Ruth felt her panic increasing. She should have known something like this might happen. For a moment, she wondered if her captor perhaps had nothing to do with Alexandru Nistor and covering up his crimes after she had tipped off the authorities to what he'd been doing at the bank. The man who had held her at gunpoint and snarled in her ear to keep walking was not a man she recognized. He'd said nothing to her as she was taken out of the airport and shoved in the back of a car. But then she saw who was driving the car.
"Renata, nice to see you again," the slimy man in the driver's seat said, grinning evilly into the rearview mirror.
"I see Alex has you doing his dirty work still, Marius," she replied. Ruth did not enjoy speaking Romanian and had hoped she could give it up. But she had not been able to escape as cleanly as she'd anticipated.
There was no more talking after that, though, for which Ruth was grateful. She needed to think. She needed to keep calm. Marius drove the car for about half an hour. The man with the gun now had it out of his pocket and still pointed toward her from where he sat next to her in the back seat. Ruth tried but was unsuccessful in looking behind them to see if Harry was following.
Oh Harry! She'd seen him! He was right there! He'd gotten her message, however vague but obvious it was. She had hoped beyond hope that the name Ruth Pearce might flag something on the Grid, and it must have. For why else would Harry have been waiting for her flight from Bucharest to arrive in Paris? He could not have known otherwise. But he had come to rescue her just as she'd hoped he might.
Only now, she actually did need rescuing. Was it now too much to hope that he was still following? That he would catch up to her captors? Ruth did not know if he would or could. She had no idea if he'd seen where she'd been taken or been able to get a car to follow them. As much as she wanted for Harry Pearce to be her knight in shining armor and charge up on a white horse to take her to safety and kiss her and make a happily ever after for them, she was far less naïve than she'd once been. If Ruth wanted to get out of this alive, she would have to figure out a way all on her own.
"Alexandru wants to talk to you, Renata," Marius said, pulling the car into the park.
Ruth tried not to be frightened by the fact that they were entering the huge wooded park on the outskirts of Paris where no one would think to look for her or find her body when she was inevitably killed and dumped under a tree somewhere. But best not think of that now. She focused her attention back on Marius. "Where is he?" she asked.
"Back in Bucharest. But I will call him so he can talk to you. And we will film what happens next. He will want to watch it for a long time."
"Watch what?" she asked innocently, already knowing what the answer would be.
"Your death," Marius sneered.
Ruth closed her eyes for no more than two seconds, just so she could take one deep, calming breath. She let her mind be filled with her former life, the life of Ruth Evershed of Section D. Everything she had ever learned from Zoe and Tom and Danny and Adam and Fiona and Malcolm. And the one thing that stood out to her when she allowed the thought to flit into her mind was the overwhelming truth that she had to have faith in Harry. Always, for everyone on the Grid, trusting Harry meant saving lives and a successful day; not trusting Harry meant death and failure. Ruth, of course, had more reason than anyone to trust in Harry. She would bet her life on him any day. Though she also knew that Harry believed in her, too. He would want her to bet her life on herself. And so she would.