by Jeanne Adams
His decision made, he straightened and she looked him in the eye, a connection that few others would ever make, a looking into his very soul. For that, as much as anything, he would take on the world for her, anyone and anything.
“It will be difficult. I will need to be away, you know this.”
“Ja, mein liebchen.” She spoke the words with precision and care. She was learning German so she could greet his mother in that tongue, when they met. That trip would be in summer and he was looking forward to it. One step closer to their wedding.
“Gut,” he praised. “I will need to think. Go on to sleep, I will come join you soon.”
Without another word, but with the warmest of looks, she stood. Bending forward, she kissed him. The connection was strong, powerful and intoxicating. It captured him and blocked out every other thought. When it ended, he felt renewed, alive.
“Make it soon.”
He watched her leave, heard her kiss the boy, even caught the faint rustle of the sheets and blankets as she got into bed.
His Caroline.
He could refuse her very little, and since his inclination ran parallel with hers, he wouldn’t refuse her this.
Decision made, he began to plan. He would sell this house as soon as they left in the morning. It had been a good bolt-hole in his single days, but it was too dangerous to keep any longer. It was unlikely that anyone would trace it to him, but there were other properties. His corporation would sell it at a loss, he was sure, given the market, but no matter. The proceeds would go to fund a scholarship at a school he’d randomly chosen from a directory. Having made that call from here, he must disconnect himself from it immediately.
He fired off an e-mail to his lawyer that would set a sale in motion. Now, for research. He needed to know who else had been offered the contract on Dav, and which of them had taken the bait, for he knew this party would not have waited to hear from him before taking action.
Dav wasn’t dead yet, but he soon could be. His Caroline didn’t want that, so Jurgens would be sure it didn’t happen.
Ever.
Dav was sick when he woke in the dark. The nausea and pounding headache reminded him of his failings the moment he returned to consciousness. Vibrations thrummed through the metal under his hip and rattled his bound hands. He heard the drone of turbines and the whistle of the wind that told him he was in a plane.
Given the metallic flooring, he was probably in a cargo hold or the back of a small plane, with the seats removed. His hands were tied behind his back, cuffed maybe, but he wasn’t sure because he couldn’t feel his fingers—the circulation was cut off.
It took him a minute to conquer the fear and anger that rose to choke him. His father had liked to discipline his son by shoving him into the darkest part of the cellar. Dav could still hear the door slamming behind him and his father yelling, “Grow some balls, boy. Can’t stand to see any son of mine afraid of the dark.”
It hadn’t been the dark that frightened him. It had been the closed-in space, the dank walls smelling of old bones and old blood. He knew people had died in that room, and died badly. More than that, it had been the roaches and rats that had sniffed at him or crawled on him, a small boy huddled by the door, praying to survive and get out.
The terror had come from knowing—believing—that he had no control over getting out. Release would come at his father’s whim, or not at all.
The shudder was impossible to suppress. All these years later, the fear still haunted him. He drew a deep breath and focused on two very important details. There wouldn’t be rats or roaches on a plane.
“Then eeseh enea chronon,” he whispered to himself. I am no longer nine years old.
Using only small movements, he shifted on the floor. Getting onto his side a bit eased the feeling of illness. He waited a heartbeat to see if anyone noticed him move or was watching him. Facedown as he was, with his head covered, he couldn’t tell if he was alone or not.
Struggling to quiet his breathing, he strained to hear any other noise over the engine’s roar. Bracing his aching elbows on the floor, he made another shift to the right. He was just getting his balance when the plane banked sharply and threw him over onto his side again. He nearly screamed at the pain in his arms and shoulders, but he worried more when he realized he’d landed on something soft. Something that smelled of flowers and woman.
Carrie.
He wanted to leap up, pull her up with him, but it was impossible. Instead, he struggled to calm his racing heart and mind enough to feel or hear if she was alive. She’d made no sound when he crashed into her, so he feared the worst.
He held his breath and scooted closer, ignoring his aching arms. “Carrie?” he whispered, the bag over his head muffling his voice. “Carrie?”
Leaning toward her, he searched for some sign of life.
In a lightning shift from deathly stillness to action, she burst upward, her elbow pressed into his neck. Her skin was warm. She was alive.
Before he could do more than appreciate the fact, she shifted her weight with a grunt, and knocked him back, pinning him to the floor. Once again, his shoulders and elbows were racked with pain.
“Touch me and I will kill you,” she hissed even as she wobbled above him. Shaky as she was, her arm stayed tight on his windpipe.
“It’s Dav,” he wheezed as her elbow pressed harder. “Carrie, it’s Dav.”
“Dav?” The pressure eased off and he drew in a lungful of musty air, still catching a faint whiff of the darkly sweet scent of the drug they’d used to knock him out. “Dav, it’s you? Are you okay?”
As she clutched at his jacket, he felt the shaking in her arms, the tremble in her body. “No, but I’m alive, and thank God you are too,” he said with heartfelt relief as her shaking hands raced over him. He could tell she was bound as well, since her hands moved together, tugging at his shirt and his lapels. More than anything, he wanted to crush her to him, hold her tightly, feel her life. “I’m okay.” He said it over and over until she began to relax and stop running her hands frantically up and down his chest.
Then he added wryly, “But when we get out of this, Gates is going to kill me.” He felt her stiffen, then felt a tremor rock her body. “Carrie, are you okay?”
“Believe it or not, I’m laughing,” she said, and her voice quivered. “Although that doesn’t seem appropriate. If we get out of this, Gates will probably want to kill me too.”
“Oh, Carrie,” Dav said, his heart sinking. “I am so sorry.”
“Hush, Dav,” she said, her voice firm and sharp now. “We’re here. We’ll figure it out. What is it they say? While there’s life, there’s hope.”
Please God, let her be right.
First things first—they had to figure out where they were and where they were going. “Can you see?” he asked.
“Oh, say can you see?” she sang softly, then giggled again, her voice returning to the wavery tremolo it had held before. “I think I’m still drugged up. That was far funnier than it should have been.”
He grinned, even as he worried for her. In spite of everything she was magnificent. “Yes, it was.”
She sobered a bit and added, “It’s a plane, it’s dark. No one else is back here with us.”
“Good, that’s good.” He shifted, trying to make sense of it all. Unfortunately, that brought him in more intimate contact with her body, driving anything practical out of his head for a moment. “I wish I could see.” He felt his heart rate leap as she moved against him. The race of his blood made his bound hands throb.
“You’re too pretty to have a bag over your head,” she snickered. “Oh, Lord,” she half moaned. “I’m sorry. Don’t listen to me. I’m just drugged enough to say stuff and just sober enough to realize I’m being stupid.”
Well, at least she thought he was pretty. That was something to take to the grave with him. “It’s all right,” he said, smiling at the thought of her talking without censor. “Can you use your hands? Can you f
eel anything around us?”
“Yes, I think so. Can you lift up?” she asked, then hummed another tune. He heard her faintly singing words. Something that sounded like “up, up and away...”
Dav struggled to a sitting position, and both felt and heard her rustling around behind him. The bag lifted off his head with a rush, and he could hardly believe it, since he still couldn’t see. The fresher air, however, was like sweet wine and he drew in the cold, fuel-tinged air with gratitude.
They were in a cargo plane, as he’d guessed, but it was smaller than he’d thought it would be. There were empty crates and bins strapped down to the grooved floor and walls, their gaping sides showing up as darker squares or rectangles in the gloom.
“How long have we been here? Do you have any idea?” he asked, scanning the space for any telltale markings or anything that could help them. Knowledge was power. In any dangerous situation, you had to assess the weapons available, some of which might be data. Of all the possible kidnap scenarios they’d run, figured out how Dav could survive, nothing had been like this.
“It’s dark outside,” she said, lifting her hands to point toward the small round window on an exterior door about ten feet away near the narrowing tail section. “We met at noon. It was probably twelve thirty when everything blew up.” She spoke with calm lucidity, then snickered again. “I’ve never had a date blow up.”
“I strive to be unique,” he answered, matching her humorous tone, though he worried that she still was feeling the effects of the drugs, based on the inappropriate laughter. “I have no idea what they used on us, to drug us. Hopefully it’ll wear off.”
“Yeah,” she said, “I really suck at drugs. Even with the dentist.” He heard her gasp, turned toward the sound, but she was just a black shape in the gray void of the space. “Whoa!” she gasped again. “Now I want to cry. That was sudden.” Her silhouette swayed and he wished he could move to brace her. “I feel like I’m on a roller coaster.”
“Deep breaths,” he said, harkening to more of Gates’s advice. “It’ll clear your head and get your blood moving, which will get the poison out of your system faster.”
As she drew in steady, measured breaths, he tried to calculate the time in his head, forcibly ignoring the image of Declan’s body flying backward through the glass, the vision of Declan bringing down a waiter and panicked patrons, as blood blossomed scarlet on his blue dress shirt.
Dav vaguely remembered seeing the other members of the team beyond Declan, fighting their way through the narrow spaces between the tables. To block the thoughts, he visualized a map in his mind, tried to calculate, push away the faces of his fallen friends. “I’m guessing it’s at least seven. Maybe later. We’re either somewhere close to the Mississippi, if we took off right away, or over the Yucatán, or the Pacific Ocean. If we went north, we’re well into Canada.” He called off the directions and considered the possibilities of each compass point.
“Somehow, I doubt it’s Canada,” Carrie said, her voice more even now. “I can’t see anyone lofting you off to the Northwest Territories and dumping you there. Snowbound Dav. That would be weird.” Now the giggle was back. She was having another manic reaction to the drugs, swinging from morose to giggly to normal.
“It would be smart, though,” Dav said, thinking it through, trying to ignore the worry that Carrie might have been really sickened by the drugs, or that she’d been given a higher dose than he for some reason. “Who would suspect it?”
“Terrible, but true,” Carrie said. “It doesn’t feel cold though. The cabin’s not pressurized, so we’re flying low. If we were over Canada it would be cold. It’s only April.”
“True. Same goes for the East Coast, probably. We may already be over Texas, or out over the Gulf of Mexico.”
“They could be planning to dump us in the ocean,” she said, and he heard terror in her voice, the incipient panic.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said, forcing conviction into his voice. “They want something from me, or I’d be dead already.”
“What about me?” Carrie said softly. “What do they want from me?”
He leaned toward her, trying for comfort, though both of them were obviously thinking the worst. “I don’t know. You may be leverage to get me to do what they want. I hope that’s all it is.”
“It’s weird,” she said, in another lightning change of mood. “I’m scared, terrified really, but it’s like this is happening to someone else. The drugs are doing that, I guess,” she added. “I need to lie down, or lean on something before I fall down,” she said, her voice normal once more. She scooted around to put her back against the side of the plane, and then helped him do the same. “Hey, look. My purse is here, so’s your coat.” The last was said in an easy, conversational tone. The shift and weave of Carrie’s emotional state was almost as disturbing as their current difficulty.
“Really? Where?”
“Over there.” She gestured with her bound hands. He wondered if he dared try to get his hands in front of him. He decided not to attempt it yet. There was nowhere to go, no one to fight in the middle of the air, in the dark.
“The plane seems to be flying fast and level,” he observed, forcing himself to think about the situation, rather than worry about Carrie. If he kept worrying about her, he wouldn’t think, not constructively or logically. If there was any chance of escape he had to be rational to see it, to plan. “We’re not close to wherever we’re going yet,” he said slowly, thinking it through, trying to get past the panic, the fear for Carrie. “If we hear anything though, like the pilot or someone is coming back here, you need to put the bag on my head. I’m guessing they don’t want me to see anyone. Let’s make sure I don’t. If I’m not supposed to see them they may only be out for ransom.”
“Then why did they take the bag off my head?” Carrie asked, and there was further panic in her voice. “They don’t think I’m worth ransom? They’re going to kill me, aren’t they.” She made it a statement, not a question. “Or worse.”
“I don’t know, Carrie, but here’s what I do know,” he said softly, forcing her to listen by the very softness of his voice. He moved closer to comfort her, bumping his shoulder against hers for the human connection. If his hands were free, he would hold her. For now, this was all he could do. “Look at me.”
She hesitated, turned his way. He could make out the glint of her frightened eyes. Even in the gloom, he could see that her pupils were so dilated there was barely a rim of the rich blue showing. “What?”
“Carrie, just focus on me, on my voice. You’ve been drugged, you’re scared. Eh-la, you know all that. It may be that they were counting on your still being out, unconscious.”
Her eyes flickered away, darting around the dark cargo hold as if searching for answers, or villains. He could see the trembling in her shoulders. Whatever sense she’d made earlier was being subsumed by the fear, and the drugs were making it worse.
“I’m cold. Where are the blankets?” she said fretfully. She was struggling now, struggling to get up, to move. If the plane banked again, she’d fall and hurt herself.
“Here, come sit with me, darling,” Dav crooned, coaxing her to sit down again. She’d struggled to her knees, trying to rise. “I’ll keep you warm. I’ve got you.”
Encountering an air pocket, the plane dropped briefly. Carrie rocked over from her kneeling position, falling awkwardly onto his chest.
“Ow!” she exclaimed, and he barely managed not to cry out with the pain.
He’d wanted her next to him, imagined her in his arms. It would be nice if her falling into him hadn’t hurt so much, but he’d take what he could get.
With her body pressed to his, he realized how cold he was. The imprint of her warmth was a dramatic contrast. He briefly wished the coat she’d spotted weren’t so far away. They could use it for warmth. Even the breath mints in the pocket would help ease the nausea that still lurked in his gut. With grim humor, he wondered how long they could survive
on mints and whatever she had in her purse.
The warm silk of her hair brushed his neck, and he realized that for both their sakes, he’d have to get his hands in front of him. He couldn’t hold her; nor could they stay warm enough with his hands bound back.
“Here now, sweetheart—” He used the endearment as much to soothe his own fears as hers. “Sit up for a moment and let me get my hands in front of me. Just a minute, okay?”
She nodded and he felt the movement on his body. He hated the deepening gloom in the plane’s interior, the yawning, inky black maw of the tail section. Her delusions and fear made it worse. The residual drugs in his system made it harder to fight back the memories, the sensory details of rats and roaches. He shuddered again as he began the agonizing task of getting his hands in front of him.
Sweat ran a damp trail down his spine as he struggled with the twists and turns necessary to pull his bound hands under his hips, and from there, under his knees. It took him forever to get his feet through the circle of his arms. Red fury threatened at several points, his temper unbound by the drug and the situation. The pain in his shoulders and elbows raced fire over all his nerves, even as cold fear rose within him because he couldn’t feel his hands.
More than anything, he was castigating himself at the sheer hubris he’d displayed. To have his decision to relax security measures cost him his life was bad enough, but to have it potentially cost Carrie her life was almost more than he could bear.
“Dav? Are you okay?” Carrie asked, her voice stronger.
“Yamot ti Panayia mou!” The vulgar curse burst forth from him as he lost his patience with being helpless, with trying to get his hands from underneath him while balancing against the plane’s movements. The only plus was that stress and the steady physical activity brought him momentary warmth in the cold of the cargo area. His hands stung in pain with the banging around generated by his struggles. At least he was feeling the pain; it would be far worse, he knew, if his hands had remained numb.
When he finally got them in front of him, he almost wished he hadn’t. Swollen and bluish, his hands were secured together with three heavy-duty plastic zip ties. One on each wrist was linked by the third, not only immobilizing him, but deliberately exacerbating the potential for pain.