Dangerously Involved

by Sidney Bristol

  Riley clenched his hands. She had training. If she got out of their grip, she could get away.

  The men hauled Ms. Lopez to her feet. She swayed for a moment before she got her feet under her. She moved like lightning, wrenching her arm away and delivering a sharp jab at the closest man’s ribs. Riley held his breath and clenched his fists. She swung her elbow at the other man, catching him off guard.

  Something happened off-screen. The attackers flattened against a wall, all three grabbing Ms. Lopez. Security? Some sort of first responder?

  Riley clenched his hands. She could still get away...

  A moment later, the three men dragged Ms. Lopez out the side door.

  The video went dark.

  For several seconds no one spoke.

  Riley tried to swallow the lump lodged in his throat. A feeling of wrongness settling in his stomach. He glanced up at Melody, who continued to frown at the square of light cast by the projector.

  “So, she was grabbed because she was all they could get to? That’s the story they’re giving us?” Riley asked.

  Grant turned to face the table.

  There was no way Ms. Lopez was anything but a target. No wonder everyone wanted to keep this quiet. An attack in Kurdistan was one thing, a kidnapping by terrorists another. This was more complicated than a simple snatch and grab.

  FRIDAY. UNKNOWN, IRAQ.

  Erin Lopez balanced her weight on the ball of her right foot, doing her best Olympic gymnast impression. The crate had to be at least a decade old and wasn’t structurally sound. She pressed her ear to the side of the building and listened to the vibrations transmitted by the stone. She willed them to tell her something, impart her captor’s secrets, but all she got was a very cold ear for her trouble.

  When she’d first been dumped down here, she’d told herself that someone was coming to get her. As poorly organized as this group was, NexGen’s security would find her.

  She’d held fast to that idea for all of twenty-four hours.

  The last day hadn’t provided her with any reason to believe someone was coming for her, and that meant her chances of getting out of here were getting fewer by the second.

  The reality of her situation was that to these people she was a foreigner working for a foreign company taking what should belong to the local people. If NexGen was going to save her, they’d have shown up by now. Which meant one of three things: they weren’t sending anyone, which would result in a sob story campaign and her parents getting some money, the US military was involved, and anything they did would take months of planning, or there was a third party, and she had no idea what their true goal could be.

  Erin didn’t like any of those options. What she wanted was to talk to her kidnappers. Understand them. If she could hear them out, get to the heart of why they’d kidnapped her, maybe she could help them. So far, her attempts to communicate had been met with hostility. These were going to kill her, it was just a matter of when and how.

  Voices reverberated through the stone walls.

  Erin pressed closer, the chill seeping into her skin and bones, robbing her of all warmth. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the tone was enough of an indication for her to feel as though her assumptions were justified. She stepped down off the crate before she broke it and paced the three steps across her prison.

  No one was coming to save her.

  If she was going to survive, she had to be smart. She couldn’t let the darkness rob her of her senses. There was a way out of this. Everyone wanted something.

  What did she know about them? Could she guess at what they wanted?

  A team of seven men and one woman had abducted her from NexGen’s newly acquired site. They’d had explosives, guns, and a getaway vehicle. Erin hadn’t seen their faces, but they’d spoken Arabic. Not that they’d said much around her except for the yelling at each other.

  Even that told a story.

  Whoever these people were, they weren’t unified, and they didn’t speak Kurdish.

  When Erin had first taken the job and moved to Kurdistan she’d struggled with the language barrier. Though the region was part of Iraq, most of the people her age and younger didn’t speak Arabic. Since the ‘70s, when the Kurds were banished to this corner of the country, one of the ways the people had fought back was by holding onto their culture. They spoke Kurdish to the point that anyone thirty and younger couldn’t communicate in Arabic. Her kidnappers were in their twenties, at most. Which meant her kidnappers weren’t Kurds, they were Iraqi, and they knew her name.

  Her stomach clenched.

  There was only one connection that made sense, and if she was right... Erin was in some deep shit.

  When NexGen hired her, they’d sent her to the Iraq-Kurdistan border where they’d been developing new oil fields and the tensions between the two people groups was tense. If she’d known what would happen, would she have turned the job down? It was hard to say.

  There weren’t many reasons for a group of unfamiliar people to know her name, though.

  Shit. Fuck. And damn it.

  Erin paced three strides, turned and paced again. She was in what was little more than a cellar of some kind, dug directly into the rock. At night she shivered and lost feeling in her fingers and toes. During the day she’d sweat until her clothes were soaked through.

  She was a bargaining chip. That was the best answer to why she was here. She was something to use to get what they wanted. It wouldn’t be comfortable for her and she’d probably be here a while, but it was the least dangerous option.

  The best option after that was to be sold to one of the insurgent groups—ISIS, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, it didn’t matter—who would then use her to try to get something in return. Prisoners, resources, it didn’t matter. It still wouldn’t be a comfortable stay, but at least her value was in being alive.

  The worst option was if this was personal, and she knew for a few poor souls out there, this could be. She’d done the right thing. The events that led to that disaster proved her case. But that didn’t matter. All these people had seen was her face speaking those words, and it was her fault.

  Erin sat on the lowest step and cradled her head in her hands.

  None of it made sense. She still didn’t understand how a group this disorganized had managed to breach the facility perimeter and get to one of the main buildings. They had new weapons. Explosives. Even the flash grenades were too sophisticated for a rag tag group of insurgents with no clear affiliation or support.

  This shouldn’t have happened. Perfect attacks existed, but for the site security to allow those men through and her personal security to be in the toilet at the time?

  None of this made sense.

  And now the people holding her were probably back to fighting about what to do next. In the few glimpses she’d had of them since being tossed down here, everyone was fighting.

  A door banged somewhere in the house and voices speaking over one another came closer.

  Erin pushed to her feet and turned, backing against the opposite wall.

  Someone clanged pots around, muttering to themselves.

  She tilted her head, listening to more than the words. The scrape of feet. The rustle of clothing.

  Two people.

  “That should be enough,” the one moving around said in Arabic.

  “I don’t see anything,” another replied.

  Two men.

  Enough what?

  And what were they looking for?

  Footsteps heralded a third and fourth person.

  “Where is she?” one of the newcomers asked. Still another man.

  “I don’t see anything,” the same voice said again. “Are we sure we have to move?”

  “Yes,” the newcomer snapped.

  Erin knew these four voices. If she saw their faces, would she recognize them? She swallowed and glanced around the darkness as though she could find a way out she hadn’t discovered yet. She’d combed every inch of the wall, wearing h
er fingernails down to the nubs trying.

  “Come on. Get her out of there. We’re going.” The newcomer in charge stopped outside the cellar door.

  A key fit in a lock. Metal rattled. Another lock undone.

  The cellar door swung open.

  Erin held up her hand, shielding her eyes from the kitchen light. After almost three days of darkness, even a little light was too much.

  A man grabbed her by the wrist and hauled her up the steep stairs. Her head ached, and her eyes couldn’t quite focus after being in the dark for days. Someone spat curses at her while another jerked her scarf down, covering her face.

  She saved her breath. These people had been hurt and wronged. They wanted a target for their anger. Begging them to see her as a person wouldn’t change them. With any luck, her compliance would make them lazy. When they underestimated her, that would be her one and only chance out of this.

  “What are you doing?” a woman demanded. The only woman Erin had heard.

  “We’re going,” the man in charge of this faction said.

  “No. No, you are not,” the woman said.

  “We have been here too long. It is not safe.”

  “You cannot go anywhere now, you idiots. Weren’t you listening? The truck isn’t working.”

  Several people muttered curses.

  “What’s going on in here?” More men, more voices.

  Erin swallowed. Something was happening out there. It was bad enough everyone was nervous, fighting and angry.

  The kitchen was—what? Ten by twelve?

  Were they going to cram nine people in here, some carrying weapons?

  With tempers hot this sounded like a great way for an accident to happen.

  “Americans!” Someone from across the home shouted.

  Please...

  A metal clang made Erin’s skin break out in goose flesh.

  She’d heard that sound before.

  “Look out!” someone yelled.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, but it didn’t help.

  A bright flash of light dazzled Erin’s eyes, even through the fabric of her scarf.

  Smoke filled the room in seconds. The people around her choked and coughed, some shouting orders that countered what someone else wanted. Her scarf provided Erin some meager protection against the smoke bomb.

  This was her chance.

  Erin took a step, only to have a pair of hands haul her sideways. She ran into a table, stumbled over a chair, all while trying to hold her breath.

  Erin bounced off a doorway, giving her the perfect opening. She spun and her feet slipped on the gravel like sand. She went down hard. The hands holding her slid.

  She rolled onto her knees and clawed the scarf from around her face.

  The night sky spread out over head. So pristine and perfect. Another person rushed past her, choking for air. The one who’d dragged her from the house wasn’t in sight.

  They’d abandoned her.

  Erin shoved to her feet and jogged a few steps out into the night air.

  The house was at the very edge of what looked to be a small village. She didn’t know if the house was being attacked, or if she was being rescued.

  “Where is she? Someone find her,” one of her captors yelled from inside.

  Shit.

  Now or never.

  Erin bolted, sprinting as fast as she could move her legs. Whoever had attacked the house might or might not be friendly to her. There was no way to tell. She kept going, arms pumping. She turned at the first opportunity, weaving between the homes. A dog rose out of the shadows right in front of her.

  She saw the shape too late.

  Her foot caught and she pitched forward. Gravel and sand scraped her skin. Her knees jolted hitting the ground, jarring her bones.

  The dog yelped as it scampered away.

  Erin coughed dust and shook her head. Her body throbbed with adrenaline, her limbs ached.

  Feet crunched the ground behind her.

  She would not go back there.

  Erin shoved to her feet and swayed. Days without regular food or water were taking their toll.

  “Erin Lopez?” The accent was American, but without light there was no way to tell if he was US military, private sector, or someone she didn’t want to run into in a dark ally.

  She whirled to face a figure armed with a rifle. The man in the shadows was impossible to identify, beyond big.

  “Who are you?” She wasn’t admitting anything yet.

  “VIP asset is in hand,” he said to someone else, but he was alone.

  “What?”

  “Sorry, ma’am. Come with me, please?” He had an earpiece. She could see the wire when he turned his head. He was either military or a contractor then.

  “Not until you tell me who you are.” Erin took a step back. She’d made enemies. She couldn’t blindly trust someone because they claimed they were there to rescue her.

  “My name is Riley.” He lowered his weapon and glanced over his shoulder. “I’m with Aegis Group Lepta Team. We were hired to bring you home safely. Now, if you don’t mind, I think it's best we move. Now.”

  Aegis Group.

  That was familiar.

  Riley strode toward her. Erin backed away, but he was coming faster than she moved. Riley wrapped his left arm around her, his hand firmly in the middle of her back, and hustled her around behind the homes. He didn’t manhandle her or drag her, which was a nice change of pace. If it weren’t for the situation, she might even call his touch comforting.

  Lepta Team?

  She couldn’t remember having heard that. Was he lying to her? Or was he her new guardian angel?

  “Nice night, isn’t it?” Riley kept her moving at a steady pace. He had a destination in mind, unlike her.

  Erin peered at the homes, but most of the lights were out. Did these people know what was going on? Were they taking cover?

  “Thirsty? Anything hurt?” Riley peppered her with questions that didn’t matter.

  “We need to get out of here,” Erin said.

  “Glad we can agree on something.” Was it her imagination, or did he laugh?

  “These homes, what about the people?”

  “Oh, everyone’s safe. Figured if things were going to get hot, we should clear out as many people beforehand. Seemed like the neighborly thing to do.”

  Erin gaped at the shadow shrouded man.

  They’d taken time to empty homes before trying to rescue her? And risked someone spilling the beans?

  Who were these people?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  It can never be said that NYT & USA Today Bestselling author Sidney Bristol has had a ‘normal’ life. She is a recovering roller derby queen, former missionary, and tattoo addict. She grew up in a motor-home on the US highways (with an occasional jaunt into Canada and Mexico), traveling the rodeo circuit with her parents. Sidney has lived abroad in both Russia and Thailand, working with children and teenagers. She now lives in Texas where she splits her time between a job she loves, writing, reading and fostering cats.

  COPYRIGHT © 2019 BY Sidney Bristol.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Inked Press/Sidney Bristol

  www.sidneybristol.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

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  Dangerously Involved / Sidney Bristol.—1st ed.