I grabbed her small black purse, fairly sure that this was all she had with her. If not, everything else is staying inside the crushed car. She has all that she fled the mansion with tonight and that’s all that matters to me.
There is no way that she could have made it more than a foot or two on her own. She’s clearly disoriented from the crash and the blood loss is only adding to her weakened state. I feel how cold she is and bring her in closer to my body as I round the shredded guardrail.
She’s compliant for the moment, which is a relief. After her one small objection she realized there was no escape. Her left wrist is sprained badly. She cried out in pain when I dislodged her and it’s clear that she favors the swollen wrist. The deep cut on her arm needs tending to. She’ll have to wait until I have time to tend to both, which will unfortunately be over an hour from now. I’m not worried. She’ll make it.
At this point I’m uncertain of the extent of her training. I’ll get that out of her soon enough. She’s confident to the point of arrogance, but that’s innate, not taught. She must have some sort of martial arts background. One of my guards phoned my mobile while I was in pursuit to inform me that she had used a sleeper hold to choke Juric out and that the boss was pissed as fuck that she’d tricked him.
He wants her dead, or at the very least returned to him immediately so he can handle her himself. Neither will be happening. Not tonight. Not on my watch.
As I place her in the passenger seat of the car, I realize that I’ll need to come up with a cover story to explain why she was inside of it. The blood attests to the fact she was in my possession.
She fades in and out as I lean across her slim frame to buckle her in. She’s not tense with fear anymore. She’s too out of it to register that emotion.
Before rounding the car, I turn to hit the camera icon on my iPhone. After taking several images of both the demolished rail and car resting below, I feel confident that Juric is going to believe my story.
After sliding into the driver’s seat, I rip out onto the highway and speed across the city toward a nearby abandoned lot. There I can stem the bleeding on her arm. That’s all that can be done until I get her back to my home, which lies near the Bosnia and Herzegovina border.
My ancestral home is deep within a forest on the outskirts of the Plitvice Lakes National Park. Plitvice is famous throughout Europe for its multitude of waterfalls and clear lakes. In my opinion, it’s the most unique and beautiful place on the planet. It is also exceedingly isolated.
There she will be secure. Even Juric has no concept of where I live. I’m just as cautious, if not more so, with my own personal security. My brother and I wouldn’t still be alive if I wasn’t.
***
A warm, weighted touch on my bare shoulder brings me around. My eyes open and I see that we are in the parking lot of a dilapidated warehouse. Two starving stray dogs amble past the misty beams of the headlights.
As I lift my eyes to connect with his, I’m sternly told, “Don’t make a sound.”
I nod once, too weak and frightened to do anything else. I watch as he hits a button on his mobile. Someone speaks first but it’s too faint for me to hear. Zoran listens and then replies, his voice firm with terse confidence. “Da, mrtva je.” Yes, she’s dead.
Fighting tears, I begin to tremble at his horrific statement. Realizing from my reaction that I understood him, Zoran immediately clamps a firm hand across my mouth. I wouldn’t have made a sound, but he really must not want the person on the phone to hear me. Is it Juric?
My eyes flare open in panic and try to meet his, but he’s staring straight ahead, obviously very focused. I listen as he finishes a conversation that my brain is too freaked out to properly translate. Zoran’s face is mostly in shadows, making him appear even more ominous, if that’s possible. He hits the disconnect button on the touch screen and slowly removes his hand from my lips. I slink back against the door, thinking that he’s about to make good on his statement.
“Don’t move.”
He has his hand on his door handle and is outside of the car before I can manage a reply.
Shit, shit! So not good, Carew. Think!
My options are few, and my hope for escape is next to none at this point.
There has to be a solution. Every problem has one, right? Calm down and think ….
What he does next makes me question his sanity. I peek nervously out of the driver’s side window as he quickly and efficiently strips off his suit jacket, followed by his tie and dress shirt. He lays them out on the roof of the Maserati and proceeds to whip his short-sleeved, white cotton t-shirt over his head.
The vision before me threatens to overload my brain. His chest is deeply tanned. A sensual trail of dark hair leads down his heavily muscled six-pack, disappearing below his beltline. From this angle I can’t see him from the neck up, but his chest and stomach are stunning. His thickly defined muscles flex and ripple in response to his controlled actions. He looks as if he spends all his free time doing full body pull-ups. With one arm. For fun.
Wait … are those gunshot wounds? Oh hell! Now that I comprehend what they are, I count three of them. And those nasty scars are only the ones I can see in this dim light.
Just when I begin to panic, wondering why he is undressing, he begins to put his dress shirt back on and buttons it up. Is he going to strangle me with the t-shirt? My brows draw together. I really don’t want to die, and I really don’t want to go out like this, cut up and murdered in a lonely parking lot on the fringes of Zagreb. My pride goes out the window and I’m fully prepared to plead with him. Few of my Aikido defenses are possible with an incapacitated wrist and a body weakened from blood loss.
He lowers his frame back inside of the low-slung car. I cast my eyes down, not wanting to agitate him further. I’m seeping blood all over the cream-colored leather but there’s nothing I can do about it. My dress is already pretty much soaked with the stuff and I’m grateful that it’s black. I might be ill if I saw so much of my own blood smeared on me.
Quietly he says, “Hold your arm out to me.”
I comply immediately. It is shaking badly as he turns on the overhead light to inspect it. A huffed grunting sound emerges from his throat. I lean back a few inches in fear of the sound and my back presses against the door. I’m trapped in a car with a monster. Just lovely. What a way for a girl to spend a Saturday night!
I gasp as he leans away from me and rips the cotton t-shirt clean apart with one sure pull.
I start to retract my arm in self-preservation, when he says in an annoyed voice, “Stay still. You should have stopped earlier when I told you to do so. You are going to learn to listen to me.”
What in the world?
Moody gray eyes bore into mine. My lips part and I suck in a breath. Not knowing what to say, I remain silent. I certainly don’t want to make this killer angry. He drops the two jagged pieces of cloth on to the center console and takes hold of my arm on the soft underside, just above my elbow.
He leans down close to inspect the cuts on my left arm. My instinct is to pull away because he is huge and terror personified, but he has done nothing to harm me since he retrieved me from my car. Breathing hard, I remain as still as possible in this awkward scenario and hope for either release or at the very least a quick, painless death.
“Oh!” I can’t suppress the strained cry as he tends to the deepest cut. It stings like a beast. He ignores my protests. After a close inspection, he begins to tightly wrap up my damaged arm with perplexing gentleness.
When he’s satisfied he lays my arm back in my lap and says, “Keep it there.”
Am I really in a position to protest?
My injured wrist is badly swollen. It’s a heady pain only overshadowed by the deep, throbbing cut in my arm.
Why would he kill me after bandaging my arm? He could have done that back at the accident site. This makes zero sense. I want to ask more than anything, but who knows what it takes to set off a guy like
this? I remain silent.
He pulls out a silver thermos from the burl wood, center cup holder, opens it, and holds it out to me. “Drink this.”
I hesitate for a moment, more stunned than anything else. Like a shot, his hand reaches out and pulls down on the back of my hair, essentially tilting my head back for him. It doesn’t hurt, it’s mostly just an acute pressure, but the overtly dominant gesture surprises me. He slowly pours the cold liquid into my mouth and I struggle to swallow.
Ice water? Hydration? Bandages? This is ludicrous!
What, does he want me to be in top form to make the interrogation process more of a participant sport? How cruel. I can see that with him. All his hardness and multi-layered stoicism.
I’ve heard that these Eastern European men can be wicked mean. It’s no shocker. Twenty years ago, bloody warfare ripped their country, formerly Yugoslavia, apart. Pain like that can linger, filtering through generations. Passed down from angry fathers and traumatized mothers. Not to mention the seasoned soldiers that are still active, protecting their country from possible attack from disgruntled enemies.
Could Zoran be one of those damaged soldiers? Heaven help me if he is. He would have been young during the war.
This is my up close and personal view of just how dangerous the spy game can truly be.
Checkmate for now, Zoran, but be warned that I’m prepping for our second psychological chess match. You just wait, big guy.
Chapter Four
Insolence
She’s a total mess. Bloody, dirty, and her hair is streaked with both. Yet she’s still unbelievably gorgeous. If she wasn’t so beautiful and arrogant I never would have bothered with her.
The reasons do not matter. What does matter is that she is going to learn a new set of rules—mine. She will curb that insolence of hers and will behave properly for me. Even though she doesn’t know it yet or isn’t likely to admit it anytime soon, she will love every fucking minute of it. And dominating her will bring me exquisite pleasure as well. Besides, it would be a damn shame to kill such a beautiful, willful woman when I know she can be tamed.
I hope by now she understands that I’m not going to murder her. If she’s as smart as I believe her to be then she should’ve figured this out back in the parking lot when I bandaged her cuts. We’ve already driven forty-five miles with heavy silence hanging between us and have nearly reached my home.
A typical American would hit me with a barrage of questions and demands, but she is an enigma and surprises me by remaining silent. However, I can see that she’s wary and as alert as circumstances have allowed her to be. After I stemmed the bleeding from her arm and forced water down her throat, she seemed to come back around.
It’s early dawn and she stares nervously out the window at the vast forest that surrounds my home. I’ve visited Germany’s Black Forest, and it’s similar to the lush, dense trees surrounding my ancestral land. The twelve acres have been in my family for eight generations, and that’s only what’s recorded on paper. Most likely it goes back much further than that.
Now my younger brother, Balthazar, and myself are the only ones left. We are the last of the Vranic legacy. Everyone else was slaughtered twenty years ago, shedding their blood in defense of this land. They died for our independence as well as the freedom of our family. That dark memory weighs on me whenever I return to my property. So much was sacrificed for this piece of heaven, for the lives of both my brother and myself.
I wish it had been me instead of them. I would step into any one of their places in a heartbeat if it could just bring one of my beloved relatives back.
I push the ever-present thought aside and focus on the matter at hand. My captive. I don’t know her real name. But I will. She will tell me everything soon enough.
If she doesn’t, I will be left with no choice but to play rough.
***
I know that we’ve traveled South. I hope that he isn’t taking me across a border into another country. I really don’t want to be caught in war-torn Bosnia or Herzegovina. That would further complicate an already dire situation.
I try to distract myself and take note of the forest we are traveling through. It is, in a word, breathtaking. The dawn light filters down through magnificent trees that are so tall, they seem to tickle the clouds. The Maserati will definitely need a strut adjustment after traveling on this uneven, dirt-packed forest road.
We’ve gone several miles into the dense labyrinth and I’ve yet to see another home or any sign of a town. This really would be the ideal place to dump a body … damn!
My adrenaline spikes yet again and I shift around nervously in the plush seat. For the first time in our hour-long journey together, I sense him looking at me. I’m desperate to know where this is leading but stay silent as I inspect my throbbing wrist for the twentieth time.
The pain is a constant, gnawing ache. What I wouldn’t give for Tylenol-Codeine right now! I breathe deeply and try to keep it together, to focus. I need to be on point in the unlikely event that he should slip up and make a mistake.
Though the windows are closed, I can still hear the gurgling, rushing sounds of water. A lot of it. The noise steadily grows louder. There must be a waterfall close by. In a forest like this? How unusual.
I finally look at Zoran. Without taking his eyes from the road, he announces, “We’re here.”
We make our way slowly down a long, unpaved tree-lined drive. Three oversized, ominous-looking black and tan Doberman Pinchers bound toward us from the side of a beautiful manor house. Their growls are so frightening that I bet they hunt down rodents for breakfast and maybe the occasional child. I plaster my back against the seat as their barks and snarls rise in a horrific cacophony.
Zoran lowers the driver’s window and sternly shouts out, “Dole!” Down.
I flinch at his command.
Seeing that it’s their master, the intimidating dogs immediately comply without hesitation. They lower into a crouch and disappear from my view. There is no way I’m getting out of this car! The Cujo trio will certainly see me as a Scooby Snack … no way in hell!
He gets out of the car and walks around to my side. I stare at him through the glass a second before he opens my door. I shudder and hesitate, clutching my arms against myself. Being inside of a bloody automobile feels almost safe compared to the uncertainty of an unfamiliar house. His house. The gruesome possibilities of what he could do to me inside are limitless.
“No, please,” I whisper, fear lacing my voice.
Without a word he bends and scoops me up into his arms, clearly in a rush. He cuts across the green lawn of the sprawling, rustic country house. The sound of water drums in my ears, so close that I think the house must be built nearly on top of it. It’s looks very old.
I crane my neck to make sense of the imposing two-story structure. It is constructed mostly of smooth, grayish-white, oblong stones, interspersed with a cream-colored mortar. There are several small A-framed dormer windows on the roof that are topped with rounded, deep red terracotta tiles. It is charming, in a romantic country-chic sort of way. Is this Zoran’s home? I wouldn’t have pegged him as its owner. It’s far too lovely.
The wide, heavy front door has to be at least nine feet high. Obviously custom–made, long ago.
Do other people live here?
If they do, maybe I could convince them to help me escape. Although I can’t imagine anyone defying Zoran.
I want to fight him. I don’t want to be taken inside, but I know if I run, those crazy ass dogs would be on me in a heartbeat. My team will be scouring Zagreb for me, following every scrap of a lead until I turn up. There is absolutely no way they would find me here. Not in a million years. Not without the GPS they installed in my car.
Unlocking the front door, he carries me into an airy foyer. The silence within hangs thick in the air. There is little in the way of décor, with the exception of a beautiful, oversized, carved cherry bench. Overstuffed deep red and black patterned pillows
are nestled in each of its corners. A wide, antique silver mirror hangs above it. Once I’m set on my feet, he turns to disarm the shrill, beeping alarm system.
I can’t help but take two steps away from him. In the daylight he is a giant of a man. His tailored suit is merely a polite disguise to help him blend into society. He’s clearly living in the wrong time period, I think, because anyone can see that he is a fierce warrior sprung to life in the twenty-first century.
His chiseled jaw lifts ever so slightly. “Up the stairs.”
Will I ever grow accustomed to his husky, growling voice? In a daze, I turn and climb the wide flight of stairs. My small feet pad silently as I make my ascent to God-knows-where. The wood on the floors is ancient and weathered but immaculately clean and quite pretty. How old is this place?
I come to a dead stop at the top of the staircase and stare in awe. Unless it was built with this sprawling, open design in mind, it seems as if all the interior walls on the second floor were demolished to create one vast space. It’s the size of at least four large bedrooms rolled into one. Two sets of enormous windows allow for sunlight to spill in, blanketing the distressed wood floors. There’s a large boxy structure built in the center of the space. Through the glass, I can see that it’s a freestanding, oversized shower; the frosted glass wall behind it must hide the rest of the bathroom.
In the right corner of the room rests a massive king-sized bed set in a beautifully carved, dark walnut four-post frame. Stark white sheets and a matching comforter neatly cover the high mattress. Behind the bed, the interior stone wall is at least fifteen feet in height. Stunning. Wood rafters painted a light gray crisscross the ceiling. They give the room a clean, loft-like feel.
This space must be close to fifteen-hundred square feet. As I look around, I note that aside from the bed and the wood floor, just about everything is either white, gray, or glass. Even the wide fireplace mantle is a pale hue, maybe a birch or pine. Cut logs rest neatly in a brown leather sling on the striated marble hearth.
Captured in Croatia Page 5