by N. J. Croft
“I know.” Luke took a deep breath of stifling air and tried to feel some of Callum’s excitement, but he couldn’t get the image out of his mind. A whole village—men, women, and children. How had they died? Had they realized what was happening?
But he could do nothing for them.
All he could do was get the people who had done this.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jenna came awake slowly. She lay on her back on a narrow cot in a small, square room that looked like a cell. A white cotton sheet covered her, scratchy against her bare skin. Her whole body throbbed, not with pain, but with a sensation she couldn’t define.
Pulling herself upright, she clutched the sheet to her breasts and peered around. There were no windows except for a small square of glass in the steel door. The walls and ceiling were painted white, and the only furniture was the cot attached to one wall and a toilet pan in the corner opposite the door.
Someone had removed her clothes; she was naked beneath the sheet except for a bandage around her left thigh.
There was no pain even though she’d been shot in the leg. The center of the bandage was blackened with dried blood, but she could feel nothing beneath it. She picked at the edge of the tape and unraveled the bandage. The skin of her thigh was smooth, unmarked, no sign of any bullet wound.
Wrapping the sheet around herself toga-style, she rose to her feet and crossed to the door. Through the small window, she could see nothing except a short stretch of corridor painted the same featureless white as her cell. With her forehead pressed against the coolness of the glass, she stood and listened.
If she concentrated hard, she could hear the distant murmur of voices, the moan of someone in pain, and a door clicking open. She knew she shouldn’t have been able to hear these things. Something was happening to her. Her senses were stronger, her hearing and her vision clearer than they had ever been. Even her sense of smell was sharper. Breathing in, she caught the whiff of disinfectant from the toilet in the corner and the faint tang of chemicals in the paint. Beneath the external smells, she could scent a faint, sweet odor emanating from her own body, oozing from the pores of her skin, vaguely familiar as though remembered from a dream.
She glanced down at her hand where she clutched the sheet. Only days before, her finger had been broken, but it had healed far faster than should have been possible, and she knew it had something to do with the medicine. Or rather the lack of medicine.
Her father had listed the symptoms in an endless promise of misery to come, but never this. Had he known? Could she be experiencing the side effects of some experimental drug? Again, her thoughts turned to the notes she’d found in his office.
Her watch was gone, and she had no clue how much time had passed or where she was. Would Luke have heard about her abduction? Would he come looking for her? Ultimately, she sensed he was a good man and was overwhelmed with a longing to see him, to touch him.
Shock had sent her running from him. Shock and disappointment. She didn’t want to be bait.
She’d thought they had a connection.
Instead, she had discovered she was just a pawn in a game she suspected he had been playing for a long, long time.
But how tenderly he had held her through the night. And she realized that while he might be willing to sacrifice her to gain his ends, the decision would never be easy.
It didn’t matter. No one knew where she was. Whoever had her were probably the same people who had killed David. They had shot Detective Jameson without a flicker of remorse, and they would do the same to her.
First, they needed something from her. Information, she presumed. Information she didn’t have, but that wouldn’t help her. And they would use any methods available to get her to talk.
Though she should have been terrified at the prospect, instead she felt calm. Returning to the cot, she sat, hugging her knees to her chest. Everything had happened so fast, and she hadn’t had a chance to analyze it or try to make sense of it.
Her father’s death had set something in motion. Or rather, she had set something in motion. If she’d done what her father had requested and not told anyone, just gone directly to Professor Merrick, would any of this have happened?
Descartes was the answer, but she couldn’t imagine how a twenty-five-year-old secret tied in with an imminent terrorist threat or what part she played in that secret. Had everything her father told her been a lie? She’d always believed he loved her and had her best interests at heart.
She still believed that. But he’d been hiding something.
Her head began to throb again with all the unanswered questions. She rubbed her temple with the tip of her finger and pressed her eyes, pushing away the questions.
Leaning back against the cool concrete wall, she closed her eyes and pictured Luke. Behind her lids, an image of him flickered through her mind. He was somewhere hot and dry. The sun beat down on him. His mind was full of horror as he stared at…
She blinked. Had she really seen him?
Footsteps sounded down the corridor, and her body tensed. They were coming for her. She concentrated and picked out two sets of feet and the low murmur of voices. Wrapping the sheet tighter around her, she waited.
The footsteps came to a halt in the corridor outside her cell, and she glanced at the small window. Memories prickled along her neck; this wasn’t the first time she’d been in a room like this while people studied her through the glass.
Someone peered back at her, the lock clicked, and the door swung open.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The drive back to the airfield seemed to go on forever, and the sun was setting by the time they pulled up beside the plane, one of those fantastically dramatic African sunsets that paints the sky in scarlet and burnt orange.
Luke couldn’t get the image of the charred ring of greasy ash out of his mind. How many had died there? Two hundred? More? It was hard to believe so much human life could be reduced to so little. Luke had seen some bad things in his time in the Legion, but he’d never managed to acquire the cavalier attitude to human life and death that so many of his fellow men quickly developed.
He felt filthy, the dust sticking to his sweat-soaked skin, and he wanted to stand under an icy cold shower and wash away the sensation of death that clung to him like a miasma of evil.
Callum climbed out of the vehicle behind him. “We’ll find them,” he said.
“Yeah.” It was true. The trucks had to come from somewhere. Whatever had been used to kill those people had to be brought into the country. He turned to Jacob. “I want you to get back to Diva. See if the doctor’s finished with the autopsy report, and I want samples, blood, sweat, everything sent to the UK tonight. Get rid of the body, pay off the doctor, and then I suggest you get out of here. We’re going to start digging, and once we do, you can bet they’ll come searching for where the original leak came from. They’ll be coming after you.”
“I’ll be on a plane out of the country tonight.”
“Make sure you are,” he said and slapped him on the shoulder. “You did well. This may be the break we’ve been looking for.”
He climbed the steps into the plane and poked his head through the cockpit door. “We ready to go?”
“Yeah, just waiting for you to get on board.”
“Good. Take us home.”
He unfastened his weapons belt, and tossed it on the seat behind him then sat down next to Callum, rested his head back against the seat, and closed his eyes. Images of Jenna filled his mind. Where was she? Had they harmed her? An intense sense of urgency filled him. They had to find her, but in the ten years investigating the Conclave, they’d never gotten close. He would never discover where they had taken Jenna unless he could find someone with enough to lose that Luke could convince them that talking was worth the risk. And he had to do it fast.
Beside him, Callum opened h
is laptop and powered up.
“We need satellite photographs of the area,” Luke said. “There were a number of trucks. We need to see them, identify them. They had to come from somewhere.”
“I’ll get someone working on it.”
“We also need a list of international companies working over here. Cross-reference them against Conclave profiles. See if we can’t narrow it down. I want to know who their contact is in Ivory Coast before we land, and I want to know everything about them.”
Callum typed into the laptop, but it would be a while before the information started coming in. Luke stretched out on the row of seats at the front of the plane. Again, behind his closed lids he saw an image of Jenna, her beautiful face twisted in pain. The thought of her suffering filled him with anguish.
He sat up and pulled out his cell phone, punched in the number of Scotland Yard.
“Could I talk to Detective Inspector Mitchell? It’s about the murder of David Griffith.”
A moment later, the call was transferred. “Mitchell, here.”
“Luke Grafton.”
There was a moment’s silence. “I hope you’re calling to tell me you’re coming in.”
“Is there any news of Jenna?” He knew the answer before Mitchell spoke.
“No. It’s as if she’s vanished in a puff of fucking smoke.”
Luke didn’t bother saying anything else, just ended the call and laid his head back. Finally, he drifted off into a restless sleep.
“Luke?”
As Callum spoke his name, he woke abruptly.
“The satellite information has come in. I think we may have found something, a convoy of trucks setting off from Diva, fitting the time schedule.”
“Any clue who they belong to?”
“They were aid trucks, supposedly taking building materials inland, but they were provided by one of the companies we’ve been investigating, a big international drug company, Flexley International. Stefan told me to tell you something.”
“What is it?”
“He said Flexley is owned and run by a Gordon Haughton. Haughton used to own a research company a couple of decades back—Bentley Research.”
“The company Merrick and Jenna’s father worked for.” Sitting back in his seat, he grinned. “It’s him. It’s got to be. Get me everything there is on Haughton.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jenna backed away from the door as it was pushed open from outside. Two men came in, one dressed in black pants and a black sweater, the other in a white lab coat. She hugged the sheet tighter around herself as the first man’s gaze ran over her, lingering on her breasts, and something flickered to life in his eyes. He was good-looking in a hard way, his dark hair cut military short above a bony face, narrow lips, and pale eyes. Out of the two, he appeared the more human. Jenna instinctively caught the bundle he tossed at her and found it contained a pair of gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt.
“Get dressed.”
She searched the room for some privacy, but there was none. So she turned away and drew on the pants under the cover of the sheet, then dropped it to the floor and tugged the T-shirt over her head. Turning back, she found them watching her.
“Hold out your hands,” the man in black said, his face expressionless.
Jenna’s hands went automatically behind her back and she took another step away, only to come up against the wall of the cell.
The man followed; he moved in close and grabbed her upper arm, his fingers biting into the muscle. He pulled her hand from behind her back and slipped the bracelet of a set of cuffs around her wrist, yanked out the other arm, and fastened it so her hands were tied in front of her.
“Where am I?” Jenna asked. “Who are you?”
The man didn’t answer, just turned away. “Follow me.”
Jenna didn’t want to. A hollow feeling settled in her stomach.
A smile curled the corners of his mouth as he turned back. It didn’t reach his eyes, which remained cold as ice. “Do as we tell you and nothing will happen.”
Jenna searched his face but found nothing to reassure her, then glanced at the other man, the one in the lab coat, and a shiver of revulsion washed over her. He had white skin and pale hair and studied her out of bulging eyes as though she were some sort of specimen. He licked his lips, and Jenna looked quickly back at the first man and nodded once. She had no choice. At least if she got out of the cell, she might have some chance of being able to work out where she was and seeing if there was any way to get out of there.
They led her down a corridor of white walls and bright fluorescent lighting. There were no windows, and she realized they must be underground. A sense of claustrophobia tightened around her. Fear clogged her insides. David’s bloody remains flashed through her mind. That would be her in a few minutes, because she could not tell them what they wanted to know.
When she dragged her feet, the man behind shoved her none too gently in the lower back. She flashed him a look of hatred, and he frowned as though puzzled by her response.
Finally, they stopped by a metal door that led into a room only slightly larger than her cell. It reminded her of a doctor’s surgery, and the comparison did nothing to calm her fears. Swallowing the dread that rose up in her throat, she halted in the doorway. A hand touched the small of her back, and she jumped. It lingered for a moment, fingering her flesh, then shoved hard, causing her to stumble into the room.
A steel table stood in the center, with buckled straps fastened at each corner. Jenna stared at it, mesmerized, as a shudder of horror ran through her. Her gaze darted around the room, searching for anywhere to go, but there was no escape, and dread locked her muscles rigid.
They could do anything to her, and she was powerless to stop them. At the thought, the anger rose inside her, momentarily overcoming her fear. She thought about fighting, but with her hands cuffed in front of her, she had no chance. Still, she would fight rather than get on that table. They would have to drag her there kicking and screaming.
But the man in the lab coat pointed to a leather chair to one side. “Sit,” he said.
She sat. The other man approached her. “Hold out your hands.”
She didn’t move, and a slow smile curled his lips. His hand moved fast, his fist crashing into her face. Everything went black as her head slammed into the back of the seat. Sparks flashed in front of her eyes, and something warm trickled from her nose to her mouth—she tasted the sharp, metallic tang of her own blood. When the pain subsided, she blinked her eyes open. That small smile was still on his face but not reflected in his expressionless eyes.
“Hold out your hands.” He repeated the words.
Jenna licked the blood from her lip, but this time she raised her cuffed wrists while he unlocked the restraints and tossed them on the table.
Her head swam. The blow had shaken her, and not just physically. She knew it was meant to affect her psychologically, was meant to make her realize her vulnerability. Show her she was helpless, and they could do whatever they wished with her. Instead, it concentrated the hard little knot of hatred that twisted in her belly. She stared up at him, memorizing his face as he strapped first one wrist and then the second to the arms of the chair.
Reaching across, he swiped his finger over her chin and wiped the blood on her T-shirt, the crimson stark against the white cotton. For a moment, his hand cupped her breast and squeezed hard, and her gaze flew back to his face.
“Later,” he murmured and crouched down in front of her to fasten the straps around her ankles.
As she realized what he meant, she promised herself she would fight him before she let him touch her like that. The straps held her tight; there was no escape. Panic flared, and she forced it down, breathing slowly, deeply. She stared at the man and allowed her hatred to show in her face.
He straightened and backed away, le
aning against the far wall with his arms folded across his chest. “She’s all yours, Doc.”
Jenna’s gaze darted to the second man in the room. The doctor approached, and she flinched as he wiped the blood from her face with a paper towel, his touch almost gentle. He rolled a trolley close beside the chair, and she peered at it out of the corner of her eyes. It contained electronic equipment and a set of needles and bottles.
He patted her lower arm below the elbow and inserted a needle into the vein to collect blood. After he’d filled two small bottles, he labeled them and put them on the counter across the room.
Jenna concentrated on his actions, preventing her mind from thinking about what was to happen. He came back, looked at her for a moment, then hooked a finger in the neck of her T-shirt and tore it, exposing the tops of her breasts. Her eyes snapped closed, but she forced them open and watched as he taped two monitors to her chest. He fiddled with the dials of the machine and stepped back.
“Your name?”
Her gaze darted to the other man, who raised an eyebrow and made a move as though to straighten.
“Jenna Young.”
At the soft chuckle across the room, her hatred rose.
The man in the white coat took her through a series of questions about who she was and what she did, and she answered them truthfully. There was no reason not to—she was sure they must know this stuff already. They were calibrating some sort of lie detector. For a moment, she allowed herself to hope they would believe her when she told them she knew nothing—that they wouldn’t resort to torture—until her glance flicked again to the man leaning against the wall. His eyes followed the rise and fall of her breasts, and for the first time his expression was clear: he looked eager.
“Okay, it’s ready.” The doctor stepped away from her.
Though she hated to beg, she knew she had to try. “Please, don’t do this. I don’t know anything. I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
