When he heard the sound again (the sinister scuff of a shoe on concrete), he didn’t have time to say anything or even push Madalina into a run. Pain lanced sharp across the back of his skull, rendering immediate lights-out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Madalina decided that her sixth sense must be improving, that tickle of awareness that let a person know all wasn’t as it should be. The beginnings of the tickle this time were more like ripples of fear on her skin, making the hair stand up on the back of her neck. Goose bumps swarmed down her arms. It happened in the breadth of a second, just before she spun around to see Cole’s eyes roll into the back of his head and his body slump to the ground. She used her arms to break his fall, at least enough so that he didn’t kiss the concrete with his face.
Standing behind him were two men. One held a billy club that he’d used to strike Cole’s head. Both strangers looked worse for wear, sporting a few bruises each on their faces and hands. The one to the left, the taller one with dirty-blond hair cropped close to his head, reminded Madalina of a gladiator. He was built as broad as a bull through the shoulders, his well-defined jaw as square as any she’d ever seen. He was the one wielding the weapon, the one with aggression and calculation in his eyes. His accomplice was shorter, slimmer, honed. Dark hair fell across a brow that protruded a little more than it should, Neanderthal-like, and his hands flexed in and out as if he couldn’t wait to put them to use. The gladiator and the Neanderthal (as she now thought of them) must have taken cover around the nearest bend, creeping along the sidewalk when their backs were turned.
If only her sixth sense had kicked in a little earlier. Like the first time Cole had glanced back, thinking he’d heard something.
Madalina did not recognize the men, but she knew who they were. The urge to flee was not as strong as her desire to stay there and protect Cole, yet she had no weapons to defend herself and doubted she could win in a fight.
An awkward two seconds passed as realization set in, and despite her terrible odds, she balanced on one leg and kicked the other toward the gladiator’s groin.
She didn’t care if it was a cheap shot. They’d come out of nowhere, with a billy club no less, and hit Cole from behind. It wasn’t as if the men were playing fair, and she didn’t intend to, either.
What she didn’t count on was their reaction time. Both men were much faster than she gave them credit for. Her blow landed on thin air rather than a crotch, which threw her balance into question. The Neanderthal reached for her ankle and yanked her forward, causing her to lurch over Cole’s prone body.
Swinging a fist wide in the other direction, knowing that the gladiator was closing in, she grunted in satisfaction when she connected with the man’s nose. Lucky shot. She hadn’t been looking and wasn’t aiming.
As if electrified by the blow, rather than fall back, the man kept coming. Suddenly she was in a struggle with both, kicking and hitting and wrenching herself out of their grasp. A loud scream ripped from her throat in the hopes of catching someone’s attention. Someone who might intervene on her behalf.
Maybe someone would have—if there’d been time.
Before she knew what had happened, the men were shoving her toward a waiting car idling at the curb. A car that hadn’t been there seconds ago. Madalina suffered flashbacks to the abduction in Las Vegas a few short months before and had the same gut-clenching fear that if she went into the back of the car, she’d never come out alive.
Sinking into the backseat, crying out at the deliberate twisting of her arm, she turned the yelp into another scream that ceased abruptly when the gladiator cracked her in the jaw with his elbow. Pain exploded through her face, her body ceasing all resistance while she dealt with the shock.
No one had ever hit her quite like that before. Even the Chinese agents, for all their threats and strength, had never purposely struck her in the head. Not to hurt her for the sake of hurting her. When they’d threatened to torture her, the agents had done a lot more talking than hurting, suggesting they would resort to physical harm only if push came to shove. These men—this situation—was totally different. The blow had come as if the man was indifferent to pain, indifferent to hitting women altogether.
The gladiator sat on her left, the Neanderthal on her right, blocking access to both back doors.
Stunned, she sorted through the muddled mess of her thoughts while the car surged away from the point of attack. She realized, too, that the blow served two purposes: to cut off her scream and to make her think twice about attempting to fight back or escape. It did succeed in making her pause and stop screaming, that much was true.
Agonized over being forced to leave Cole unconscious and helpless on the sidewalk, Madalina blinked away excess moisture in her eyes. The watering was an involuntary reaction to the intense, sudden pain. She cupped her jaw tenderly, relieved it wasn’t broken.
“Where are we going?” the man who’d hit her asked. He spoke like an American, with no discernible accent.
She knew the men wanted to know where she and Cole had been headed.
Defiance overcame pain. She said nothing. Let them stew. Let them wonder. If she wound up with another bruise or three, then so be it. The sharp pain in her jaw was already beginning to fade to a throbbing, dull ache.
She could handle this.
“I said, where are we going?” the man asked again, this time with an impatient edge in his voice.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Madalina retorted belligerently, “you can go straight to hell.”
Cole jerked awake, both hands flying out in self-defense. He was on his back, staring at the sky, with three bodies looming above him. His fist struck a knee, while someone else swooped a hand down toward his face. Groggy and disoriented, he flailed at the man’s arm, knocking its trajectory off course.
Another hand flashed down to run something under his nose that made his brain snap to attention. Smelling salts. Had to be. So that was what had helped bring him around. He twitched away from the sharp smell as determined hands guided him to his feet.
These weren’t adversaries after all. This was Thaddeus’s crew, the scouts he’d sent ahead to check out Walcot’s “house.”
“Cole, man, wake up. You took a pretty nasty hit,” one man said.
“You all right? We need to take you to the hospital?” another asked.
He swayed against a third man and reached up to feel the back of his head and the bloody goose egg the attackers had left behind. “Yeah, yeah. How long have I been out? They’ve got Madalina.”
“Whoa there, big fella,” the initial man said. “Get steady on your feet. You’ve only been out a few minutes. We were just coming up on you as the guys took off with Madalina. We have one of ours in pursuit, and a car waiting here to catch up. Soon as you’re ready—”
“Let’s go.” Cole understood he still wasn’t thinking clearly, but he didn’t want to waste another minute in finding Madalina. The longer she stalled telling anyone about the house overlooking Ipanema Beach, the longer he had to close the distance.
“I’m Carlo, that’s Frank, and this here is Reggie,” Carlo said, guiding Cole to a car parked cockeyed against the curb. He supported Cole with ease, despite their height and size difference. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, sporting a small mustache, Carlo was the wiry one of the group and seemed to be in control of the situation.
Frank, rugged and strawberry blond, with white eyelashes and more freckles than a person could count, stood perhaps a half foot taller than Cole, which was mighty tall indeed. He opened the back door, then jogged around to the driver’s side, while the third man, Reggie, with mocha skin and striking gray eyes, walked backward, attention on the surrounding area. On alert for unexpected danger.
Cole climbed into the backseat, arranging his limbs to make room for the duffel bag that Carlo dropped on the floorboard between his feet. As soon as all the men had emba
rked, Frank swerved the vehicle into traffic. The flow was slower here until they turned the corner onto the busier thoroughfare.
“You got here a lot faster than I thought you would,” Cole said, putting names to faces while the car picked up speed.
“Weelll,” Frank said, drawing out the word, “you know how Thaddeus is.”
Cole grunted, smearing the blood on his fingers onto his pants. “You weren’t tailing us the whole time because you would have intercepted an attack. That means Thaddeus has been tracking us some other way.”
“Madalina’s GPS is on,” Frank said. “He’s been keeping tabs and sent us to find you not long before you asked for backup.”
“Yeah, that figures. He didn’t mention he’d already done so when we talked,” Cole said. In this particular instance, he couldn’t be angry that Thaddeus had taken the extra precaution.
“Probably didn’t want you to think he was being overprotective,” Carlo added. Then he gestured out the front windshield and said, “And we’re all keeping tabs on our other guy, who isn’t too far ahead.”
Cole noted Reggie, who sat in the back with him, kept glancing down at a device in his hand. It looked like a slim cell phone but a bit more rugged, with a blue blinking dot on a street grid.
When Reggie picked up an earpiece and slid it into his ear, Cole said, “If that’s your man following Madalina, tell him to stop that car. I don’t care what he has to do.”
The man on Madalina’s left, the one who’d so callously clocked her in the jaw, the “gladiator,” slowly slanted a look her way. As if he couldn’t believe his ears—or her audacity. Madalina imagined there weren’t many people in the world who dared to defy him. Especially a woman stuck between two bigger men, clearly at a disadvantage. She imagined she saw a flicker of dislike in his gaze as she maintained eye contact. That went two ways. She didn’t like him any more than he liked her. The brute would have to deal with her whether he wanted to or not.
During the staredown, Madalina decided to go on offense. If she could catch the men off guard, cause a little chaos, perhaps the distraction would force the driver to pull over and she could make an escape. Cocking her own arm, elbow bent to a point, she cracked it against the gladiator’s cheek.
Rearing his head away from the strike, the gladiator bellowed in rage. A guttural snarl ripped from his lips while the hateful Neanderthal grappled her arms to her sides.
She’d done it now. If she thought the men had been brutal before, she probably hadn’t seen anything yet. She took grim satisfaction knowing that she’d not gone quietly, and used a foot to strike out at the Neanderthal’s shin, awkward as it was with so little space in the backseat.
He grunted and gripped her tighter, then shouted, “You little hellcat. Quit squirming!”
“What’s going on back there? Can’t you keep one little woman in check?” the driver said, sounding impatient and annoyed.
Madalina yelped in surprise when the gladiator wrapped a fist in her hair and gripped tight.
He said, “You’re going to learn the hard way—”
The car swerved hard to the right, interrupting the gladiator’s threat. Madalina caught a glimpse of a speeding motorcycle as it cut off the sedan. The driver shouted in frustration as the car bounced up the curb, forced to veer into an empty parking lot. He brought the car to a stop and opened the door.
Releasing her hair, the gladiator spat a curse and exited the car at the same time as the Neanderthal.
The motorcyclist, who had stopped and dismounted the bike, ripped off his helmet and gestured wildly at the men as if the event had been their fault. He shouted in a language Madalina didn’t immediately recognize. Russian, German, she couldn’t tell. It wasn’t Portuguese; that much she knew. For such a skinny man, the motorcyclist moved as if he could kick everyone’s ass, and all at the same time. He bounced on his toes with frenetic energy, puffing himself up as he advanced on the car.
Scooting across the seat, Madalina judged the distance between the gladiator and the street, gauging whether she had time to make an escape and perhaps gain the aid of a local. If she was really lucky, a policeman would happen by. The gladiator remained close to the car, within easy reach of the door. A precaution, she knew, in case she attempted to do what she was thinking of doing. All it would take was one long snap of the gladiator’s arm to catch her if she bolted out of the backseat.
The altercation outside escalated when the motorcycle man, wild-eyed and raising hell, threw his helmet at the driver. Even as the helmet arced through the air, the redheaded, whiskered motorcycle rider rushed the men, drawing all three away from the car. Just that fast they were fighting on the ground, punching and wrestling and grunting with effort.
Madalina wasn’t about to waste a perfect opportunity. The gladiator was three times the size of the motorcyclist, and although the redheaded man looked to be putting up a good fight, she didn’t think he could overpower the much larger man. She scooted out of the seat and hit the ground running. At least that was her plan. She didn’t get two steps before she crashed into a rock-solid body that didn’t belong to any of her captors. Were there more of the bastards? Had they been following behind as backup?
Cocking her arm back, she prepared to deliver a resounding sock to the man’s jaw. She could all but taste freedom and wasn’t going to make it easy on her assailant.
“I’ve got you,” Cole said, trapping her arm before she could hit him. “You can tell me all about this another time. Let’s get out of here.”
Cole briskly walked Madalina to the car, which was parked at a slant eight feet behind the abductors’ vehicle. He glanced back to see Reggie and Carlo entering the fray with the redhead, while Frank stood outside the driver’s-side door, ready to jump in and drive at the least provocation. Cole had ordered it that way just before arrival. He wanted one man with him while the others subdued and, hopefully, brought the assailants in for questioning. It was a fluid situation, and so far he had no hard plans about where to take the men on short notice, but he’d figure that out in a minute.
For now he wanted to get Madalina into the car, get her away from the fight.
“We need somewhere to take them,” Cole said to Frank, tucking Madalina into the backseat. “You guys have a hotel room nearby?”
“Yeah. We have two. Not sure how we’ll get them—crap.” Frank tensed, one hand gripping the edge of the open car door, as if he was about to spring into action.
“Wait,” Cole said to Frank. The altercation had taken a turn for the worse in a few short seconds. Carlo flew backward from a hard punch while the redheaded motorcyclist scrambled up from the ground, blood streaming from a cut lip. Two of the assailants fled toward a wobbly chain-link fence and vaulted it like they were Olympic hurdlers. Just as Reggie was about to give chase, the final assailant—a huge man by anyone’s standards—body-slammed Reggie and took off running in the same direction as his brethren. Cole knew Reggie and Carlo and probably the redhead could have caught up to the men, but he didn’t want his team splitting up at such a critical time. Already he suspected the assailants had backup, who might even then be closing in for an attack. He whistled sharp and high to his team, halting them in their tracks.
“Cole?” Frank asked, as if clarifying Cole’s intent.
“Better to let the bastards go. I’m more worried we’re sitting ducks right here and that there are more of them on the way.” Cole slid into the backseat after a quick look at the street behind them. Cars blurred past, but none had, so far, turned into the parking lot.
“Pick it up, ladies. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” Frank called out to his teammates.
The men advanced on the car and piled in wherever there was room. Frank spun the wheels and headed to the exit, peeling out once the tires hit the street.
“We could have caught them and interrogated them,” Reggie said, out of breath.
“We could. Or we could have let them split us up and attack us when we were most vulnerable. Pick us off one by one. I know there are more of them somewhere.” Cole had fought them off earlier in the day.
“How many more?” Carlo asked.
“Six that I know of—no, wait. Seven. That hulking brute—”
“The gladiator,” Madalina said.
“The gladiator wasn’t a part of the original six that came after us earlier today. I would have remembered his size. So there’s at least seven. Maybe more,” Cole replied.
“That hulking one had bruises and cuts like the rest, though,” Reggie pointed out. “We didn’t fight him, so who did?”
“Maybe he came that way from another mission or got into a spat with one of the other men in his group. I don’t know; I just know he’s one of them,” Cole said.
“Do we know who they’re working for yet?” Carlo asked.
“Nothing solid, just guesses,” Cole said in disgust. “Whoever they are, they’re well funded and resourceful.”
Carlo glanced out the back window.
Cole asked, “Anything suspicious?”
“Not yet, boss. Not yet.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Madalina sat on Cole’s lap as the sedan sped away from the confrontation. Arms wrapped securely around his neck, she tucked her feet on the outside of his thigh, careful not to bump Reggie’s leg. He and Carlo were in the backseat with her and Cole, shoulders crammed together, faces showing signs of the recent fight. The motorcycle man—whose name turned out to be Alston—sat up front in the passenger seat, fidgeting with the vents, the radio, the button for the window. It seemed he could never sit still, even for a second. Taking in the details while she recovered from the ordeal, glad to be heading away from trouble, Madalina decided not to look out the back window when Cole asked Carlo if there was anything behind them. Instead, she sent up a silent prayer that they’d made a clean getaway.
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