The jet interior felt so empty without Sam and Kyle. He knew they would be in a panic by now. Xander wondered how Sarah would feel about this. As if things weren’t complicated enough, the amazing night that he shared with her last night threw a whole new monkey wrench into things. They had connected on another level, which at the time, he thought rivaled where he and Natalie had reached just a couple of weeks ago. But he didn’t have time to worry about Sarah. She was a big girl. She would understand why Xander had to go and find Natalie. The question was, what would happen if he could save Natalie? It was then that a feeling came over him that he didn’t like at all. But it was a feeling that he understood as a certain truth. He couldn’t be with either one of them. If he could somehow manage to save Natalie, the best thing he could do was continue what he had already started trying to do: leave her alone. Same for Sarah. Though Sarah understood his world, and even operated well in it, she still had been nothing but in danger since the day they met. Enough was enough. He couldn’t keep dragging them into his mess. He could no longer be selfish. He needed to find Natalie, bring her to safety, then leave her and Sarah the hell alone.
Forever.
The Worst Kind of Trouble
Sarah paced the kitchen like a woman waiting on her spouse’s cancer diagnosis. She had checked her iPhone several hundred times over the last hour. Hoping each time that Xander had answered her messages. The television on the wall hadn’t stopped reporting on Natalie Rockwell since they had turned it on. No new information had come in. The world was turning to social media in an outpouring of fear and emotion for the safety of their beloved sweetheart. Natalie had played the lead in two of the last three highest-grossing romance movies to open in the United States. America—the world—adored her. Xander adored her. Sarah knew it from the first moment she was in a room with them. Their chemistry was palpable. Magnetic. Sarah thought the same of her and Xander last night. Now, she didn’t know what to think.
“Sarah, for God’s sake, can you please either take a seat or wear out the floor in the other room? You are absolutely driving me mad,” Sam said from her seat at the kitchen table. She had been on the phone calling everyone she knew, gathering all the info she could gather, and the entire time she had been forced to watch Sarah walk a hundred miles in about a ten-foot radius.
“I’m sorry, Sam, but I’m worried. I don’t know what else to do.”
“We’re all worried, Sarah. But driving us bonkers won’t help anything,” Sam continued, frustrated.
“Would you all cool it?” Kyle spoke up. “Seriously! Jesus H.”
Sarah stopped pacing. “Sorry. Does anyone have anything?”
Sam took a deep breath to settle her nerves.
“That was Marv I just spoke with. He hasn’t heard anything. The only thing I have learned is that Xander left in the G6 this morning, but they wouldn’t give me a destination. The man said Xander told him specifically to keep it quiet. Even to me. Xander must have disabled my tracker that he knows I have on all of his toys. That means Xander doesn’t want us involved. For our sakes, no doubt.”
Sarah’s shoulders stiffened. “Well, he doesn’t have the final say in that.”
“I agree,” said Sam. “I will be able to find out where Xander is going, but, it will take a little longer. However, I can already tell you, it’s Paris. Unless Xander knows something we don’t, he will start there.”
“Then what the hell are we waiting for?” Kyle stood up, his arms held out to his sides.
“You have a plane I don’t know about, Kyle?” Sam asked.
“No, Sam. I don’t have a plane. But we can charter one.”
“We may not have to,” Sarah told them as she unlocked her phone.
“Mary?” Sam asked.
“Mary who?” Kyle asked.
Sarah set down her phone and looked at both of them. She could hardly contain her enthusiasm.
“Mary Hartsfield. The new director of the CIA. She just texted me back. A plane will be at the Blue Grass Airport in half an hour, ready to take us to Paris.”
Zhanna walked into the room when she heard Sarah’s update.
“Nice work, Sarah.” Sam stood from the table and glanced between Sarah and Zhanna. “I’ve got some clothes for the two of you. That is, if you even want to go, Zhanna. You have no stake in this.”
Zhanna raised an eyebrow and folded her arms across her chest.
“No stake? I will never be able to repay Xander for ridding the world of my evil father. But this will be good start, saving his sweetheart.”
All three of them looked at Sarah, knowing that last bit would sting. Sarah dropped her head to her phone and an awkward silence followed.
Zhanna tried to recover, “I am sorry—”
Sarah interrupted Zhanna. “It’s fine. I just want to help Xander.”
Another awkward silence. Sam finally and mercifully broke it.
“Great. It will mean a lot to Xander that you are willing to help, Zhanna. Kyle, pack a bag. I’ll reach out to Jack. Xander had chartered him a plane to return from the Ukraine to the US. Maybe I can get him to divert and fly into Paris instead. I bet he’ll want to help as well. We have no idea what or whom we are dealing with, so we will need all the help we can get.”
“I agree.” Kyle looked at Sarah. “Sarah, if you can get the CIA involved, that will help. Don’t you think, Sam?”
“Of course.”
Sarah put away her phone. “Mary said we have the full cooperation of the CIA. It doesn’t hurt that Xander has taken out just about everyone on their most-wanted list this year. She said it also doesn’t hurt that Natalie is such a high profile. This is a big case for the CIA. If they can help bring her home, it will be great PR.”
“PR?” Kyle made a face. He didn’t like the sound of that.
“After a scandal like former Director Manning left behind, working with a mafia boss and all, the CIA needs all the good press we can get,” Sarah explained. “It will be a huge help for the start of Mary’s time as director as well. It can only help Xander, Kyle.”
“Whatever,” Kyle dismissed her. “Is there anything I can be doing?”
Sam answered, “Just keep trying to reach out to Xander. Out of all of us, you’re the one he will answer first.”
“How bad is this, you all?” Kyle asked. “You have dealt with this sort of thing before, right?”
Zhanna fielded Kyle’s question. Her time with the KGB gave her plenty of expertise on kidnappings. “I will not sugarcoat, Kyle, this is bad.”
Sam added, “She’s right. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is about money. If it were, I wouldn’t be all that concerned. But going to the extreme of coming to Xander’s home here in Lexington and killing King’s Ransom—that says to me that it is personal. Someone wants to hurt Xander, and they obviously know that Natalie is the way to do it. She is in trouble. The worst kind of trouble.”
If These Walls Could Talk
Pure darkness. All-encompassing black, zero visibility, not an ounce of light—darkness. Natalie had no idea how long she had been in there. Wherever the hell she was. She had no sense of time, no sense of anything. Her mouth was dry, due to whatever they had stuffed in her mouth to gag her. Her wrists were raw from the ropes that tightly bound her arms behind her back. She would scream if she could get a scream out, but she couldn’t. She imagined it would make no difference if she could. There wasn’t much of a smell to the room she was in. The floor beneath her was hard but not porous, so she figured maybe it was hardwood. When she managed to stand, she counted fifteen footsteps, wall to wall, between all four walls. A perfect square. Her throat was scratchy from her earlier fear-riddled shouts. Her eyes burned from releasing what must have been every teardrop her body could manufacture. Her cheeks felt sticky from the salt trails those tears had left behind. There were no noises. Not even the hum of an air conditioner. And it was hot, which was probably why she couldn’t hear an AC unit. Beads of sweat dripped down the small of her back.
She had had no warning, so all she had on was what she had worn to bed: pajama shorts, which were light blue with navy blue anchors, and a white athletic tank top. With nothing in the room to stimulate her senses, the horror of the night replayed over and over in her head like a terrifying movie scene.
When it happened, at first she thought she had just heard a knock on her hotel room door. Still half asleep, she shouted at the door, telling whom she thought was the maid to come back later. When she glanced at the clock and it was only four in the morning, the first set of alarm bells went off in her head. No way the maid would be knocking that early in the morning. In that moment, she thought back to the night her and Xander were attacked at his home in Lexington. Also at four a.m. She sat up in bed and in a shaky voice called out, “Hello?” to what she hoped was an empty room. She waited, nerve endings on fire, but didn’t hear anything else. Just as soon as she started to relax, she heard a click; the lamp in the sitting area of her suite had been turned on. Three figures, dressed in all black, instantly appeared in front of her. The next three minutes were a blur. She gave it all she had, but they were too strong. She tried to scream, but the first thing they did was stuff something in her mouth and taped over it, muffling her attempts to cry for help. Then, as she scratched, clawed, kicked, and punched—whatever she could do to break free of them—she felt a pop on the top of her head. The next thing she remembered was the darkness.
Natalie’s head continued to throb. Whatever they had hit her with must have been hard as a rock. She imagined there was probably blood, but there was no way for her to tell. She may as well have been trapped in a cave. On one hand, she wanted to think that this had nothing to do with Alexander King. On the other, she sort of hoped that it did. That way Xander would be coming for her. Wouldn’t he? Surely people knew about her missing set-call this morning. Was that this morning? She was so confused, and scared. At least they had left her alone for the moment. Maybe they were negotiating a ransom. She would pay absolutely anything to end this nightmare right now.
For the first time since she had woken up, she heard a noise. It sounded like the jangling of keys, followed by the shaking of a doorknob. Natalie immediately fell into a ball on the floor. Everything inside of her burned in fear. Her breath was short, her heart was pounding, and her entire body shook like someone had hit her with a taser. The rattling stopped and with the creaking of a door, a piercing light, like a sword plunging into her eyes, filled her vision with a bright white pain. She didn’t have a free arm to help her shield the light, so she was forced to close her eyes. If she didn’t, she felt as though she might lose her sight entirely.
Shadows moved beyond her closed eyelids, and she tried to look once again. She could only make out black figures until finally, a softer yellow hanging light was turned on in the center of the small room, and when the door was shut, three men, all in ski masks, looked down at her in the corner. She blinked the blur out of them, but it only made them clearer, not go away. This was not a dream. As her eyes adjusted, she could finally see the four-walled, square room that they were holding her in. The men didn’t move. As Natalie whimpered in fear, she looked around in horror at the walls. Every wall was covered with eight-by-ten photographs, pinned to the wall with thumbtacks. Dozens of them. Every single one of them was a picture of a different dead body. The fear within her was unlike any feeling she had ever encountered. The three men still weren’t moving. They just watched her as she looked around the room, tears running down her face. Her jaw began to ache from biting down on the gag so hard. She wasn’t even aware she was doing it. It was just the way she was surviving the moment. Natalie had read that when you are faced with such fear, one of two things happens: fight or flight. She hadn’t had the chance to read up on what happens if you are unable to do either of the two. She wished she could melt into the floor. She wished they would just do something. Anything. Anything had to be better than having them just stand there staring at her. In that moment of sheer terror, she longed for the feeling of passing out. But it never came.
It wasn’t but a moment later that she wished she could take that bit about “anything” back. Anything wasn’t better.
The door opened and in walked a man dressed in what Natalie recognized as an abaya, almost like a black cotton gown, and a black cotton scarf twirled atop his head. Traditional Middle Eastern attire.
The man walked right up to Natalie and pulled her up to her feet by her hair. She squealed in pain and cried in fear. The other three men surrounded her from behind and held her in place. The man in the black turban, clearly the one in charge, tilted Natalie’s head up by nudging her chin. Then he moved her head around the room, making sure she was taking in all of the pictures pinned to the walls.
“You see this?” There was anger in the man’s voice. His accent was Middle Eastern; his tone, dead serious.
Natalie made no motion to acknowledge the man’s question. It wasn’t that she was trying to ignore him; it just didn’t register to her that he actually wanted an answer.
He shook her face hard with his hand and screamed, “Answer me!”
Natalie quickly nodded, begging with her eyes for him to let her go.
“This, these pictures, these people. These are my friends. Were my friends. They were my family! And they are all dead! Do you know why, Miss Hollywood? Do you?” He shouted.
His voice echoed in that tiny room. It shook Natalie all the way through to her bones. She pleaded with him by shaking her head from side to side; no, she didn’t know why. The breaths coming in and out of her nose were frantic. She whimpered as she awaited his answer. An answer that she already knew. This was because of Xander. She remembered seeing the news report on television the day after Xander had left whiskey and roses on her balcony in Paris. The news about the terrorist cell in Syria that had been taken out in the middle of the night. More than fifty of them were killed in total. Then, she flashed to the moment at Xander’s house in San Diego when CIA Agent Sarah Gilbright explained that it was Xander and his team who had taken them out. All of them. All because he had been led to believe that the bad guy—something Khatib—had killed his parents. Could this be him? Khatib? She knew that Xander had killed him. She remembered it on the news and from the recount of it in San Diego. So it couldn’t be him, could it?
“Of course you know why they are dead! DON’T YOU?” The man continued to scream at her. All she could do was shake her head and hope he would leave her alone.
“All of these men, my people, and most importantly, him!” The man pointed to a picture that was larger than all the rest on the back wall. The picture showed a man sprawled out on the sand, clearly dead, dressed in the same sort of attire that the man screaming at her was wearing. “He is dead, and I know you know why. You know!”
Once again, Natalie shook her head. Emphatically.
“You say no, but I know. The reason all of my people on these walls are dead is because of your man. Your man who took you to the races. There were pictures of the two of you in magazines, on television. And I think he would like to see what I have got here with me. Don’t you?” This time the anger was gone. His voice was cold, his eyes were black, and she imagined his heart just might be as well.
Before Natalie could answer, he had hold of her chin again. This time, instead of showing her the walls, he tilted her upward until she was looking straight into the yellow light bulb that hung from the middle of the ceiling. Her face was a mess: tears running down her bright-red cheeks, her eyes wild with fright, and her mouth gagged and covered with duct tape. It seemed this was exactly what the man wanted to see. She figured this out when he pulled out his phone, forced her to open her eyes, and then took a picture. He admired the phone’s screen for a moment, and then his goatee-covered chin helped his mouth form a crooked-toothed smile.
“Yes. I think Xander King will very much like to see what I have here.”
He dropped her chin, put away his phone, and let out a maniacal laugh.
&nb
sp; And just like that, all four of the men were gone.
And so too was the light.
Shades of Grey
Xander told his faithful pilot, Bob, to settle in because it might be a while; then he said good-bye, turned on his phone, and pulled up the Uber app. Xander didn’t want record of him getting a rental car. Not that Sam wouldn’t be able to find him anyway if she really wanted to. He had disabled the tracking device on the plane, and he had shut off his phone until he landed, but that would only minimally delay Sam in finding him. She was the best, and that was the reason they were such an amazing team. Regardless, he thought it might be a safer bet. Plus, he just really didn’t feel like driving. He waited for the car to pull up before he walked out of the airport. Better to wait inside than get drenched by the driving rain. It was coming down in sheets. They say Paris is magical in the rain. They also used to say cigarettes weren’t bad for you.
It was a particularly cool summer day as well. Even for Paris. Low sixties. The rain would make it feel more like upper forties. He spotted the Uber car, opened the airport terminal door, opened his umbrella, and made his way to it. His feet sloshed through the standing water on the blacktop, and the raindrops crashed into his umbrella like kamikaze pilots into Pearl Harbor. The sky was the sort of gray that would be enough to depress a man on his happiest day. Xander thought he could remember what a happy day was. But he wasn’t sure. He thought the Kentucky Derby was a happy day––the day that King’s Ransom had taken it to those other Thoroughbreds. But he also had to kill a man that day. Then that night, nine more when they broke in and stole Natalie’s innocent view of him. He had thought he had let her go in time after that. He thought letting her go would save her from more trouble. But here he was in Paris, once again trying to save her from one of his messes.
King's Ransom (The Xander King Series Book 3) Page 2
