“Yes.”
“Then we’ve nothing to worry about. If the feelings caused you angst, than acting them out would be impossible.”
“But why do I have such feelings? Such impulses? What the hell is wrong with me?”
“You are what you are, baby, and I couldn’t love you more if I tried. Whatever it is that makes you what you are, that engenders these urges, it’s as much a part of you as anything else, but it will never control you.”
He kissed her.
“You make me feel normal.”
Jessica laughed.
“Oh, you are anything but normal, you’re extraordinary, and there’s a group of armed men in the building who will soon discover that for themselves.”
“They will. I’ll end this siege and come back to you, to you and our children.”
Jessica placed a hand on her stomach.
“I can’t wait until they’re born. I’m so excited.”
“So am I and I love you.”
He left Jessica resting in the bedroom and when he walked into the living room on his way out, he found that Virginia had shed her wedding dress and was now wearing one of the hotel’s complimentary white robes, he also took note that she was snuggled against O’Grady on the sofa.
He removed a few spare shells from his pocket and laid them on the coffee table.
“Hopefully you won’t need those, or this,” he said, and placed the knife he had taken away from one of the terrorists next to the shells.
“I’ll keep your wife safe, count on it.”
“I am,” he said, while knowing that true safety would only return once the threat had been eliminated.
***
Belenko tried to hide his shock from his men as he learned that his nephew, Pavel, had been found murdered at the loading dock, while another of his men had barely survived an encounter with a man in an upstairs hallway.
Belenko silently cursed himself for disabling the security monitors. He did so in order to aid in their attack, but it was now enabling someone to hunt them down. With Pavel, he now had two men dead, two missing, and a man with a hand that resembled ground meat. Also, he had not counted on Wessel’s daughter being so difficult to acquire. He was certain that threatening her would have loosened the man’s lips. He would have to try something new if he were to get the man to talk, since mutilating him had proven fruitless.
Belenko scanned the guests’ faces, and as his eyes fell upon Carly, he smiled.
***
He left the room with the intent of tracking down more terrorists, when he stumbled across the woman with the can of mace.
She was dressed in a maid’s uniform and had nearly sprayed him in the eyes when he met her coming around a corner.
“Don’t shoot me! Please don’t shoot me.”
“I won’t. I’m a wedding guest, not one of the terrorists.”
The woman sighed in relief. She was in her early-forties, with curly red hair and blue-green eyes.
“Have you seen a little girl? One of the other maids told me that she spotted a little girl wandering alone.”
“I haven’t seen her, but I have an idea who she is. You get yourself to safety and I’ll find her.”
The woman pointed down the hall.
“I’m in room 613 with two of the other maids. I only left to find the child.”
“I’ll walk you back there.”
When they reached room 613, the woman knocked on the door.
“Barbara, it’s me, Melanie,”
When Barbara opened the door, she gasped as she spotted the shotgun.
“It’s okay,” Melanie said. “He’s one of the good guys.”
He turned to leave once the maid had entered the room, but she called him back and handed him something.
“That key card will get you into any of the rooms. Use it if you need a place to hide.”
“Thank you; this could come in handy.”
Melanie sent him a smile, and then closed and locked the door.
He walked along the corridors searching for Samantha, but in the end, it was she who found him.
He had just gone past a room service cart when he heard her call to him.
“Mr. White!”
He looked back along the way he’d come and spotted Samantha crawling out from beneath the tablecloth that hid the bottom of the cart. She smiled at him, but then turned and reached under the cart when she remembered her flowered hat and purse.
“Samantha, are you alright?”
“I’m fine. How many of them have you killed so far?”
He sighed.
“Four, I’ve killed four of them, but there are many more and I want to take you to be with Jessica until this is over.”
“No!” she shouted. “Don’t treat me like that. I’m small, but you know that I can help.”
“I may not be able to protect you.”
Samantha took his hand.
“I won’t be in the way, I promise, but I’m not leaving you to go hide.”
He thought about grabbing her and handing her off to the women in room 613, but he doubted that they would be able to keep her there, and any attempt she made to escape could cause them harm.
“Stay with me, but you’d better do everything I tell you to do.”
She smiled. “Of course,”
“Right.”
He headed for the stairway with Samantha following along beside him, and after entering it, he tried unlocking the door with the key card he’d been given, and found that it worked on the stairway doors as well as the room locks.
The stairway they were in was at the opposite side of the building from Perpetuity, and he left it in quiet stealth and eased his way towards the club by hugging the wall of the corridor with his back, shotgun held high and at the ready.
As they drew closer, he could hear the murmur of voices, but as he eased his head around the corner, one voice grew loud, as Belenko shouted an order at one of his men in English.
“Pull that girl from the crowd.”
He could see into the club, and saw that they had herded the guests into a corner. One of Belenko’s men entered the mass of frightened humanity and plucked a young woman from its midst.
The young woman was Carly.
Her boyfriend, Michael, attempted to intervene but was struck in the throat and collapsed to the floor while gasping for breath, and Carly was yanked along by the wrist.
Jessica’s uncle was down on his knees in a patch of bloody carpet, and Belenko leaned over and spoke to him.
“Your daughter has proven elusive, but we will find her. In the meantime, I will butcher her friends one by one until you tell me the traitors’ names.”
Wessel answered him in a hoarse voice.
“I can’t tell you something that I don’t know.”
“Still playing games, very well then, watch this young woman die.”
Belenko freed a gun from a holster on his hip and passed it to the man gripping Carly.
Wessel let out a sick moan.
“No. Dear God, please don’t hurt that girl.”
“You admit that you are CIA?”
“I... my company... I allow them to use our resources at times, but I’m not one of them, not a spy.”
“Still, you have the names I need, do you deny this?”
Wessel broke eye contact.
“I can’t give you any names. I don’t know anything about that.”
“You lie!”
“No, it’s the truth. I swear it.”
Belenko gave Wessel a look of disgust and then turned back to his man.
“Anton, shoot that girl in the head.”
As Belenko’s man released the safety on the gun, Carly trembled, closed her eyes tight, and waited to die.
CHAPTER 7
“Be ready,” Samantha said, and then she went skipping out into the open.
He whispered the word, “No.” as loudly as he dared, but she ignored him and attracted more attention to herself by
singing the theme song to a popular cartoon.
He leaned back against the wall and waited, knowing that whatever she had planned wouldn’t be subtle and that once it occurred he’d have only the element of surprise on his side.
With all eyes and ears tuned to Samantha, he dropped flat and began crawling along the floor, inching closer, and when he was lying at a corner of the front desk, he risked easing his head around it until he could see into the club.
Samantha skipped along merrily, smiling and singing, until she reached the man pointing the gun at Carly’s head.
Carly stared down at her through tears.
“Oh, little girl, baby please go to your grandfather. Go to your grandfather and cover your eyes.”
Samantha ignored her and smiled up at the man holding the gun, she then crooked her finger at him, indicating that he should lean over so that she could whisper something to him. She looked so adorable that it broke the hearts of many of the hostages looking on, to think that this angelic child should be at the mercy of the vicious thugs holding them captive.
One of Belenko’s other men found Samantha’s gesturing amusing, and he pointed at her and chuckled. The man with the gun smiled, shrugged his shoulders and bent down so that Samantha could speak to him, and as he brought his face level with hers, she freed one of the four-inch pins from her hat and jammed it deep into the man’s left eye.
As his comrade howled in agony, the man who had thought Samantha charming now cursed at her while taking aim with a shotgun, but before he could pull the trigger, a blade flashed through the air and embedded itself beneath his sternum, halting his intent.
Michael, now recovered from the blow to his throat, tackled the man from behind and began fighting him for control of the weapon.
***
He had been rising up even as Samantha shoved the pin into the man’s eye, but held his fire until he got closer. Firing from a distance with the modified shotgun would not only be ineffective, but would likely injure the very people he sought to save.
As he neared the club, he saw the man take aim at Samantha and flung his knife at him, and then witnessed Michael’s leap.
Two men to his right raised their guns as he entered, and he sent a double blast from the shotgun that shredded both men across their chests and necks.
The other guests, who previously cowed docilely in a corner of the large room, now screamed in terror and began bolting for the door. Belenko shouted at his men to stop them, but his men could do nothing but watch the herd of humanity depart, while trying to avoid getting trampled in the process.
He reached Michael in the midst of the frenzy and slammed the butt of the shotgun down hard against the forehead of the man Michael had been wrestling with. The man immediately went limp, and he ripped his knife from the man’s body and placed it back in his boot.
Michael got to his feet with the man’s gun as Carly came over carrying Samantha, whose face was splattered with the clear, intraocular fluid of her victim’s punctured eye.
She grinned. “How’d I do?”
“You saved Carly’s life, thank you.”
He pressed the key card into Michael’s hand, as Samantha’s grandfather joined them, looking ashen.
“That’s a master key. Go find a suite on one of the upper floors and stay there until this is over. You too, Samantha, now go!”
They ran out with the tail end of the crowd and he saw that George Wessel had also made his escape, and was running barefoot beside two other men, the three of them running down the very corridor that he and Samantha had made their approached from.
He grabbed a second shotgun from the floor and suddenly the only ones remaining in the club were himself and the terrorists.
“Kill that man!” Belenko roared in his own tongue, but the words’ intent were clear despite the lack of a translator and he dived behind the oak bar as a barrage of gunfire came his way. He kept his body flat as he searched for a path to freedom, while splintered wood and spent pellets rained down upon him.
The bar ran from one end of the club to the other, and near the entrance, its wall was made of glass. While staying low, he shot out the plate glass window and made his way over the broken shards and into the lobby. He was running backwards, and when the first of Belenko’s men gave pursuit, he sent a blast his way, killing the man, and giving the others pause.
The dead man brought him just enough time to gain a lead, and he sprinted down a long corridor with Belenko’s men in pursuit, and their sole intent, his death.
***
“Kick it again!” Jessica said, and O’Grady slammed a heel against the door and was rewarded by the sight of it swinging open.
“That’s good, Jude; now shatter the window in that room the same way you did the one in here.”
Jessica had been busy while her husband went off to fight, and with Virginia and O’Grady’s assistance had come up with a plan to summon help. They stripped the bed of its sheets and then tied one side from each sheet to the other in order to make a long canvas, upon which they planned to write an SOS. There was just one problem; they couldn’t find anything that would make letters large enough to be seen from a distance.
Undeterred by that obstacle, Jessica instructed O’Grady to break into the adjoining hotel room through the connecting door so that they could stretch the sheet between the two windows.
“I’m going to shatter the window now.” O’Grady called. “Close your eyes and cover your ears again.”
O’Grady ducked behind the bed, propped the shotgun atop the mattress, and fired at the window.
The sound of breaking glass came amidst the gun’s blast and the adjoining room filled with cool air.
Jessica came into the room, but then stopped short and grimaced. Virginia looked at her with concern and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Are you alright, Jessie?”
“I’m fine, just a touch of back pain.”
O’Grady joined them by the open window.
“All right, so now we have someplace to hang the top ends and we can tie weight to the lower ends to keep it from fluttering in the breeze, but what do we use to make the letters?”
“This room looks occupied, see if you can find anything in the closet.”
O’Grady did as Jessica suggested and a moment later bellowed in triumph, as he held up a can of black shoe polish.
Jessica grinned.
“We’re in business.”
***
Vadim Belenko stalked the bottom floor of the hotel as a scarlet rage burned in his breast.
The interrogation of Wessel should have gone smoothly once they had corralled the hotel’s employees and guests together. But then the tall devil with the evil eyes interfered and now he had to track Wessel down and torture him until he talked, and talk he would, Belenko vowed to himself, even if he had to flay the fat American’s flesh from his bones.
Belenko shook his head as he remembered the sight of Samantha jamming the pin into his man, Anton’s eye.
What sort of child is capable of such a thing?
At least he knew that his men would track down and kill the man with evil eyes, and once he made Wessel talk, they would exit this island as heroes. He checked his watch and saw that their boat would be arriving in a matter of minutes.
He had to end this, and he had to end it quickly.
Belenko entered the kitchen and caught movement from the corner of his eye. It was two of the wedding guests, a man and a woman in their thirties, and they were huddled beneath a stainless-steel counter. One or both of them had just urinated on themselves from fear at the sight of him, and the odor was pungent.
He raised his gun to snuff them out, but then thought better of it, as the sound of the shots could alert Wessel to his presence. With a huff, he lowered his arm and continued past them and through a pair of swinging doors that opened onto a dining area.
Wessel!
George Wessel sat with two men at a table with one of the men posi
tioned behind him, and it wasn’t until Belenko drew closer that he realized the man was holding a gun to the back of Wessel’s head.
“Hey there,” Blake said. “It looks like I’ve got something you want. So we deal, huh?”
Belenko frowned amid a sigh, and wondered once more how such a simple operation had gone wrong so quickly.
***
Sand Island was essentially three large buildings with a golf course positioned between them. The Sand Hotel on the island’s southern end faced the larger island of Ocean Beach, while on the northern end, twin thirty-story apartment buildings faced the city of Harborton.
On the fourteenth floor of one of the apartment buildings, Henry Mason called over his wife, Marlene, and pointed out the back window in their kitchen.
“That’s an SOS.”
Marlene smiled. “It’s probably teenagers fooling around.”
Henry rubbed his chin.
“Maybe, but I’d better let the hotel know about it.”
Henry found the number and dialed. When he received no answer, he tried once more, thinking that he must have dialed wrong, but when he got the same result, he dialed another number.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
“Yeah, hi, my name is Henry Mason and I....”
CHAPTER 8
Virginia stared out the window.
“Do you think anyone has seen it?”
“Yes,” Jessica said. “Now we have to hope that they call the authorities.”
Virginia leaned against O’Grady and he swallowed her up in his arms.
“I’m worried about Daddy, and Craig too. Even though he left me and Jessie alone on the roof, I still don’t want to see him get hurt.”
“It would serve him right,” O’Grady scowled, but then he swung his head around at the sound of someone at the door.
Jessica aimed her shotgun at the door as an older couple opened it.
“What are you doing in our room?” the man said, as behind him another couple ran by in a panic.
Virginia smiled with relief.
“It’s okay, they’re Craig’s grandparents.”
Jessica lowered her weapon, and the couple came in and locked the door behind them.
“What’s happening?” Jessica said.
The TAKEN! Series - Books 9-12 (Taken! Box Set Book 3) Page 20
