dark. She used the knife on the first and the third man, the wire on the second. She wasn’t even breathing hard as she eased Christopher Hanley into the car’s backseat and drove off into the night.
    Christopher Hanley had come awake halfway into the boat ride that formed the next leg of their journey. His piercing scream had shaken Hedda from her perch at the bridge. She rushed below to find him sobbing and moaning, the victim of sedative-induced nightmares as well as the real ones that had nearly stolen his life. He clung to her and she let him, the feeling distant and foreign but somehow welcome.
    “How does your leg feel?” she asked him.
    “Numb. Stiff.”
    “Can you walk?”
    “I … don’t think so.”
    “Then you won’t have to.”
    He had looked at her fearfully. “I remember the shots. I was shot, wasn’t I? What … happened?”
    “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to get you home. Just do what I tell you and I promise I’ll get you home.”
    The boy hugged her again. Hedda’s large frame swallowed him.
    The boat had enough fuel to get them to Syria, where she enacted the next phase of her plan. The boy indeed couldn’t walk, so she rigged a crutch for him and taught him how to use it. The key to disguise was to make use of what was available, and in this case they easily adopted the cover of a woman with a crippled son. Hedda even showed him how to beg so he would fit in perfectly with the natives through the limited time they would spend finding safe haven.
    They docked in Syria’s port city of Latakia an hour past dawn. The open-air market there sold far more than just fish and produce. The right price bought Hedda and the boy space on a transport plane east into Qatar. She and Christopher arrived at the Gulf Hotel in the capital city of Doha. The doorman’s eyes flashed briefly with recognition and her check-in to the Gulf was expedited. A bellhop brought her and the boy straight to a secluded room on the hotel’s seventh floor without ever having to appear at the front desk. In Doha discretion was everything.
    The afternoon shifted toward night, and she managed to grab sleep in fitful bursts that actually left her more tired. She had gotten this far and knew she and the boy were safe. By the same token, though, they were trapped. Doha provided sanctuary but offered no handy escape route.
    “Can’t you just call my father?” the boy asked her.
    “They’ll be watching and listening.”
    He hesitated. “The ones at the bridge, you worked with them.”
    “Yes.”
    “But they tried to kill us.”
    “And they will again, if we let them.”
    “There are so many of them.” He sighed.
    “Less now,” Hedda replied, thinking of the three she had dispatched back in the woods the previous night. She wanted to elaborate, but there didn’t seem to be a way without alarming the boy even more.
    His eyes were glistening with tears again. “But if you can’t call my father, how can he come and get me?”
    “There’s a way,” she assured him. “There’s a way.”
    Hedda composed the note carefully, a half-dozen drafts before settling on one that would do the job. It was not possible to say everything. The trick was saying enough.
    MR. HANLEY:
    I HAVE CHRISTOPHER WITH ME AND HE IS SAFE. SOMEONE BY NOW WILL HAVE TOLD YOU THAT HE IS DEAD. THAT IS UNTRUE. HE IS SITTING BESIDE ME AND SAYS HE HOPES YOU HAVE BEEN WORKING ON YOUR BACKGAMMON GAME. I WAS ASSIGNED TO RETRIEVE HIM FROM HIS KIDNAPPERS, BUT MY SUPERIORS BETRAYED ME AND YOUR SON WAS CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE. I WISH ONLY TO SEE HIM SAFELY RETURNED. BUT YOUR LIFE MAY BE AS ENDANGERED AS YOUR SON’S. DO EVERYTHING AS YOU WOULD ORDINARILY AND THEN TOMORROW …
    A FRIEND
    The note went on to