by Low, Gennita
As long as he doesn’t name us in his book, John can say whatever he wants to, Joe had been pointing out. What’s he got to lose now that he’s retired?
True. And someone had better drag Rawlings off his mountain before he climbs any higher. The senior chief’s voice grew rough with disgust. I never dreamed he’d go into politics. Christ, I’ll never forget the way he just turned and shot that kid and his mom like it was nothing.
I hear he’s on the short list for Vice President, Joe grimly volunteered.
Oh, Christ, no, Senior Chief protested. Tell John to go ahead and write his book. Hell, I’ll hand-sell it for him. We thought Rawlings was dangerous when he was working for the CIA? Wait until he’s next in line to be our fucking Commander-in-Chief.
Sudden insight cast a spotlight in Ophelia’s head on a previously unrealized fact. This John that the SEALs had been talking about—could he be John Staskiewicz, the Navy SEAL who’d lived near Vinny, the one who’d been murdered? Was the world that small?
Oh, Lord, it was, wasn’t it? In that case, they had all been on the op-gone-bad—Rawlings, Staskiewicz, Joe, Senior Chief, and one other SEAL. And when their target, Gabir al Baldawi hadn’t been present in the building as expected, Rawlings had blown his top, shooting and killing some poor kid, along with his mother.
The SEALs had reluctantly agreed to cover up the truth. John Staskiewicz, the first to break his code of silence, had ended up dead.
Which meant that Rawlings would stop at nothing to keep the truth out of the public eye.
I am so dead, Ophelia thought.
Terror gave rise to a wave of nausea. Battling the urge to hang her head off the edge of the seat and vomit, she held as still as possible. If she so much as moved, her abductor might pull over and hit her with another crippling injection. God only knew what was in that stuff and what it was doing to the fragile little life in her womb.
My baby! Oh, God, she couldn’t let her baby die with her.
As the car veered off the highway, banking onto a tight turning exit ramp, she adjusted her position surreptitiously. Their speed slowed, giving her hope that they would pull up to a gas station. But then she remembered—Vinny had topped off her tank right before arriving at Mama Rose’s, three days earlier. Her gas-sipping engine wouldn’t need fuel for several hundred more miles.
The car turned right, then left, before gaining speed and merging back into traffic. Had they switched directions, heading back the way they’d come? It seemed so, but that was unlikely. After all, her captor had a job to do, and he would see it through to its gory finish. The most that she could hope for was the chance to escape when he finally stopped.
Chapter Five
‡
At the sound of Vinny’s cell phone ringing, the kitchen fell quiet. The eyes of the three Navy SEALs who’d just entered Vinny’s mother’s kitchen focused on Vinny as he glanced at his phone and took the call. “Hello?”
“Mr. DeInnocentis?”
“Yes.”
“This is Sergeant Presti with the Philadelphia Police Force.”
“Yes, sir.” Vinny held his breath, praying for good news.
“Uh, unfortunately, there’ve been no reported sightings of your wife’s vehicle. We can’t treat this as a missing persons case until forty-eight hours have passed.”
They didn’t have forty-eight hours, but Vinny couldn’t assert that without bringing up Rawlings’ name. Thanking the officer for the call, he shooed his mother and sisters out of the kitchen and gestured for his teammates to sit. “You want any leftovers?” he offered belatedly, and they all shook their heads. He sent his commander an imploring look as they sat. “There’s gotta be something we can do.”
“There is,” Joe Montgomery assured him. Lacing his big-knuckled hands on the table in front of him, he leaned in and pitched his voice lower. The SEALs had rallied around Vinny within hours of Ophelia’s disappearance. A ray of late afternoon sunlight sliced through the window over the kitchen sink and emphasizes the disfiguring scar on Monty’s otherwise handsome face. “Rawlings wants John’s manuscript badly enough to trade Ophelia for it,” he conveyed, causing Vinny to cover his eyes briefly to conceal his relief.
“Can we trust him to keep his end of the agreement?” he asked hoarsely.
Senior Chief gave a snort of derision.
“We don’t have much choice,” Joe replied, darting his senior chief a quelling look. “But that doesn’t mean we’re going to sit here with our thumbs up our asses. I’ve got a friend in the FBI—you know Hannah Lindstrom. She’s monitoring Rawlings’ phone calls as we speak. He’s been talking to his assistant, David Collum, every few hours. Hannah suggested the three of us take off to Harrisburg tonight to keep tabs on both men. If they do anything suspicious, then we film them. It’ll take convincing evidence to put a powerful man like Rawlings behind bars.”
Vinny’s temples throbbed. “I’m coming, too,” he insisted.
“Negative.” Joe fixed him with a stern look. “You’re going to stay right here and protect your sister. Think about it: Rawlings has a motive for wanting her out of the picture, too. If he had Ophelia and Bella followed this morning, then he knows where Bella lives. You need to stay here to protect her.”
Joe’s observation pushed Vinny’s concern to new heights. His commander was right. He had to think about his sister’s and mother’s safety, too. “You’ll keep me updated,” he pleaded.
“Absolutely,” Joe assured him.
Vinny nodded. “Does Penny know what happened yet?”
“Not yet.” Joe regarded him steadily. “You want me to tell her?”
Vinny pictured Lia’s sister’s reaction to the news. “No,” he decided. The fewer people who felt as miserable as he did, the better. “We’ll tell her tomorrow, when it’s over.” That was assuming everything went as planned—which it would, Vinny assured himself.
Joe sent him a sympathetic grimace. “I know what you’re going through, buddy,” he reminded his brother-in-law. “Believe me, when Penny was kidnapped by that thug working for the ricin thief, those were the longest twenty-four hours of my life. But if she managed to outsmart her kidnapper, who knows what Lia can do? She’s hell on wheels when she makes up her mind to be; you know that.”
Oh, he knew. And while Joe meant for his words to be reassuring, they only notched his anxiety higher. It would be so like Ophelia to undermine their rescue attempt by trying to escape on her own. The very real possibility that she could end up getting hurt, even killed, pushed tears of distress into his eyes.
Joe flicked a glance at his watch. “We should probably get going.” He shoved his chair back, signaling to the others to do likewise. The diminutive kitchen could barely contain the four large men standing shoulder to shoulder.
“We’ll see you at John’s funeral.” Senior Chief McGuire threw an arm around Vinny’s neck in an uncharacteristic show of affection.
“Keep this,” Sean Harlan said, pulling a Sig Sauer P226 out from under his T-shirt and laying it gently on the table, along with two boxes of extra ammo that he fished from his pockets.
Vinny reached for the weapon, still warm from Sean’s skin, and tucked it into his waistband against the small of his back. “Thanks,” he said, “all of you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Hell, you wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for us,” Joe pointed out.
That wasn’t exactly true, Vinny ruefully reflected. It was Ophelia letting her professional ambition get the better of her common sense that had gotten them all involved.
Trailing his teammates down the hall to the door, Vinny let them out. He watched them slip into their government-issued sedan and drive away before shutting and locking the door and killing the lights.
Creeping up the stairs, he found his mother and sister consoling each other on his mama’s bed. The picture they presented, crying and hugging each other, reminded him so forcibly of the night his father had abandoned them that he s
hut the door so he didn’t have to see them. Then he made a perch for himself at the top of the stairs and waited. If Rawlings did send someone tonight to try to silence Bella, Vinny would be ready for him.
*
It’s wearing off again.
Ophelia blinked away the sticky weight that kept her eyelids shut. She lay face down across a soft surface, drawing on fractured memories of the last time she’d been conscious enough to make sense of her present situation.
She remembered the car stopping. The second the engine died, she’d sat up, determined to catch her captor off guard. Only, she hadn’t moved fast enough. One minute she’d been pawing at the door handle, fumbling to release the lock, and the next she’d fallen into his arms. A light snow had flecked her cheek. She’d gleaned a fleeting impression of tall pine trees and cold mountain air just before the sharp prick of a needle pierced her shoulder for a second time. The last thing she remembered was being hauled out of the car and tossed over her captor’s broad shoulder.
Where am I? A thread of faint silver light shone between two dark panels suggesting the presence of a window. Turning her head the other way, she spied a brighter beam of light at the bottom of a closed door. From beyond it came the sound of a television program, complete with canned laughter. The blanket under her nose emitted the odor of mothballs.
Given the bits of information at her disposal, she concluded she’d been driven to the Pocono Mountains. Was this where her captor meant to kill her, in some remote cabin where no one would hear her screams? If so, why hadn’t he done it already? Perhaps he was waiting for her to regain consciousness. That made sense if he was after information.
Not going to happen.
She tried to move. Her limbs felt inordinately heavy from the drug still cycling through her veins. She discovered her feet bound, her hands also, with what felt like long plastic garbage ties. A numb fire licked up her arms to stab at her shoulder sockets. It was that pain that had roused her.
Stifling a moan, Ophelia rolled onto her back, jackknifed to a sitting position, and took closer stock of her whereabouts. The room appeared small but decently appointed—a dresser, a bed, and a mirror. Perhaps there was something she could use to cut herself free?
An object resembling her purse had her looking back at the dresser. Would her captor be so careless as to leave her purse, with her phone inside it, sitting right next to her?
Vinny! She could call for help.
Moving slowly, so as not to let the bed squeak, she stood up, not altogether certain her legs would hold her. When they did, she gave a little hop, and then another, leaned over the dresser and caught her purse between her teeth. She discovered the snaps hard to open without hands. The two halves of her purse parted at last beneath her wriggling jaw. She nosed her way into the main pocket, searching desperately for her phone. But it wasn’t there. Her abductor must have removed it. He’d probably turned it off, too, so she couldn’t be traced.
He wasn’t careless after all. Or was he?
Seizing the whole bag with her teeth, she pivoted and dropped it on the bed, causing the contents to spill out. Then she sifted through them with her nose—makeup, checkbook, lipstick, ah ha! Fingernail file. She sat next to it, groping behind her back to pick it up. She would use it to cut herself free.
This looks a lot easier in the movies.
But hope and desperation lent her dexterity. Back and forth over the plastic strip she sawed, cutting through it one millimeter at a time. With a snap, the cuff around her wrists broke. Swallowing a cry of hope, she went to work on the strip that bound her ankles together. Outside her room, she could hear the television program give way to advertising. At any moment, her captor might get up and check on her.
Having injected her twice now, he was clearly cognizant of the fact that the drug only worked for a specific period of time. He was probably gearing up to inject her yet again—or worse yet, keep her awake for questioning and torture.
If it comes to that, I’ll pretend I’m versed in torture like Vinny. But it wouldn’t come to that if she could help it. She was getting the hell out of here before her captor could lay his hands on her again.
With another snap, the flex cuff dropped from around her ankles. Ophelia pushed to her feet. Straining to hear over her galloping heart, she dropped the file back into her purse along with the rest of her stuff, picked her purse up, and tiptoed toward the window. Discovering her coat hanging on the bedpost, she dove into it, fingers fumbling to button herself up. It would be cold out there.
She had just crossed the room to the window to further her escape when the television fell silent. Terror spiked, causing her to freeze like a thief, her ears pricked to the sounds beyond her door. Her captor seemed to be listening, also. Any minute now, he would get up to check on her. She couldn’t afford to tarry.
Stretching out a hand that shook, she felt beneath the heavy curtain for a window latch. There it was, in the middle of the window, icy to the touch. The mechanism was simple and familiar. With a push of her thumb, she flipped it open, eliciting a scraping noise. On the other side of the door, the slow thud of approaching footsteps goaded her into reckless action. Now, Ophelia! She yanked aside the curtain, put both palms against the frosty pane, and pushed upward. At first it stuck. But then, with a pop, it rumbled upward, admitting a gust of frigid air that took her breath away. At least there was no screen to contend with.
The doorknob turned. Should have locked that, she realized in hindsight.
With the silhouette of her captor filling the opening door and his shout of warning abrading her ears, Ophelia threw herself head first out the opening, diving into the darkness. More than halfway out, her upper thighs caught on the windowsill. For a terrible second, she hung suspended, purse dangling from her elbow, her head mere feet from the dark earth while the man sought to grab her failing legs and drag her back inside.
With a mighty kick, Ophelia freed herself. Her captor’s shout of pain echoed in her ears as she crashed onto the hard ground, hands outstretched to break her fall. A shooting pain radiated up her right arm just before the top of her head struck frozen soil. She tucked her chin, rounded her spine and rolled the way she’d seen Vinny do when he wrestled with her nephew.
To her amazement, she rolled right up on her feet. But she’d lost her purse in the tumble. No time to pick it up now. Clasping her right arm to her chest, she ran blindly into the shadows, only to discover that they were trees with sharp branches that clawed at her clothing and her hair as she wended her way through them.
The earth rose sharply under her Keds, forcing her to ascend a densely wooded slope, one with unseen boulders that jutted out of the earth causing her to trip. She fell to her knees, landed on a bed of pine needles, and struggled up again.
Behind her she could hear a door slamming and the tramping of feet.
As expected, her captor was coming after her. He’d seen which direction she was fleeing. She could hear him crashing through the forest in her wake, gaining on her steadily. She lengthened her stride, but he was frighteningly fast. Hide! She cast her gaze about, looking for a bush to squirm beneath, but the underbrush was tragically thin. Hearing him just feet away, she darted behind the wide trunk of a tree and froze.
He slowed, no doubt scanning the area, searching for her.
Ophelia fought to silence her panting. She could hear Vinny in her head, teaching her how to breathe the way Navy SEALs did—Inhale for the count of three, through the mouth, hold for one second, slowly exhale. But her chest convulsed in fear, causing her exhalation to come out in the form of a sob. Twigs snapped right behind her under the soles of her captor’s shoes.
“Thought you could run?” He pounced without warning, prompting her scream of terror. “Shut up, puta.”
The slap came out of nowhere, sobering her with its force.
“Come here.” He grabbed her with impatient hands, whipping her around and prodding her back in the direction of the house. “You gonna get
me in trouble,” he groused in his accented English.
With her last shred of hope, she sought to outsmart him. “Whatever Rawlings is paying you, my husband will double it,” she offered.
“I don’t know who’s payin’ me, and I don’t care.”
“He’s the lieutenant governor, Jay Rawlings.”
“Shut up. I don’t want to know nothin’. I just do what I’m told.”
“Then you’re nothing but a coward,” she retorted.
“I said, shut up!” He gave her a push that sent her stumbling face-first into the nearest tree trunk. Rough bark scraped the side of her face, leaving it stinging. The injured hand she’d used to catch herself gave a throb of protest. “Maricón,” he hissed, hauling her upright. “You gonna hurt yourself and I’ll get the blame.”
Mulling over his words, she winced as he grabbed her by the hair and propelled her toward her makeshift prison.
The cabin looked like something seasonal that a hunter might use. There were no other structures in sight—no signs of any other human inhabitants anywhere.
What did he mean he would get the blame for hurting her?
He shoved her through the open door, kicked it shut behind them and slammed her against the refrigerator. “Don’ move,” he warned, turning away to paw inside of a plastic case.
She touched a finger to her stinging face and realized it was bleeding.
When he turned around, her captor was sucking clear liquid from a capsule into a syringe.
“Oh, don’t do that,” she begged him. “You’re going to hurt my baby with those drugs.”
Dismissing her words with a sneer, he seized her shoulder and stabbed her through her coat like he’d done two times previously.
In the next instant, Ophelia slumped against him. As the room turned gray then black, it occurred to her that he was keeping her alive. But why?
Chapter Six
‡
“Eat your sausage, figlio,” Vinny’s mother insisted.