Moments later, she saw the smaller of the men motion that he’d found something as she tried to breathe. “Got it.” He pocketed what appeared to be a cell phone before the men turned to her.
Hope soared. They’d found whatever they’d come for. Now maybe they would leave the way they’d come in, like phantoms in the night. It wasn’t as if she’d seen their faces.
Her slender thread of hope died as she heard the man holding her down say, “Help me with her.” The words sent a fresh stab of alarm coursing through her. She fought even harder. Kicking free of the covers, she got a leg out and struck the smallest of the men in his masked face as he tried to grab her legs. She felt his nose give under her heel and make a loud pop. He let out a wounded cry as he backed off.
“Damn it,” the first man said. “I need help here.”
The other man intruder, the one who’d been searching the room earlier, climbed on the bed, crawling across the king-size mattress toward her. She caught him in the jaw with her fist before he pinned her arms down as he climbed on top of her.
She struggled to breathe from the weight of him, gagging. What had he eaten tonight? Pizza with anchovies? She tried to turn her head away as she bucked in an attempt to throw him off her, but he was too heavy. All she could do was heave and squirm under him, horrified at what these men now planned to do with her. To her.
“Come here,” ordered the man who still had her mouth covered. The one she’d kicked in the face approached, still holding one of his gloved hands over his bleeding nose. “Cover her mouth.”
She caught the angry glint in the man’s pale eyes before the men made the switch. She tried to tell them about the mistake they were making, but before she could get out more than a word and a breath, the broken-nose man covered her mouth roughly with his bloody glove. She gagged at the smell and feel of the warm, sticky liquid on her lips. But it was the look in his eyes that sent her heart rate off the charts.
He would kill her if he got the chance.
Panic had her inhaling sharply through her nose as she watched in growing terror as the first man pulled a syringe from his coat pocket. She fought with all the strength she had left in her. But even as she did, she knew it was useless. She stood no chance against three men. She felt him jab the needle into her neck as she continued to fight until her body went limp.
As she lay like a ragdoll, helpless on the bed, she heard a sound that turned her blood to ice. Someone was tearing duct tape into strips.
Copyright © 2020 by Barbara Heinlein
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ISBN: 9781488067259
Protective Operation
Copyright © 2020 by Danica Winters
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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Protective Operation Page 19