"Another 'interested party?'" guessed Dash.
"But who?" demanded Peter.
Gideon shook his head. Panic threatened to boil if he let himself wonder who, a 'who' nasty enough to have scared Subrahmanyam off the island. "Let's go check on Walter. If he's up to it, he may remember something."
There was a well-appointed bedroom down the hall, one Gideon suspected Hollister had been using — there were ruffles on all the furniture. There Walter lay on a high, soft bed. His eyes were closed.
Anja, her expression worried, was running a cloth over his forehead. "He needs a doctor," she snarled, as soon as Gideon came through the door.
"I don't need no doctor," Walter, himself, snarled back, but without opening his eyes. "It's a broken collar bone, at most, and I'll live until the boys wrap this up."
Anja scowled at him. "You are a durak."
"It occurs to me..." Dash noticed, and then grabbed, a sandwich from a tray set on the night table. "We may end up hearing from the women, themselves."
Peter stared at him. "How do you figure that?"
Dash shrugged and bit into the sandwich. "We have Anja. The ladies may see that, from wherever they're hiding, and figure there's no more reason to keep away from us."
Gideon narrowed his eyes and tried very hard to believe Dash's theory. So the women were not in the hands of Hagar Subrahmanyam's mystery client. They were hiding. Merely hiding. They would come out, as in some elaborate game of hide-and-seek, once they saw the men had won.
Peter's eyes narrowed in a mirror of Gideon's expression. "Jeez, Dash. I suppose that's...possible."
Anja shot them all a dark look. "What have you done to my friends that they run from you halfway across the world?"
Dash sucked in his lips. Peter ran a hand over his mouth, and Gideon averted his eyes. None of them were about to attempt answering that question. Meanwhile Gideon considered Dash's theory. Could something so pleasant possibly be true? Just then, his cell phone rang.
The eyes of everyone in the room snapped to the phone clipped to Gideon's belt.
"It could be headquarters," Peter suggested, but he was staring at the phone as hard as anybody else. "They may have some questions about the jet we, uh, borrowed."
Gideon's hand felt like it was moving in slow motion as he reached for the phone. Intense disappointment arrowed through him as he read the number printed on the screen. Not Olivia's. But neither was it a number he recognized. Warily, he raised the phone to his ear. "Yes?"
"Gideon?" Olivia's voice, so desired but unexpected, nearly sent him to the floor.
"Uh...uh..." Gideon reached out for something, anything, to support his suddenly weak knees. He wrapped a hand around the post of the bed. "Olivia?"
"You're kidding." Dash's wide eyes said he hadn't believed his own theory about the women coming out of hiding.
"Is Brittany with her?" Peter wanted to know.
"And Shana?" Dash asked.
Gideon waved them down. "Where are you?" First things first. Find out where she was, then kill her — kill her — for having put him through this. Hide-and-seek my foot.
"Can't you tell?" Olivia whispered softly. "You know, from the phone signal?"
"Where you are?" Gideon frowned. "If I could do that, I'd be there right now — with you over my knee!"
There was a short silence after which Olivia said sharply, "Being a bully, as usual."
It belatedly occurred to Gideon he couldn't afford to antagonize her just yet. He needed to find out where she was first. Then he could antagonize her all he wanted. "Olivia, listen — "
"No, you listen. I don't know where we are!"
Gideon blinked. The relief that had been rising in him like a balloon stopped dead. "You don't know where you are?"
"This is not the time to criticize." Olivia went snappish again.
"I'm not criticizing."
"What did she say?" Peter wanted to know.
"Is Shana there?" Dash demanded.
"Be quiet," Gideon hissed. He turned his attention back to the phone. "Olivia. I'm sorry." He reached down, way down, for his self control. "I didn't mean to criticize. Of course not. But...perhaps you could explain. How is it that you don't know where you are?"
There was another pause over the airwaves. "You're going to get mad again," she finally said.
Gideon closed his eyes. He'd thought he was at the bottom, but perhaps he had more, just a little bit more patience. "Olivia." He made his voice very soft. "Please."
"Oh, fine," she said. "We've been kidnapped. Apparently by terrorists. And I have some idea of where we are. Underground."
Gideon's eyes flew open. "You've been kidnapped? By terrorists?"
"You're yelling," Olivia warned.
"Damn straight I'm yelling!" End. Terror brought him to the very end of any patience. "How the — ? Who — ? All right. Gimme a second here." Gideon bent over and held one knee with his hand while he struggled to breathe. Everything he'd ever learned about such situations had just flown from his brain.
"They've been kidnapped?" Dash asked.
"Is Brittany there?" Peter wanted to know.
"Okay." Gideon was still struggling to breathe. "Let's take this from the top. You're underground — but not very far, or the phone wouldn't work — and you're prisoners. How long have you been there?"
"I — Now, don't yell."
"I won't yell."
"Well, that's something else we don't know," Olivia admitted. "They knocked us out with something to capture us, and took away our watches."
"They." Gideon latched onto that. "How many of them are there?"
"Oh. Let's see. At least three. But I assume there are more down the hall."
"Shana," Dash insisted.
"Brittany," Peter put in.
Gideon glanced in their direction, then asked. "Are Shana and Brittany with you?"
"Oh, yeah. Sure. We all got taken together. Except for Anja. I don't know where she is."
"We have Anja," Gideon told her.
"Oh...That's great!"
Sue him, but Gideon couldn't have cared less just then that he had the Russian scientist safe. "What time were you taken?"
"Time? Uh..." Gideon could practically see Olivia wince.
"I won't yell," he promised softly
"Well, it was around one o'clock. Fact is, we'd just spied you and Peter and Dash outside the hotel and were wondering what to do, when these guys sneaked up on us from behind."
One o'clock, Gideon thought, and closed his eyes again. They'd been taken three hours ago. They could be anywhere, including another island.
"Don't worry," he told her anyway. "We'll find you."
"How?" Olivia wanted to know. "Can you home in on the phone?"
Even though this phone didn't have a GPS chip, he could home in on it if she could manage to stay on the line — and if he still had the jet they'd hijacked to Antigua. But he'd sent the jet home, figuring he was in enough trouble as it was. "I have resources," he told Olivia. He'd find some.
"Good," she stated, "because, um...I haven't told you all of it."
Gideon grabbed onto the bedpost again. "There's more?"
"Well, uh, you know that virus you told me Anja was working on, the one that could deliver any kind of disease?"
Gideon's fingers whitened on the bedpost. "They injected you." His voice was flat, betraying nothing of the white hot rage that had just leaped into being. He was going to eviscerate these thugs. Tear their guts out through their throats.
"Yes," Olivia confessed. "They, uh, seemed to think this would, um, motivate us."
"Motivate you?" The rage was so huge Gideon was seeing everything through its haze; the bed with Walter and Anja watching closely, and Peter and Dash whose faces were identically frozen.
"They said they need to find what's the 'back door,'" Olivia told Gideon over the phone. "Do you have any idea what that means?"
"Haven't got a clue," Gideon said.
"Oh."
"Woops, gotta go," Olivia said, and that was it. The connection was severed. She was gone.
Gideon took the phone away from his ear and stared at it. His hand shook as he restrained the urge to crush the thing to bits. Olivia was even then being confronted by a bunch of crazy thugs, and he couldn't do a thing about it.
"Okay," he breathed, and looked at the others, who were all staring at him. The red rage passed, and a cool, clear calm settled over him. He had to think now, really think. "They're prisoners of a band of terrorist thugs, possibly underground, possibly not even on this island. Any suggestions?"
Dash crossed his arms over his chest and tightened his jaw. "I could go for killing somebody."
Peter cracked his knuckles. "Yeah. I wouldn't mind taking someone out."
"Or," Anja said, looking from one to the other of the men with alert intelligence. "You could use Hollister's dogs."
All three men turned to stare at her.
"Yes-s-s," hummed Peter, his voice eager, optimism clearly rising. "They're tracking dogs."
"If a bit undomesticated," added Dash dryly. "But I'm game if you are."
"There's only one problem," Peter said, and winced.
"Right." Dash closed his eyes. "We don't have anything to give them to track."
"No?" Gideon stuck his cell phone in his trouser pocket. His fingers came across the scrap of lace he'd been carrying about — all right, a trophy — since the night he'd confiscated it from Olivia.
Dash turned to him. "You have something."
Gideon grimaced.
"He does," Peter confirmed, watching Gideon's face.
"I do," Gideon admitted. His eyes narrowed. "But you all have to promise to turn your backs when I present it to the dogs."
Dash tilted his head, looking confused, but Peter laughed. "Way to go, Gid."
~~~
Olivia hastily shut the phone and handed it to Brittany when she heard the sound of heavily booted feet heading toward their cell.
"What am I supposed to do with it?" Brittany hissed.
"Throw it under the cot," Shana ordered.
Brittany had just tossed the slim silhouette phone under the iron cot when three thugs, including the leader, Leo, hove into view. Olivia squinted and tried to remember. Were these faces the same ones she'd seen before, or different? Gideon had seemed keen on finding out how many of them there were.
The leader came to a spread-legged halt, hands on his hips. "Well?" he smirked. "Any sudden memories? Any of you now recall what is the back door?"
"Um...we're trying," Olivia piped up, remembering Gideon's injunction to humor them. "We're trying really hard to recall."
But she didn't seem to have the knack of it. Leo turned to her with a snarl. "Evil capitalist whores."
"Doesn't have a very long script, does he?" Shana observed in an undertone.
"Not to mention this role has been done to death," Brittany added.
The leader narrowed his eyes and Olivia told herself to inform her friends about the humoring business as soon as she had the chance. But then, Leo smiled.
"You will think faster, remember better," he promised. "Very soon." His gaze went around the walls of their cell. "Dr. Subrahmanyam explained it all to me. How we swim in a sea of bacteria and viruses. A healthy body fights most of them off. But for someone who has been injected with the vector..." His smile widened. "For someone like that, it is open season for the sea of germs. They can come right in."
He started to laugh. It was not a pleasant, social laugh. He was turning to go, having done his work, Olivia supposed, when the sound of Old MacDonald having a farm stopped him.
Olivia did her very best not to flinch. She noticed that both Shana and Brittany, like her, turned faces of utter innocence in the direction of the thugs.
The leader stared directly into Olivia's eyes as Old MacDonald had his farm again. "It's a telephone," he realized, then snapped his fingers. Immediately, one of his cohorts dragged a huge set of keys out of his pocket and stuck the biggest of the keys into the cell door. He stomped inside, followed by the third man.
Run? Olivia considered, but Leo stood blocking the open cell doorway. Besides, Gideon had told her to be submissive. He hadn't told her to make a desperate and doomed attempt to escape.
It took the thugs three more playings of Old MacDonald to find the phone under the cot.
"Very clever," Leo said, his tone approving, and gestured for the phone. Olivia watched with muscles tensing as Leo put it to his ear. Surely Gideon hadn't tried to call her back. He'd have understood she got off the phone because she was no longer alone. Right? He'd understood that.
Leo simply listened to whoever was on the other end of the line, smiling. But his smile soon faded. "No," he told the person on the other end of the phone. "I am not interested in refinancing my home. No. But — " His eyes widened. "I don't care what kind of interest rate you can find me. I'm not interested!" He pushed the end button viciously. "Fucking telemarketers."
Everyone in the room murmured in agreement.
"You gotta get on the 'do not call' list," Shana muttered to Brittany.
"Now you tell me," Brittany muttered back.
The leader held up Brittany's cell phone and smiled again. "It does not matter who you called. They will never find you here. Or at least, not in time." And he laughed, the same unpleasantly satisfied laugh as before. Then he turned, and cohorts following, marched back down the hall.
"There goes our communication," Shana mourned, hanging on the bars of the cell to try to peer down the hall.
"What did Gideon say?" Brittany asked, turning to Olivia.
"Um..." Olivia bit her lower lip. How to put the best spin possible on what Gideon had said — and not said? "Uh, he had good news and even better news. He has Anja."
"Which I suppose is better than these cutthroats having her," Shana remarked with a sigh.
"Yes," Olivia agreed. "Other than that, he said to hang tight and he'll rescue us. Oh yeah, and to humor them. Be submissive."
Shana snorted. "Not much chance of being anything else."
"Were the guys with him?" Brittany asked.
Olivia snorted. "They were peppering him with questions about the two of you the whole time we were talking."
Shana looked over with a frown. "Really?"
"That's what I heard."
Brittany turned to stare at the wall. "Damn," she said.
"So." Shana crossed her arms over her chest. "How are they going to rescue us?"
Olivia had no idea.
Brittany turned at her silence. "They have no idea."
"Well..."
"So, this was more of a wish." Shana waved one of her hands. "Rather than a plan."
"Well..."
"Damn." Brittany sat in a heap on the floor. "Damn, damn, damn."
"Oh, now. It isn't as bad as all that." Though Olivia wondered if she wasn't starting to feel a little nauseous. One of the germs in the sea all around them starting to take root?
"It's bad," said Brittany, and rested her forehead on her upraised knees. "If I don't get out of this my kids are going to be raised by Blake. Christ."
Olivia winced.
"And I will never have had a real love affair," Shana sighed, leaning against the cell's bars.
"For heaven's sake!" Brittany exclaimed.
"I said love affair," Shana clarified. "The kind Dash — Well, never mind. It's not going to happen."
"All right, all right. Let's think," Olivia suggested. "Rather than expect the worst."
"Okay, I'll tell you what I think." Shana rubbed her throat. "I think I'm starting to come down with some
thing."
"Bull," Brittany said.
"I do."
"Even if we did catch something, it wouldn't start symptoms this fast," Brittany claimed.
"And Brittany ought to know, being the mother of two young children," Olivia said hopefully. But she suddenly wondered if she was getting a stomach flu. "We may feel sick simply due to the power of suggestion."
Shana straightened from her position leaned against the bars. "Hey, I just had an idea."
"No kidding?" Brittany put her forehead on her knees again.
"No kidding." Shana jerked her thumb in the direction of the hall. "These guys need us alive. If we got sick faster, or — or — worse than they planned, they won't have a chance of getting the information they want out of us."
Brittany lifted her head off her knees.
Olivia frowned at Shana. "So, you're saying...?"
Shana started toward them. "I'm saying, let's play sick, really sick."
Olivia's frown eased. She was beginning to get the picture. "They'll let down their guard."
"For sure they'll open the door," Shana said.
"And maybe they'll come inside," Brittany finished.
"Since they won't imagine we'll quick jump up and run out," Olivia went on.
Shana clapped her hands. "Locking the door after us."
The three of them looked at each other, excitement and a seed of optimism in the air.
"It's crazy," Brittany said.
"You're right," Shana agreed. Her shoulders drooped. "It would never work."
"Maybe not, but — " Brittany turned to Olivia. "Do you think if we just sit here and humor these thugs, Gideon and the guys can find and rescue us?"
Olivia bit her lower lip. "I think they'll try."
"But fail," Shana guessed.
"They don't even know where we are," Olivia pointed out.
"So..." Brittany said. "Our only real chance of getting out of here is by trying to escape by ourselves, no matter what the risk."
Shana sucked in her lips. "That sums it up."
"Yup," agreed Olivia.
"Okay, then!" Brittany clapped her hands and rubbed them together. "What are we waiting for?"
"A miracle?" Olivia suggested. Heck, she was no secret agent. Escaping from captivity by terrorists, while drugged, was outside her scope of abilities.
Brittany was unfazed. "I can't let my kids' future hang on a miracle." She turned to Shana. "Think you can make some we-are-sick looking glop out of the dust and spider webs that are in such plentiful supply around here?"
Indiscreet Ladies of Green Ivy Way Page 24
