She was wrong about that.
She was wrong about both things.
When he spoke, his voice was shockingly, jarringly deep.
“Marion,” he said. “You’re not safe.”
She blinked, her lips parting slightly.
She was about to say something back––hovering between asking him what he meant, asking him how he knew her name, asking him who the hell he was, and telling him to let her the fuck go, right now––when someone else grabbed her arm from Marion’s other side.
As the hand on her bicep wrenched her backwards, a second person, a bald mountain of a man with a tattoo across one side of his face, wrapped a thick arm around the throat of the big guy with the coal-black eyes who’d just told her she wasn’t safe.
Everything happened fast after that.
Marion twisted sideways, trying to free herself from the new hand holding her…
…right as something pricked her neck, making her gasp.
She felt a hard pressure.
Something got pushed forcibly into her skin.
A syringe.
Someone emptied a syringe of something right into her bloodstream.
Terror exploded in her mind, spiking her adrenaline.
It probably only carried the drug through her bloodstream even faster.
Marion couldn’t feel the effects of whatever they’d given her, not yet, but she already knew it was too late.
It was too late.
A clock ticked over her, telling her it was too late.
She glanced over at the black-haired man with those odd, volcanic eyes, just in time to see him flip the tattooed bald guy up and over his head as he jumped up and then fell to one knee, throwing his weight backwards to land the bald, tattooed mountain onto the tile with a sickening crunch.
The black-haired man with the deep black eyes straightened, rising to his full height as the bald man fell forward, landing like dead weight onto his broad back.
Marion stared down at the bald man’s face.
She wondered if it was the same person who tried to get her in a sleeper hold in the corridor, who called her “kitty,” who threatened to snap her neck… and decided it was.
She was okay with him dying.
She was okay with the dark-eyed man taking care of him.
Even as she thought it, she leapt over and past the bald man’s inert form, trying to get to the dark-eyed man herself, trying to get away from the man with the syringe.
Then she saw a fourth guy go after the big guy with the obsidian-black eyes.
She felt fingers grip her arm, dragging her backwards.
She turned to her left, and now she saw Mike Rostroe, head of her Secret Service detail, running towards her, his mouth open in a shout as he touched his ear. She saw his partner, the handsome Don Gerald, running towards her from the other end of the bar.
The drug was doing its work now.
Everything was slowing down, turning dreamlike.
She leapt past the bald guy, only to be jerked backwards in midair, falling on her back.
She stared up at the lights rotating overhead.
People shouted all around her.
She heard screams.
Marion looked up, fighting to focus as she was dragged back, across the slick floor, two men on her now, one on each side…
She saw him, then.
The black-eyed man stood over her, staring down at her on the floor.
She saw him grab his current attacker by the wrist, twist it down and sideways, forcing the man’s body to follow with it, until he had the guy face-down on the floor.
Her two Secret Security guys were running towards her, too.
They were running for her, but somehow, Marion couldn’t look away from the man with the obsidian eyes, watching the flame there grow brighter as he stared at her.
She saw rage there, in his face, despite the stillness of that gaze.
Somehow, that didn’t frighten her, though.
Truthfully, she found it strangely comforting.
That was the last thing she remembered seeing as everything grayed around the man’s face, all of it darkening and leaving colored spots, screams, shouts of panic and confusion––
––until there was nothing left but silence.
7
A Cold Wind
She came back to consciousness slowly.
It felt like wading through Jell-O at first, like she might be stuck inside some kind of sticky, gelatinous void. Marion grew aware that some part of her was hearing and seeing things, but she had no idea where she was, or what was happening to her.
Something vibrated her skin, bones, teeth, flesh.
She heard a voice speaking.
She was cold.
Shivering, she lifted her head from something semi-soft, blinking at the light from a low, round window just above eye-level. She squinted into the sunlight shining there, then realized she was looking at clouds. She was in an airplane. She wasn’t in the passenger cabin of a commercial airline, not even in coach.
She definitely wasn’t riding in a private jet.
She was in the cargo hold of something a hell of a lot bigger.
Glancing down at where she’d laid her head, she saw blood on a dark coat she didn’t recognize. A heavier coat had been wrapped around her shoulders and back, and she pulled it closer as she sat up, shivering even more violently than before.
It felt like she was turning to ice.
Looking down at herself, she realized she was still wearing the gold dress.
She even had on the matching shoes.
Staring down at her bare legs, then at the blood stain and black marks on the front of the dress, she looked around at the rest of the cargo hold, bleary-eyed.
A few things were finally sinking in.
It was sinking in that this wasn’t good.
Marion didn’t quite put the rest of it together until she turned her head to the left, hearing a screeching sound of metal that somehow penetrated the thick, grinding hum of engine noise, and the freezing cold wind whistling through the enormous hold.
By then, she’d noted half the cargo hold was filled with crates, filling much of the cavernous space on both sides. In the center, she saw what looked like five covered cars, likely luxury vehicles, from the lettering on the covers, along with a helicopter tied down on one side of the ramp, its propellers bouncing lightly in the wind and mild turbulence.
She looked back at where she’d heard that screeching noise.
Someone was coming down a ladder.
They descended from a catwalk above the main floor.
Marion saw broad shoulders, thick arms in a black, form-fitting shirt, dark pants, and overall expensive-looking clothing and shoes.
His black hair already had her holding her breath.
His outline had her staring, waiting for him to turn.
She remembered the bald guy from the club, her two Secret Service guys, at least three other guys who grabbed her––men with faces blurred by dim lighting, the drug they’d injected in her neck, flashing colored lights. None of those faces had been distinctive enough for Marion to recall their exact features, apart from the mountain-sized bald guy, whose face was half-covered by a tribal tattoo.
She had only flashing impressions of most of them.
Blue eyes on one, red hair.
Blond hair on another, brown eyes, a cruel smile.
Marion was pretty sure he’d been the one with the syringe.
But the man who reached the bottom of the stairs and turned around wasn’t any of those people. He wasn’t one of the three or four men who’d been dragging her, drugged, across the sticky floor of the club.
He wasn’t one of her Secret Service guys, either.
It was him.
It was the guy with the strange black eyes and that incredibly still face.
His somber expression looked exactly how she remembered it.
He walked directly towards her acros
s the metal floor of the hold, his balance unaffected by the jerks and dips from turbulence. His mouth looked like it was carved out of stone, his high-cheekboned face as difficult to read and unmoving as she remembered.
His dark eyes burned with that dense, coal-like, inner light, even in broad daylight.
She watched his eyes longest of all, still staring up at them as he approached.
He looked her over, his expression as still as glass.
Then he motioned towards his temple.
“Your head,” he said, speaking over the sound of the plane’s engine. “Does it hurt? How do you feel?”
Frowning, Marion reached up, mirroring what he’d done with his hand and touching her own temple. She winced, feeling the lump there, and a sticky feeling. Remembering what she’d seen on the jacket someone gave her as a pillow, she swallowed.
She should have realized those stains came from her.
When she withdrew her hand, her fingers had spots of still-wet blood on them.
She was staring at her red-stained fingertips when the tall man with the broad shoulders sat down beside her on the metal bench.
She jumped, but again, he seemed unfazed.
“I tried to wake you,” he said, still speaking over the engine. “I was not comfortable with you sleeping… not with a head injury. Then I found the syringe mark. Once I realized they’d drugged you, there was little I could do but wait for the effects to wear off.”
He studied her temple, frowning.
Reaching under the bench, he pulled something out from under it.
Marion watched as he pulled out a leather bag, what looked like an old-fashioned doctor’s satchel, or even a men’s toiletries kit. Whatever it had inside it, the design of the satchel, with its zipper across the top and a silver and bronze buckle, struck her as utterly dated.
He held it towards her almost as an offering.
“I can clean it now,” he said, still speaking louder than what felt natural, but not as loudly as when he’d been standing over her. “The wound. I didn’t want to disturb you before. Other than to make sure whatever they’d given you wasn’t dangerous.”
Thinking about the face of the man who drugged her, Marion winced.
Still looking at the black-eyed man, she laid a hand on her throat in reflex. She was hours too late to protect herself, but some part of her wanted to try anyway.
“You fought well,” the man remarked, giving her a faint smile. “I should have reacted more quickly, but it turned out, you were quite skilled…”
His eyes shifted to the hand she had pressed to the side of her neck.
That shadow of a frown crossed his lips.
“Not much you could have done against that,” he said. “You were still struggling even when you were only half-conscious––”
“Where am I?” she blurted.
He fell silent, his dark, silent eyes locked on hers.
She released her neck, lowering her arm to her lap.
“Who are you?” she pressed. “Why did you take me? Where’s my protective detail?”
The tall man with the obsidian-black eyes didn’t move at first.
Then, setting the leather satchel in his lap, he unfastened the buckle, and unzipped the top. He pulled out a small, soft-looking piece of cloth, squirting some kind of gel on it.
The gel smelled like alcohol.
Marion felt herself stiffen anyway, staring down at it.
She had visions of being overpowered and chloroformed, of having him press that cloth against her mouth and nose until she fell back unconscious.
Setting the leather bag down by his feet, the man held up the piece of cloth cautiously, almost as a form of asking permission.
“May I?” he said politely.
Marion swallowed, staring at those dark, fathomless eyes.
“What is it?” she said, although she already knew.
“Alcohol,” he said promptly. “To clean the wound you sustained when one of the men hit you in the face, trying to get you to stop struggling.”
Pausing at her flinch, the man added,
“If it helps, I hit him shortly after. He fell to the floor. He fell much harder than you did, and sustained a much more serious injury. I wish I’d gotten to him sooner, but I was busy fighting off two others in their group.”
“Who are you?” Marion said, still with no hostility, only bewilderment. “Are you going to tell me? Why did you take me? Where are you taking me?”
She knew this had to be about her father.
There’s no possible way this wasn’t about her father.
She just had no idea why now, or what they wanted from her dad specifically.
Was someone trying to use her to get political prisoners released from some black site in Eastern Europe or whatever? Did they want him to bomb some country? To not bomb some country? To release terrorists? To lift sanctions?
Whatever it was, she guessed they would be disappointed.
Somehow, she doubted Dad would go along with any of that, last surviving daughter or not.
“Who I am… is complicated, Marion,” the man said, studying her eyes. “I will not harm you. I will not allow anyone else to harm you, either. I mean your father and country no ill will. More than anything, I am trying to keep this situation from escalating.”
Pausing, he raised the cloth a second time.
“May I?”
She blinked, frowning. “Who you are… that’s the complicated part?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me your name, at least.”
“Tyr.”
Her lips pursed. “Tyr? Like… Teeer? What kind of name is that?”
The dark-eyed man gave her a flat look. “One my father bequeathed me.”
Marion’s frown deepened.
She looked between his eyes.
He wasn’t screwing with her. With anyone else, she’d assume they were screwing with her, but she honestly didn’t think this guy was.
“Do you want something from my father?” she said.
Tyr shook his head. “No. I do not. I fear others do, however.”
“What others? What do they want?”
Tyr raised the cloth a third time, and that time, after a bare hesitation, she nodded. As he began dabbing her cut and swollen forehead, cleaning the wound, Marion winced, still watching his dark eyes. Before she could ask again, he began to speak.
“There is a group in particular that concerns me,” he said, his voice calm, a deep, rolling rumble in his chest. “I was made aware of them by my sister-in-law, who used to work for them. She came upon materials indicating they might use you as an excuse to start a military conflict between your country and another country––”
“What country?” Marion broke in.
He looked at her, answering without hesitation.
“China, from what I saw on the tapes,” he said. “I suspect the who is somewhat incidental, however. Their ultimate goal appears to be de-stabilization of both countries. Which would destabilize the world, frankly, and, if it resulted in military conflict, potentially kill many people. Which also puts it more or less in my…”
He hesitated.
Closing his mouth, he stared off, as if contemplating different words.
“…jurisdiction, I guess you could say,” he finished, looking back at her.
Marion zeroed in on the same word.
“Jurisdiction?” She folded her arms under the thick jacket, hugging her chest. “What jurisdiction would that be, exactly? Who do you work for?”
“No one.”
Hesitating, Tyr frowned, again seeming to be thinking.
“Well,” he amended. “I suppose I work for my father. I answer to him, certainly. But my position also transcends the usual employment-employer relationship, in the sense you mean it. Or even sovereign-subject. Or sovereign-soldier. My role is of a more universal nature.”
Marion stared.
“What?” she said finally.
When h
e only kept cleaning the cut, she frowned, wrapping her arms around her body tighter, clenching her hands into fists.
“Am I supposed to understand what you just said?”
Tyr gave a slow shrug, one that somehow matched that deep voice.
“Suffice it to say, a group is looking to destabilize the current global situation,” he told her, focusing back on her head, dabbing at her skin with the alcohol-soaked cloth. “Lia––my sister-in-law––she calls them ‘The Syndicate.’ From the surveillance tapes she gave me, they call themselves this, as well. Would you like to see those tapes?”
He asked the last casually, as if inquiring about the weather.
“Yes,” Marion said at once. “I would like to see them. Right now.”
The man with the black eyes, Tyr, nodded.
“We have time now, before we arrive at our destination. It is probably good for you to watch this while we are en route, so I will set that up for you as soon as I have bandaged your wound.” Pausing, he added, “The gist of it is, they would like to cause an armed conflict. This will accomplish several goals for them. They want your father neutralized. They want him distracted. They also favor an unstable environment in the other country in question… and they want war. Preferably a long war, if they can manage it.”
Marion fought to digest this.
She didn’t want to believe the guy was crazy.
He sure sounded crazy.
Paranoid, at least.
“Can I watch it now?” Marion said. “These recordings? While you’re cleaning the cut? It’s really hard to take you seriously, just hearing this from a total stranger.”
The man was still cleaning her head, and she winced as he got down another layer of dried blood. He glanced at her, without stopping what he was doing.
“I understand,” he said.
Lowering the cloth, he sighed.
“All right. Wait here. I have to find you something to watch it on. And a headset so you can hear it in here.” He motioned around at the noisy cargo hold.
He rose fluidly to his feet.
Marion watched as the man walked away, back to the ladder leading to the catwalk, and presumably a part of the plane that was actually built to house human beings.
Tyr Page 5
