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She was about halfway across the field when, without warning, something huge and heavy tackled her from behind, landing on top of her and knocking the breath out of her. She gasped frantically for air, but none came.
Dammit. She’d never even heard him coming.
A hard hand plastered over her mouth, which did nothing to help her regain her breath.
A male voice snarled low in her ear, “You and I are going to stand up. Then you’re going to turn around and walk back to the van and climb in, all nice-like and cooperative.” Hot breath wafted over her ear as her captor leaned close to add, “And if you don’t, I’ll knock you out and carry you back to the damned van.”
A detached voice in a far corner of her mind registered that he hadn’t threatened to kill her. But in the abrupt rush of adrenaline that accompanied the return of her ability to breathe, she ignored the voice and thrashed wildly beneath him.
She managed to get turned over on her back, but he was significantly bigger and stronger than she was, and apparently a trained wrestler. He flattened her with demoralizing ease. Their bodies pressed together in what would be a blatantly sexual fashion under any other circumstances.
As it was, she held herself rigid beneath him and did her best to ignore the way his thighs pressed against hers, the bulge of his crotch against the junction of her legs, the way his hard stomach pressed into hers and how her breasts smashed against his chest.
Goldeneyes, indeed.
She stared up at him in shock. Either his tackle or their struggle had knocked his baseball cap and sunglasses off, and she got her first good look at him.
If one human being could look any less like a violent criminal, this guy was it. His hair was a sun-tossed mix of brown and gold, nearly the same color as his eyes. His skin was tanned, his jaw chiseled, his features classy. All in all, he looked like he belonged on Martha’s Vineyard, wearing chinos, a polo shirt and a white cricket sweater, sailing a boat on a crisp summer day.
Her brows twitched into a frown. She’d pegged all of these guys as Iranians from their use of Farsi. But this one didn’t look even remotely Persian.
“Who are you?” she breathed.
“Get up.” With a quick flex of powerful biceps, he popped to his feet. He had a crushing grip on her hand and gave a hard yank on it now, dragging her upright.
He frisked all her pockets and then did a weird thing. He checked her neck for jewelry. “What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Making sure you don’t have a wallet with any identification in it or dog tags on you,” he muttered.
Realization smacked into her, like a slap across the face. He didn’t want any of the other terrorists to figure out her real name. If that was the case, then this wasn’t about her being a Medusa at all. That was a relief, at least. Although it still left behind the glaring question of what in the world these guys wanted with some woman who worked with little kids.
With a quick jerk, he twisted her arm up and back behind her, shoving her along in front of him, back toward the rest stop building. The van was out of sight on the other side of the structure.
“What’s your name?” she gasped.
“Amir.”
“Baloney,” she blurted. “That’s not your name. You’re named something preppy like Chad or Blaine.”
He gave a warning tug on her twisted arm that was just shy of painful.
“You really should set me free,” she tried. “I guarantee you don’t want to face the criminal penalties when you guys get caught. All the law enforcement authorities will already be out looking for me. You’ll never get away with this. If you let me go right now, by the time I can get over to the truck stop, call the police and wait for them to respond, you guys can be long gone. A clean getaway.”
“The others will come out of the van any second to see what’s taking so long. They have long-range rifles and know how to use them. You’d never make it across that field alive.”
He almost sounded regretful about that. Weird.
“Be quiet,” he bit out as they approached the building she’d broken out of.
He shocked her by walking her into the ladies’ room and shoving her toward a toilet stall. He was still going to let her go to the bathroom? By rights, he should haul her back to the van, toss her in and let her suffer—or soil herself—after her attempted escape.
She used the facilities fast and was not surprised when she opened the stall door to see him looming just outside. He grabbed her elbow and steered her toward the van.
He growled low, “If my partners find out about your little stunt, they’ll kill you—or worse. However, if you’ll promise not to say anything about your failed escape attempt, I won’t, either.”
“Um, okay,” she responded in confusion. Now, why on earth did he make that offer? Surely it was only because he would get in trouble for her nearly getting away. Still. Something was off about this guy.
He hustled her back to the van and started to hoist her inside. “I’ve got this,” she snapped, yanking her arm out of his grip. She got the distinct impression he chose to let go of her. His hand felt plenty strong enough to have resisted her tug.
“That took a long time,” one of the other men complained in Farsi.
“Women,” her strange captor responded, rolling his eyes.
The other man grunted in commiseration.
A frisson of satisfaction coursed through her. If they wanted to underestimate her because she was a woman, she was totally fine with that. Wait till they figured out she was a trained Special Forces operative. They weren’t going to know what had hit them. Anticipation of the moment when she kicked butts and took names coursed through her.
Patience, Piper. Patience.
Not to worry. She would show them, all in due time.
She considered her captor’s name. She supposed it was possible his name really was Amir, but it had rung false when he said it. He just didn’t seem to own the name the way he would have if it had been his actual name. No, Goldeneyes fitted him better.
They drove for perhaps two more hours, taking back roads exclusively. The next time they stopped, she spied through the windows a tiny town boasting a single flashing red light, one gas station/convenience store/Laundromat and a Baptist church. Goldeneyes was the only man to exit the van. Which made sense if he was the only American in the bunch. He would draw a lot less attention than the others in this rural part of the country where few foreigners visited. He went outside to pump and pay for gas, and escorted her to the restroom again.
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 (#u95de7290-5a1b-50d6-984a-38aef340738a)
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.”
