Savage Recruit (Ryan Savage Thriller Series Book 8), стр. 14

“Thank you.”

“You cannot find her? Is she your wife?” A coy look came into her eye. “Maybe she finds a strong Grecian man, eh?”

“She’s my boss,” I said. “She was kidnapped.”

The mirth evaporated from her face. “I am sorry. You said she was here yesterday? Are you sure?”

“Very.”

“Come.” She motioned for me to follow her to the next stall, where a slim, gray-haired man sat on a stool pecking at his phone. “Kendar! Kendar, stand up!” she insisted. “Look at this.” She grabbed his forearm and hauled him to his feet.

The man bristled with irritation. “What, Lydia? I am busy.”

“You have not been busy in thirty years, old man. Look, this gentleman here, his friend has gone missing. An American lady.” Lydia held out her hand to me, indicating that I should give her the phone. No sooner had I held it out than she snatched it and showed the man the picture. “She was here in the market yesterday.”

He took the phone, held it out in front of his face, and squinted. After several seconds, he frowned, rubbed his chin, and then shook his head. Then he paused, and I watched as his eyes lit up with recognition.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, she was here yesterday.” He glanced at the image a final time and then looked at me, nodding. “I remember. She was interested in that.” His shop was exclusively dedicated to handmade wooden carvings. The images ranged from ancient Greek buildings to intricately shaped cutting boards and chess sets with pieces resembling characters from Greek tragedies and poems. Kendar stepped to a shelf and plucked up a wooden flask. “Here.” He held it out to me. I took it, examined it, and gave it back. “She wanted me to sell it for forty,” he scoffed. “But I told her I could not go below fifty. These flasks, they take much time to carve and to shape.”

“Do you remember about what time she came through?”

He rubbed a palm across his chin. “Ah… four o’clock? Perhaps four-thirty. But I cannot be sure.”

The latter matched the time when Kathleen’s phone stopped issuing a signal. “Did you notice anything unusual after she left? Or did you happen to see her leave the market?”

His eyes widened slightly, as if he was just considering what his neighboring merchant had told him. “She has gone missing?”

“Yes,” I said. “Not long after she left here.”

“Ah….” He shook his head. “I did not see anything. She left here and continued toward the exit. Another customer was interested in one of my chess boards. I spoke with him for several minutes, and when he left, I did notice your friend leaving through the exit with her friends. She got into a car with them.”

The back of my neck prickled. “I’m sorry. What friends?”

He frowned. “I do not know. I assume they were her friends. It was two men.”

“They weren’t her friends,” I said. “What did they look like?”

“I am not sure. I only saw them briefly. Naturally, I had no reason to think something was not proper.”

“The men, were they small, large?”

“Normal size. A little shorter than you. They were wearing jeans and… what do you call… the jacket—a nice jacket. Like a suit.”

“A blazer?”

“Yes. Yes. They were each wearing blazers.”

“What kind of car did they get into?”

“I’m sorry. I could not say. It was dark colored. A taxi, perhaps. Or perhaps not.”

“Your boss,” the lady said, “you are sure she was taken against her will?”

“Yes. She was expected to return to her cruise ship and never showed.”

Both she and the old man offered their apologies. I thanked them and continued toward the exit where the food vendors were serving a short line of customers. After waiting for them to receive their food and clear away, I passed Kathleen’s picture around. When the vendors were unable to offer anything helpful, I passed beneath the building’s high brick arch and stepped onto the sidewalk.

Sofokleous Street was a hive of activity. Mopeds cut in and out of traffic in an unspecified cadence, all of them managing to avoid a near collision every couple of seconds. Car and trucks vied for inches, horns blared, and delivery trucks were parked hard against the curb, their drivers unloading cargo for merchants in the market.

A taxi came to an abrupt halt in the center lane and a moustached man leaned out the window. “You need a ride?” he called out. I waved him off. He shrugged his indifference and shot down the street as a temporary gap opened up.

A slow glance up and down the street didn’t reveal any more cameras. If the shopkeeper I spoke with was right, then Kathleen had been sufficiently motivated by two men to get into a car not five feet from where I was standing. And then they had vanished, leaving no trace, no hint of a thread to follow. Whoever they were, they had known where the cameras were and had been careful to avoid being caught on film.

Anxiety crept through my veins.

During my time with the 503rd MP Battalion, I had worked closely with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, functioning as an information liaison between my office and theirs. I had witnessed every kind of violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, cases that would make your hair stand on end and your blood boil. And during these last few years with Homeland’s Federal Investigative Directorate, I had worked nearly every case imaginable: murders, kidnappings, forced labor camps in the jungles of South America, attempted assassinations, corruption—you name it. But this one… This one was absolutely personal. And it still didn’t feel real. Kathleen had been snatched out of the heart of Athens in broad daylight. She wasn’t lying on the sundeck of her cruise ship, working on her tan. She wasn’t in her office back home reviewing case files and answering emails. She was gone, vanished, and here I was standing in the