“Nothing to say?” he teased, pressing his knee into my back hard; my chin hit the metal floor of the van and scraped it. Pain was beginning to radiate through my body. I closed my eyes and mentally reached out to Patrick, mentally reached out to Brad. I didn’t believe in that crap one bit, the idea that someone could psychically reach out to another person, but I was in a life and death situation here, and I figured it couldn’t hurt.
“What are you going to do with me?” I asked, my voice muffled by the floor. My captor shoved his knee down one more time, then released and sat back. I tried to roll over, to sit up, but the van was moving too quickly; it seemed like every time I tried to shift, the van would turn and I’d go sliding back to my stomach. This seemed to amuse my captor, who was sitting against the wall of the van.
“I actually have no interest in you,” he said. “You’re bait. A pawn. I want the big fish.”
“Who’s the big fish?” I asked. “Brad?”
My captor laughed loudly at this. “Bradley White? A big fish? No, sweetheart, Bradley White is a minnow in the ocean. He’s nothing. I’m after his boss.”
I didn’t know what to say. Brad was his own boss. I thought of the documents I’d seen, the inventory with the lists of guns. I’d never been able to put it into context, and I hadn’t been able to find any other information besides that isolated list. Was this man an arms dealer?
“I think you’ve probably got the wrong person,” I said, my voice shaking. “Brad is a hotel owner and operator, nothing more. He’s got money, though; you could be a very rich man if you give me back to him in one piece.” I wasn’t about to tell my captor how much money Brad had, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try to appeal to his sense of greed and self-interest. “Whoever you’re working for can’t possibly pay you as much as all this is worth. Brad could make sure you never have to worry about money again.”
This was the wrong thing to say. My captor leaped off the wall and back onto my back, straddling me from behind and pressing his gun to the base of my head. I saw stars.
“Do I look like I need money, bitch? Now shut the fuck up. If you talk again, I’ll kill you.” To emphasize this, he pushed the barrel of the gun hard against my head, and my forehead and nose slammed into the floor of the van. I sniffed, sure that my nose was bleeding, but I kept quiet.
After a moment, he got off of me and moved to the front of the van. He opened a small window between the back of the van and the front, and spoke to the driver in a language I didn’t understand. The driver said something back, and my captor grunted in agreement, and then shut the door again. He sat back.
I looked around, trying to see anything I could use as a weapon. If I could get out of the handcuffs, or, hell, even if I couldn’t, I could get out of the back of the van and take my chances landing on the road if I was able to paralyze my attacker for even a moment. But, the van was stripped and completely empty. It was pitch black except for the light that came through the window in the front. That light was just enough for me to see the bulky shape of my captor against the black paint of the van.
I tried to stay focused on him, tried to memorize his features. Sweat rolled into my eyes and, with my hands cuffed behind my back, I could only try to rub it away with my shoulder. The salty sweat stung, and the fabric of my shirt only added to the rough feeling against my eyes. I slumped back for a moment, blinking as I realized the salt in my eyes wasn’t just from sweat; it was from tears.
I felt my breath shake as I inhaled and exhaled slowly. I wasn’t a yoga instructor anymore, but I had been one for five years in college and just after. The one thing I took with me from my yoga practice was that any posture, any obstacle, can be conquered with a strong, sound breath. Our brains functioned better, our nervous system calmed itself. Our fight or flight instinct disappeared. I forced my breath to move in and out as slowly as possible while I kept my eyes on my captor. I began to notice details about the van. The engine had a loudness to it that suggested trouble—it either had recently had work or would need it soon. The paint job was fresh; I could smell it. Who knew what color the van had been before, but the interior and exterior colors were likely not the same as how they had started.
I tuned my ears into my captor talking to the driver. His accent was definitely American. I tried to place the region. Not Southern, and not New York or Boston. It was a fairly non-descript accent, which meant Midwest or, perhaps, the West Coast. I had heard about a number of terror cells being founded in places in the Midwest that wouldn’t normally draw suspicion: Minneapolis, Minnesota; Kansas City, Kansas; Columbus, Ohio.
With my journalist senses on high alert, I was able to keep my brain occupied enough to calm myself down. Distraction to focus. I continued to be watchful and alert, my brain moving quickly as I tried to envision myself escaping, somehow, before we got to wherever my captor was taking me. I knew if he took me out of the van, I probably wouldn’t be alive much longer.
I laid back and closed my eyes. It was impossible for me to sleep, obviously, but I knew that I could trick my body a bit into relaxing further by mimicking the actions of sleep. Eyes closed, body slack, breath slow, I began to calm myself down from the inside out.
“Hey!” A rough voice accompanied by a kick pulled me out of my trance. I opened my eyes, and looked up at my captor, still hooded and hidden from my view. “Hey, what the fuck?”
I didn’t respond.
“Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. In two minutes, the van is going to stop. And when it does,” my captor said, making his way from my right side to my left, closer to the back double doors. When he mentioned the van stopping, my heart began to pound fast and hard in my chest. “When it does, I’m gonna pull you out, and you’re gonna come real nice. Real quiet. There’s no one else around anyway, so there’s no need to waste your screams.”
“Are you going to kill me?” I asked.
“Shut the fuck up,” he snarled. “Stand up.” The van slowed to a stop and, in what felt like one motion, my captor grabbed me with both hands, kicked the door open with his foot, and pulled me out. I landed on the ground in a heap, the breath forced out of my lungs as I grunted. I looked around. We were on a gravel road, and the dust from the road clouded my vision. When it cleared, I could see that we were in a remote area, the country of Morocco, and we’d pulled up in front of a house that looked like any other non-descript Moroccan housing. A few walls slapped together made from metal that didn’t look as strong as it probably was, mixed with clay and stone. My captor picked me up by the back of my shirt and tried to drag me into the house. I let my feet slacken and my body turn to dead weight, though, inside, I was buzzing with terror. Again, I knew, if he took me into that house, I was as good as dead.
He didn’t bother asking me ‘what the fuck’ this time; he knew. He strained to lift me and eventually picked me up and threw me over his shoulder. I turned rigid, then, to try to make my body harder to hold onto.
“You fucking bitch,” he said, his breath ragged and challenged.
“I’m not going to let you kill me without a fight,” I said. “I hope you know that.”
We reached the door and, in place of a response, he kicked the door open and tossed me against a wall that looked like it would have been a living room if the house had been furnished. On the other side of the room was a sink. Two chairs and a table sat in the middle. Other than that, the large room was unfurnished.
I shook my head, trying to clear the fuzziness of being thrown around, when my captor came to my side and pulled my arms, still cuffed, toward the wall. He ran a chain through my cuffs and fastened it to some sort of attachment in the wall. Then, he punched me hard. I felt a flash of pain and I saw light… then I blacked out.
Brad
“So,” I began, shifting uncomfortably, “this is kind of awkward.”
“Yeah,” Patrick said. “It’s pretty much all awkward.”
We stood together at the restaurant where, just a day earlier, Patrick a
nd Cassie had been having breakfast. I tried to think of it as ‘breakfast,’ not as a ‘date,’ though I would have definitely wondered about that under different circumstances.
My plane had landed an hour earlier and I’d come straight to the restaurant. Patrick was there as a witness; his team had been, according to him, investigating since he’d called it in when Cassie hadn’t returned from the bathroom and he’d gone looking for her.
“Well,” I said, clearing my throat. “Let me try to help it out. Basically, I don’t know what’s going on with you and Cassie, and I don’t care. My only concern is finding her alive and in one piece. One she’s back, then you and I can have a gentlemen’s conversation about who her boyfriend is.” I sized him up as I spoke. He wasn’t a bad looking guy, though he didn’t seem to have any attributes I was lacking. His posture suggested he was ready for anything; even after the last twenty-four hours, he stood straight and alert. Of course, I couldn’t help but notice that he looked like he’d recently been through a mangler.
He also looked confused.
“What do you… me and Cassie?” He shook his head as he forced the words out. “I don’t know what…” He looked at me and I watched as awareness dawned on him. “Oh, wait, you think… No! That’s not what I meant by things being awkward. Cassie and I are not… no, she’s your girlfriend and I don’t do that. Neither does she.”
“So, I’m to suppose that you just happened to travel to Morocco at the same time as Cassie—and at the same time I was in South Africa—by coincidence?” I couldn’t keep the sneer out of my voice. What kind of an idiot did this asshole think I was?
“No, and that’s… that’s the awkward part. Cassie didn’t tell you… I’m… well, I was, I’m probably not anymore, investigating you.”
Years of practice in takeovers and business meetings, not to mention my interactions with Manuel Brown, had taught me to keep my face carefully neutral no matter what was thrown at me, so I knew my face and body didn’t change. Inside, however, my heart surged blood through my body and my mind moved faster, trying to assess what exactly Patrick Shim was investigating about me. How much did he know? Every word suddenly became a landmine.
“Oh?” I said, arching my eyebrows in what I knew would be a socially understood response. “Oh. Well, yes, yes, I suppose that would make this more awkward. And, now I’ve gone and made it as awkward as possible by suggesting my girlfriend is cheating on me with you.” Another tactic from the board room—bring the focus back to the other person as quickly as possible.
“Yeah. Well, obviously my investigation is suspended for at least the time being, and, uh, I hope that we can cooperate here, uh, in the interest of bring Cassie back safely.”
I smiled. I could see that my confidence and experience had thrown Patrick off his game. He was searching for his words, and beads of sweat had broken out on his temples.
“Do you need to sit down?” I asked, pulling out a chair at a nearby table. “You look like you’ve had a rough go of it.”
“No,” Patrick said firmly. “I’m fine.” He cleared his throat, but I saw him slowly exhale, a tell that showed how nervous he was.
“What do you have so far?”
Patrick looked at me sharply, and I realized that my question could have been regarding information about Cassie, or information about his investigation of me.
“About Cassie,” I clarified. “What leads have come in? Who’s seen them? When was the last sighting? Have there been any ransom calls? Obviously money is no option; whatever they want, I’ll pay it. I’m sure Cassie has told you—or,” I added dryly, “you’ve found out on your own, that I have plenty of money.”
“There haven’t been any leads yet,” Patrick responded, ignoring my comment about the ransom. “No one saw them leave, though we know they left from the back. There are no cameras. No evidence of any getaway vehicle in the back lot. She went to use the restroom, and, when she didn’t come back after ten minutes, I went to look for her. So, that’s the maximum amount of lead time they had. It’s not a lot, but… it was obviously enough.”
“Whatever resources you need, I’ll fund them. Private investigators, more manpower, whatever it takes. We need to find her before the sun goes down today.”
I felt a buzz in my pocket and assumed it was Simon, but it was a text from an unknown number. South Africa will send inventory today, it said. I sighed. Relieved, but now that seemed like a pebble in the ocean in terms of importance. Of course, it would make Manuel Brown happy, and that was of the utmost importance.
Especially now. I knew he had Cassie. I needed to get ahold of him and reason with him. I couldn’t let what had happened to Lorinda happen to Cassie. Not again. Never again.
While I had my phone in hand, I texted Simon. I’d texted him several times since my plane landed, but he hadn’t responded. I was starting to get worried.
“Mr. White,” Patrick said, interrupting my thoughts. “We just got a tip. A restaurant down the street has some video footage of a van driving recklessly around the same time Cassie was taken.”
“Let’s go check it out,” I said, putting my phone back in my pocket without waiting to see if Simon had texted me back.
We walked onto the sidewalk and over to the makeshift headquarters that had been set up outside the restaurant. The NCA agents on site tried to hide their stares, but I found more than a few of them regarding Patrick and me walking together. I wondered how much money was exchanging hands and what the bets actually were. Billionaire becomes allies with the NCA agent who investigated him? NCA agent steals billionaire’s girlfriend under his nose?
“Hey!” I barked at the lot of them, “Get back to work and piss off with your gossip and staring. You’ve got a kidnapped woman to find. If anything happens to her because you were too busy fucking around to find her, I’ll have all your jobs and I’ll own your lives.”
I stared at them until the last one looking at me looked away. I turned back to Patrick, who was staring at me with a look that smacked of both fear and respect.
“Now,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder lightly, though he still winced, “let’s find Cassie.”
Cassie
My captor sat at the table, tapping away at his iPhone. Every time I said something, he ignored me, no longer even looking up when I moved or spoke. Another man, the one I assumed had been driving the car, came in and out several times before sitting next to my captor at the table. They began to speak in low voices, and I could tell that the driver was definitely not an American. I strained to see their faces, though the reason I couldn’t see them had nothing to do with my eye sight; they were wearing their hoodies up and also wearing gloves; I couldn’t even get a feel for their skin tone.
I thought about what I had to bargain with. What I could offer that might buy me some extra time. I’d seen a few weapons, and I knew both men had at least two guns each on them as they sat at the table. That didn’t give me great odds. But, I was still alive, so, statistically, I had already beaten the odds. I was fairly certain based on my internal clock that I had been in captivity for longer than twenty-four hours, though how much longer I couldn’t say. Twice I had believed my captor would kill me, and twice he had not. So, it stood to reason that he was intentionally keeping me alive to use me, as he’d said, to get to Brad.
I knew Brad had to be close. With the amount of resources he had at his disposal, all I needed to do was stay alive until he could get to me. I knew he was searching. And then there was Patrick. Patrick had said he was giving me five minutes in the bathroom, which meant that he had to have come looking for me almost immediately after I’d been taken.
A horrifying thought crossed my mind as I realized that, because of my relationship with Brad, and because of Patrick’s relationship with me, the two were bound to meet. To have some conversations. At the very least, Brad would find out that Patrick and I had been at breakfast together when I’d been taken.
Horror overtook me. What if Brad was a
ngry and had written me off? He would never, ever do that, a strong voice rang out in my mind. And I knew that he wouldn’t—he was a gentleman and a knight in shining armor if there ever was one; he wouldn’t abandon me. Not until he knew I was safe. I felt my ears rush with noise as I realized that he may actually believe I’d been cheating on him.
“I’m a writer,” I suddenly blurted out. I slammed my mouth shut as both my captor and the driver looked over at me as if I’d just announced I was having a baby. “I mean, I’m a professional writer. It’s what I do for my job, for a living. I write. Stories and stuff. I… I thought you might want to know that.”
“Are you threatening us?” the driver asked me incredulously. He looked at my captor. “Is she threatening us?”
“I don’t know what the fuck she’s trying to do,” my captor said to his companion.
“I can help you… further your cause,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “You’re going after Brad because of something with Legacy, right? It’s something political? I can help. I can help write a… a manifesto or something for you.”
I was trying to avoid calling myself a journalist or indicating in any way that I wrote for a magazine. I obviously knew what had happened to journalists when they’d been kidnapped in the Middle East. I had no clue what would happen if my captor found out I was a journalist, but I didn’t think it would help me.
But, if he knew that I could contribute, if I could help whatever he was trying to do… that was another reason to keep me alive. Even if I could just keep him talking. I was realizing that I needed to do literally anything to stay alive, and each minute, each second, was a victory.
Billionaire Romance Box Set: The Billionaire's Legacy: An Alpha Billionaire Romance Box Set Page 15
