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She didn’t have a peanut-sized bladder, and in the absence of anything to drink didn’t particularly have to use the restroom, but she still took the chance when offered. Who knew when they would stop again? And it felt good to get up and move around, get some circulation back in her legs. Wary of her captors killing the cashier, she didn’t cause a fuss as Goldeneyes marched her inside.
She did, however, make a point of saying hello to the teen girl behind the counter and making direct eye contact with her. Maybe if this girl saw some sort of news story on a kidnapped woman, she would remember seeing Piper and call the authorities.
Goldeneyes had a painfully tight grip on her elbow as they walked past the store attendant, and Piper didn’t test his unspoken warning to behave herself. There was no telling how far his goodwill would extend, and she’d pushed it pretty hard already.
He deposited her back in the van and went inside once more, returning after a few minutes carrying several grocery bags full of sandwiches and snacks.
Oh, no. That looked like road-trip food. Which meant they still had a ways to go before reaching their final destination.
“Where are we headed?” she tried.
Her captors just stared at her stonily.
The van pulled back out onto the road, and despair washed through her. The next time they stopped, she needed to let someone know she was in trouble and to call the police. But how? With Goldeneyes hovering over her every move and the threat that his teammates would kill innocent bystanders ringing in her ears, it wasn’t like she had a lot of options.
He passed her a bottle of water. Silently, she took it and downed the whole thing. She had to give him credit; he was taking pretty decent care of her, all things considered. For the moment, at least, these men seemed interested in keeping her alive. Thank God.
At least she was able to tell by the setting sun that they were traveling more or less toward the north, and maybe slightly west. By now they had to have left Louisiana, which put them possibly in Arkansas.
They started to go up and down hills—which made sense if they were in the western portion of Arkansas, entering the Ozark Plateau. Which was both good and bad news. Good because it was lush country with plenty of food, water, shelter and cover for her eventual escape. The bad news was that it was isolated country with areas of very sparse population. She might have to evade her captors for days before she found help.
Why in the world had these men gone to all the trouble of kidnapping her just to haul her off on this extended road trip? Why not kill her in or near Houma? Did they plan to ransom her back to the Medusas? Surely they knew the US government adhered to a strict pay-no-ransom policy. And it wasn’t like she had a rich family that would cough up money for her return. Her dad owned a small auto-repair shop and her mom was a preschool teacher.
Her captors took turns napping and driving into the evening, all except for Goldeneyes. He seemed to have appointed himself her personal guard, and the other men seemed to have silently agreed to let him assume all babysitting duties.
A small blessing for which she was grateful. He seemed generally concerned about her comfort and well-being, while the other men looked at her with open contempt as if she were of no more worth or interest than a bug crawling across the floor of the van. Their dismissive attitude would be their undoing if she had anything to say about it.
It had gotten dark outside when she noticed most of the men were dozing. Only the driver and Goldeneyes were awake. His disturbingly beautiful stare was locked on her like it had been for most of the past twelve hours.
“What’s your real name?” she asked in a low voice.
“Amir.”
“Fine. Be that way. I’ll just stick to calling you Goldeneyes in my mind.”
His right eyebrow lifted faintly, but he didn’t show any other reaction.
“My name is Piper.”
He replied firmly, “Your name is Persephone Black.”
“I beg your pardon?” she blurted. He’d asked about a Mrs. Black when he’d first stormed into the school office. Was she a teacher? Why would these men kidnap an elementary school teacher?
“Your name. It’s Persephone Black. You can pretend to be anyone you want. But we know who you really are.”
What on God’s green earth was he talking about? Had they kidnapped the wrong person?
“But...you looked right at me... You said you’d seen my picture...that you knew I was the right person—”
“Quiet,” he bit out low, cutting her off.
She looked away from him and realized that the man who acted like the leader was awake, his eyes barely slitted open. How had “Amir” known the boss was awake? She hadn’t gotten the slightest indication of it—not even a hint of intuition that she was being watched. Wow. Her powers of observation were messed up worse than she’d realized. And his—they were sharp and on point.
“May I please have some more water?” she asked meekly.
Goldeneyes passed her a bottle of water without comment.
She downed it and added the bottle to the pile of trash growing in the back of the van: food wrappers and soda cans. These men’s discipline clearly did not extend to picking up after themselves. Either that or they planned to ditch the van at some point. Still. There would be fingerprints and DNA all over that trash.
With darkness, the team had taken off their sunglasses and hats, and she’d seen all their faces now. She’d watched them all evening, learning each man’s features from many different angles. The bump on the bridge of a nose, the angle of a jaw, the shape and fullness of lips, even the timbre of their voices.
She was confident she could pick out any of these men from a lineup if it ever came to that. Now she just had to make sure she stayed alive and got away so it could.
All of them except Goldeneyes were black haired, dark eyed, and their skin was caramel toned, in keeping with a Middle Eastern heritage. Two of them looked quite young, in their early twenties.
The other three looked hard as nails and closer to their midthirties in age. The older men reminded her of Gunnar Torsten. They all had the same hardness and cool, lethal confidence as her boss. She made a mental note not to mess with any of the older men.
As for Goldeneyes, he was the odd man out. Besides his fair coloring, he looked about thirty years old, and he carried himself differently than the others. At least, he did now.
When he’d stormed into the school office, he’d exhibited all the deadly confidence of the older men. But now, he slouched in the back of the van, eyes down, shoulders hunched. As if he was trying to make himself invisible to the other men. Odd. He didn’t strike her as the submissive-follower type. At all. But he was clearly acting like the low man in the pecking order.
The van slowed and turned off the winding two-lane road they’d been following up and down mountainsides for the past hour. It commenced bumping and banging over what was obviously some sort of bad dirt road.
They spent two or three more minutes getting tossed all over the back of the van, and then, just like that, the vehicle stopped. The driver turned off the ignition.
They’d arrived. Wherever that might be.
The silence and stillness were a shock to her system after spending the last twelve hours or so in the rumbling, vibrating van.
“Out,” the one called Mahmoud ordered.
Bijan, one of the young ones, opened the double back doors, and Piper glimpsed the dark silhouette of a decent-sized log cabin with a long porch across its front. Trees—deciduous, she noted—crowded close, and there was no ambient light in the sky to indicate a city of any kind nearby. Yup. These guys had brought her out into the middle of nowhere to hold for whatever dastardly purpose they had in mind for her.
Goldeneyes hopped out of the van in front of her and turned around to help her out. She was tempted to shake off his hand, but her legs were numb, and as she stood on them, they tingled so badly she wasn’t sure they would hold her full weight. She clung to his powerful forearm while circulation returned to her aching limbs. After a few seconds, she let go of his arm.
“Better?” he murmured under his breath.
“Uh-huh,” she muttered back.
He stepped behind her, efficiently twisting her arm behind her, but putting no pressure on it that would be painful. His intention was clear: if she didn’t fight him, he wouldn’t hurt her.
For now, at least. As long as their silent truce held.
She didn’t for a second believe these terrorists had brought her out here solely to enjoy the fresh air. They had some agenda up their sleeves. She just couldn’t fathom what it was.
Which led her back to the same question that had been preoccupying her all day. Why her?
Chapter 4
It didn’t take long after the report of armed men at Southdown Elementary School in Houma hit the news for the Medusas to put two and two together. They were taking a water break in the woods when Rebel, glancing at her cell phone, exclaimed.
Tessa piped up, asking, “Whatcha got, Reb?”
The communications specialist looked up from her phone grimly. “I just got a breaking-news alert. Armed men burst into Southdown Elementary School in Houma this morning and kidnapped an unnamed woman. She’s described as tall, blonde and in her mid-to late twenties.”
Tessa lurched upright from where she’d been lounging on a patch of moss. “That’s got to be Piper!”
Major Torsten cut in. “Where are Captain Ford’s cell phone and class ring locations now?”
Rebel answered, “I’d have to go back to the ops center to answer that, sir.”
“What are you waiting for, then?” Torsten snapped.
Tessa got that he was worried about Piper. But he didn’t have to bite their heads off!
Her train of thought derailed abruptly. Torsten was always tough, but he’d never been this snappish before. She traded worried looks with her fiancé, Beau, and his thoughts clearly mirrored hers. He was worried about the boss, too. Beau had worked for Gunnar Torsten for several years before being asked to help train the new Medusa team. If even Beau was worried about him, something was definitely wrong with Torsten.
When they hustled back to the vehicles to drive back to base, she made a point of climbing in the front passenger seat of the Hummer Torsten was driving.
“What’s up, sir?”
He glanced over at her and bit out, “I’ve got a missing and possibly kidnapped team member.”
“Besides that,” she replied carefully.
“Isn’t that enough?”
“You were way more tense than usual even before we thought anything was wrong with Piper...sir.”
He exhaled hard and turned his eyes back to the road. “I got an intel report last night.”
“And?”
“It indicates that Abu Haddad may not be dead.”
“What?” she and Beau squawked simultaneously. The two of them had by a hair escaped dying in the explosion that had killed Haddad last year. The international, and very illegal, arms dealer, had to be dead! His entire yacht—and everyone on it—had been blown into bits not much larger than her finger. Beau had set the charges himself.
Torsten replied heavily, “We never did get a confirmation of death.”
Beau leaned forward from the back seat and ground out, “That’s because nothing but matchsticks and the occasional chunk of meat were left when I was done blowing up that bastard’s yacht.”
Tessa frowned at their boss. “Why does someone think Haddad may be alive?”
Torsten huffed, clearly as unhappy as she and Beau were. “A rumor has surfaced that the Haddad network may be doing some sort of big secret deal with a Middle Eastern nation. The source apparently has it on good authority that Haddad himself is expected to close the deal. It’s possible that one of his flunkies has taken over the business. But there’s also a very small chance that the bastard is back.”
“What country is this deal with?” she asked.
“Rumor places the deal in Iran.”
“For what kind of weapons?” Beau asked quickly.
Tessa wasn’t sure that mattered. The Iranians were dangerous enough with the weaponry they already had. Although she supposed the last thing anyone needed was for that country’s leaders to get their hands on something high-tech and truly deadly.
“No idea,” Torsten replied.
“It’s not like we have a ton of human information sources on the ground in Tehran,” she commented. “If someone outside its borders could figure out who’s making the sale and what the cargo is, we’d have a better chance of finding out what the Iranians are getting their hands on.”
Appearing to give himself a mental shake, the major replied, “Not our problem, today. Right now, I need us to focus on finding Piper.”
“Of course, sir.” But curiosity about what a dead arms dealer was selling to a country like Iran continued to niggle at the back of Tessa’s mind.
They parked in front of the one-story building that was their communications facility and operational headquarters for Training Site Vanessa, named for Brigadier General Vanessa Blake, the founder of the Medusas over a decade ago.
Their headquarters squatted on stilts and looked like every other ramshackle fishing shack in this part of Terrebonne Parish. Notable only was the building’s lack of windows, and the unusually bulky storage shed under the center of the building.
In reality, that shed disguised the elevator shaft down into the underground/underwater bunker that housed the heart of their ops center. The aboveground building mainly disguised antennae and receivers for the equipment below.
They piled into the elevator and stood in silence as it whooshed them down into the bunker. The door opened into the perpetual twilight of a room crammed with computers and monitors.
Rebel sat at her communication console and typed quickly. In just a few seconds, she reported without looking up from her screen, “Piper’s phone is still at the elementary school where it was this morning.”
“And her backup locator signal?” Torsten asked.
“It appears stationary about fifty miles west of here,” she reported. “Reporters are saying a group of masked men were seen coming out of a white air-conditioning company van and heading into the elementary school. They left in the same vehicle. Presumably with Piper in tow.”
Major Torsten left Rebel to man the ops center in case Piper called in, and loaded Tessa and Beau into his Hummer. They drove west, paralleling the murky waters of Bayou Black to the GPS coordinates Rebel had given them for Piper’s backup locator signal. It turned out to be coming from a crappy little 1950s-era gas station in the middle of nowhere.
The gray-haired Cajun man inside the station swore he hadn’t seen any woman fitting Piper’s description all day. When Tessa showed him a picture of Piper on her cell phone, the attendant declared her hot, but again denied having seen her. Tessa was inclined to believe him.
Torsten called Rebel to confirm they were at the right place, and she was adamant that their position locators were literally on top of Piper’s. And it was still pinging.
They fanned out to search the area, and after a minute or so, Tessa spotted a glint in the gravel at the corner of the building. She bent down and picked up Piper’s West Point class ring. The one with the locator in it.
“I found her ring!” she called out.
“Don’t move!” Torsten ordered immediately. He knelt down, examining the dirt between himself and Tessa. After a moment, he moved off to his right, toward the side of the building. Using his finger, he drew a rectangle on the ground. “Tire track. Recent,” he commented, continuing to stare at the dusty clay.
Beau moved forward to join him in staring at the ground. He had a sniper’s outstanding eyesight and was the best tracker of all of them.
“Looks like three men,” he murmured. “They milled around beside the vehicle.”
Torsten nodded. “And one walked over there to the corner of the building and back, close to where the ring was.”
“Did he drop it, maybe?” Tessa asked.
Beau answered grimly, “I don’t see any tracks small or narrow enough to be Piper’s. These are all men in boots.”
“Agreed,” Torsten muttered. “I don’t think she dropped it as a bread crumb for us.”
“Either way,” Tessa commented, “we know she was headed west a couple hours ago.”
Beau crouched and studied the dirt a bit more, adding, “It looks like some of the tracks lead over to this burn barrel.”
Tessa detoured around the footprints to stare into the rusty container at the pile of light gray ashes inside. It didn’t look like it would hold any clues to Piper’s whereabouts.
Torsten moved over beside her to gaze into the trash barrel, the contents of which were smoking lazily and stank of burnt plastic. He gingerly poked around in them.
“Do you see anything, sir?” she asked hopefully.
“Nope. Just ashes. If the guys in the van dropped anything in here, it’s gone.”
Damn.
Torsten moved away from her and pulled out his cell phone.
“Where’s Piper now?” Tessa asked logically.
Beau looked up grimly from snapping pictures of the tracks. “I think it’s safe to say she was kidnapped. Which leads to the even more salient question. Why her?”
They stared at one another grimly. Were the Medusas compromised?
How? Practically no one knew of their existence, let alone what their real mission was supposed to be. The only—deeply buried—paper trail that led to the team vaguely referred to it as an environmental research group.
“Back in the Hummer,” Torsten ordered briskly. “We’re going to New Orleans.”
“What’s in New Orleans?” Tessa ventured.
“An NCIS field office. It’s time to bring in the big guns to track down Piper and figure out what in the hell is going on.”
She wasn’t about to voice the idea that, if Torsten had listened to her and Rebel earlier, Piper’s kidnappers wouldn’t have such a big head start on them. Torsten looked like he was probably having that thought all on his own, without her having to say it.
They climbed back into the Hummer in silence, and Torsten stomped on the accelerator, blatantly ignoring any notion of speed limits as they raced toward New Orleans at nearly a hundred miles per hour. No doubt about it, the boss was definitely more worried than he was expressing aloud.
They all were.
* * *
Zane goose-stepped the woman into the cabin as gently as he could. “Piper,” she’d called herself. After a brief stop in the bathroom, he followed Mahmoud’s order to take her downstairs into the basement and secure her.
The cellar was dirt walled and windowless, cool and dank smelling. He led her over to a four-inch steel pipe running vertically up one wall and pulled out the pair of handcuffs Mahmoud had handed him.
He looped them around the pole and then carefully snapped her wrists into the cuffs. He made sure they were tight enough that she couldn’t slip out of them, but not so tight that they hurt her.
Zane brought over an armload of blankets and spread them out on the ground beside her. “It won’t be the most comfortable place you’ve ever slept, but it’s dry and you’ll be warm enough.”
“Why are you doing this for me?” she asked under her breath.
Why indeed? If he was one of the bad guys, he ought to be roughing her up, scaring the living daylights out of her and terrorizing her into unquestioning cooperation with him and the other men. But she was the innocent victim in this scenario, and he was the criminal who’d put her here.
He had already considered telling her who he was in hopes of gaining her trust and cooperation. But he’d reluctantly ruled out revealing his true identity to her.
If—when—Mahmoud and Yousef got around to torturing her, which Zane had no doubt both men were sadistic enough to enjoy doing, he really needed her not to blurt out that he was an undercover CIA agent. People in the midst of torture would say or do just about anything to make the pain stop. He dared not give her a grenade that she could lob to save herself.
As much as Zane would like to put her mind at ease and tell her he was one of the good guys, he couldn’t. Not yet. Not until the two of them were out of here and clear of Mahmoud and company.
Her eyes were big and dark as she stared at him, revealing for a moment the fear that she was valiantly holding at bay. God, she was brave. Admiration for her coursed through him.
“Get some rest,” he said gruffly.
Her brows furrowed in confusion.
“I’ll take you upstairs to use the bathroom in the morning. If you have an emergency before then, let me know.” He bent down and deposited a bottle of water and a protein bar on the floor next to the pole. “There’s a drink and a snack right here, where you can reach them.”
He headed toward the stairs and his hand lifted toward the light switch.
“Could you please leave the light on?” she asked.
“Of course.” His hand fell to his side. He hated leaving her alone down here with her fear and uncertainty, but Mahmoud and the other men would be suspicious as hell if he hovered over her like a worried mother hen.
He hurried up the steps before he could lose his resolve.
“She tied up?” Hassan asked when he emerged into the kitchen.
“Yup. Not going anywhere.”
Hassan nodded and set a TV dinner on the table for him. Turkey and gravy. Not his favorite, but he wasn’t about to complain. Not with so much on the line.
Zane ate about half the bland meal before asking around a mouthful of pasty mashed potatoes, “What does Mahmoud want with the woman?”
Hassan shocked him by actually answering. Whether it was because the man already knew that Mahmoud planned to kill Zane, or because Zane had actually earned some trust today by participating in the kidnapping, he had no idea. “She’s the wife of some guy that our employer needs to do something.”
“So she’s being held as leverage, then,” Zane commented neutrally, leaping all over Hassan’s rare chatty mood. “Got it. Keep her alive. Reasonably healthy. Just maintain control of her.”
Hassan grunted in what Zane took as an affirmative.
“Do we know who her husband is?” Zane asked.
“Above my pay grade.”
“And who exactly ordered the kidnapping?” Zane pressed.
“Above your pay grade.”
He grinned and shrugged at Hassan. “Sorry. It’s hard for me to keep operating in the dark all the time. At some point you guys are going to have to learn to trust me.”
“I think you’re okay. Don’t take it personally. Mahmoud always plays everything close to his chest.”
“Thanks, man.” Zane got up and carried his empty dinner tray over to the trash can and tossed it in. “Tomorrow, you gotta let me go to a store and get us some real food if we’re gonna be here awhile. That crap tasted like cardboard.”
“No lie,” Hassan laughed. “I’ll ask Mahmoud in the morning.”
“You want me to guard the prisoner overnight?” Zane offered.
“Don’t you want to take shifts or something?” Hassan blurted.
“I don’t mind doing it tonight. You drove most of the day and could use some rest. I can sleep at the foot of the stairs. It’s not like she can get loose and go anywhere.”
“You show admirable dedication to the work, my friend.”
He shrugged and made eye contact with Hassan. “Just trying to prove myself to you guys. But you’re tough nuts to crack.”
Hassan grinned and merely dipped his chin at the compliment, reverting to his usual taciturn self.
By the time Zane went back down to the basement, the woman was curled up on her side next to the steel pole, nested in the blankets like a puppy. She was out cold. Exhausting day she’d had. He pulled one of the blankets over her gently.
Rough day for him, too. He unrolled the sleeping bag he’d carried down here and spread it at the bottom of the steps. His offer to stay with her was a two-edged sword, of course. Not only did it keep Piper from escaping, but it kept the other men from paying any extracurricular visits to her, as well.
Confident that she would be out cold for hours to come, he closed his eyes, knowing that sleep would claim him immediately. It was a combat trick he’d learned during his stint in the army, fresh out of college. When he’d never known when or where his next chance to sleep would come, he’d become expert at napping anywhere on a moment’s notice.
* * *
A painful kick in his ribs woke Zane up sometime later. He tensed to do violence before he remembered where he was. He threw off the sleeping bag and rose, silent and fast, to his feet. Yousef was grinning at him and looking pleased with himself.
“Boss wants to see you,” the man announced.
Zane suppressed an urge to bury his fist in the guy’s face and merely gestured for Yousef to go first up the stairs. A quick glance at Piper confirmed that she was still dead to the world.
Yousef led him to the living room, where Mahmoud and Hassan already sat. These three were the senior members of this cell. The other two guys, Bijan and Osted, acted mostly as muscle.
Mahmoud held out a cell phone and a national newspaper to Zane, who stared at them suspiciously. After months without him having access to any kind of news or electronic communications, why in the world was the guy offering him both now?
“I need photographs of the woman,” Mahmoud announced. “Clear ones where her face is easy to see. And she needs to be visibly tied up. We want her husband to understand in no uncertain terms that she is a captive.”
“Of course,” Zane responded. “Do you want them right now?”
“Yes.”
“Back in five minutes.”
Zane jogged down the basement stairs loudly, announcing his coming to the woman. Sure enough, when he looked across the space at her, she was awake and watching him.
In the middle of the cellar, he set down the wooden chair he’d carried from the kitchen, then moved over to her to unlock the handcuffs.
“What’s happening?” she asked quickly.
“Picture time, Mrs. Black.”
“You need proof of possession of me? To show whom?”
“Your husband, of course.”
“Are you asking for a ransom? Blackmail? What’s the play here?” she demanded.
An interesting, and decidedly military, turn of phrase. He responded, “The play is you’re going to sit in that chair with your hands tied behind your back. You’re going to look properly terrified, and I’m going to take a picture of you to send to him so he’ll do what we want him to.”
“Which is what?” she snapped.
God, he’d love to know that very thing. But he also wasn’t about to admit to her that he didn’t have the slightest idea what any of this was about. He propped the newspaper against her chest, being careful not to touch anything personal while he did so. When he was satisfied that the headline was prominently visible, he stepped back from her.
“Say cheese,” he muttered as he pointed the camera at her.
“Are we doing just stills, or do I get a video, too?” she asked.
“So you can blink out an SOS or something clever like that?” he asked dryly. “Trust me. Your husband will know you’re in trouble without you having to tell him.”
“Jerk,” she muttered.
“You have no idea,” he muttered back.
“Do tell.”
“Look scared, Persephone.”
The end result was her scowling at the camera, looking more defiant than frightened. But her features were clear and readily recognizable.
Which was, of course, a gigantic problem for him. As soon as Mr. Black saw the photos and declared them not to be of his wife, and that information was relayed back to Mahmoud, this woman would be dead. How long did Zane have until all that happened? A day? Two, maybe?
Urgency to get this woman out of here and run far, far away from these bastards pounded through his gut. The only thing keeping him here with her was the fact that he still had no idea why she’d been kidnapped. That, and so far, the men upstairs had shown no inclination to harm her. If he kept his cool for just a bit longer, hopefully whatever Mahmoud had planned for this woman would be revealed.
He briskly led her back over to her pole and cuffed her to it once more. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said wryly.
“Are you kidding?” she retorted. “I love what you’ve done with the place. Why would I leave this cozy little dungeon?”
One corner of his mouth turned up in sardonic humor. She was a sharp one, all right. “Don’t try that sarcasm on any of the others. They’ll kill you for showing them such disrespect.”
“But not you?” she asked quietly.
“I’m the one with the sense of humor. Just don’t push your luck.”
She subsided, silenced by the admonition. Dammit. He much preferred her sassy and mouthing off to him over this silent, apprehensive version of her. If only he could tell her who he really was, what his mission was here.
“Look,” he muttered under his breath, “I don’t know what the boss has planned for you. I’m going to do my best to protect you from harm. But I need you to hang in there for a little while longer.”
Her brow twitched into a perplexed frown. “Who are you?”
“I’m the guy giving you a wad of cotton balls. Keep them in your pocket for now, but if it looks like we’re coming back down here en masse to rough you up, slip them in your mouth between your molars and cheeks. They’ll protect the inside of your mouth, cushion any blows and help keep us from knocking any of your teeth out.”
Her frown deepened sharply as he tucked several cotton balls into the front pocket of her jeans. The pocket was snug and warm against her body, and he jerked his fingers out quickly. Must not allow himself to feel anything for this woman. No attraction. No interest. No affection.
