Free In Too Deep - 39 Clues 06 by Jude Watson

"Shut up, Natalie, I'm trying to think," she snapped.
    Natalie rubbed her fingers along the fabric of her sweater.
    Cashmere. Her mother had bought her one in every color. Whenever she felt upset, she thought of them stacked in her huge closet at home in London. She had the best mother in the world.
    Isabel stabbed the elevator button again.
    "Call the concierge, Ian," she barked. "First, order a car. And second, tell them to fix their elevators.""Yes, Mummy.""And don't speak to me, either of you," Isabel said as the elevator do ors opened. "I have to think."
    CHAPTER 12
    The echo of the door slam faded. Irina stared at the phone. She would have to call the Fixer. He could be out of the country on a job, but that would be too much to hope for.
    There was one in every city, she supposed, a person who could get anything you needed. Passports, cars, explosives, poisons.
    The Lucians found such contacts valuable. The Fixer was one of the best. He did not balk at anything, he could get anything, and he asked no questions.
    She had used him herself.What would Isabel need from him this time? What was she planning?Restlessly, Irina paced the room. She had lost Isabel's confidence. She no longer knew the plan, only parts of it.
    She ran her fingers over the cool green stones of the necklace. Isabel's insults had washed over her like water. They hadn't stung.She slid the necklace into the pocket of her black jacket and zipped the pocket shut. She nev er felt sentimental. Ever.
    Yet she understood sentiment. Having something a loved
    one had touched. Keeping it near.
    When she had finally made herself clean out Nikolai's room all those years ago, she had folded his favorite pair of pants and found something in the pocket.
    Her own school medal for First Place Vaulting Championship. The metal was tarnished, the ribbon tattered and faded. But Nikolai had carried it with him. He had touched it every day. A reminder of his mother.
    She was away so much. He needed something real to keep her with him. She hadn't known.
    She hadn't known.
    That had been the moment she had broken. She had held the pants against herself and sobbed. She had screamed out her agony. She had put herself back together slowly, but she was never the same. She was still broken. She had lost her son.
    She slid her hand into her other pocket and touched the medal. Now it was her turn to keep something close as a reminder. To touch something he had touched.
    Irina, the problem in Helsinki needs your attention. My son is sick. It's not a good time. She still remembered Isabel's brittle laugh.
    Children are sick all the time. No, it is more than that. The doctor said... Don't bore me with details. Do your job. The tickets are w aiting for you at the airport.
    So she had kissed him, kissed his golden curls. She had whispered that she would be gone for only two days.
    Anna, her neighbor who watched him, whom he adored, Anna would be by his side. Irina would bring him back anything he wanted.
    A monkey, he said, and she had laughed.
    She had to go undercover. No communication, no phones, nothing. So she did not collect Anna's increasingly frantic messages. She did not get the doctor's call. She touched down in Moscow two days later and discovered that her nine-year-old son was dead. She was holding the stuffed monkey, an expectant smile on her face, when a weeping Anna told her the news.
    Now Irina rose.
    Once Isabel had forced her to do something that she regretted with every waking brea th. It would not happen again.
    CHAPTER 13
    The delicious smells of good things cooking greeted Amy as she wearily pushed open the door to Shep's house.
    It had taken her over an hour to get back. Plenty of time for her to digest what had happened. But it still hadn't taken away her fear.
    It was still there in her stomach, a cold, hard ball.
    When she closed the door, she began to shake. Now that she was safe, the horror of what had happened truly sank in. What if Hamilton hadn't saved her?