at the nape of her neck. It made her skin crawl. She drew her shoulders up and leaned forward to draw away, eliciting nervous laughter from some of the men. She tried not to think about what they were capable of, but her mind filled with images of torture, rape and murder. She had spent two years building a case of such crimes, but until this very moment, they had been merely legal concepts. Now they were very, very real.
The Dutchman drove, taking corners too fast in the snow and heading for the port with the confidence of someone familiar with the city. The vehicle sped down the roadway that ran alongside the Verversingskanaal that flowed into the Voorhaven, a lock-controlled waterway of the North Sea.
A bridge rose in a high arc over the locks station. Snow flew at the windshield. The tires slipped and spun on the slick roadway. The bridge was entirely deserted of traffic, aglow with amber lights on tall poles, which turned the covering of snow to pure gold.
From the rear of the van, someone said, “There’s a helicopter. We’re being followed.”
“Not to worry,” said the Dutchman, accelerating past 130 kilometers per hour. “I left instructions.”
Sophie realized then what the man’s exchange with the attaché had been about. They had promised to kill their hostage if their needs were not met. She also realized that, at some point, they would kill her anyway. Why give them that chance, then? She had lived her life trying to do everything right, yet things so often turned out wrong anyway.
Her hands seemed to belong to someone else as she moved with a speed and strength she didn’t know she possessed. She grabbed for the steering wheel and dragged it into a sharp turn.
The Dutchman cursed and tried to wrestle back control of the van. But it was too late. The bridge was too slippery, the guardrail too flimsy to stop the van from hurdling over the side of the bridge and plunging into the ink-black water.
Part Three
St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands
Three Kings Day
Three Kings Day, or Epiphany, is the culmination of a month of celebration on the Caribbean island of St. Croix, a place famed for its sugar, molasses and rum. Wedding fruit cake is so dense and richly flavored that it must be served in small pieces as a memento of the event.
Wedding Fruit Cake
Place five pounds of mixed dried fruit (currants, raisins, dates, figs, prunes) in a very large bowl, and cover it with about three cups of Cruzan rum. Set this aside to macerate for two days or up to a week.
To make the cake, you will need the macerated fruit, plus:
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 pound brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup molasses
1/2 pound butter at room temperature
6 eggs
Beat the butter in a large bowl and add the sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and molasses. Add the eggs one at a time. Beat in flour and baking powder and then stir in the fruit mixture.
Pour into two or three well-greased 13”x9” baking pans. Bake in a 350°F oven for about one hour.
Six
St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands
6 January – Epiphany
Max Bellamy couldn’t stand weddings. In his family, weddings seemed to crop up on a regular basis, like flu season. Since he was just a kid, he wasn’t allowed to check off “regrets” on the invitation reply card and stay home. But boy, did he regret having to sit through a wedding.
Sometimes they even made him participate. Twice, when he was really little, he’d been a ring bearer. At age four, he’d thought it was cool until he realized they wanted him to dress up and stay clean and stand still through a ceremony that wouldn’t end.
At twelve, he was way too old for such an indignity, but his family managed to find a new one. Last summer, he’d been upgraded to usher for his cousin Olivia, who married Connor Davis at Camp Kioga on Willow Lake. That was when he knew for sure all weddings were pretty much the same. Same level of discomfort, in starched clothes and shoes that pinched, same droning ceremony and sappy songs, different couple at the altar.
His take on weddings—they were long and boring and everyone talked about love and promises, and it was pretty much all a load of crap, as far as he was concerned.
Today the discomfort came from a different source. Since the ceremony was on the beach, everybody got to wear beach clothes. They looked like a reunion of Hawaiian punch guys, as far as Max was concerned. Which was a lot more comfortable than tuxedos and tight shoes, but that didn’t mean he was having a great time.
How could he, when the groom was his dad?
Okay, so Max liked Nina Romano. A lot. She was going to do fine as a stepmother. He wanted her to marry his dad. He wanted them to be married. But he didn’t want to have to sit through all the endless vows and recitations. He didn’t want to have to listen to his dad say stuff like “I offer you my heart” to anyone.
That kind of stuff just skeezed him out. He wished they had sneaked off somewhere to do it instead of involving families. There were like a gazillion Romanos milling around. Nina had eight brothers and sisters, and most of them had kids, so between the Romanos and the Bellamys, this had turned into some huge deal.
Cheerful, Italian-American strangers had been coming up to him all week, thumping him on the back and acting like his best friend. They weren’t all strangers. Two of them—who by the end of the day would be stepcousins—were in his grade at Avalon Middle School. Angelica Romano was in his prealgebra class and Ricky Pastorini was on his hockey team. Ricky’s mom was Nina’s sister, Maria. She was the team mother. Although he was Max’s age, Ricky was already shaving and his voice had changed. Big deal, thought Max.
He tried not to grind his teeth in disgust as another lame song was sung about two hearts beating as one, while most of the women cried. It was just too sweet. He was going to slip into a diabetic coma if they didn’t end this soon.
He cast a restless eye through the gathering on the beach. Everyone was seated in white folding chairs, their feet in flip-flops, sifting through the white-sugar sand. Max’s hand stole into the pocket of his cargo shorts. He palmed his phone, checked the screen. His mom hadn’t texted him back after he sent her the picture earlier. He’d tried to put a positive spin on it, because his mom was all about trying to act like everything was fine, all the time, even when you had to sit through your own father’s wedding. Max’s message had been that St. Croix was
