These strongmen were probably not the Sultan’s men. That’s who she’d initially suspected was behind the attack. The other surfers had talked about him in hushed tones.
She’d always played it cool—asking questions without appearing to be too interested.
“Get in,” the gunman said.
Rose crawled into the back seat. The masked man with the gun followed.
He turned to the driver.
“Drive.”
Rose waited for him to point the gun at the driver. That would be her chance. But the gunman kept the gun pointed in her direction, leaning back against the door far enough so he was just out of reach.
“Man, I told you I don’t want any trouble,” the driver said, holding up both hands.
“I said fucking drive,” the gunman said. “Or your wife and mother are dead.”
The driver started the car and took off.
Rose turned her head to look behind her. The other man was still inside with Dylan. She closed her eyes. He should be out by now. He should be on the motorcycle. What was he still doing inside?
“Who are you? What do you want?” Rose asked in a low, steady, and calm voice.
“I ask the questions, not you,” the gunman barked.
Rose clocked his answer. He wasn’t very sharp. He hadn’t actually asked her any questions. He’d just ordered her around. She filed all this away to use later.
Thirty minutes later, the gunman instructed the driver to turn down a long driveway.
Rose had been tensed the entire time, waiting for the gunman to relax his guard. But the man had leaned back against the door, staring at her the entire time, barely blinking, while keeping the gun pointed at her. It rested on his thigh, his finger near the trigger.
At one point, after she’d laid her head back against the seat and closed her eyes, pretending to sleep to create an opportunity to disarm him, he’d spoken.
“Don’t try anything. My brother is still with your dog. If I don’t call him and say I’ve delivered you within the next twenty minutes, he’ll kill it.”
Rose’s eyes narrowed. His brother? Delivered her?
She also logged that information.
The car pulled up in front of a large house.
Immediately she knew where she was.
X.
In her mind, she made her escape plan.
She’d kill X and all his men, steal a car, drive back, and get Dylan and her laptop and phone and then take off for another island. She hadn’t planned on leaving the island until she had a solid lead on the Sultan, but she was close. She’d heard rumblings about something strange in Australia. She just hadn’t had time to find out more yet.
She’d miss the surfer gang she’d become friends with over the past three months.
But it was time to go.
She’d especially miss Makeda.
Over the past few months, she’d really grown to like and respect the tall, athletic surf goddess who was basically the leader of all the surf rats. If she hadn’t been forced to be so secretive about herself, she had a feeling she and Makeda would’ve been good friends.
Her thoughts were disrupted by the gunman sticking the gun in her back, prodding her out of the car, and directing her into the house.
They went in through the front door.
There wasn’t a garage or other entrance. One way in to the road and one way out. Not ideal.
Inside, Rose scanned her surroundings.
A staircase. A living room that led to a kitchen. She could see a stove and table through the open door. Everything was sleek and modern, and she spotted several expensive paintings by artists she recognized.
Before she could take in more, she was herded upstairs and into a bedroom. The room was nearly bare—a bed, a dresser, and an armchair. She was flung onto the bed. By the time she whirled and stood, the door had been locked behind her, and she was alone in the nearly empty room.
Rose immediately analyzed not only the room, but everything she’d seen so far from the moment the car turned down the long driveway leading to the house.
Her training under Eva came back to her in full force. Step one: Assess the entry and exit points.
This room had one door and one window.
She went to the window and drew back the curtains. It had bars on it. And there was no way to unlock it in an emergency or fire like many barred windows had.
Any assassin trained by Eva knew that determining how to get out of a situation or environment was crucial and therefore, step one.
Eva had taught her well.
Steps one and two in situational awareness was assessing not only the entry and exit points to her current location but also her surroundings.
The front of the house had one door and numerous windows. The steep walls she’d soon earlier would make it difficult to get to the front of the house. There might be a back exit, but the walls would make it difficult to get to the front of the house.
And looking out her window, Rose saw that the back of the house contained a small walled area with a patio and pool, but beyond the walls lay thick forest for as far as she could see.
The best bet, if she escaped, would be to head back down the long driveway to the main road and the island’s small village.
It would be more difficult for them to capture her if there were other people around.
Heading into the deep jungle behind the house would be a gamble—one she might consider if it weren’t for the dogs she’d heard barking when she was led in. They could easily track her movements, and she could end up trapped in the jungle.
The third step in assessing her surroundings was looking for places to hide. In this room? Under the bed. She’d only resort to concealing herself if there was an explosion or if she needed to take cover during a gunfight. Unlikely in this scenario.
The last step was preparing to fight.
She had no weapons on her, but that had never stopped her before.
Looking around, she scanned the room for anything she could use in a fight.
The bed’s frame was bolted to the wall, and the armchair was as well.
The small dresser was also attached to the wall. She was able to pull out the two small drawers. She could use them as weapons, but they’d be easy to avoid. Anyone could duck seeing a dresser drawer flying their way. The handles were round knobs. She reached inside the drawer and unscrewed the knobs. Perfect. The sharp ends were like small screws. By palming the round end of the knobs, she had two sharp weapons to strike with.
But she wasn’t done yet.
Getting down on the floor, she examined the legs of the bed. They were attached to the frame itself. Damn. She would have liked to have used a bed leg as a sharp stake, but after giving it a few tugs, she realized it wasn’t going to break.
She heard voices and footsteps in the hall and, grabbing the drawer knobs off the bed, she raced to the door, pressing her ear against it.
To her surprise, she heard another girl’s voice. This girl was giggling and seemed happy.
Shit.
It was Keiki. One of the surfer chicks from the camp. She was a pain in the ass—a surly little rich girl who had become a drug addict. What the hell was she doing here?
Rose held her breath as the voices grew closer.
X was saying something about how beautiful Keiki was.
Then the voices and footsteps passed.
For a second, Rose thought about crying out for the girl to run but realized it would be foolish
and would only draw attention to herself. Right now, she wanted to be prepared when someone walked in that door.
And it hadn’t sounded like Keiki was a prisoner.
She was probably one of the girls the other surfers spoke about in hushed tones—a girl who willingly gave favors to X for drugs.
He was such a fucker.
Rose couldn’t wait to kill him.
She clutched the pointed ends of the dresser knobs. She’d poke out both his eyes
at once.
But an hour later another man—some dude she hadn’t seen before—kicked open the door. One of the brothers stood behind him.
“We’re going for a drive.”
Rose discreetly palmed the dresser knobs and then pretended to shove her hands into her hoodie’s front pockets and slouched.
“’kay.”
The man in the doorway backed out and held the door open for her.
The man in the hall was pointing a gun her way.
“Don’t try anything.”
“Whatever,” Rose said.
Then the man tied her hands behind her back with rope. She positioned them as she’d been taught, to leave the most amount of pull, but it would still take time to wriggle out.
She would wait to see where they were going and then make a plan.
Anywhere beyond this isolated house would increase her odds of escape.
It was an important lesson she’d learned from Eva.
Sometimes it was better to outsmart your enemy instead of trying to overpower them.
As a woman, this was usually the better advantage. Especially if the enemy was armed.
But when your only option was to fight, you had to do it with every ounce of your being and be willing to die.
Right now, she still had other options besides fighting, so she was going to take them.
The two men led her out to a big black car. As they walked her past the front of the car, she saw him in the passenger seat.
X.
He was different than she’d imagined.
He was attractive, for starters.
Super short grayish hair. Piercing blue eyes. His lips pursed in a smirk.
She glared back.
Then she was thrust into the backseat with the man with the gun. The other man got into the driver’s seat and started the vehicle.
She stared at X’s profile, but he didn’t glance her way. He said something in a low voice to the driver, and they pulled out of the driveway.
Rose went over her options again as they drove.
She was outnumbered. Sure, she could open the door and jump out onto the dirt road, but where would that get her? She would sit tight and wait to see where they were going.
Meanwhile, she worked on loosening the ties that bound her wrists.
When the car pulled up to the ferry terminal, Rose knew she’d done the right thing.
They were going to Padang.
7
Present Day
Portsea, Australia
In the gloaming, Tom stood out on the rocks overlooking the dark sea and brought the crystal tumbler up to his lips, draining the glass. His eyes were trained on a spot further down the beach that was lit up like daytime.
The local authorities had been scouring the beach and surrounding area for the past ten hours.
As soon as he’d gotten Tilly’s message, he raced home.
Investigators had questioned him and Tilly and asked to search the house. Tilly, being the sort who never had anything to hide, readily agreed, even though Tom was uncomfortable with the idea.
It wouldn’t do to express concern.
Toward dinner time, the detective came back to tell them they’d be closing the road to visitors but that the O’Briens, of course, were welcome to come and go.
Tilly, who had been drinking since noon, looked glassy-eyed at the detective standing in the doorway. Before closing the door, she reached for his arm and clutched it.
“Who is it?” she asked. “What happened?”
He exhaled loudly before he spoke.
“We’ve found the rest of the body in a different location, at the quarry.”
Tilly’s eyes grew wide. The quarry was about a mile away.
“How? Why?”
“It appears that some type of wild animal might have brought the limb down to the shore here. There were other parts scattered.”
Tilly closed her eyes. “I don’t understand.”
Then the detective said what Tom had feared the entire time.
“We have reason to believe that it is Maddie May Johnson.”
The girl had been missing for a week. Tom and Tilly had talked about it over dinner several times, expressing disbelief that a girl could disappear without a trace.
She’d been walking to a friend’s house one night and never arrived.
Her parents said she’d been going to study for an exam the next day.
The girl’s father was a pastor at a local church. The family was very involved in the community and volunteered with several charity organizations.
Maddie May had clearly not run away.
Several searches had been fruitless.
But somehow, she’d ended up at the quarry dead.
“Was it? Was her death, I mean, an accident?” Tilly asked, her face crumpling as she spoke.
The detective shook his head slowly.
“We believe it was foul play.”
8
Present Day
Sumatra
The car Rose was in had driven off the ferry in Padang and stopped in the parking lot.
The driver and the brother who had been in the backseat with her had gotten out of the vehicle, leaving Rose alone in the back seat.
She watched them walk toward the entry to the parking lot. X had his head bent over his phone.
By then she’d wriggled out of the ties binding her wrist. She glanced around the parking lot.
It was surrounded by water.
She calculated the odds of diving into the water and trying to swim away.
They weren’t great.
But the only way out of the parking lot was the narrow driveway where the two goons stood. If only they would go somewhere else…
A few seconds later, the two men turned and headed to their right where a big black boat was anchored.
Rose’s heart skipped a beat. An icy chill ran over her.
The Sultan’s boat. It had to be.
Was he right there?
Was he watching her right now through binoculars?
She didn’t think so.
If he had been, she would have felt it.
It was the strangest thing, but she had some odd psychic connection to the man. But man was too kind a word. He was subhuman.
Now it was making sense.
X was turning her over to the Sultan.
It was almost too good to be true—the Sultan had come to her.
This was not how she had planned to confront the man—being helplessly handed over.
She’d escape into the bowels of the city and then return and stow away onboard while they prowled the city looking for her. If she was really lucky, the Sultan would be onboard alone or nearly alone. That’s when she would kill him.
But first to get away from these amateurs so she could deal with the real enemy.
By now, the two men were a substantial distance away from the driveway into the parking lot. Beyond the driveway was a row of buildings. If she could make it there, she could easily disappear, dodging down alleys and into buildings if necessary.
Rose calculated how far away the men were from the driveway compared to how far away she was. It would be close. She would have the element of surprise, though. Slowly, she worked her hands to her front and put one hand on the door handle.
X’s head was still bent over his phone, his fingers tapping a message.
Now!
She jammed down on the door handle and eased through the opening she made, the metal scraping her on both sides. She slipped out the narrow opening. As soon as both feet touched the pavement, she took off at a sprint.
Rose wove in and out of small streets and back alleys until she made it to the red-light district. From there, she hugged the buildings as she made her way to the blue house with the brown door at the end of the street.
This stretch of the strip was deserted and falling apart. It seemed as if the trash service stopped a few blocks earlier. Litter and bags of trash were pile
d on corners. It smelled like they had been there for a long time.
When Rose got to the blue house, she dipped down the alley and shifted the fake board, revealing a door handle that she twisted. The door swung open with all the boards still nailed to it. Rose slipped inside before pulling the boarded door back into place. Making her way in the dark, Rose found the stairs. About midway, she gave a low whistle, the signal that a friend had arrived. A small flashlight shone down on her.
The guy holding it grunted.
“I need to hide out here for a few hours.”
“Come on up,” he said.
Upstairs she found Joan, the girl who had brought her to Sumatra.
When she’d first been alerted through her surveillance of missing girls that Joan had disappeared, she suspected the Sultan and came to investigate. But soon it became clear that it was X who had taken the girl. That fucker. He’d given the girl something or done something to her that had permanently damaged her brain.
When Rose reached out to Joan’s parents, they had turned their back on her, saying she was dead to them.
She was just about to speak to Joan and Zahra, an older girl who was in charge at the flop house, when she heard the sound of a motorcycle out front. Shit.
Rose drew back fabric from a window facing the street.
Gia.
“Gotta go,” she said. She waited until Gia rounded the corner to the alley and then quickly lifted the window and leaped out onto the roof of the porch and then jumped to the ground, taking off at a full sprint. So much for laying low for a few hours.
Getting off the main street, Rose wandered back toward the marina more cautiously, sticking strictly to the smaller, side streets. On one residential street, a line of laundry hung pretty low between buildings. Jumping onto a large trash container, she was able to tug on a scarf hanging to dry. She wrapped it around her head, hiding all but her eyes, hoping it would serve as some type of disguise.
Plus, she was counting on X and his bodyguards not expecting her to return to the marina.
Before long, she was back in the parking lot. X’s car was still there. It was empty.
Blood & Fire (Vigilante Crime Series Book 2) Page 4
