Chapter Five

Dane was moving. The darkness was still there, but the cloud around his brain had subsided enough that he was awake. And definitely moving.

Realizing he was in trouble, he relied on his training to mentally prioritize a crisis list. First and foremost, he was tied up, and didn’t know where he was. The thin hood covering his head caught on the stubble of his jaw when he turned his head.

He wasn’t sure who had hit him or if Lena was okay. He could still smell her perfume, but he wasn’t sure if she was close or if it came from his clothing.

“Lena?” he whispered, his voice raspy.

“Shh.” She was next to him. Close.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, keeping his voice low. He moved to reach for her and remembered his hands were tied behind his back.

“N-no.”

“What happened?”

Maybe she had seen the intruder. She might have information that could help him get them out of this.

“Are you hurt?” she asked rather than answer his question.

“My head feels like it was hit with a baseball bat, and my arms are cramping up. But I’m not damaged.”

“That’s good.”

“Is he awake?” a male voice said from farther away.

“No. Not yet,” Lena lied. “How much longer?”

“We’re almost there. Maybe ten minutes.”

“Can you turn this up? I love this song,” she requested.

The men obliged and Shinedown filled the vehicle, making his head throb.

“Do you have a family?” she asked, her breath right by his ear.

This was a different question than the one she’d asked before. Originally, she’d asked if he was married. He assumed she’d asked to determine if he was available. But her question now stirred a different fear in him.

“No,” Dane answered, thinking about the little boy who couldn’t be in his life and the wife he never really knew.

“That’s good,” she said. And he knew he was fucked.

A few minutes later, the sound of the tires changed from the hum of pavement to the crunch of gravel. When the vehicle bucked under him, a small hand on his arm braced him from rolling over.

The vehicle stopped. Doors opened and closed and the distinct sound of the rolling of a van door before someone grabbed his feet and yanked him across the rough carpet of the vehicle.

His leg was so stiff he stumbled and would have fallen if a large body hadn’t caught him and pushed him back up.

“Easy,” Lena said. “You don’t have to be a dick.”

“Right, we wouldn’t want to hurt him.” The man chuckled darkly.

Dane had been focusing his thoughts on a plan of escape, and how to help Lena until he heard that ominous laugh. Now he had to prepare himself for what would happen next. Pain. And lots of it.

He knew he was only still alive for the purpose of ransom or information. And since he didn’t have anyone who would pay two nickels to get him back, he assumed they were planning to extract information.

That usually meant torture.

He’d been trained to manage pain and taught how to shrink inside his own mind to protect himself. He wasn’t sure what they planned to do with Lena, but from the sound of three individual sets of footsteps he knew she was walking under her own power.

Was she in on this? Had she set him up? As he replayed her conversations with the men, it seemed likely. But he’d looked in her eyes last night and seen nothing but honesty and interest. He wasn’t normally wrong about these things.

His ability to read people had helped him in the business world, and it had kept him from danger on more than one occasion in his new profession.

It was the oldest trick in the book, using an attractive woman to lure a man into danger. He sniffed at his stupidity. He’d been so desperate for companionship he hadn’t been paying attention.

She’d come into the bar after him. She’d allowed him to approach her instead of being aggressive. She’d waited hours for him to suggest they go back to the hotel so as not to appear too eager to get him alone.

How bored she must have been making small talk when all she wanted to do was bash him over the head and collect her fee.

“How’s our new guest?” a different male voice asked, once he’d been brought into some kind of structure.

“Lena says we’re supposed to take it easy on him.” The men chuckled again.

Dane was tall and lean. Not thick with muscle like his task force brothers. Even with his eyes covered, he could tell the two goons that towered over his six-foot frame were like boulders. He wasn’t going to be able to fight his way out of this.

They left him alone sitting against a wall for what felt like hours. He used his breathing to measure the time more accurately and decided it was not that long.

Eventually they came back.

His captors probably thought it would be easy to break him, but they would be disappointed. He wouldn’t tell them anything.

His bound legs dragged behind him as they heaved him into a cool room and dropped him into a chair. The hood was ripped from his head and fluorescent light burned his eyes.

He blinked the room into focus, and his gaze fell on the small boy bound to the chair in the middle of the room. Tears streaked through the dirt on his face, and he looked up with the same dark eyes Dane saw every day in his own mirror.

Oh God, no.

“Dad?” his son whispered, and Dane knew he would tell them anything they wanted to know.