Private Monaco

Chapter 14

The ancient stone was already starting to bake, and Justine was sweating as she used a broken chair leg to gouge a gap out the mortar between two of the big stones forming part of the outer wall. She’d chosen a stone roughly the diameter of her shoulders and had moved the table against the wall to obscure what she was doing. The angle of the tabletop to the door meant her work wouldn’t be seen by a guard performing a casual check on her.

And such checks had happened every couple of hours. A masked man would unlock the door, poke his head inside and leave quickly, satisfied all was as it should be. What they didn’t see was the growing mound of mortar dust beneath the table and the deep groove around the stone. She prayed the wall was only a single course thick. The thought of moving even this one stone was daunting, but she pushed that problem from her mind and focused on the task at hand: removing every inch of ancient mortar, one millimeter at a time. She was grateful that age and the long hot summers had made it brittle and relatively easy to erode.

Justine had been working on one spot and had dug about twelve inches deep, creating a sharp, narrow dip in the binding around the stone. She could feel a change in the composition of the mortar as she worked, hunched under the table. She crouched forward and when she’d removed the chair leg from the depression, she peered into it and saw glints of light shining through a thin mesh of mortar. One more push and she’d be on the other side. She now knew how thick the wall was and that she wouldn’t have to dig through another layer of stone, and that lifted her spirits. She started on the mortar immediately next to the deep grove, but her excavation didn’t last long. She heard the sound of the padlock on the other side of the door.

She’d been disturbed in the night and had immediately leaped into bed and pretended to be asleep, but she was drenched in sweat and if they saw her sleeping during the day, they might become suspicious, so she decided on another approach.

She scurried out from beneath the table and strode toward the door. The moment it opened, she said, “I can’t take it in here! It’s like an oven. I need a fan or a cooling unit. Fresh clothes too.”

She stopped when she saw the face of the man who’d stepped into her cell. He was lean, with short black hair and about a week’s stubble. He had piercing eyes that looked devoid of pity, and his scowling face suggested a festering, ever-present rage, but the most concerning thing about him wasn’t his features, it was the fact he wasn’t wearing a mask. She’d seen his face and she knew from experience working abduction cases that being able to identify the perpetrator wasn’t a good thing. Her chances of survival had just dropped. The need to escape was now even more pressing.

“I will see what I can do, Ms. Smith,” the man said, glancing around.

Justine noticed he was carrying a newspaper.

The chair was propped against the wall on the far side of the table. The missing leg would not have been immediately apparent but he was walking closer to it.

“What do I call you?” she asked, trying to distract him.

“Roman,” he replied, casting his eyes over her. “You may call me Roman. We shall get you clothes and washing supplies. The fan may be more challenging, but we will see what we can do. In the meantime, I need something from you.”

“What?” she asked, trying to conceal her anxiety.

“Proof of life,” he replied. He tossed the newspaper at her feet and pulled a phone from his pocket. “Mr. Morgan wants to know you are alive and unharmed.”

Justine’s heart leaped at the mention of Jack’s name. She stooped to pick up the paper, and Roman held the phone in front of him.

“Please send Mr. Morgan a message telling him you are in good health,” he said, before he started to record.