The Second Lie (Immortal Vikings Book 2)

by Anna Richland

“One.”

  “It’s too hard to get. I need three.” If Ivar’s intelligence contacts could trace the number or the car, maybe he’d have a location tonight and could be on-target tomorrow.

  “Drive quickly.”

  “You want me to get nicked? I have to go back to the UK, and after the mess with Wend and Skafe, the Brits are all looking for me.” He gambled they’d been watching that closely.

  “Fine. Forty-eight hours.”

  Relief at the first move going his way made him sag into the seat, but this wasn’t finished. “Where do I bring it?”

  “Call this number tomorrow at noon from Britain and I’ll tell you.”

  Between now and then, he’d have to buy another giant beef bone and boil and sand it, but at least he didn’t have to convince Unferth of its veracity, only Leif.

  “I want proof of life.”

  “Listen.”

  He heard a thin scream that sounded like stop. A woman’s voice.

  “Christina—”

  The call disconnected.

  He looked at the rest of his team. Even Porkchop, with his tongue inside his mouth and his head resting on his paws, looked grim. “We have a deal. And forty-eight hours to find her.”

  “What if we can’t?” Locke asked.

  He looked at the driver. “Then I go in with a beef shank and a prayer.”

  * * *

  The zip tie holding Christina’s wrists in front of her was tight enough to make her hands slightly purple, but at least they weren’t behind her. Being men, they’d left her purse hanging across her body too. She wasn’t going to point out the mistake, but she closed her eyes and mentally inventoried the contents: wallet, lipstick, tissues, candy bar and her corkscrew.

  The car drove inside an airplane hangar. Her stomach flopped. She’d have less chance to escape if they loaded her onto a plane. In the air, there were no bystanders to beg for help.

  “Move.” The man in the back seat with her gripped her arm and hauled her toward the open car door faster than she could get her feet under herself.

  She was falling toward the concrete floor, but at the last minute he raised her by her bound wrists. Her arms screamed in their sockets, but she didn’t face plant. Think.

  They were in a hangar, presumably at an airport. Two cars, two helicopters, rolling steps, lots of metal tools and racks, and three men. The driver, the man who’d snatched her and a man next to the larger of the helicopters. He held a clipboard and wore a headset dangling around his neck. Presumably the pilot, and the only one who might help.

  “No screams?” The pointy-toothed man spoke quietly very close to her face.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Stig always had good taste.” The tip of his finger hovered over her lips, filling her with an animalistic urge to bite it off, like snapping through a carrot stick, and then spit it in his face, but he moved it before the wildness overcame self-preservation. His finger marked the air a half inch above her chin, then dipped in at her neck and out over her chest. He never touched her, not even her clothes, but the knowledge of that finger tracing a path down her body made her feel soiled.

  “We’re on a tight schedule.” Gripping her elbow, he propelled her toward the helicopter with the driver flanking her. In the metal-roofed hangar, their footsteps echoed like steel doors closing, locking her in. Getting on that helicopter would be a mistake. Her feet knew it and stopped walking.

  The one who seemed to be in charge pulled hard enough to make her shoulder burn, and she used the pain to give her voice more volume when she yelled “No.” The only result was the driver yanking on her other arm until the two men were dragging her, her soles bouncing across the ground because they’d lifted her enough that she skimmed the floor, unable to find footing to fight back.

  “Help!” she yelled. “Help me!”

  In front of the helicopter, the pilot’s lips parted as if he intended to speak.

  As they drew nearer, she reached with her fingers, the only part of her body she still controlled independently. “Please help me!”

  Her kidnapper shoved his gun barrel so hard into the bottom of her jaw that her head snapped back until it seemed to touch her shoulder blades and her teeth clicked painfully together. The sound reverberated through her brain like a dead bolt slamming home.

  “Ready?” The question wasn’t aimed at her.

  The pilot closed his mouth. “Blowing hard, sir.”

  She wouldn’t find a rescuer here.

  “Are you saying you can’t fly us?” From the corner of her eye, she saw the smile with the strange teeth, and his shoulders leaned forward as if he wanted to pounce.

  “No, not at all.” The pilot held the door, his eyes focused on the metal body of his helicopter rather than on her.

  Despair seemed to levitate her outside her own body. From what felt like a viewpoint on the ceiling, she recognized that they tossed her into the helicopter cabin, and immediately followed. When she’d been kidnapped with Stig, his chatter and confidence had lightened her ordeal and given her hope. He’d created the plans. He’d made her feel as if she would survive.

  This time she was alone.

  * * *

  Fifty-five minutes from Stig’s first call to Ivar, the mobile rang.

  “Here,” Stig answered, and put the call on speaker.

  “The number you gave us last pinged cell towers at the Antwerp airport.” Wulf’s voice hadn’t changed. He sounded exactly like the soldier Stig had known since the first fight at Heorot, a man others wanted on their team, the sort who could kill a man with his pinkie finger and a handful of toasted o’s cereal.

  Locke started the car.

  “Watching the signal move right now,” Wulf continued.

  Luc had leaned forward to hear, and Locke was already passing slower drivers to reach the entrance to the E314 autoroute.

  “Moving fast, straight line. They’re flying.”

  No matter how fast Locke pushed his high-powered engine, they weren’t catching Christina in a car.

  “Tracking north by northwest.”

  “Out of Antwerp, that’s likely to be private aviation.” Since eighty percent of the world’s rough diamonds passed through the Belgian city, Stig knew the airport well.

  “The speed and line confirms they’re in the air. Fact that they’re not too high for cell towers says rotary, not fixed wing. Shorter range, but below air control radar.”

  “What else do you have?” Wulf wasn’t providing enough to find her.

  “Car’s registered to a corporate successor to Black and Swan. Unferth’s old company.” Wulf’s voice betrayed no emotion, but after seeing what Unferth had done to Wulf’s brother, Ivar, Stig didn’t need to be sitting across from Wulf. He could imagine the other Viking’s ice-cold eyes, because his own emotions were so frozen at the thought of Christina in Leif’s hands that he would never thaw.

  “Leif’s in charge now. He gave me forty-eight hours. I have to call at noon tomorrow.”

  “My contacts are getting the flight plan they filed in Antwerp, although it’s undoubtedly a lie, but we’ll have the tail number. We’re pulling satellite pings as we can. The picture’s coming together.”

  “Not fast enough,” Stig prodded.

  “I’m wheels up from Manhattan in an hour. The jet will divert to the closest airport as the situation develops. My gut says they’re heading somewhere north, remote and private. Ideas?”

  “The North Sea.” Locke’s voice was steady from the driver’s seat. “Black and Swan had a subsidiary that bid for decommissioning and environmental work on tapped-out drill platforms.”

  “Who the fuck is that?” Wulf asked over the mobile connection. “What’s he know about Black and Swan?”

  “He used to work for
Black and Swan,” Stig answered. “Now he’s on my team.”

  Locke had said that Unferth and Leif had killed his wife. He and Thomas might have many skills in common, but if Loki wanted a devoted servant, that loss was a similarity he and Thomas didn’t need to share.

  Porkchop barked.

  “Thor’s hammer, that’s a dog.” Wulf had to yell to be heard over the dog. “Sounds like a little one. What the hell are you doing?”

  “His size is inversely proportional to his abilities as an attack animal. Like my demo man. Small guy, big boom.”

  Luc gave him a thumbs up between the seats. Stig ignored how the digit trembled back and forth.

  “Fine. I’ll bring plenty for him to work with. This time we’re going to blow them so high the Wild Hunt will wish they had windshield wipers.”

  Chapter Twenty

  If she lived through this, Christina vowed never to ride in a helicopter again. Hiding in her apartment for the rest of her life would be a good plan. Only the guy in charge and the car’s driver had joined the pilot, so they could have belted her to one of the four seats. Instead they’d thrown her on the floor of the helicopter’s cabin and left her to roll into their legs whenever they changed direction or height.

  Maybe the pilot wasn’t demonstrating slalom skiing. Maybe the side-to-side movement was caused by the dark clouds and sheeting rain. Past her head was a door, more like a bus door than a car, because it had glass panels above and below a center crosspiece. Even from the floor she could see out to the gray-black water below. Impossible to tell how high they were above the surface of the featureless water. It might be the English Channel, or whatever the body of water between the Netherlands and Great Britain was called this far north.

  She closed her eyes, fighting to settle her stomach enough to think. Wherever they were taking her, the flight was the place where she had the best odds. The pilot couldn’t hurt her while he flew. For an instant in the hangar she’d thought he wanted to help her, so there were only two men she’d have to overcome. Both of them wore safety harnesses holding them in place while she—if she could control her legs and balance, despite the pitching and shuddering—was free to maneuver.

  Anything she tried had to be soon.

  She let the helicopter’s motion roll her until her body concealed her hands and purse. After being tied for so long, her fingers struggled with the clasp, but she finally opened it and located her corkscrew. She didn’t need to see the folding tool to know the nicks in the oak handle and the dull gleam of the matte steel-finish foil-cutter and spiral screw. Since her stepfather had given it to her on her sixteenth birthday, this wine opener had never left any purse she carried. The gold-embossed logo of the Mancini Brothers winery had worn away, as gone as Big Frank, but maybe his gift could save her life.

  She pictured her actions with the method she’d used in gymnastics. Visualize her moves in order, leg positions, arm positions and location of center of mass. Nail them in her mind, then execute. The sharpened spiral spike wasn’t long enough to penetrate all the way to a key organ, except maybe at a man’s windpipe, so an eye would be her best choice.

  She flicked the corkscrew to the maximum point of its hinge. Her life or his. She bunched like a spring, hands under her body with the corkscrew facing down, took a deep breath and then she pushed upright while raising her weapon. Straight at the guy in charge.

  With her full weight backing her thrust, the worm screw went in her target more easily than she’d expected, all the way until the bottom edge of her linked fists slammed into the bony ridge of his eye socket. Light-colored goo spurted from the eye, followed by blood. Blood gushed on his face and her hands and wet dots sprayed her cheeks as he yelled louder than the roar of the helicopter.

  She must be screaming too, because her mouth was open and her chest heaved, but she didn’t have time to fall apart.

  She yanked on her weapon at the same time the helicopter floor bucked, knocking her off balance and preventing her from putting any force into her pull.

  He grabbed her forearm to lock her next to his seat while she struggled to remove the corkscrew from his eye socket.

  Then the other man, the one she hadn’t stabbed, wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tried to pry her off the man in the chair. Not the way she wanted to go, not without her weapon.

  Like the hospital laundry chute, she used her thighs to push. Because she was small, she could lift her legs and plant her shoes on the chest of the man whose eye she’d punctured. She pushed hard with her legs and simultaneously pulled her arm to escape his hold.

  The corkscrew popped out, his grip broke, and she and the man behind her went flying across the small cabin. Linked together, they hit the wall next to the door. Her feet scrambled for purchase on the vibrating side of the helicopter. She kicked out and down as hard as she could, trying for leverage.

  Something moved under her sole.

  The door popped open.

  Rain and wind slashed her in the face. The gale filled her ears, and knives of cold and wet tore at her. An alarm blared in the chaos.

  The man screamed in her ear. They were going to fall out.

  The floor shifted, the opening suddenly forty-five degrees above her as if the pilot realized what had happened and banked or turned to tumble them away from the opening.

  Now they were both on the floor. The man’s arm dropped away and she could breathe, great gasps of freezing wind that filled her chest with pain. Her shoulder burned where she’d hit the floor, unable to break her fall. The bolted legs of an empty seat filled her vision.

  The helicopter dipped again, the wrong way, as the maelstrom outside sucked at her, but she jammed her bound hands between the seat struts. Her arms went as deep as her elbows, and her fingers found a protruding piece of metal, a sort of handle or cleat.

  Desperate hands scrabbled at her clothes, yanking, but she kicked out. The man locked on to her waist, his weight heavier than her arms could support. Her shirt rode up and the pebbled metal floor abraded her skin as she was pulled from the seat that anchored her. Water everywhere. Water made her shoes slide as she tried to dig her toes into the floor.

  “Leif!” the man clutching her shouted. “Leif! Help me!”

  For the extended second that the plea hovered in the air, her gaze fused with the single eye of the man in charge. Leif. He was laughing, lips pulled back to show his feral teeth and his tongue hanging out of his mouth like a coyote. He would let his own man die for amusement.

  Her arms and spine stretched as if she was a human rope extending inch by inch from the weight of the man clutching her waist. Her arms were nearly numb from being bound for an hour, and her shoulders wouldn’t hold much longer.

  She wanted to live. Anger beat down her fear and gave one more burst to her legs. She would live. Kicking was useless, so she lifted her right knee sideways, sliding it along the deck. More than anything, she didn’t want to go out that door. She tucked her bent leg as high as she could and pushed it back and up, not managing as much force as a forward press, but unexpected. His right arm lost contact with her waist. She bucked and kicked backward again, and then suddenly all his weight was gone.

  She didn’t even hear a scream.

  Her shoulders popped with relief. Spread flat on the floor, she had no idea what to do next, but she knew this fight wasn’t finished when she lifted her gaze to the remaining man.

  He was unbuckling his harness.

  She drew her knees underneath her body, ready to stand, but he grabbed her hair and yanked—that hurt, hurt worse than her shoulders or hands. Her wrists scraped into the metal struts under the seat and she couldn’t hold on.

  He lifted and slammed her into a seat, snapping the harness across her lap and chest even though her bound arms didn’t fit in their spots. The whole time he worked, he had his body braced between th
e seats, far from the open door. He was too careful.

  Her hands remained tied in front. As soon as her captor fastened the buckle, he closed another zip tie to link her restraint to the seat belt so that even if she unlatched the release, she’d remain attached to the loosened strap unless she broke the plastic.

  Although the air cutting through the open door froze her face and chest, leftover warmth from the ejected man’s body cradled her back, a live demonstration of how little time had passed.

  The man whose eye she’d destroyed gripped her chin, his face a foot from hers. Nothing fresh oozed from the mangled mess left in the socket. The blood had darkened and crusted into chunks closer to his former eye and smears down his face and chin. Red had soaked the front of his blue sweater, darkening it, and spatters marked his collar and cuffs. She hadn’t realized an eye would bleed that copiously. Maybe she’d hit much deeper. But then he should be dead.

  His grip tightened, shifting her lower jaw out of alignment and squeezing at the joints until she knew she must be moaning, but she couldn’t hear over the pain screaming from the hinge of her jaws straight to her ears. He immobilized her head and forced her face directly in front of his ravaged eye socket.

  “Watch.” She couldn’t hear over the wind and engine roar filling the small cabin, but she read the shape of the word on his lips.

  What happened was like a slow-motion video of a flower growing. First a tiny bud of red threadlike veins and quivering gel formed, then it grew until a larger bud pulsed in the cavity where he’d once had an eye.

  Stig hadn’t been joking. All those comments, his story about being immortal, the quips about healing, the gunshot, the broken neck—all of it had been true. The knowledge hit her hard in her stomach, another blow in a day of agony.

  Her captor brought his pair of matching blue eyes within inches of her face. She smelled blood and sour breath, old and stale, even though his skin looked young. At this distance she could hear every word he said.

  “You don’t know what we are, do you?” When he laughed, the dried blood on his cheek cracked in fine lines like a sunbaked puddle. “Stig used you and fucked you but he didn’t trust you enough to tell you who we are.”