Capturing Victory (Driven Hearts Book 3)

by Nikita Slater

  “There are, but they’ll take a few minutes to get up and running.”

  Ivan looked at Keane and tried to keep the worry from his voice when he spoke. “I want eyes on her. I know we told the men to keep their distance, but the situation has changed. I don’t want her up there alone, she could slip and fall.” Keane nodded and radioed to his men, telling them to get to the roof. Ivan turned back to the monitoring station about to ask where they were at with the video feeds when the lights in the room went down. The room was windowless so they were left in the dark for about thirty seconds before the back up lights kicked on.

  “Brilliant,” the techie muttered and started pounding the keyboard so hard the desk creaked. It was clear he was trying to beat Jaya to something.

  “Talk,” Ivan demanded. “Tell me what she’s doing.”

  “She’s blinding us, sir.”

  “For what purpose,” Ivan growled, pacing like a caged animal. It occurred to him that she was doing to him exactly what he’d been doing to her. Cutting off his senses one at a time and taking away his power. “Tell me what she’s up to.”

  Keane stepped between Ivan and the technician. “Let the man work, boss,” he growled, holding up his hands when Ivan looked as though he’d get physical. “Might I suggest that he will update you as soon as he knows something.”

  Ivan breathed heavily through his nose and jerked his head in a nod, turning to stride across the room, pacing the length. The room, which was more than large enough to contain six grown men before, now five and a body, seemed the size of a shoebox. He wanted to punch something. He wanted to leave, stalk his home until he found her and lock her up tighter than before. Ensure she never escaped him again. Never put herself in harm’s way again. He couldn’t abide the idea of Jaya running free, attempting to leave him. No matter that he’d been the one to sanction the experiment. He wanted her locked back up immediately and all her toys taken away.

  “Fuck me.”

  Ivan whipped around to look at the man who’d spoken. Camera feeds were flickering to life, but they were completely screwed up. Some feeds didn’t register, some were completely blacked out and some were crossed with ones they shouldn’t be.

  “She found her way into a separate security feed,” one of the other techs said.

  “Does that tell us where she is?” Ivan asked, trying to sound like he wasn’t about to murder another of them.

  “Possibly, there are only so many access panels on the roof.”

  Before the guy could explain, Keane’s radio interrupted. “She’s not on the roof anymore.”

  Ivan took a deep breath and reminded himself that this was a good thing. At least she wasn’t at risk for falling. “Exactly how many electrical panels does she have access to now that we don’t have eyes on her and she’s no longer on the roof?”

  The first guy checked the original blueprint, cleared his throat and said, “Uh, around two dozen, give or take.”

  Ivan gritted his teeth and snarled, “Send men out to those panels. They are to detain her without touching. Any man that lays a hand on her dies.”

  “Yes, sir,” Keane said and then relayed the order to his men. He turned back to Ivan. “Andrew says there’re power cuts all over the building and they’ve been locked out of certain sections. Somehow she’s gained access to our security system.”

  Ivan was equal parts angry and deeply impressed with Jaya. She was turning out to be a formidable opponent. He might be able to dominate her on the chess board, but she was quick on her feet. He would bet half his empire she’d been waiting for this moment. Maybe even guessed he would test her eventually. She probably sifted through dozens of potential scenarios in her brain until she settled on the one that would seem most unlikely to him and be difficult for her to manage, but not impossible. And she had nothing but weeks of time to lay around, first in a dungeon room and then a cage, and think about how best to escape when he presented her with the opportunity.

  Ivan’s cock twitched in appreciation of the woman who finally decided to show him her hand. He suddenly realized that she probably could have maneuvered an opportunity for escape far sooner. He frowned. Why wouldn’t she have taken the chance to run when he wasn’t expecting it?

  Because she wouldn’t have gotten far. Not with his men at their checkpoints. He’d cleared them from their individual stations for this exact exercise. She’d been biding her time, waiting for him to hand her this opportunity on a silver platter. She probably figured out he would clear a path for her. Hide his men, essentially giving her the opportunity to go invisible once she left the room and cut the cameras. And it wouldn’t take more than an educated guess to place Ivan, his head of security and four of his technicians in a room together.

  “Keane,” Ivan said calmly. “Check the door.”

  Keane frowned, then strode to the door and tried to open it. Exactly as Ivan feared it was locked from the outside. Ivan dropped his head and for the first time since the entire fiasco had begun, for the first time in years, he grinned. He had vastly underestimated his prisoner. It was actually laughable how much he had underestimated her. In fact, as emotion poured through him, he realized he was proud and extremely turned on by her; as though he sensed a worthy foe and was finally giving himself permission to take her as a mate.

  He was also extremely relieved. If she had planned this well, it was highly unlikely she would hurt herself. She was showing far too much forethought and skill. When he’d been worried about her, he thought she was simply frantically trying to escape.

  Ivan looked toward Keane who was trying to force the door with one arm, muscles bulging as he strained and shouted instructions to his men over the radio. “The doors are electronically controlled. All the offices and security are in this wing. She probably has the entire area on lockdown.” He nodded toward the guys sitting at the consoles. “Let them work on getting us out. There’s no point in you trying to break it down, it’s meant to withstand a bomb.” Keane stepped away from the door, clearly seething now that he was on the receiving end of Jaya’s tricks. “Not so cute now, is she?”

  “When I get my hands on our canary, I’m going to fuckin’…” Keane snarled.

  “No one touches her,” Ivan repeated his earlier order. “That includes you.”

  Keane fell silent for a moment and then nodded respectfully. The men had worked together for years. Ivan wouldn’t call him a friend; Ivan wouldn’t call anyone a friend. But he did trust in Keane’s loyalty. He’d bought the Irishman’s mercenary contract from a group that had chipped him with a deadly explosive that would kill him if he either turned on them or went off the grid. Expecting similar treatment from Ivan, Keane had been shocked when his new employer had immediately had the chip removed and offered him an extremely generous compensation package if he agreed to work for him.

  Keane had thanked Ivan by punching him in the face, beating up some of his best men and then drinking himself stupid in the nearest town. He then attempted to impregnate half the single female population of the same town before returning to Ivan and accepting his offer. After Keane had signed on the dotted line, Ivan had returned the Irishman’s right hook to the jaw, knocking him flat. Then he’d stood over his new hungover second and very succinctly explained the chain of command.

  “Where do you think she’ll go?” Ivan asked quietly so only Keane could hear. They’d run through the scenarios already, but he was no longer confident that he’d chosen the most likely outcome.

  Keane looked a lot less confident too. “Still think she’ll hide and try to wait us out until she finds a way off the island.”

  Ivan shook his head. “No, she’s fast and she thinks on her feet. She’ll look for a way off right now, while she has the advantage. We need to stop underestimating her and start believing that she can actually pull this off.”

  “Fuck!” Keane snarled, clearly thinking ahead. He started to speak into his radio and then stopped, making eye contact with Ivan. “What’s it gonna be,
boss? We’re starting to spread the men too thin. Do they cover electrical panels, come find a way to get us out, or cover the boat dock, airstrip and helicopter pad?”

  Ivan closed his eyes and shook his head. This is what she wanted. Him locked in a room and his men scattered and scrambling. “What a fucking beautiful mind,” he murmured. “Genius.”

  “I’ll say,” one of the guys from the monitors said, his voice stunned. “Look, she just hacked her way through the security gate to the helicopter pad. She couldn’t possibly know how to…”

  Ivan walked toward the monitor, his gut clenching in fear. He was trapped in a room watching a shitty security feed that cut out intermittently and his captive bird had just found her wings. He watched as she reached up on her toes for the door of the helicopter and wrenched it open, then hauled herself up inside. She had to reach way out in order to grasp the handle and get the door to close again.

  A hush fell over the men in the security room and no one dared to even breathe as they waited to find out if Jaya could actually fly the thing. Seconds later the blades whirled to life. Minutes after that, just as Ivan’s security team crashed onto the helicopter pad to stop her, she lifted off and headed for the mainland.

  “Well I’ll be goddamned,” Keane said from beside him. “I guess she found a way off the island after all. Did anyone actually lay odds on the hacker?”

  One of the technicians cleared his throat. “Uh, Jimmy did.”

  They looked down at the floor.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It felt so good to be in control again, to have technology back at her fingertips, that Jaya could almost feel the flow of happy sparks flying through her as she quickly looked over the helicopter controls. She mentally sifted through every flight simulation game she’d ever played where she’d had to fly using similar instruments and began pushing buttons. She let out a gratified whoop when she heard the helicopter blades roar to life over her head. She knew flying an actual helicopter wouldn’t be the same as gameplay, but she didn’t have much choice. And she’d spent hours upon hours learning how to fly in virtual reality simulators. It was how she got exercise and learned what she needed to know to keep her in business.

  The best game designers in the world used systems that exactly matched reality. And Jaya had made sure she connected with those designers when using the simulators. In theory, she should be able to fly all sorts of different aircrafts. She glanced over the controls while the rotator blades picked up speed. She recognized most everything she would need to fly the helicopter.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “I think we can do this.”

  She reached behind her and pulled the seatbelt over her head, latching it around her middle. She glanced over at the squirming bag on the co-pilot seat. There was no way to buckle Haty in, though she wished she could figure something out.

  “Hang on to something, kitten, this could be a bumpy ride.”

  Letting out a slow breath Jaya opened the throttle and pulled the lever gradually up so she could ascend. As the pitch increased she pushed the left pedal. The helicopter started to move to the right. She shrieked and immediately let go of the throttle, afraid she would hit the security perimeter fence around the heli-pad. She forced herself to take a deep breath and try again. She had to get moving. Ivan would know where she was by now and his men would be on their way to her position. If she wanted to leave the island she needed to do it now.

  She took hold of the throttle and tried again. This time she was able to leave the ground without the helicopter pulling too far to either the left or the right, though the controls were extremely sensitive and she had a difficult time leveling out. She broke into a sweat as the aircraft rose. She glanced down, her heart racing. Ivan’s men were attempting to get onto the platform, but she’d locked out the security codes.

  She used the extra time it took them to get onto the heli-pad to calmly level out the helicopter and lift it higher. By the time they broke through the fence the helicopter was too high to reach and it quickly became clear that they had orders not to shoot her down.

  “Now we head to Jakarta,” she whispered, manoeuvering toward where she hoped Indonesia was. She’d taken the vague information Ivan had given her on the island’s location, cross-referenced it with what she knew about this part of the world and the navigation instruments on her dashboard. “Let’s hope we have enough gas, Hatyarra, or this is going to be a very short flight.”

  The most terrifying moment of her entire escape came when she flew the helicopter over the cliffs toward the open ocean. “Oh, holy shit!” she shouted, sorely tempted to squeeze her eyes shut. But she needed her sight, which included the breathtaking drop directly below her.

  Then she made the first of a series of colossal mistakes. She decided she wanted to fly lower so she wouldn’t die in case she accidentally crashed. Which she probably wouldn’t have done if she’d just stayed level and kept flying toward Indonesia. She was still pretty close to the island when the helicopter started to jerk to the left. She over-compensated by pulling too hard on the throttle, which is when the helicopter began spinning. It jumped up and down then plunged toward the choppy waves.

  Jaya was thrown around in her seat. She gripped the throttle, but it seemed to lock in position. Nothing she did made a difference. She was going to crash!

  She reached for the bag on the other seat and clutched it against her chest, feeling the warmth of Haty seeping through. The cat seemed to sense their predicament. She used her tiny claws to cling to Jaya through the sack. Jaya sobbed against the bundle. “I’m so sorry, baby,” she whispered. “Oh god, please don’t die.”

  Seconds later Jaya was jerked hard to the side and then flung back in her seat as the helicopter hit the water. She screamed, her voice echoing through the small space. The whirling blades slashed the water and forced the helicopter sideways. She watched in horror as one of them bent and snapped off. A rush of water hit the window in front of her. The helicopter was completely sideways in the ocean and sinking fast.

  She took Haty out of the makeshift bag and very carefully dropped her the few feet to the other side of the helicopter. Then she braced herself as best she could so she wouldn’t fall and unbuckled her seatbelt. Standing on the edge of the opposite seat she tried to reach over her head and push the door open. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she still forced her brain to move, to work through the problem. There wasn’t much she could do for herself except stay with the helicopter and hope a boat came before she drowned. But maybe Haty could swim back to the island. She had to climb on top of the dashboard and use the throttle for a foothold in order to finally get a good grip on the handle. Just as she threw the door open a big wave slapped against the side of the helicopter, sending it listing further to the side. Jaya was thrown back against the opposite door.

  “Ouch!”

  Haty landed on top of her just as another wave hit the helicopter, soaking them through the now open door. Haty screeched and burrowed into Jaya’s neck. Jaya curled onto her side, the kitten cuddled against her. She sobbed helplessly. She knew she needed to get up, keep moving. Check to see if someone was coming for them. Urge Haty to start swimming, but she was too frightened to move.

  She was jarred from her momentary pity party with a gasp when water rushed over her. She lifted her head. Water was coming rapidly through the open door. Looking around she stared out the front window and realized the helicopter was now swiftly sinking. This galvanized her into action. She didn’t want to be trapped inside when it finally went down, though she was screwed if she was out in open water. She couldn’t swim.

  She crawled toward the opening, a shivering Haty clinging to her shoulder. “Okay, baby, when we get out that door, you need to just start swimming. Go to the mainland and find Ivan. I’m probably not going to be able to go with you. Humans aren’t like cats, we aren’t born with the ability to swim, oh god!” The biggest wave she’d seen yet hit the helicopter, swamping the entire thing and floodin
g the interior almost completely. She sputtered and clung to the seats while Haty clawed her shoulders in a desperate attempt to hang on.

  Jaya reached for the edge of the helicopter and dragged herself toward the door, resisting the swirling water attempting to suck her back in. She grabbed Haty, kissed the wet, squirming kitten and flung her out the door. “Swim, Haty! Go, go, go!”

  The little grey and white body hit the water, bounced, sank then came up screeching angrily. She immediately turned around and headed straight back for Jaya. Jaya sighed and reached for her. She was pretty sure that was exactly what Haty was going to do, but she’d had to try. “Okay, sweetie, you’re okay,” she said soothingly. She reached out to scoop up the yowling mass as it hurtled toward her. She tossed the bedraggled kitten back up on her shoulder where it burrowed in Jaya’s hair. “Not much of a killer now, are you?” Jaya muttered as she attempted to grip the side of the helicopter and pull herself up on top before it sank completely under the waves.

  She slipped and lost her grip, falling off the side and sinking into the water. Panic hit as water engulfed her. She opened her mouth to scream but salty water rushed into her mouth and nose, choking her. She waved her arms and kicked her legs, trying to push herself up. Images of nothing but endless dark blue ocean stretched out beneath her flashed through her brain scaring her. Her heart felt like it was bursting in her chest. Haty finally let go of her. Jaya accidentally kicked the helicopter. Pain rushed through her leg, but she was able to reach out and take hold of the edge of the door and haul herself back up.

  As soon as her head broke the surface, Haty launched herself back at Jaya, tucking her body beneath the heavy, wet curtain of Jaya’s hair. Jaya coughed and gagged as water streamed down her face. She cried, her tears mixing with the sea water, and pulled herself against the front of the helicopter, resting her face against the windshield. She was utterly exhausted.