ASHES (Ignite Book 3)

by R. J. Lewis

  A lot of time had lapsed. I knew that much, but it just made me more confused. I understood flying well. My father owned several small planes and I had gone along with him on many journeys to know this plane didn’t have a long way to go without fuelling up. Where were we going? How many times had it landed to fuel up? I couldn’t even begin to know. Whatever they’d given me was strong. Or they’d made sure to keep me dosed up along the way. The thought of their hands on me made me feel violated and ill. There was something very scary about knowing you’d been touched when you weren’t conscious to feel it. The icky sensations multiplied the more I thought about it.

  I wondered what my father was doing now. If he was searching for me. If Sonja was okay. If she too had been taken. What was Tony doing now that his impending wife hadn’t walked down the aisle? Did they even know where to begin in their search?

  Powerless, I had no choice but to accept I was genuinely helpless.

  I imagined a gang of masked men. I imagined my head on the chopping block. So many fucked up, insanely bizarre death scenarios flooded me, aiding poorly in my paranoia. I felt like a child again, my imagination was running wild and I couldn’t stop them.

  As I panicked, the plane suddenly started descending, and my stomach dropped along with it.

  We were going down too fast.

  Way too fast.

  It felt like we were nose diving. I held my breath and shut my eyes tightly, preparing for a bad landing. What the hell was this pilot doing? We were going to crash at this rate!

  The landing came abrupt, skidding along the earth, the plane surprisingly levelling out just in time. Feeling angered that I was being tossed around like a fucking bag of potatoes, I screamed through the cloth. I couldn’t hear my voice. The plane stressed, shuddering every metal limb in its body. I always hated this part. The anticipation had always killed me, and it was made worse that I couldn’t see it through the windshield and this pilot was a fucking head case!

  The road didn’t feel smooth like I was accustomed to. It was bumpy as hell. I could see the small window from where I lay. Clouds of dirt kicked up all around us, confusing me even more. Dirt? This wasn’t a normal landing strip. Shit. Fuck. That was a bad sign.

  Miraculously, the plane came to a slow stop. Halle-fucking-lujah to the pilot who deserved a kick in the balls for that shoddy landing. I lay there, panting, trying to get my heart to slow down.

  After several minutes, the engine shut off, and it was then an unspeakable terror washed over me. It was different this time, more acute. Like the ride was finally over and what was going to happen was here at last. But with it, I was also angry too. The heat, the fear, the pain, the not knowing what the hell awaited me – it was a messy cocktail that had my adrenaline firing through my blood. I was shaking with it as I waited.

  I hadn’t appreciated the screaming engine the whole time it ’d been on. I should have. Because this silence was worse. The door to the plane suddenly opened, and the plane jerked with the movements of the men climbing out. I caught a glimpse of black hair on one of them before the door shut again. I held my breath, my heartbeats consuming my ears as I strained to listen. More words were spoken, clearer than before. The language was…recognizable now that I could hear the words clearly. It was…I tilted my head to the side, grasping for the answer as I recognized little words.

  Spanish.

  They were speaking Spanish.

  What did that mean? I tried to wrack my brain with any Spanish speaking businessmen my father had known over the years, but nothing came to mind. My father had associated with many factions of many races and languages. He was German himself, his early years brought up in an impoverished town somewhere in Germany. Nothing about this answered any questions yet.

  I jumped when the door opened again. The front seat slid forward, and my eyes connected with a man’s face. He was middle-aged, bearded, his skin a light brown. He looked surprised to find me awake. Looking over his shoulder, he said something to the other man, and he too poked his head in, looking at me. This man was white, blonde with the greenest eyes I’d ever seen. He frowned at the sight of me before muttering something in response and disappearing.

  The darker man leaned over and grabbed my legs, shoving me toward him. Fear washed over me. I kicked my bound legs at him, the end of my heels hitting him square in the face. He fell back, his hand flying to his nose. Blood poured out of it, and he swore angrily, his face turning a deep shade of red when he looked back at me. I tensed at the rage in his eyes, but I didn’t stop from kicking again when he grabbed me once more by the legs. Instinct kicked in. I didn’t have a plan, but I wasn’t prepared to make this easy for him.

  This time, he tore my heels off and threw them over his shoulder, ending my pathetic endeavour right there and then. Then he wrapped both his arms around my kicking legs and shoved me to him so harshly, my bare upper back burned against the thin carpet. I screamed through the cloth, feeling tears burn my eyes. I tried to twist my body, ignoring the agony it sent through my bound arms and spine. He grunted, cursing again as he struggled to remove me.

  “You serious, Andres? Can’t take a woman out without hurting yourself?” growled the blond, coming to his aid.

  He nudged him aside and grabbed me around the legs. This time, there was so much power in his arms, my entire body slid out in one brisk jerk. Dazed, my upper body flew up and slammed into him. The front of him was hard and muscled. He smelled of sweat and mild cologne. In fact, I knew that cologne. It was expensive fucking cologne. I jerked back in disgust, but he already had his arms around me, steadying me upright against him. Looking up, I glared at him. His green eyes pierced my own, and instead of anger there, I saw amusement.

  “Look who’s bright eyed and bushy tailed,” he remarked, his deep voice alight with humour. “You’re not supposed to be up.” I tried to shake his hands off me, but he just laughed at my futile effort. “Calm your tits, princess,” he said, finally letting me go.

  My eyes narrowed at him, and my nose flared in hatred. I was pissed. Every part of me was hurting, the drug was still mildly coursing through my body, and this dress was so heavy on me in the boiling heat, I felt close to passing out. On top of that, I’d just endured the harshest landing ever in an aircraft, and he was calling me a princess? Motherfucker.

  He smirked at me. His eyes didn’t leave mine when he opened his mouth and spoke to the other guy. He paused in between his speech, his brows coming together in thought before he continued. He was struggling. It was then I realized the language had nothing to do with anything at all. It was just a barrier between them.

  The man he called Andres handed him a bottle of water. Immediately, my stare tore from the man’s eyes and settled on the bottle in his hands. I swallowed hard. My throat felt like sandpaper. My tongue rubbed against the cloth, the thirst desperate to be quenched. I didn’t know how long it had been since I had anything to drink. It felt like days. Weeks. Even years. My time in the airplane felt like a haze that went on for eternity.

  He saw the want in my eyes and grinned at me. Taking a step even closer, until his chest was flush against mine, he dangled the half-full bottle before my face and raised his brows in question. He was silently asking me if I wanted it, and my body trembled in response. I did. I fucking did want it more than anything. But there was a problem with me too. I was defiant. My father always said life would be easier for me if I complied. They were tiny rebellions growing up. The kind where I stood my ground and chose to suffer than give in. Tiny little protests in the face of being overpowered and controlled. This was the defiance Sonja warned me about on my wedding day. The small pride I clung to because it was all I had. I didn’t want to take anything from him. I would rather be thirsty than let him know he had something I wanted.

  So, despite being so fucking thirsty I wanted to die than carry on, I made no indication I wanted it. I stared right back at Green Eyes and held my ground. I made sure to keep my stare firmly on him, never wavering on
ce on the bottle I would have eaten the plastic off to drink.

  He laughed softly, his eyes brightening with surprise. “I was warned about you,” he muttered. “They said you’d be stubborn.”

  Who was they?

  “Boss man didn’t seem bothered by that.”

  My gaze was still trapped on him, but my mind reflected on his words. Who was his boss? I was under the impression this guy was in charge, but that was a silly thought. You never sent the Queen to retrieve the honey. It was always the worker bee.

  He slowly unscrewed the top, raised his head up, and downed the bottle in one go. I died right there on the spot. Regret washed over me, but I kept it hidden as best as I could. He didn’t even savour it. Lines of water trailed down his neck, pooling at the collar of his white shirt.

  My soul shattered.

  Fuck!

  FUCK!

  Blinking back angry tears, my pride fell. I wanted to weep. Maybe I would have if my eyes weren’t so dry and sore. I didn’t need to see his smirk or watch his eyes laugh at me. I couldn’t bear it. Dejected, I looked past him for the first time, and my world… stopped.

  Just…stopped.

  I froze, every inch of me rooted to the ground. My heart collapsed. Thirst forgotten for a minor second, awe took its place. Dense, tropical jungle lay before us. So foreign, I knew without a shadow of a doubt I wasn’t anywhere near Winthrop. In fact, I recognized this scenery. This was…this was the kind you saw in the Amazon. The kind of rainforest that sprawled across South America for how many millions of miles? Two?

  South America.

  Was that even possible?

  No.

  No.

  Fuck no.

  It couldn’t be. In a tiny plane like that, we would have had to have been travelling for two days, minimum. How many stops would the plane have had to make to fuel up? How low had they flown to bypass all radar detection? More distressing, how long had I been out?!

  But as I looked around us, noticing how foreign the world looked from here, I knew it was true. The bush was completely different. Thick and consuming every direction around us. Tied up and stumbling, I spun regardless, my pride swallowed by fear and utter shock. I’d never felt so small in my life.

  This…This couldn’t be happening.

  “That’s right, princess,” Green Eyes chirped behind me, his voice alight with amusement. “You’re a long way from home.”

  Blood rushed in my ears. Spots formed in my vision. For the first few seconds, I felt removed from my body.

  Help wasn’t going to be on the way. These men had skilfully kidnapped and drugged me without incident.

  I glimpsed at the plane, trying to make sense of this. It was old, but the body was in great condition. An expensive little plane. These fuckers had money and they had risked their necks to get me here.

  Something big was at play here, and I had a feeling it didn’t involve my head on a pike.

  I took in the dirt, narrow runway, then the jungle surrounding us, and then I craned my head up and stared at the clear blue sky. Unless you knew where to look, there was no way this runway was visible from so high up.

  My hope plummeted further.

  “We’ll be walking it from here to the car,” Green Eyes suddenly said, stepping closer to me.

  I tensed when he knelt and lifted my dress off the ground, baring my legs. My eyes widened in alarm and he looked up at me, taking in my distress with that grin on his face. My skin felt hotter with rage as I imagined his hands on my bare skin. There would be nothing I could do about it. I stood there, bound and helpless. He could do anything to me and there would be no repercussions.

  But then he ordered something from the man he called Andres. In response, the man approached me from behind. My breathing came harder as he bent down. His hands touched at the back of my legs, and I saw spots in my vision, the relief coming to me strong when I realized he was untying the rope around them. I hid the relief I felt the second it was off. Green Eyes stood up and, looking at me with that smirk, he grabbed the cloth wrapped around my face and cut it with a blade he pulled from his belt. On instinct, I spat out the ball of cloth from my mouth. I shuddered in disgust, the taste of it still lingering.

  “You’re alright, it wasn’t that bad,” Green Eyes said, that permanent smirk pissing me off. “Just something we cleaned the fuel up with. At least now you’ve got your legs back. You wanna move around a bit, get used to using them again?”

  I glared at him, refusing to respond. Father told me once that communicating with the enemy in any way would be a grave mistake. They could sniff out your weaknesses, read you like a book the second you opened your mouth and gave yourself away. So, I resisted, even though it killed me not to scream curses at them.

  “Andres,” he called, snapping his fingers, “another bottle.”

  Andres came moments later with an unopened bottle of water. The blond took it and opened it, throwing the cap on the ground. Abruptly, he grabbed me by the chin and forced my mouth open. On instinct, I went to scream just as he began pouring it into my mouth.

  “I ain’t getting skinned alive because you refuse to drink water,” he told me, his humour fading. “You ain’t dying on my watch, honey. You can leave that for later.”

  I didn’t protest, not even when I started choking out coughs. Oxygen deprived for those few moments, I took what I could get. Warm, plastic tasting water had never tasted so good. He poured the last quarter of it down my head, soaking my face and neck. It made the heat bearable.

  “There we go,” he said, his voice shifting a little. I opened my eyes to catch his gaze travelling from my face to the trail of water moving between my breasts. The desire in his face shone, and he quickly tore his eyes off me like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t. That was interesting. His expression went flat as he threw the empty bottle at Andres, and then he grabbed me by the arm, steering me in the direction of the jungle.

  My legs felt stiff and numb. I hadn’t used them for how long? I stumbled, kept upright only because he had an iron grip on me.

  Not far into the bush and hidden in tall grass, I spotted over a dozen blue barrels and a pile of Jerry cans. My mind raced. It was fuel. This was a regular stop for them.

  We were on a trail well tread upon. The tall grass was mostly bent or plastered to the earth. We walked for ages through it. Sweat broke out on my forehead as I struggled to keep up. I panted, the dress feeling heavier with each step. I could hardly bear it. Bile climbed my throat.

  “Not long, keep it together,” Green Eyes said.

  I couldn’t. I was going to collapse. My head went light and the spots in my vision returned. I fell to the ground, part of me held up by his grip. I expected him to shout at me, or force me back up, but he stopped and let me go, letting me take a breather.

  I didn’t expect that.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, heaving a sigh. “This isn’t gonna work.”

  I needed a minute, but the more I rested with my head flat against the ground, the more lethargic I grew. He spoke to Andres while I flopped there like a dead fish. Andres moved past us, continuing forward while he stood by me, watching over me.

  “Few more moments, sweets,” he assured me, the concern in his voice surprising me. “Hang in there. I know this has been rough.”

  I shut my eyes, feeling tired enough to fall back asleep. The water had hit my stomach hard. I felt nauseous. How long had it been since I’d eaten? My energy levels were depleted. Now that dehydration wasn’t going to kill me, heat stroke would.

  These guys were terrible kidnappers.

  “You’ll be feeling better soon enough,” he continued to say, kneeling to my level once to pat my back. “This heat takes getting used to. You’ll climatize.”

  That didn’t make me feel better. Feeling spiteful, I used the last of my energy to shrug his hand off me. I glared at him, and he chuckled in response, respecting my distance by pulling away.

  I didn’t expect that eith
er.

  Minutes later, the purr of an engine broke through the silence.

  “Alright, time to go.”

  Green Eyes grabbed me around the waist and heaved me up to my feet. My back relaxed into his front, and I was too tired to feel angry about that. I opened my eyes long enough to catch the sight of an older jeep coming toward us, cutting through the grass effortlessly. Andres was behind the wheel. He stopped it in front of us and motioned us in. Green Eyes picked me up and took me to the passenger door. He opened it and very gently situated me inside on the leather seats. He shoved my puffy dress in, making sure none of it was sticking out before he climbed in after me and shut the door.

  I tried to glare again, but the muscles in my face felt dead. Too drained, I panted, the heat obliterating me. I was in and out of consciousness when I felt him wrap something around my eyes.

  A blindfold.

  “You can’t be serious,” I spat out, my voice sounding foreign to my ears. “I don’t even know where I am!”

  “Just following the rules Boss tells me to,” he explained.

  “Well your boss is an asshole.” So much for no communication.

  “He is an asshole,” he agreed, chuckling. “But you ain’t gonna be brave enough to say that to his face.”

  I disagreed. At this rate, with the rage building, I was going to have no issues telling him that to his fucking face. I envisioned a weedy man, probably in his mid-forties, oozing in money as he stood in the jungle in a suit. Because they all wore their fucking suits. They were crazy enough to wear it in this heat, too, these fucking mutant men.

  Five

  Liv

  Time went on with very little comfort. I had been blindfolded forever at this rate. My body was already sore from the plane ride, and now it was aching with every bump in the road. My arms were numb, but that was already established a whole lifetime ago. I fidgeted relentlessly, before I decided to lay on my side and close my eyes.