The window shattered with a deafening roar and the chair fell outside. A sudden cool burst of wind entered the bar and everyone shivered, or at least those who were not shivering before.
The stranger picked up another stool and brought it down hard on the bar top. The wood pieces flew in every direction and Angie had to duck to avoid one hitting her in the eye. She was now terrified and praying that the lunatic got out of there as soon as possible.
“I will NOT leave without the goddamn package!” he shouted and Bob cowered.
“I-I can’t help you,” he stammered.
“Then I have no choice,” he said.
Angie had gotten up from her ducking position and as soon as she stood to full height, a hand grasped her neck. The stranger pulled her around the bar.
“I am going to take her until you see some sense, old man, and give me the package,” he said.
Angie’s eyes were bulging and she was having trouble breathing, the grip of the stranger was so strong on her neck.
“Do not think that I am beyond hurting a woman,” he declared, dragging Angie to the door.
“I will do anything to stop them.”
Angie gave one last terrified look to Bob and all the drunken men of the bar. Martha had tears in her eyes and was clutching Michael. Michael looked frozen.
Soon Angie was put in the back of a car and her hands were handcuffed. The stranger got in the driving seat and started driving.
Angie screamed but the thundering clouds drowned her voice.
Chapter 2
The car was striding along an abandoned street and Angie had lost the will to scream. Earlier she had tried to draw attention to herself to passing cars but before long, she gave it up after realizing that it was futile.
The stranger sat quietly, driving along paths undefined. Angie was petrified, mortified, terrified beyond all measure. Just an hour ago, she was pouring drinks to drunken men and trying to ignore Patrick. Now, she was afraid for her life.
“Are you going to kill me?” she asked, her voice shaking. The bravery that she had felt at the bar had gone, replaced by dread.
The stranger didn’t reply but kept on looking ahead. If Angie had to guess, she would probably say that they had travelled out of the city to the mountains. She could see the whole city at her right.
The view was mesmerizing. Thousands of lights shining like fireflies in the sky, their serenity envious. The tsunamis that wreaked in the individual lives of the people who lived among these lights could not transcend up to these mountains. Angie felt awed.
Then reality hit her: she was being kidnapped and taken miles away from the only place she had ever called home and there was a good chance that she would never see it again. It was a humbling thought. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“Please, let me go,” she sobbed.
The stranger’s head twitched a little but otherwise he gave no indication that he had a passenger in the back seat that he had, oh so casually, kidnapped.
He remained quiet and Angie figured that her pleas had no value to him. It was better to shut up. Her tongue was in her control, the shaking of her body and the thumping of her heart, not so much.
They drove on, farther and farther away from the city and Angie got scared with every turn and twist that the road took. She had never been in these mountains and the unfamiliarity made her uneasy.
They seemed to be approaching a house, shrouded in trees so that it was not very much visible from a long distance but as they came closer, Angie could make out the brown exterior.
She always thought that houses such as these existed only in horror movies. It was a right old cabin in the woods, down to the chimney.
The stranger parked in front of the door and opened the back door. He grabbed Angie, despite her futile attempts to get away from him. He dragged her across the short distance to the entrance effortlessly, though she was doing her all to get free; what she hoped to achieve by that, she had no idea but she was not going to go down without a fight.
The inside of the house was dark. The stranger turned on a light and Angie fluttered her eyes briefly and then adjusted to the brightness.
The cabin was unrealistically organized and clean. There was a dining table in one corner, which accompanied the kitchen. The newspaper on the table in front of the couch was properly folded. There was a door on her right, which was closed, and a flight of stairs led to a room upstairs.
He took her upstairs and pushed her inside the room. The room had a single window but it was boarded shut. There was an attached bathroom and a wardrobe cupboard.
Apart from a bed, a mirror and several cabinets, the room was empty. The walls were white, almost too white and the sheets looked washed and clean.
Angie was looking at her surroundings with dread when she heard the door close and a click. She turned around at once and tried to open the door but it was locked from the outside.
She kicked it and desperately tried to open it, despite knowing deep down that it was the most useless thing to do.
“Let me OUT!!!” she shouted without any hope but she couldn’t stand doing nothing.
Predictably, there was no answer from the outside. She turned around to face the empty, depressing room. She laid down on her stomach on the bed, and started sobbing.
Chapter 3
Angie woke up, though she had no memory of going to sleep last night.
Maybe it is all a dream.
That was her first, childish thought, though she was sure that it was not.
She kept her eyes closed, hoping against hope and forcing herself to believe that if she tried hard enough, she could somehow undo what had transpired last night. She opened her eyes and the strange room presented itself.
It wasn’t a dream.
The door opened and the stranger came in. Angie recoiled on the bed. He seemed to be carrying some shopping bags.
“Here are some clothes for you,” he said and placed the bags on the foot of the bed.
“Why am I here? How long will you keep me here?” Angie asked him.
“As long as I have to,” he said, cryptically.
“Will you hurt me?”
“Not if I can help it. If your friend Bob…”
“He’s not my friend,” Angie said before she could stop herself.
But it was true. Of all the things she thought about Bob, friend wasn’t one of them.
“What?” he said.
“Bob,” she continued.
“You said ‘your friend Bob’. Well, he isn’t. He is my employer. That’s it.”
“Be that as it may, you were still close to him, privy to a sensitive location where he operated from.”
This did not make any sense. What was Bob involved in?
“Bob is the last person you would expect to be involved in a shady business,” Angie said.
“Hence the most suitable person to be used as a middleman,” the stranger said.
Angie remained silent. She still could not absorb the information that Bob was involved in something other than idle gossip and beer.
The stranger was looking at Angie in a queer sort of way. Angie noticed that.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing,” the stranger said a little too quickly.
Awkward silence fell between them.
“As long as you are here-” he continued but Angie cut him across.
“You make it sound as if I am here by will.”
“Whatever the case may be. As long as you are here, you will follow my rules.”
“Rules?”
“Yes, rules. If you want to get breakfast, come downstairs precisely at 8. I will open this door at 7:59 am every morning. If you are not down by 8:01, no breakfast.”
“But---” she started to say something but the stranger stopped her by raising his hand.
“Lunch is at half past noon and dinner at six. You can shower once a day whenever you want. You will have an hour outside this house, during which I wil
l accompany you so that you don’t try anything stupid.”
“You make this sound too much fun,” Angie snapped.
“And you will keep your tongue in check. Your accomplice…”
“He is NOT anything to me,” Angie said, half shouting.
The stranger was looking at her with daggers in his eyes and it seemed to Angie for a moment that she had made a huge mistake, losing her temper like this. But then he continued talking.
“You will follow these rules without change and all will be well. I will contact that old barman soon and as soon as he comes to his senses, your ordeal will be over. Or you can just tell me where it is and be done with it.”
Angie sighed. How can he think that she had anything to do with it?
“I already told you…” she began.
“I know what you told me. If you insist on lying, there’s nothing I can do. Stay here.”
He said this and closed the door.
Chapter 4
The next morning, Angie woke up at 7:00 am and she was surprised that she was able to do that without using an alarm. The stranger had placed a wall clock in the room.
At 7:59 am the door was unlocked but left unopened. Angie was sitting on the bed, wearing the clothes that the he had brought yesterday. They fit her perfectly, which surprised her.
She went downstairs and the stranger was sitting on the breakfast table in a tank top and shorts. He had a towel around his neck and was breathing a bit rapidly. He had just worked out, Angie thought.
She could not take her eyes off of his flesh. It looked hard and chiseled like it was sculpted by a master, manufactured in a workshop. His hair was wet and fell over his eyes. She could not believe that she was checking out her kidnapper.
“Good,” the stranger said and Angie mentally shook herself.
What is wrong with me?
Angie sat down opposite him and started eating the breakfast, pouring milk over the cereals. This felt so weird, eating cereals with her kidnapper, in a remote cabin in the woods.
If someone saw her right at this moment, they would think that she was having a romantic getaway with a hot hunk, instead of being forced to get breakfast right down to this minute or else go empty stomach.
“So what should I call you?” she said, trying to make conversation.
“You don’t have to call me anything,” he said briskly.
“You know; I was telling the truth earlier.”
He raised his eyebrows and looked across at her.
“What?”
“About the package. I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“I don’t believe that you have been working at that place for so long and not come to know of its actual purpose,” he said, getting redder in the face.
“What secret purpose? Maybe I would understand better if you stopped speaking in codes.”
His nose flared.
“That place is a hideout for some of the most dangerous men of the world,” he said, and paused.
Angie looked at both his eyes, trying to see if he was joking. But there was not even a single hint of humor in those eyes. She burst out laughing.
“Hideout for some of the most dangerous men of the world? You have got to be kidding me,” she said in between laughs.
The stranger seemed to be getting angrier by the second and her laughter wasn’t helping.
“It may sound to you as a joke but people’s lives are not a joke. That package I was looking for contained many of their secret plans and even identities of many of their core members, including Bob. Someone defected from their group and stole these documents. They got it back and delivered it back to their safe house to look into the detail of what was exactly stolen.”
Angie had stopped laughing and was now listening in earnest. What he said made sense and he didn’t seem like crazy. He seemed very handsome.
“Ok, Ok. I believe you,” she said.
“But you have to believe me. I was not a part of…whatever that was going on in that place. I just tended the bar, ignored the drunks and went home to write my novel, which I will never finish. That’s it. That’s my life.”
The stranger looked at her in that queer way.
“And let me tell you one thing: holding me here will not help you one bit,” Angie said, trying her best to sound earnest.
“If what you are saying is true and Bob really is one of them, then there is no way he will give you the package in exchange of me. He doesn’t care about me. He barely knows me.”
“I will be the judge of that,” the stranger said and got up to get something from the kitchen.
“Will you please tell me who you are?” Angie said, pushing her luck.
His back was facing her and she wasn’t sure what expression he was courting. She was hoping that he would not snub her.
“I think I have a right to know who my captor is,” she said, placidly.
He remained quiet for some time and Angie continued eating her breakfast, giving up hope that he would ever tell her anything when she was surprised to hear his voice, and not in the usual commanding and domineering manner.
It was softer, a bit shaky, and vulnerable.
“I am in the Army,” he said.
“Army?” she said, really surprised. That explains that body.
“Well, actually in a really secret branch of the Army. We look into domestic terror cells.”
“Isn’t that what tons of other agencies are doing?” Angie asked, racking her brains to think of as many acronyms as she could.
“There’s a difference: we don’t get questions asked after we get the results.”
He silenced after saying this and Angie realized what he meant. He belonged to a dangerous and black army unit, which acted without bounds and probably carried out illegal tasks.
“So you are all about the greater good, I guess?”
“You can say that and I think the world is a safer place because of us,” he said and it seemed he was trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince her.
“Every man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord ponders the heart,” Angie said.
He turned around and his eyebrows were raised. Angie shrugged.
“Heard it in a Russell Crowe movie once,” she said.
He ignored that comment.
“So, we fight the good war, we get the bad guys and everyone turns a blind eye.”
“And you kidnap innocents,” Angie said before she could stop herself.
“Haven’t convinced me of your innocence yet,” he said.
“Haven’t proved my guilt, yet,” she said.
He glanced at her bowl, it was empty.
“Ok, you are done. Go back to your room,” he said.
Angie sighed. One moment they were having a real conversation and next moment, he was playing the kidnapper.
She got up and started walking towards the staircase. When she was on the bottom step, a voice rang out.
“Shadow.”
“What shadow?” she said turning around.
He was standing against a wall and looked so alluring. His hair falling over his eyes, his arms bare, muscles rippling. She felt heat rising up in her body despite the cold outside.
“You can call me ‘Shadow’,” he said.
“That’s what my unit named me.”
“And what did your mother name you?” she asked.
“She didn’t.”
Chapter 5
It was a weird name, but it made sense as a covert code name.
Shadow.
It sounded weird in her head, as well. She spent the day in her room, bored out of her mind, and pangs of fear hit her at odd moments.
She didn’t know his end game or if she was still completely out of danger or not. She tried to open the door, out of habit than anything else, but it was closed every time.
She continued pacing in the room. True to his word, he opened the door at half past noon. She opened the door immediately and confront
ed him right then and there.
“I need a definite answer,” she said. She had thought this through in her head, had this conversation with herself. She was ready.
“Answer to what?” Shadow said.
“For how long, will I be here?”
“I told you,” he said, exasperatedly and going down the stairs.
“When I get the package; when I find out the truth.”
“So, that’s it? That’s all I am supposed to do. Wait for meals all my day. Doing nothing. I will kill myself.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” he said.
“Be thankful that I have not tied you up to the bed.”
She opened her mouth and closed it.
“Doesn’t change the fact that you kidnapped me.”
He kept walking.
“The food is getting colder.”
She stood on top of the stairs as he sat on the table, her fists clenched and face reddened. She had expected an answer but she got nothing. Her frustration had turned into indignation and she was determined not to give in to this prison.
Chapter 6: One Week Later
Angie was walking a few steps ahead of Shadow in the woods. It was her time to take a walk. It had been a week since she was taken to this cabin in the woods and a sort of laconic predictably had settled into the days.
She was getting restless but at least she was sure that Shadow was not some deranged person who would hurt her just for the sake of it. In these last few days, Angie had come to know the man inside the hard exterior that he carried along with him.
He was a man with a stoic sense of duty who truly believed in what he did. But on some days he seemed less sure of his mission. She had met him at a critical juncture in his life.
“You know, you can walk with me,” Angie turned around and said to Shadow who was several feet behind her.
He didn’t say anything but picked up his pace to walk with her. There was silence for a few moments.
“Is this your place?” Angie said when she was sure that Shadow was not going to be the one to initiate the conversation.
“Yes,” he said briefly.
Romance: Undercover Panther: BBW Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance (BBW, Paranormal, Werebear Romance) (Shapeshifter Romance Series by Ashley Hunter) Page 2
