Page 15 of Dark Gambit: The Play

"About half an hour. I need to scan Sofia's entire body."

"Can I be here while you do that?"

The young doctor shook his head. "It's not mandatory for you to leave, but it's preferable. It's very difficult to lie perfectly still inside the device while it's doing its thing, and the less distraction Sofia has to filter out, the better."

"Then I shall wait out in the hallway." Looking reluctant to leave her side, Marcel cast her an encouraging glance and a smile before heading out the door.

"Okay, young lady." Julian offered her his hand again. "Hop on the bench."

She used his hand as a lever to hoist herself up, and when she was sprawled on the platform, Julian arranged her arms and legs the way he wanted them.

"You're not claustrophobic, right?"

"Not as far as I know."

"Good. If you were, I would have to give you sedatives. Try to relax and think of your happy place. If you can doze off, it would be even better."

"I'll try." Sofia closed her eyes and imagined her room in the university's dorms, and when that didn't do the trick, she imagined her room back in the compound with her cousin sitting on her bed and telling her about everything that had happened while she was gone. That brought a smile to her lips, and she tried to keep thinking happy thoughts as the machine started buzzing and the platform started moving.

10

MARCEL

"These are just plain hairpins." Leon handed them back to Marcel after crushing a couple to make sure they were not hiding anything inside their tiny plastic bubbles. "But I want you to take a look at that locket of hers. Can you tell where it was made without taking it apart?"

Marcel smiled. "I'm way ahead of you on that. The thing was so cheaply made that I figured it wasn't a high-end piece of equipment. I've looked it up, and it turns out that you can order them on the internet. Like everything else, they are made in China."

"Bummer." Eleanor leaned against the desk and crossed her arms over her chest. "I was hoping it was a piece of alien technology and that we could learn something from it."

"We did learn something from it." Marcel put the pins in his pocket. "That particular group of Kra-ell doesn't have advanced technology and they use commercially available things. We have a clear advantage over them in that."

Leon looked doubtful. "Jade had access to advanced technology. She launched a telecommunications company with what she knew."

Eleanor huffed out a breath. "She must have had an engineer and a scientist in her group, and that's how she had access to advanced technology. Her captor's group was probably comprised of meatheads, the types who don't know how to build anything and only know how to take it from others. They must have emptied her tribe's bank accounts. Emmett says that the tribe was wealthy thanks to its many enterprises, but when Vrog came back from Singapore and found the compound burned to the ground, all he found was the cash that Jade had kept in the safes. The money in the banks was gone. The compeller must have forced her to surrender that money to him."

Leon still looked doubtful. "The Chinese government could have confiscated the funds. Having money in the bank in China is a risky proposition."

"Maybe it wasn't in a Chinese bank," Eleanor countered. "Jade was a smart lady." She shook her head. "Correction. She is a smart lady."

The discussion about Jade and the possible fate of her money turned into a discussion about international banking, which Eleanor knew a lot about, and then moved to the subject of precious metals and where best to store them.

Marcel wasn't overly interested in the topic, but it provided a good distraction while they waited.

An hour or so later, when the door finally opened and Julian stepped out, the grim expression on the doctor's face told Marcel all he needed to know.

"I found a tracker on her," Julian said. "It's so small that I missed it the first time around, but I had a hunch and repeated the scan. It's in her thigh, and it's the size of a grain of rice."

Eleanor cast Marcel a mocking glance. "Can that be ordered on the internet as well?"

"No."

"I didn't think so." She turned to Julian. "Did you take it out?"

"Not yet. She wants Marcel to be with her when I do."

Why the hell did that make his heart swell?

"Are you going to use a local anesthetic?" he asked the doctor.