From Kiss to Queen

by Janet Chapman

Irina gave a little giggle that quickly turned into a sob. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to wait. Mark will come get us.”

  “He doesn’t know where we are. Neither do we. How can you be so calm?”

  Jane’s handcuffs rattled as she patted Irina’s knee. “Because I’m going to load my shotgun with rock salt and hunt him down if he doesn’t.” She sobered. “He’ll come. He has to. He loves me.”

  Irina found a weak smile. “So sure you are,” she whispered.

  “Darn right. He needs me.”

  Irina closed her eyes and swayed slightly. “I am so tired. And thirsty.”

  Both women looked around, but saw no food or water. They did find a dented, chipped chamber pot, and Jane walked over and rattled it with her toe. “I say we fill this up and throw it at the first man to walk through that door.”

  “Do . . . do we dare ask for some water?”

  “I dare,” Jane said, walking to the door and rattling the knob. It was locked, as she’d expected, so she began pounding on it. When that brought no results, Jane picked up the board she’d broken and started banging on the door.

  It finally, suddenly opened.

  She took a step back, dropping the board, and meekly asked for some water. The door was slammed shut in her face. But ten minutes later, a battered, dented bucket was brought in by one of the men. Another man brought in another bucket with what Jane guessed was supper. A third man stood sentry, a gun pointed at the two dangerous prisoners.

  Jane stuck out her tongue at the closed door. “Did they think we were going to overpower them?” she asked as she awkwardly picked up the bucket of water. “The least they could have done was give us a cup,” she muttered, setting the bucket on the nightstand. Peering down in it, she made a face. “Do you think it’s drinkable?”

  “I don’t care,” Irina said, lugging over the other bucket and setting it on the bed, then looking inside. “I’m willing to drink mud. Oh, look. A cup,” she cried, like a child at Christmas.

  “You go first,” Jane told her, rummaging around in the food bucket. She pulled out a plastic bag. “Oh, boy. Bread and water. How quaint.”

  “But better than nothing,” Irina said, drinking greedily, spilling the water down her chin.

  Not having anything else to do, they both ate three slices of bread and drank some of the water. And then they politely each turned their backs while the other awkwardly, almost comically, tried to use the chamber pot. And then they all but fell on the bed and into a restless sleep.

  Bright sunlight came through the broken window the next morning to find Jane and Irina huddled together and shivering. Blinking, looking up at the window, Jane nudged Irina awake. “Good heavens. It snowed last night.”

  Irina followed her line of sight. “It did,” she said in disbelief. “We must be inland and possibly even in the mountains to be seeing snow, as the ocean current brings more temperate weather to the coast by the end of February.”

  “Well, now we know where we are.”

  Irina snorted. “Fat lot of good it does us.”

  Jane sighed. They could be five miles from home and it wouldn’t do them much good. There were three pit bulls guarding their prison, all of them with guns and all looking ready to use them. The day held no surprises and no less worry. They were kept locked in the room, the only light they dared allow coming from the broken window. The oil in the lamp was getting low, and Jane wanted to keep it for the darkness.

  They explored their little prison, looking in all the boxes. What they found were ancient, mildew-covered books on logging and forestry and wildlife. There were no tools, nothing metal whatsoever to use to pry more boards off the windows. And so the women spent their time talking about their childhoods, reading, and worrying.

  Jane learned, much to her surprise, that Irina had been married for twelve years to a wonderful man she still mourned and had no desire to replace. No one, Irina told Jane, could compare to George Spanes, an American from Alaska who had stolen her heart one warm summer eve when he’d come to her father’s home on the coast of Shelkova to buy fish from their village. George had died six years ago in a plane crash on one of his buying trips. Irina had returned home to Shelkova, and then she’d come to live with the Lakelands when Katrina had suddenly taken ill.

  Jane’s heart went out to the woman. Smiling sadly, Irina said she’d loved and lost, and was glad for the time she’d had with her husband. The only true tragedy was that they hadn’t been blessed with children. Markov, Sergei, Dmitri, and Alexi had become her sons.

  Their bucket of water was refilled, they were given more bread, and, in a repeat of the previous night, both women cuddled together on the squeaky, rickety bed and went to sleep praying for deliverance from their prison. It was sometime in the middle of the night that Jane stirred to a faint sound. Shadows moved at one of the windows. She nudged Irina awake, and both women waited in suspense for what they hoped was a rescue.

  What they got were two men peering in at them through the quietly sawed boards. Jane didn’t know whether to run up and embrace the fools or push them off the ladder. They were fierce-looking men, what she could see of them in the faint moonlight. As quiet as mice but looking like lions, they climbed through the window and approached the bed.

  Although she supposed elite soldiers on a covert mission might disguise themselves as . . . stone-age cavemen, Jane got a sinking feeling that her and Irina’s predicament was about to go from bad to worse when a large calloused hand covered her mouth and she found herself looking into the most ghostly eyes she’d ever seen. Jane began to struggle when that hand was suddenly replaced by a rag and she was once again grabbed by the shoulders.

  She’d had enough.

  She lashed out at this newest threat by kicking violently, catching him in the thigh and gaining a satisfying grunt. Her satisfaction lasted only a second before she was wrapped in a heavy, smelly rug that she feared was actually an animal skin. And then she was tossed none too gently over a hard, muscled shoulder—making her quickly twist to protect her protruding belly.

  From the sounds of things, Irina was experiencing the same rough handling.

  Jane was mad now, but she didn’t outright panic until she discovered the man intended to lower her out the window into the waiting arms of more men. She instantly stilled, scared they would drop her. It was a harrowing experience to be lowered two stories while relying on the strength of unknown men.

  From the sounds of things, Irina was making the same journey.

  Once on the ground, Jane was stood on her feet, still handcuffed, gagged, and blinded by the rug. The rug was suddenly removed just before she was tossed up onto a tall horse, into the waiting arms of the man who’d originally crawled in the window and stolen her.

  And so their new odyssey began. Irina was mounted on another horse, being held tight against the broad chest of her own fur-clad abductor. Jane was barely able to see Irina’s look of panic as they galloped past, along with no fewer than five others mounted on horses. Jane turned to peek around the broad shoulder of her rescuer and spotted two more men and horses before she was rudely jerked around to face front again. She pinched the arm around her middle, but was only able to get it to rise above her baby to beneath her breasts before it squeezed her tightly.

  It was at that moment Jane decided to fear for her life. Not from the man behind her, but from the horse. It was a monstrous beast, tall and powerful feeling, galloping at breakneck speed over the frozen, snow-covered ground through the dense forest, seemingly oblivious to the branches getting in its way—sort of like an equine tank. With her still-handcuffed hands, Jane held its mane and closed her eyes. When that only made her dizzy, she tried to stare through the night and guess the horse’s next move.

  She was suddenly thankful for the man holding her so tightly. She leaned into his chest, which seemed more than ad
equate to hold her up as his free arm reached out to shield her from the oncoming branches slapping against them in a blur. But she soon started worrying again—if one hand was around her waist and one was blocking the branches, then who was steering the darn horse?

  They kept up the grueling pace for half an hour and then slowed to a walk. The man holding her—whom she still hadn’t dared look up at—suddenly reached between them and unbuttoned his coat. He let go of her long enough to wrap her closer against his warm chest, only to stiffen when his hand returned to her waist. He splayed his fingers to cup her belly, then growled something unintelligible—not at all sounding like the Shelkovan she was familiar with, but still recognizable to Jane as a curse—and so she pinched his arm to get him to raise it again.

  He merely laughed and pulled his hand away, then finally wrapped her up in his coat and urged the horse into a less harried lope. Indignant at being manhandled yet thankful for the warmth, and growing more tired by the minute, Jane endured the dark journey for what seemed like another full hour.

  The sun eventually rose, and with it came the sight of a village nestled into the crux of a valley cut by a swiftly flowing river. She sagged in relief against the man, although she still couldn’t bring herself to turn and look at him. But she intended to tell Mark about her and Irina’s rough handling the moment this harrowing mission was over.

  Geesh, would a simple “You’re safe now” have been too much to ask?

  The returning rescuers were met at the center of the village by more men, several chickens, at least a dozen goats, and countless barking dogs. Jane looked around for signs of Mark, but when she didn’t see anything that looked even remotely military—say, a helicopter waiting to whisk them back to civilization—she then tried to decide what disturbed her about the place. There weren’t any utility poles, which meant there was no electricity or landline phones, but she did see that some of the crudely built cabins had small solar panels attached to their roofs. Were the panels for recharging cell phones, maybe? Hopefully?

  She also noticed several ATVs—some looking older than she was—and two very shiny, definitely new and fast-looking snowmobiles parked next to a rather large barn. So why hadn’t the men used the snowmobiles to rescue her and Irina?

  Well, unless they’d felt the machines were too noisy.

  So okay, then; their rescuers were at least from this century despite using horses for transportation. Yeah, she supposed it might have been more expedient to send a couple of elite soldiers to the area and have them enlist the men of a local village to help rescue her and Irina, and Mark was probably right now racing to them in a fast helicopter. But that still didn’t explain what was bugging her about this place, as if something . . . important was missing.

  Jane’s attention was drawn to Irina being handed down to the outstretched hands of grinning men all trying to grab at her at once. The man who’d been carrying Irina growled low in his throat and shook his fist at them. And poor Irina, looking frazzled and dazed and scared, was frantically trying to climb back up on the horse.

  The man holding Jane suddenly shouted, nearly unseating her. The men on the ground instantly stilled, and reluctantly backed off with disgruntled muttering. Her rescuer just as suddenly dismounted, making Jane realize she was up on the monster alone. But she had a death grip on the tangled mane and managed not to fall.

  But she nearly did just that when the guy turned and Jane got her first good look at him.

  Nope; this definitely didn’t feel like a covert rescue mission, and those animal skins definitely weren’t a disguise. The large hands reaching up to her were calloused and strong, the broad chest she’d leaned against stretched the suede shirt under his open jacket to the point it was in danger of bursting, and the guy’s hair was a striking jet black that reached well past his shoulders. From behind he’d looked like an old mountain man from the historical west, but not from the front. No, the clean-shaven jaw, smooth brow, and prominent cheekbones surrounding keen, alert, ice-blue eyes belonged to a man of thirty or thirty-five hard-lived years.

  He said something and beckoned with his hands.

  Jane clung to the horse and shook her head.

  His face grew harsh and he said something again, his fingers beckoning.

  She didn’t exactly like sitting on top of a scary horse, but the giant made it the lesser of two evils.

  Ignoring the laughter coming from the villagers, the guy reached up and simply pulled her off the horse, only to have to prop her on his shoulder halfway down in order to untangle her fingers from the mane—only to have to hold her up when he set Jane on her feet and her legs buckled.

  The man, whom she decided to name Conan—he certainly looked like a barbarian—let out a heavy sigh and swept her up in his arms and strode past the staring men. He carried her into one of the crude cabins, having to duck to make the door, and deposited her on a high bed covered in colorful wool blankets.

  Irina was carried in and deposited beside her.

  Irina looked at Jane with wide, bewildered eyes, and Jane noticed the woman’s blouse was torn at the shoulder, her hair was more tangled than the horse’s mane, and she was shivering from both cold and fright and looked ready to drop. “What is happening to us?” Irina asked the moment the men left.

  “I’m starting to worry that instead of being rescued,” Jane whispered, “we may have been kidnapped again.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  It suddenly dawned on Jane that not only had they just been abandoned in a room full of tools, but they were mobile. “Come on. Help me look for a weapon,” she told Irina, getting off the bed. “A knife or something.”

  “You don’t think to use a knife on that . . . that man,” Irina said, even as she got up and began limping around the room.

  “Did you hurt yourself?” Jane asked, forgetting her search to go to her friend.

  “No. My legs are asleep,” the woman confessed, groaning as she took another step.

  “Mine, too. And yes, if Conan tries to paw me again, I’m going to do violence,” Jane muttered, walking to the counter next to a rusty, heat-radiating cookstove.

  “He pawed you?”

  Jane turned to see Irina’s cheeks were no longer pale, her handcuffed hands clutching her dirty jacket closed at the throat. Jane nodded. “He squeezed my belly.”

  “Oh, the man I rode with kept his arm tucked uncomfortably close to my breasts. There was no need for him to keep his arm that high. I got so mad I wanted to slap him!”

  “Then find your own knife. If he tries to grope you or anything, stab him with it.”

  “Oh, Lord. I wouldn’t dare. He’s too intimidating.”

  “Well, these men don’t scare me,” Jane boldly lied, resuming her search for a knife.

  “This place is a mess,” Irina observed, awkwardly pushing around cans and foodstuffs on the counter. “And can you smell that? Something has spoiled.”

  “That’s it!”

  “What!” Irina cried on a gasp, spinning toward her.

  “Women. There aren’t any women here. That’s what’s missing.”

  Irina snorted and went back to searching. “That explains all the men shoving each other out of the way trying to be the one to help me off the horse,” she muttered, only to suddenly smile. “Here are some knives. Quickly, take this one and hide it.”

  Jane limped over, thankful her brace was holding up better than the rest of her was, and took the knife. She lifted her pant leg and tucked the small weapon inside her brace, then quickly smoothed down the material again. “I saw solar panels on some of the cabins, including this one,” Jane said, looking around the cluttered room. “I’m hoping they’re for charging cell phones.”

  “There can’t possibly be cell phone towers this far out.” Irina straightened from hiding her own knife in her knee-high sock and also looked around. “Maybe they have a
satellite phone or a ham radio.”

  “Did you recognize what language they—” Jane stilled at the sound of voices growing louder just outside, and both women rushed back to the bed and sat down again.

  The door burst open and men began spilling inside. Or rather, they tried to bulldoze over one another to gain entrance. Within seconds the small cabin was full of smelly, hairy, staring men. Carrying a large, plier-like tool, Conan elbowed his way through the men pointing and snickering like children and strode directly up to the bed. Jane and Irina tried scooting back, but Conan grabbed Jane’s knee to stop her retreat, then tugged her hands forward and indicated with gestures that she hold them out.

  Getting the drift of things, Jane held out her hands as the blue-eyed giant carefully pinched the handcuffs with what she realized was a bolt cutter, breaking them free from one wrist and then the other. She immediately began rubbing her bruised wrists as Irina held up her own hands and received the same freedom.

  Both women smiled and nodded their thanks.

  Conan did not smile back.

  Instead he grabbed Jane’s chin and lifted her face to expose her bruised neck where the pit bull had grabbed her two days ago. She managed not to flinch, but couldn’t stifle a wince when Conan ran his thumb over the bruise and then took her hands and examined her wrists. And then Irina’s. And then he turned to say something to the older man beside him, who was also examining Irina’s wrists.

  Jane decided to call that one Grizzly Adams because of all the fur he wore. His knee-high boots were made of leather and his coat had a fur-lined hood, but the man had a beard of graying whiskers that would shame Rip Van Winkle. He was older than Conan and not quite as big, and his eyes were so dark they looked nearly black.

  At least Irina’s rescuer could smile—at Irina, anyway. And he said something and patted her knee. Irina glared at him and jerked her knee away.

  The entire cabin broke into laughter.

  Conan and Grizzly turned and walked away from the women, and Conan began stirring some foul-smelling concoction simmering in a huge cast-iron pot. Grizzly went to a cupboard and took out some bread and plates and utensils, and Jane and Irina held their breaths, hoping the knives wouldn’t be missed.