by Kaylea Cross
The other three men whirled to face them and the largest one immediately stopped the fist that was poised to come down on her again.
“Knock it off! We need her in good shape for the auction. No one will buy her if she’s got bruises all over her.”
As Kelly heard the words, her brain struggled to process them and she finally understood. The fear she had felt earlier was nothing compared to the gut-wrenching terror that washed through her and took hold now. She began to tremble uncontrollably and the other women all began to struggle as their fate dawned on all of them.
“Shut up!” The larger man yelled at the women before turning to the man that had hit Kelly. “What the hell are you doing?”
“She flooded the bathroom. It will have gone through to the apartment below by now. Someone will come to investigate soon and this floor is supposed to be empty. She gave us up,” the first kidnapper hissed in a voice that dripped with poison and made Kelly’s trembling worse.
The larger man appeared to be in charge. He began to bark orders to the other men while Kelly lay on the floor beneath them, frozen as she waited to see what they would do to her.
“You two, go get the van. We need to move the women now. Pull around to the back door and call up to us when you’re ready. We’ll get the women ready and when you let us know you’re there, we’ll bring them down one at a time.”
The men all began to move while Kelly processed what he had said. They’re going to sell us. With that Kelly felt the bile rise in her throat and it took all her strength to choke it back down. Kelly let tears fall down her face freely now as the terror of what could lay ahead filled her thoughts and she began to wonder if Jack would be able to find her in time.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Jack and Chad huddled in the stairwell of the third floor and watched the door to the apartment while they waited for the FBI to arrive. Without warning, they heard a door open in the hallway. Chad and Jack pressed their backs up against the wall. Chad leaned forward and peeked through the narrow glass window in the stairwell door and saw two men coming toward them. He held two fingers up to Jack who nodded and knelt down to cross under the window to the other side of the door. With Chad on one side of the door and Jack on the other, they could take the men down as soon as they entered the stairwell.
The door opened and Jack and Chad acted quickly. Each of them struck one of the two men. It was a quick, silent takedown and they had the men subdued in under a minute. Chad pulled zip ties out of his back pocket and they bound the men’s hands behind their backs.
“Let’s get them downstairs before they wake up. I don’t have anything to cover their mouths and the last thing we need is for them to alert the others,” Chad said.
He and Jack hauled the men down the stairs by their shoulders, letting them thump, thump, thump down the stairs. Neither was careful with their cargo.
When they got to the bottom, they could see several unmarked cars rolling to a stop down the street and they watched as police officers and FBI agents crept silently toward the building and came to a stop outside the stairwell entrance.
Chad looked at Jack and grinned. “Cavalry’s here.”
Chad opened the door to the stairwell and waived the FBI in through the door.
“They’re in apartment 307. We were waiting in the stairwell and these two came out. They were both armed. I estimate two more inside but I can’t be sure there aren’t more.” Chad handed over the guns they had found when they disabled the two kidnappers and briefed the FBI agents on the layout of the building and location of the apartment.
Jack and Chad fell back and, grudgingly let the law enforcement officers take the lead – but Jack would be damned if he wasn’t going to be right behind them. He followed silently up the stairs after them, driven by the intense need to have Kelly back in his arms safe and sound.
With FBI in the lead, the group crept silently down the hall toward the apartment. Four FBI agents framed the doorway. Two held flash grenades that would stun the kidnappers while two more agents poised, ready with a battering ram. Given the exigent circumstances, they could enter with force, without knocking.
The lead agent nodded his head to the agents holding the small but powerful battering ram and they swung the ram at the door and broke through with the first swing. The two agents to either side of the door quickly threw the flash grenades into the room and the agents stormed through the chaos and took down the two additional kidnappers.
* * *
As she began to give up and let despair creep around the edges of her brain, Kelly heard a frighteningly loud crash and watched as the door splintered off its hinges and flew into the apartment. There was a blinding light and a sound that took Kelly’s hearing completely away. For what seemed like hours – but was likely only seconds – the whole apartment was in chaos.
Kelly’s sight came back before her hearing and through the spots that floated in front of her eyes, she saw agents. Blue vests. Guns.
Then Jack. Just Jack. Kelly broke and the tears fell in an unstoppable current as Jack’s arms encircled her and she knew she was safe.
Jack lifted her and carried her, cradled in his arms, out of the chaos, down the stairs and out of the building. Kelly couldn’t hear Jack as she sobbed in his arms but she felt his lips as he buried his face against her neck, moving over and over as he spoke to her and she let herself sink into his arms while he carried her away from danger.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Kelly was checked into Yale-New Haven Hospital where she was cleaned up, the bruises on her face and the abrasions on her wrists and ankles were treated, and she was monitored in case she went into shock.
The FBI questioned her but Jack didn’t let that go on for too long before he insisted they postpone the rest of their questions for a day or so. Jack got his way.
As soon as the FBI left, Kelly’s family and Mrs. Poole swarmed the room, while Chad, Andrew, and Aunt Mabry waited out in the hall for their turn. Kelly began to sob again when her mother wrapped her arms around her in the hospital bed and Kelly was once again overwhelmed by the emotions running through her.
Kelly’s dad beamed with pride when he told Kelly how Jack had stopped at nothing to find her and how Jessica had recognized the water-flooding trick from the safety video and told them Kelly would be in that apartment. Kelly couldn’t explain the strength of the connection she felt to her sister in that moment when she knew that her actions had spoken to Jessica and brought her rescuers to her.
Eventually, Jack made everyone leave so Kelly could rest. She felt loved, protected, and safe with Jack as he watched over her. He climbed onto the bed with her and cradled her in his arms as she slept. It was a restless sleep with nurses coming to check her pulse and heart rate throughout the night, but Kelly didn’t care. All she wanted was Jack.
* * *
Jack held Kelly as she slept. He felt the love in his heart for her grow stronger and bigger with each moment that passed. He saw their future together as he watched her sleep. A home, children, grandchildren, together. To come so close to losing Kelly scared him to death.
As Jack watched, Kelly’s eyes fluttered open with the rising sun. Then she turned to him and smiled and that smile for him made him feel his heart would burst.
“Hi,” Jack said quietly to her.
“Hi,” Kelly said back and rested her head on his chest silently for a few minutes. Then, “I was so scared, Jack.”
“I know, sweetheart. I’ve got you now and I won’t let anyone hurt you again.” He held her tight and pressed his lips to her temple. “Kelly?”
“Yes, Jack?”
“Please don’t ever leave me. I love you Kelly. I love holding you. I love laughing with you and arguing with you and just plain being with you. I love the way you accept everything about me without trying to change me. I love making love to you and holding you when you sleep. And I don’t ever want to give that up. Not in a year, or two years, or ever. When I’m with you,
I know that I finally found the kind of love that my parents had – the kind of love that will last forever.”
Kelly gasped and raised her head to look at him with tear-filled eyes.
“Will you marry me, Kelly?” Jack asked. When Kelly laughed, Jack added, “For real, this time? Marry me?”
Kelly laid her head back down on his chest and breathed easily for the first time in a long time. “Yes, Jack. I’ll marry you for real.”
Epilogue
Jack took Kelly home the following day and over the next few weeks, they began the process of trying to put the turmoil of the kidnapping behind them. The kidnappers were arrested and their testimony led back to the mastermind of the human trafficking ring and to Denise, who had set up Kelly by getting her to go out the back door where her security detail wouldn’t know she was in trouble until it was too late to do anything about her disappearance.
The group had struck previously in two other cities and the FBI were working with the kidnappers to have their sentences reduced if all ten of the other women who’d already been sold could be located and returned home. Sam was working to help police locate and monitor the people who accessed the site where the women were sold in the auctions. A sting was being set up to arrest interested buyers.
Jack and Chad decided to find someone to provide temporary security for Kelly until she felt safe being on her own again and she was going to take some self-defense lessons and see a therapist to help her regain her confidence.
Kelly felt good that she had taken steps to help Jack and the police track her down but she still felt vulnerable when she left the house and she knew she couldn’t live her life feeling that way. She needed to take back what those men had taken from her. She knew that Jack would help her do that.
Jack and Kelly planned to renew their vows in a real wedding ceremony the day before they left on their three-week trip in August. Jennie and Jessica helped Kelly pick out the wedding dress of her dreams and pale violet bridesmaids’ dresses for them to wear. Chad and Andrew would stand with Jack as his groomsmen and Aunt Mabry would sit behind Jack where his mother and father would have sat. Chad and Jack agreed, it was good to have Mabry – the old Mabry – back among them.
Jack walked into the house and called out for Kelly and Mrs. Poole. He had come home early from work, something he had been doing a little more often since Kelly had come home from the hospital. Mrs. Poole came bustling in from the kitchen.
“Hi, Jack.” She greeted him with her usual cheery smile. “She’s sitting outside on the patio. She seems more relaxed today.”
“Thanks, Mrs. P. What’s for dinner?” Jack asked as he kissed her on her cheek.
“Roasted chicken with new potatoes and carrots,” Mrs. Poole answered as she swatted him away and shooed him in the direction of his wife.
Jack watched Kelly for a few minutes as she sat in one of the Adirondack chairs on the patio. There was a book next to her but it sat on the table unopened, and Jack hoped she wasn’t thinking about the kidnapping. He would do anything to take away those memories and help Kelly heal.
Jack thought back to his life before Kelly and wondered how it was that he hadn’t known how empty his life was. He had no idea until Kelly arrived that he was missing the fullness of a life with the one that he loved. As he crossed to her now, he thought of the completeness he felt with Kelly by his side.
“Hi, beautiful,” he said as he came up behind her. He was happy to see that she didn’t flinch when he spoke. He pressed a kiss to her lips and sat on the edge of her chair and looked into her eyes.
“What are you doing out here?” Jack asked.
Kelly smiled at Jack. “I was just looking at the lawn and thinking that this is a lawn that is calling out for children. I’ll be busy with school for a few years, but I want us to have kids someday,” she said, as she looked out over the lawn. “There should be children splashing in the pool and children running down to the beach. There should be a dog and a tree house. And a horseshoe pit. We should have horseshoes.”
Jack grinned. “Anything you want, sweetheart, as long as I have you. Anything you want,” and he gathered his wife into his arms and swept her away into the fairy-tale land of kisses and passion once again.
* * * *
If you enjoyed Legal Ease, read Andrew’s story next: Penalty Clause by Lori Ryan, available at Amazon.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my wonderful husband for his patience and support. Thank you to Susan Smith for her endless brainstorming and reading, and to Cathy Cobb, Amy Glasgow, and Liz Burton for reading early drafts. Thank you to Patricia Thomas whose editing proved invaluable. Thank you to Patricia Parent, my final set of eyes, for cleaning up after me. Thank you to all of the friends and friends-of-friends who read the pre-release version for me. I owe you all so much.
About the Author
Lori Ryan is an award-winning and national bestselling author. She writes romantic suspense and strives to create characters her readers can fall in love with and plots that keep you turning pages again and again. She lives with her husband, two amazing children, three dogs, and a cat in Austin, Texas. You can find Lori and her books at www.loriryanromance.com.
Table of Contents
THE KILLING GAME
Toni Anderson
* * *
Cover by Killion Group Inc.
ISBN-13: 978-0991895809
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For my dad, Neil Beddow, who served in the Parachute Regiment during the 1960s and raised me on a diet of military history and healthy skepticism.
Overview:
Wildlife biologist Axelle Dehn isn’t about to let anyone harm her endangered snow leopards—not the poacher intent on killing them, nor the soldier who wants to use them as bait. But Axelle is unknowingly entangled in a conflict that stretches back three decades, a conflict that could spark a war between two of the world’s great nations.
British SAS soldier, Ty Dempsey, is on a mission to hunt down an infamous Russian terrorist in a remote region of Afghanistan. Dempsey hasn’t failed a mission yet, but when Axelle is kidnapped by the Russian, he is forced to choose between duty and his heart. He risks everything to save the determined, prickly woman he’s fallen for, but in doing so sparks a deadly series of events that threaten to expose the most successful spy in history. A spy who will destroy anyone who gets in his way.
Heat Level:
Sensual
We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow
Across that angry or that glimmering sea…
THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND
James Elroy Flecker
Prologue
Present Day
Dmitri chewed a piece of dried meat, then swallowed a lump of gristle. Camp was a cave in the mountainside, three hundred meters above the valley floor. Rain dripped past the entranceway, and cold snaked through layers of cloth and bit into his flesh like the metal teeth of a gin trap. He heaved on his heavy sheepskin jerkin, the muscles across his shoulders burning from wear and tear. Skin itched where coarse wool met his neck. The sun had risen but the world outside remained as
empty and barren as his carved-out heart.
Charcoal boulders merged with steep scree slopes, forming an impenetrable wall of bleak granite. He drained his coffee and cleaned out his cup with a small splash of river water he’d carried up the narrow path yesterday. He checked the homemade receiver and GPS unit and picked up his hunting rifle. Cautiously he peered from his cave and raised his whiskered chin to the sky, testing the clouds for any hint of pity for an old man’s bones.
And found none.
Dmitri grabbed his water canteen and filled his pocket with ammunition. He pulled his pakol hat low over his brow and stepped into the murk of the day. He wore the clothes of local herders, though up-close his fair hair, towering height and distant blue eyes betrayed a different heritage. He walked cautiously along a path made by goatherds and yaks. The snow was gone from the lower gullies, the grass beginning to ripen and green. Perhaps the weather would aid his cause. Perhaps not.
He checked the receiver again and froze. The target was close. Very close. He used a large boulder for support, sank to his knees, and scanned the countryside. He flipped the safety off the rifle and waited. Less than a minute later one of the most beautiful creatures in the world padded into view.
The snow leopard’s tread was silent. Blue-gray eyes and smoky coloring blended perfectly into the landscape. Even though Dmitri knew the animal was right there in front of him, it was still hard to pick out. He held his breath in awe. Then the image of his grandson’s sallow face filled his mind, and his finger stroked over the trigger. For one split second the leopard met his gaze and his tail snapped taut. Dmitri exhaled and pulled the trigger.
Percussion pounded the rocks, and a smattering of shale clattered down the hillside behind him. Dmitri checked his shoulder but it was just a small rockslide, nothing to worry about.