In less than twenty minutes (by her estimation), the van screeched to a halt, and the back doors flew open. Rushed out of the van, Madalina got her feet on the ground and hurried along toward a flat building with a chain-link fence blocking entrance to a large open area.
She knew what this was. A private airport.
They weren’t staying in California, but getting on a plane for some foreign destination. It made sense with the maps on the wall and how Lance had pinpointed that one particular spot. Once realization struck and she was confronted with the cold, hard truth, Madalina balked and put the proverbial brakes on, digging her shoes into the ground. Freddy, the fourth member of the group, growled a warning and jerked her by her elbow, using force to propel her forward.
“I demand to know where you’re taking us,” Madalina said.
Wesley shouted for the man to quit handling her so roughly, while Juniper gasped and pleaded for the men not to hurt her.
“Shut up and walk,” Freddy said in a displeased voice, using his greater strength and weight to overpower her resistance.
“No! We’re not going on the plane,” Madalina said. It was more than the unknown—she believed it would be the last she ever saw of her homeland again. She feared that once the men got what they wanted out of her, they’d kill her and her parents and leave them dead on foreign soil.
Lance swerved back from where he’d been stalking toward a gate in the chain-link fence, drew a weapon, and caught Wesley around the throat with one arm. He nestled the muzzle against Wesley’s temple and glared hard at Madalina. In a low voice, he said, “We don’t have time for this. You either get a move on, Madalina, or I’ll shoot him where he stands. We may need your mother later down the line, but we don’t need him. Do you understand?”
Madalina stopped thrashing in Freddy’s hold. Out of breath, hair tossed across her face, she stared at the sight of Lance with a gun to her father’s head. It infuriated her and also scared her half to death.
“All right.” There was no way she would put her father’s life at risk.
The tense standoff ended when Lance jerked Wesley around and walked him toward the gate.
Madalina followed the procession around the building toward a waiting jet. The sleek white aircraft sat on the tarmac with the stairs already lowered.
Who the hell were these people? They seemed to have unlimited resources and obviously had planned this abduction for a while. The Chinese agents had the financial backing to pull it off, but she still wasn’t positive they were behind all this. Everything about this operation was different from any she’d been involved in before.
Led across the tarmac to the plane, she jogged up the stairs and into the aircraft. The décor was all soft sand and cream leather. Not brand-new, but well worn and in good care. To Madalina, it looked only like a decadent prison.
She waited through the process of having her hands brought around front and secured once more with a new zip tie. Her mother and father were given the same treatment, much to her relief. Flying for hours on end with their wrists behind their backs would have eventually become uncomfortable.
Shoved down into a window seat, Madalina glared up at Freddy, then caught her mother’s eye for a brief moment before Juniper sank into a seat two rows up. Galled at being separated from her parents so they couldn’t talk or at least exchange reassuring glances, Madalina looked out the small oval window, still unable to tell what city she was in, thanks to the darkness. The internal, gut-wrenching fear that she would never see the States again—that she would die on some lonely island—refused to abate. It grew worse as the men buckled in and the pilots prepared for takeoff. Swallowing a knot of panic, she called upon Cole’s lessons in training, which only made her long to see him. To glimpse reassurance in his eyes—to at least say good-bye.
Short minutes later, the jet taxied slowly along the tarmac, heading for the beginning of the runway. Madalina prayed for a miracle. Prayed for some kind of intervention. A freak storm that would prevent takeoff, a jet malfunction to ground the flight.
Something.
Anything.
The jet rumbled forward, engines humming, still on track for departure. There was a special kind of torture, Madalina thought, in knowing you couldn’t do anything about your circumstance. She couldn’t stand up and make demands, punch out a window, or create enough chaos to slow the flight herself.
Lance had made it perfectly clear what would happen if she protested.
A twin flash of lights beyond the chain-link fence drew her gaze to the little window again. It was a car, coming fast. Leaning forward, a tingle racing up her spine, she fervently hoped to see flashing red lights or some other indication that the authorities were about to stop the plane. The car burst through the fence at a high rate of speed. No lights, no sirens. It wasn’t the police.
Go, go, go! She urged the car on in silence so she didn’t alert Lance and his team, although she figured someone would see. Especially the pilots.
The jet surged forward, engines roaring. Madalina whimpered in the back of her throat as the car fishtailed to a halt and several people got out. She couldn’t see details in the gloom and from this distance, but she knew who it was. Who it had to be.
Cole. Unfortunately, he was too late.
The jet picked up even more speed. The tires left the pavement. Madalina’s stomach lurched as the jet went airborne, ferrying her and her parents swiftly away from the airport, from the city. The ocean glittered along the coastline—a dark, sinuous mass that became all she could see from the window.
Madalina tilted her head back against the seat, fighting the sting of tears at the back of her eyes. She exhaled long and slow, telling herself over and over that everything would work out. It would be okay. Cole had found her once; he could find her again. And she would continue to try and leave him bread crumbs to follow, continue to look for ways to escape. This wasn’t the end—not yet.
Just when her neck muscles started to relax and she thought she had a handle on her distress, someone snatched her under the elbow and hauled her out of the seat.
“What—” Her eyes popped open.
“Quiet,” Beau said, ushering her toward a door at the back of the jet.
In his other hand he held a wickedly curved knife.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Colorful curses rolled from Cole’s tongue as he watched the jet take off. Thaddeus had called during the drive to inform them that a jet had scheduled an unexpected, quick takeoff from this airport, as they’d suspected. Thaddeus hadn’t received all the flight information at the time of the call, but Cole knew it was too much of a coincidence for this plane not to be carrying Madalina and her abductors. There were too many clues, too many indications that he and his brothers were on the right trail.
Chest heaving from adrenaline and the exertion of running across the grounds, he holstered his gun and fished for his cell phone. Damon and Brandon caught up to him moments later.
“Damn,” Brandon said as he followed the arc of the jet with his eyes.
“So close. We’ll get her,” Damon said.
“Thaddeus, it’s Cole. Any other information yet on the flight plan? Can you confirm it’s them?” Cole glanced at his brothers, then jogged back to the Jaguar. He ignored the minor damage at the front end from bashing through the chain-link fence and slid into the driver’s seat.
“The jet is scheduled to land on Spratly Island. I tapped my contacts, and apparently there’s a pretty violent skirmish going on over there. The Islands are involved in conflicts all the time between several countries, and China is front and center of the current crisis,” Thaddeus said.
“Malaysia, China, and Vietnam are a few of the territories involved,” Cole said, remembering Brandon’s details from earlier.
“Among several others, yes. One incident has flared up, and though it’s not making headline news, the military is abuzz with it,” Thaddeus said.
“This confirms that the plane was carry
ing Madalina and her parents, then. The question is—why are these people taking Madalina to a war zone?” Cole started the car but let it idle as Brandon and Damon listened in on the call once he put Thaddeus on speaker. “Have we received demands about the dragons or a ransom on Madalina and her parents?”
“I’m still working on the whys,” Thaddeus said. “No word of demands or ransom. Is there any possibility that the men left Madalina or her parents behind?”
“We can’t rule anything out completely. We’re confident, though, that the men still have Madalina. I mean—I guess they could have dumped her and her parents off here before boarding the jet, but we haven’t seen any evidence of that,” Damon said.
“I know this is hard to think about—and I’m sorry to be the one to suggest it—but maybe we should check the area around the airport,” Thaddeus said.
“To look for bodies,” Cole said in a flat voice. He glanced out his side window at the dark landscape, shuddering internally to think that the men had what they came for and had dumped the bodies before fleeing in the plane. Sheer stubborn will made it easy for him to assume that Madalina was still alive, but Thaddeus had a point.
“I’ll do it,” Brandon said, and started to get out of the car.
“Wait,” Cole said, halting his brother before Brandon even opened his door. “You’re right, Thaddeus, they could have done that. Maybe even dumped them off on the side of the road between the house and here. Have the local authorities do the legwork, will you? Because I’m going to be optimistic and say that Madalina and her parents are still alive and aboard that plane. Which means we’ll waste time searching when it could be better spent in transit to Spratly Island. Find me the closest private plane—”
“I’m already on it. When you mentioned the Islands the first time, I figured I’d better be prepared, just in case. The best I could do was a jet out of Burbank airport,” Thaddeus said. “It’s a loaner, good enough to get you where you need to go. You won’t be too far behind. Also, I’ve leaned on my contacts in the military, and we’re redirecting a group to meet you at the airport when you land,” Thaddeus said.
“Just how much danger will Madalina and her folks be in?” Cole asked, turning the Jaguar around to get back on the road toward Burbank. He handed his phone to Damon to hold.
“Unfortunately, a lot. Like I said, it’s a pretty violent situation and escalating by the minute. Eight people have died so far,” Thaddeus replied.
Cole thrust a hand back through his hair. He refused to give in to dread. Madalina had learned a lot during the past six months. She wasn’t combat-trained, but he thought she would find ways to stay safe. What he couldn’t predict was how the men holding her would react. Or what they would do. If they were flying into the heart of the fight, then the men somehow had a stake in the outcome. Perhaps they had something of value for one side or the other.
With the suddenness of a lightning strike, an idea occurred to him. Puzzle pieces began arranging themselves in his head.
“I think I might know why these guys grabbed Madalina and her parents,” Cole said.
“What?” Brandon said from the backseat, sitting forward.
“Well, let’s look at what we know. These guys are professionals; they’re taking Madalina to an area disputed between several countries—one of them China. These men might know that Madalina has been in possession of two other dragons and is the best lead to find the other two. What if they’re using her and Juniper—since she’s Walcot’s daughter—as bargaining tools?” Cole sped down the 101, heading for Burbank.
“So these guys are putting pressure on the Chinese to retreat from the conflict in exchange for Madalina,” Thaddeus summarized. “Although which side they’re working for is still up for grabs.”
“If a threat exists to kill Madalina and Juniper, then whoever these men work for effectively obliterate any small lead that might exist on the dragons,” Cole said. “We’ve seen how desperate the Chinese agents are to get those artifacts back. Would they withdraw from a territorial dispute, even temporarily, to save her life? This isn’t an all-out war, not on the worldwide scale. It’s a skirmish. That’s a pretty powerful bargaining tool just to make the Chinese back off for a while. And we don’t know—maybe new clues have come to light about the dragons. The fact is, these people using Madalina have the upper hand. It’s the most plausible thing I can think of that ties in the dragons, Madalina and her parents, as well as the Islands.”
Damon, Brandon, and Thaddeus remained silent for several telling seconds. Cole could almost hear their collective brains churning through data, options, outcomes. He didn’t like the conclusions he was coming to himself.
“I think you’re right on the money. Or close,” Thaddeus finally said. “The men might also be attempting to force Madalina and Juniper to find the last dragon, or dragons, to gain their freedom—or to spare their own lives. Then use the dragons themselves as collateral. If the Chinese agents knew that the opposing team had the actual artifacts, I’d bet money that they would cease and desist immediately. This is a scuffle—they happen all the time over there—so it wouldn’t be any sweat off the Chineses’ backs to halt their advance, get the artifacts, then come back later to finish what they started.”
“And we know this is likely an opposing country, because otherwise the Chinese would have just sent their own agents back to snatch Madalina and Juniper,” Brandon added.
“Exactly,” Damon said.
“But which country is it?” Cole asked. “Who are the factions in dispute on the island right now? I mean the ones actually fighting in the skirmish today.”
“Vietnam and China,” Thaddeus said.
“Right. The Vietnamese hired these guys, probably already on American soil, because it was easier and faster. Americans abducting other Americans aren’t as noticeable,” Damon said.
“I’m still baffled as to why they’re taking Madalina into the battle zone, though,” Cole said. “If it’s dangerous, why risk her life?”
“There are too many variables here. We could speculate all day long about why these men are doing what they’re doing. It’s possible that they’re under orders from someone else, too, and that they departed the US because they were commanded to. Madalina and her folks might have been taken along since they couldn’t be left behind. Madalina must be an integral part of whatever’s going on,” Thaddeus said.
“I think you’re right. We might not have every single detail worked out perfectly, but we’re not far off,” Cole said. The more he learned, the more worried he became. Madalina and her parents were headed to a region of serious conflict, and there was no telling what danger she might be put into.
“I’ve arranged to have an acquaintance pick up that map you’ve got to test the blood on it when you get to Burbank. He’s discreet and not connected to the local authorities. He’s also got a portable copier on him, so he’ll give you a copy to have in case you need it,” Thaddeus added.
“Thanks. Make sure the military members we’re meeting when we land have extra weapons and ammunition,” Cole said. “I have a feeling we’re going to need them.”
Madalina turned around to face Beau after he ushered her into a back room that was a combination bedroom and office. A bed sat against the far wall, and a large desk stood near the door, ready for business. Madalina noticed little of the plain blue-and-cream décor; rather, she watched Beau’s eyes, wary of his intentions. The knife gleamed in the low light of a lamp he snapped on when he closed the door.
Licking her lips, ready to defend herself if necessary, she said, “What do you want?”
Beau stared at her in a predatory way that made Madalina uncomfortable. She saw the calculation in his eyes, in the way he gripped and regripped the handle of the blade. She felt confident that he wouldn’t kill her, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do all manner of other unpleasant things to make her do what he wanted.
“You’re going to tell me everything you know about the lette
r from your grandfather. Any hint of an idea, a guess, a supposition—I want all of it. There’s a message in that note, and I want to know what you know. For every five minutes you make me wait, you lose a piece of yourself.” He flashed the knife to drive home his point.
Madalina’s mouth went dry. She had images of herself missing an ear, the tip of a finger, the end of her nose. The idea to barter information vaporized like mist under a hot sun. Beau wouldn’t stand for that. He wouldn’t put up with her asking him questions about where they were going and why.
“There wasn’t any definitive mention of the dragon in the letter. He’s sending me to a place in Nepal—the Pokhara region, to be exact—but I don’t know what we’ll find there. He just said he left me something, and considering how this has gone previously, we might find another letter, a dried flower, or something equally innocuous. That’s the straight-up truth. I’ve figured out half the address and am working on the rest.” Once she started talking, the details spilled out in a rush. Taking a quick breath, glancing between the knife and Beau’s eyes, she waited to see if her information was good enough to stay his hand. Technically, she thought, five whole minutes hadn’t passed anyway.
Beau studied her with a serious expression, as if trying to deduce whether or not she was telling the truth. “So did he say where the other dragon or dragons might be, then? Did he give you a hint, or did you get a feeling from something he said that they might be in a specific place somewhere else?”
“No. He’s very cryptic in all his correspondence because he likes to keep me guessing. I’m honestly telling you that I can’t make any kind of educated guess right now as to where the dragons might be—except for the place in Pokhara. That is the best lead we’ve got right now until we see what he left there.” Madalina took a step back when Beau took a slow step forward. “I swear, that’s all I know. That’s the extent of the letter.”
Tension hung in the room, thick and cloying. Madalina tensed with dread but tried to keep the emotion out of her eyes. She didn’t think it wise to show any of these men how afraid she was.
A Dangerous Tryst (The Inheritance Book 3) Page 7