On Thin Ice (Special Ops)

by Capri Montgomery

  He climbed into the truck, gave one final wave to Henri and took off. He had a mountain to travel, a woman to save, and bad guys to kill. “All in a day’s work,” he said. “All in a day’s work.”

  Chapter Six

  I have to go to the bathroom!” Akira yelled loudly and she kept yelling. She didn’t have to go desperately, but her legs were starting to fall asleep and she knew if she wanted to still be able to escape—if ever the opportunity presented itself—then she needed to keep her body ready for movement. A walk to wherever the bathroom was would at least allow her to shake out her legs and arms.

  “Hey you big jerk! I have to go to the bathroom!” When the door pushed open and banged against the wall with a loud thud she stopped yelling. The door bounced back toward the man, but he swiftly put his hand out to stop it from whacking him in the face. Now that would have been a fun thing to see, she thought. He was the one who had hit her and she would love to see him get whacked in the face with a big metal door.

  He approached her with a steady gait that sent a shiver of fear up her spine, but she refused to show weakness. “You do anything stupid and I’ll break your bones and blow out your knee. You got me?”

  She nodded. She didn’t have a plan and she wasn’t going to just try to make a run for it when she didn’t have a plan; she had already tried that and fortunately she was smart enough to learn from her mistakes. She was unconscious when they arrived here so she didn’t even know the way out. A few bathroom breaks might help her figure out the layout of the building. Maybe she would see an exit, and then calculate if she could get to it or not. She still didn’t know where she was. If they had taken her to Russia she would have thought she would have awakened between Alaska and there, but then they could have stuck her with needle full of a drug to keep her knocked out.

  She watched as he cut her bindings attached to the chair and then cuffed her hands in front of her body. She hadn’t expected that. Maybe he was using extra caution, not trusting her to stick to her word of not trying anything stupid. If that were the case then maybe he didn’t want to have to shoot her. It wasn’t as if she thought he would care if he did shoot her, but maybe having a wounded hostage would be more work than he wanted right now. She had doubts, but still, she wouldn’t chance trying to escape right now.

  He pushed her into the bathroom and entered with her. He closed the door behind him. “There’s the toilet.”

  Yes, she could see that. “You have to take the cuffs off me so I can go.” Clearly she couldn’t get her pants down with the cuffs on. He approached her and she thought he would comply with her request, but instead of removing the handcuffs he started attacking the buttons on her pants and then he yanked them down with her panties before pushing her backwards. She fell onto the toilet seat. She almost fell off the other side, but she used her leg muscles to steady her like she would steady herself from an almost fall on the ice. Still, the impact of butt to seat hurt. It was like those times when she would fall on her butt on the ice, only she didn’t have anything cold soothing the ache.

  “Piss already.” He barked.

  “I can’t go with you standing there.”

  He pulled out his gun and pointed it at her. “Piss. I don’t have all day to stand here.”

  So it was still day then. Was it the same day? They had been at the station in the morning. How much time had passed? Was it late afternoon? Was it evening? Was it night and he was just saying that he didn’t have all day as a means of throwing off her mental balance? Not being able to keep track of the time and day was the fastest way to lose track of reality—or at least that’s what she thought anyway.

  Surprisingly she had been able to urinate at gunpoint. She would file that fact in her mental database and hope she never had to do it again.

  She cleaned herself the best she could before he put his gun back in the waistband of the back of his pants. He jerked her to standing and violently pulled her panties and pants up. He started to pull her toward the door. “I have to wash my hands,” she said as if he should already know that.

  “Fine. Wash them.”

  The soap was practically nonexistent. It was just a little slither of white elongated soap, but she used it anyway. Once her captor was of mind that she had spent long enough washing her hands he pulled her out the bathroom and back down the hall. He pushed her back into the chair and she noticed the ropes that now lay on the floor. He secured her ankles first and then, undoing the cuffs, he used the rope to secure her wrists to the chair. He left the room and closed the door once again. She hadn’t heard him lock it and she figured that was probably because he knew she couldn’t get out of her restraints—either that or there was going to be somebody guarding the door. Maybe there was before. Maybe he was guarding the door. Maybe that’s how he heard her yelling for the bathroom.

  On her way to the bathroom she saw stairs and nothing more. That meant the only way out was up the stairs and not knowing what was at the top meant it would be a huge risk to try. She had taken risks before. She took them all the time on the ice. She took them with her heart too. She had taken a huge risk when she decided to tell Jet about her dream and about how she felt about him. While her skating risks usually ended well, telling Jet the desires of her heart hadn’t ended so famously. She would say that maybe they were still working on a friendship basis, if she could call not seeing him for months friendship. But maybe they were getting back there; at least she hoped so, although she wanted more. She thought, but she couldn’t be sure, that the last time he saw her he had looked at her differently. Instead of looking at her like a kid, she thought he looked at her as a woman—fully aware of the body before him and the heart awaiting him.

  Did he even know she was missing? If he did would he even come for her? Just because she was in love with him didn’t mean he was feeling anything for her. In fact he may have thought of her as more of a nuisance than a friend. Still, she hoped he would come for her. She hoped somebody would come for her, because she didn’t know how she was going to get out of this mess by herself.

  Jet pulled the truck into an area off the road and covered it as much as he could with branches and brush. He punched in Alex’s number. It was getting dark and he would need to stop to rest, but he wanted to make as much progress as he could. The urgency inside him would not let him stop for long.

  “I’m with her parents now,” Alex told him.

  “Before you put me on speaker I need you to check on something for me and I don’t want them to know yet.” He told him about Nathan, the name change, the family and the fact that he was one of the investigators on the case. Apparently he was the one who liked to play nice with the reporters and get his face on the television. Jet wondered if that was because he was sending coded messages to the enemy within those press updates.

  “Got it,” Alex said. “Aaron is going to have a plane waiting for you. From your location,” he heard Alex shuffling some papers. “I think there are one or two possible landing strips for a jet of that size to land.” He shuffled more papers. “They’re not exactly currently in use, nor have they been for a long time, but Aaron assures me his guy will be able to land on either one and pick you up. Call me when you have her and let me know which direction you’re headed and I’ll get pickup scheduled for you.”

  “Will do,” Jet acknowledged. He needed to get moving. “Another call didn’t come in did it?”

  “No, not yet. I think maybe they’ll call tomorrow. You know they didn’t even ask him not to alert the FBI.”

  “I think that’s because they know the FBI already knows. Plus this is about revenge. These guys will go out in a blaze of glory and the more law enforcement they take with them the happier they’ll be. Keep the Feds out of it as much as you can or this will get extremely bloody. I don’t want to risk Akira getting killed because of a botched FBI operation.”

  “Got it. Would you like me to put you on speaker?”

  “I need to get moving. Just tell them I have
a possible location and I’m going in. If she’s there I will get her out.”

  “Okay. Watch your six.”

  “Always.” He disconnected the call. Alex could handle updating Aaron. He knew they would understand the urgency of the issue. Aaron would understand it was crucial he keep moving and he couldn’t do that if he were holding a conversation with them. He shut his phone off, secured it in a pocket, put the backpack on his back and his weapons in various places on his body. Thankfully he had just taken necessary items to Alaska with him which is why he had his change of clothes in his pack. Henri had allowed him to change into his rescue clothing on her property and now all he had in his bag were more bullets, the water, the protein bars and a few hiking necessities. He had a blanket rolled up and attached on the bottom of the pack because if the temperature dropped, which he was sure it would at night, then Akira was going to need something to keep her warm. What she had on during the interview wouldn’t protect her body if the temperatures dropped below sixty. There was already a distinct chill in the air and since they would be higher up in the mountain he was sure it was going to be much colder. He was prepared for it; she wasn’t. It was almost seven, which meant he could hike until about midnight but then he would need to get at least a couple hours sleep before moving onward. He had slept a little on the plane because he knew once he arrived he wouldn’t be doing much sleeping, but that didn’t mean he still wouldn’t need some rest tonight.

  He wanted to get to her as soon as he could, but he also needed to be alert. A couple hours sleep would be all he needed. He had worked on that amount of sleep before and he knew he could do it now. This hike wasn’t a one day pitch from where he had parked his vehicle. He knew even if he only slept a couple hours he had another day of hiking before him. He could probably make it by midnight tomorrow if he moved with extreme speed, and at the latest three, maybe four o’clock. He banked on extreme speed because he would use the cover of darkness to mask his entry and exit. From what he could tell from the blueprints he only had the option for one way in and one way out unless he wanted to try to get Akira out the front door—which he didn’t. He preferred to keep her as safe as possible, which meant being smart and guiding her through the overhead tunnel that would lead them back to the outside. Then he was going to have to get her back to the truck and off that mountain. He wouldn’t breathe easily until she was home. He was putting her safety first and revenge second. If he had to track these bastards down after he got Akira to the safety of her home then he would just have to come back to Alaska. He had a lot of vacation time because he never took it. He would take it all for this, for her, because he knew the only way to give her the ultimate safety was to get rid of these men completely. Men like these men didn’t stop just because they lost one battle. They would come back for her, maybe even her entire family, and he wouldn’t allow that to happen.

  He had to move swiftly. The climb was uphill all the way so he knew it wouldn’t be an easy hike, but he didn’t care. He needed to get to her swiftly so he would take the off the trail hike with the speed of a determined man no matter how hard it would be.

  Chapter Seven

  “Make ‘em wait,” Alexei laughed. “He’ll probably piss his pants wondering what we’ve done to her.” He was taking so much pleasure in this he almost wanted to drag it out. Making Aaron Bowman wait to hear from him would give the man plenty of time to think about what his only daughter, his only child, was going through. He liked that idea a lot given the fact that Ambrosii was dead because of the money Aaron gave that task force. If he had kept his nose and his checkbook out of Alaska then Ambrosii would still be alive today.

  Ambrosii was the last of his blood and because of Aaron Bowman that blood had been spilled. He would pay for that. First, he needed money. The others in their group had dispersed, fled like cowardly dogs with their tails between their legs, but he and a few men had stayed. They had stayed behind to kill the bastards. So far they had managed to get rid of a few members of the task force. He made sure things looked accidental. He couldn’t give his plan away now could he? It had taken years, but he had started picking them off one by one. He had planned to have Aaron’s daughter long before now. He had planned to have her dead, but things hadn’t gone according to plan.

  If Demetri hadn’t gone soft on him then it would have. He was Russian. His loyalties should have been to his family. His step-father had been just as much a member of the original group many years ago as Alexei was right now. Maybe that was the problem—the man hadn’t knocked his brat step-son around enough before he got killed. If he had maybe he could have beat some loyalty into him. He was twelve and maybe that was part of the problem. Twelve was old enough to already be set in his ways and his ways were not their ways.

  “She’s not a part of this and I won’t help you hurt her,” he had told him when he contacted him five years ago. He meant it too. He wouldn’t help them grab her at one of those fancy competitions and shows. If anything, he increased his security. Fortunately for Alexei, Demetri didn’t know where the main hub for his men was. Had he known they were still in Alaska, right there in Anchorage, he wouldn’t have allowed her to come for the show and stay for the interview.

  Alexei’s plan had been so perfect. Everything was perfect. He had covertly planted the idea of an exposé in the mind of the bastard reporter. Nobody really knew who he was, or what he looked like. They knew the tattoo so he kept it covered if ever he went into town. There was only a select few who would have hit the panic button, but he couldn’t risk it. He sat right there in that bar telling the man how he should interview her, drill her about her conservation efforts that he complained so much about.

  “She won’t come for that,” he had said.

  “So make her come for something else. Isn’t there a charity event coming up? You could make her think you want to draw attention to it.” He had seen the light finally go on. He hated that he had to be the one to think of everything, but if he wanted things done he was going to have to walk some of these people through it step by step.

  “Ambush,” he had said.

  That’s exactly what Alexei had in mind, only his kind of ambush was a completely different thing. He would have killed the rat faced reporter with the beady eyes because he was blood to the man who had authorized the killing of his brother, but even if he hadn’t been he still would have had to die. He would have been able to piece things together and give an accurate description of what Alexei looked like now, and it wouldn’t take long for them to find him.

  He would love to kill the cop too, but that wasn’t his battle. Whatever name the man was going by now it wasn’t any surprise of who he originally was. His parents had turned on the group and then vanished. Alexei laughed. There Nathan stood, plastering his face all over the news thinking nobody would notice. What an idiot he was. He looked too much like his father for it to go unnoticed. When word made it back to Russia the little prick would be sorry then.

  Alexei’s mind went back to the woman sitting down in their version of a holding cell. He had given her bathroom breaks, but she hadn’t needed many. He hadn’t fed her or given her anything to drink, and he wasn’t going to either. She was going to die. He knew he would kill her and when he did it he would send a video of it to her father. He didn’t see a need to waste food and water on her. Besides, without those basic needs being met she wouldn’t be bothering him for bathroom breaks so much.

  He wondered if she could sleep in a chair. He laughed. “She’ll have time to find out,” he mumbled. “Two nights time before I call her father.” He was going to demand the money be deposited into an offshore account he already had setup. It would have to be wired the same day and if it wasn’t he would threaten bodily harm to Aaron’s precious baby girl. That would make the man rush to deliver. There would be no time for him to try to pull a fast one on him. Once the money was in he was going to kill her. She had a little time left and then he would take Aaron Bowman’s blood just as he had been
the cause of Alexei’s blood being taken from him. He would let him live with that guilt for a while and then he would kill him. He would torture him with guilt first and then kill him.

  It felt like it took forever to get to her. Never before had he felt this antsy on a rescue mission. It wasn’t as if he didn’t care about the previous rescue missions. He was always alert to the possible dangers and to the possible missteps that could throw his mission off, but this was different. This felt different. She wasn’t a package; she was Akira, sweet, innocent—relatively, he told himself. There was nothing innocent about the things she had written to him. But she was different. She wasn’t a package and for some reason, this rescue felt as if it were the most important rescue mission of his life. He had gone in to rescue Natalia and she wasn’t a package either, but what he felt then and what he felt now was not the same thing. It scared him. He was angry, anxious about getting Akira safe, and he was sad. God, he was sad for her, for what he knew she had to be facing, and for the fear he knew she felt. If he didn’t get to her in time he would never forgive himself.