White Bone by Ridley Pearson Page B

keep moving. She considered the best vantage point from which to watch for her abductor’s return. She pushed away despair, invited anger.
    This spot of torn clothes was her “kill zone.” From here, she would establish a pattern as she searched for the abandoned vehicle, working outward in a spiral. If out there, it would be several kilometers away; it would tell its own fiction. She could search while keeping the kill zone as a center point. She had a plan, a mission.
    When her killer returned, she would attack him, wound him and leave him to the elements. Quid pro quo. She set this as a priority. Aware that the mental and emotional toll would be her biggest challenge, she braced for the unexpected, told herself to take failure as motivation, setbacks as lessons.
    Start small,
she thought. Stay alive one more hour. Keep to the plan at hand. Walk. Bigger ambitions would have to wait.

21

    K nox was heading to the front desk to ask after the assistant manager when his phone buzzed. His mood changed instantly; he imagined Dulwich calling to say Grace had been found, alive and well. Gone to ground just as expected. That she was asking after him, wondering what had taken him so long. He viewed the screen.
    Not safe. Gather belongings. Side doors. Five minutes.
    He casually raised his head, still walking. Maya Vladistok, phone in hand, offered a sideways glance. A uniformed policeman, an officer, was staring at his mobile phone, head down, seemingly engrossed. Knox took the stairs and walked the lobby balcony to reachhis room. He never unpacked; lived out of his duffel. Packing amounted to collecting his toiletries, putting his Dopp kit into the duffel, and zipping it up. He was wiping down the room when a knock on the door startled him.
    “Police.”
    The only way out was the door—or to break a window with the desk chair and bail out from three stories up.
    “Mr. Knox, you will please open the door?”
    The cop knew his name. Not good. Knox checked the peephole. He recognized the sergeant from the lobby. The policeman had been waiting for him. Alone. An arrest would typically involve patrolmen, not a sergeant. Either he wanted only to speak to Knox, or Knox was about to learn firsthand about the Kenyan corruption he’d been hearing about. He moved the equivalent of a hundred dollars in cash into his right pocket.
    “How can I help you, officer?” he shouted as he considered the window. He carried one hundred feet of AmSteel rope in his bag; about the thickness of a shoelace, its nearly five-thousand-pound tensile strength was more than enough to support his rappelling.
    Forced to make a split-second decision, he elected not to run. He unlocked and opened the door. Took a bathroom towel and dropped it to the floor to prop the door open. Before the sergeant asked, Knox was already presenting his passport.
    The sergeant was black-skinned, round-faced and forbearing in his examination.
    “It’s your visa, Mr. Knox, that’s the problem,” he said.
    Knox waited. Nothing about this was right. Cops didn’t chase down bad visas. Sergeants didn’t make hotel calls. Knox’s visa was standard issue. No wonder Maya had tried to warn him.
    “Your visa was executed at the airport?”
    Here it comes,
he thought, wondering if a hundred dollars wouldbe enough. “Yes. Of course. The stamp is right there. Issued upon entry, just like everyone else’s. It cost me fifty U.S. dollars, cash. The exit document’s right there. It’s all in order.”
    “It’s not right, I’m afraid. You will need to leave the country.”
    “What? Why?”
    “This visa was issued incorrectly. You will need to apply for a tourist visa once you land. At the granting of that visa, you may return to Kenya.”
    “I just got here. My visa’s good. What’s wrong with the paperwork?”
    “Please collect your things. You will come with me.”
    “Please check that you have the right John Knox. It’s a common enough name.”
    “There is no mistake. I