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Kennedy came to with a groan, trying to orient to her surroundings. Encased in scratchy, suffocating, dusty fabric, as if she’d been dumped in a burlap sack, she felt the rumble and roll, start and stop, of a vehicle on the road, and the painful press of whatever the heck unforgiving surface she’d been placed on. She tried to wiggle a little to see if she could discern her surroundings. Am I in the trunk? The back of a van?
Her wrists and ankles were bound. A hood smothered her face. Her mouth had been taped shut. The back of her head throbbed, the pain pulsing in waves through her temples, making her sick to her stomach. Completely, utterly freaked, she tried to get her wits about her. What happened?
She remembered leaving the apartment at around eleven. Dante slept so soundly, she didn’t have the heart to wake him. She stopped by her apartment to retrieve the keys to the gate, something she’d forgotten in her spaced out, preoccupied mind. And then she phoned Simon. She wanted to catch up with him and tell him about her relationship with Dante and pray he didn’t give her a lecture.
She also wanted to tell him the truth about Dante for when the tabloids picked up his father’s story. Where was I? I’d arrived at work but hadn’t stepped onto the property. I stood beneath a tree near the acreage in the back, intending to enter through the back gate and check on a recent acquisition—Akono, another young tiger who’d been poorly treated at a small zoo. Akono, quite simply, trusted no one. He’ll need some serious, long, arduous work and patience. And then, wham! A blow to the back of the head had brought her down.
No sound came from the driver, but she could make out the tinny sound of cheap speakers, playing some radio station. I must be on the floor of a van. Some pop diva crooned, but inside her horrifying cocoon, she couldn’t make out the words or the singer.
The dust surrounding her, coupled with the tape over her mouth, made her feel stifled and strangled. She shook her head and let out a strange, garbled groan. The filthy grime trapped in the moldy fabric prison tickled her nose until a sneeze became imminent. She tried to hold back the lung convulsion, but couldn’t. This led to a fit of coughing.
Apparently trying to drown her pathetic sounds out, the driver cranked up the volume on the radio, allowing her to catch the tail end of a Taylor Swift song, something about “there is nothing I do better than revenge.”
Kennedy tried to scream through the gag. Revenge was the least of her concerns, but if she did ever manage to get free, she’d want it in spades for whoever had her in this fucking vehicle. She wiped her snot covered face off on the icky cloth, hoping she didn’t catch some sort of disease. She rocked back and forth but only succeeded in making her head ache and her body bruise from whatever unyielding sharp tool she’d jabbed her back against.
Another song floated through the airwaves and she stilled, captivated. Dante? A deep, sensuous, masculine voice filled her with comfort as he sang the words to a tune she’d never heard. She’d meant to download every song he ever wrote, especially after hearing he wrote some for her but hadn’t gotten around to it. I mean, it’s not like I have a leisurely life. Since Africa, her days were spent with tigers, her nights in studious silence or in community meetings seeking strength, and she couldn’t remember ever hearing a song by Marked Love. This one made her weep.
“Where is my sweet, sweet longing, the one that takes me deep? Where is my heart’s yearning, the one I long to keep?” A piercing, haunting guitar solo followed.
She’s right here, Kennedy cried in her mind. She’s been kidnapped, but that person could have been me.
“It’s bound to be lost forever, in the death of a distant sleep.”
Bound, gagged, restrained, sleep seemed as distant as Africa. Death seemed far more likely. But she didn’t dare succumb to despair. Wait, she told herself. Just wait and find out what’s next. She pictured the endless patience a tiger possessed when he hunted for his food. Wait and watch. Gather scents in the air. Wait some more. Trust. Who am I kidding, she thought, angry tears pushing to the surface. I’m going to die.
After several twisting turns, stops and starts, the vehicle paused followed by the clang and rattle of an industrial garage door opening. The van eased forward and came to a halt. The engine ceased. The vehicle door opened and banged closed. Men’s voices conferred but she couldn’t make out what was being said. A side door slid open. Hands around her ankles.
A tug, a grunt and she was lifted in someone’s arms, still smothered by the sack, as she shrieked in protest. Slung over his shoulder. Smells of male cologne, cigarettes and body odor, coupled with something musty and dank. Steps on solid flooring, tromping upstairs, doors opening and closing, her body jostled around to make way for the arm reaching for the doorknob.
Cool air all around, fingering through holes in the cloth surrounding her. More footsteps, more stairs. The click of a lock. Finally, she was dropped onto one of those unforgiving beds consisting of more metal springs than soft padding. More footsteps, the door opened and, whoever dropped her, exited. She waited, rigid and terrified.
In the other room, men argued. Conferred. Something about “wait for the boss” and “the bitch is secured” and “where’s my money?” More sounds. Bottles clinking? Liquid pouring into glasses. Laughter. A distant door opening and closing. “Hey, boss,” someone said, and his voice sounded contrite...edgy.
“Gentlemen,” came the responding voice. And the smell of clove cigarettes.
A surge of panic blasted through her bloodstream. It has to be Iniko.
The voices tensed. Increased in volume. Then silence, followed by footsteps, heading Kennedy’s way.
“What? A present? For me?” a smooth British voice said. “How nice. And here it’s the middle of summer. It isn’t even my birthday.”
Iniko. Helpless, powerless, Kennedy wanted to scream. The door to her prison opened the closed.
Fumbling hands fell upon her wriggling, resistant body. They rustled about the burlap until it could be peeled away from her body. Warm air, expensive men’s fragrance—some 2k Caron’s Poivre explosive, an intense spicy scent she remembered—and a plume of smoke from the kretek wafted around her. The hood was pried from her face, and she lay staring into the cold, dark eyes of Iniko Khari, a wretched duplicate of her dead lover, Mosi.
“Allow me,” he said. He placed the kretek between his lips, reached for the end of the tape binding Kennedy’s face, and ripped it free. A satisfied smirk formed on on his face as she yelped in pain.
“You fucking bastard,” she yelled, writhing and wiggling.
His hand, reeking of tobacco and food, quickly clamped around her mouth, smashing her head against the barely padded bedsprings. “Not a sound from you,” he snarled, the cigarette bobbing between his lips, sending a sprinkle of ash across her jaw and neck.
Her eyes grew wide, and she shook her head back and forth as best she could.
“Did you get my gift?” He smiled, the grin of an evil clown stretching across his face. Then he inclined his head, narrowed his eyes and slowly removed his palm from her mouth. He kept it poised a few inches from her, such that he could backhand her if she as much as whimpered.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice emerged in a child-like whisper.
Apparently assured she wouldn’t scream, he brought his hand to his mouth and removed the cigarette. “How did it go down? I made sure they were extra-strength, the way you always liked them.”
“They flushed nicely, thank you.”
Iniko’s eyes narrowed. He inhaled on the c, held the smoke in his lungs, then blew out a toxic stream toward her nostrils.
She snorted.
“I’m going to have fun with you, pet. Make your last moments on earth count for something—my satisfaction.” One long finger reached out and snaked across her cheek. His other hand guided the smoke to his lips, then away. His face revealed excitement...arousal even.
Disgusted, Kennedy shivered but said nothing. She tried to wrench her head away, but he deftly caught it, gripping it tightly in his bony, claw-like grasp.
Giving her a look that chilled her to the bone, he released her face and continued leisurely stroking her skin with a single digit. He trailed it along her jaw. Slid it along her collarbone. Traced the tender skin at the top of her breast. When he got to the spiral, he ran his finger around and around in a circle, chuckling softly. “Your tragic tattoo. Marking the slash of a claw meant for you. Well, this time I won’t miss,” he said, swallowing hard.
How the hell does he know about my tattoo? I got it when I returned to the U.S. And what does he mean he won’t miss?
He splayed his fingers and kneaded her entire breast. “So soft. So succulent. And now you’re here for the taking.” He took a long, deep drag from his cigarette, practically shuddering.
“Hey, boss,” one of the men called from the other room.
His head snapped to the side, toward the front room. “I’m busy.”
“I think you need to take this call.”
“You deal with it.”
“Can’t. It’s for you.”
His head whipped in her direction. The look of longing in his eyes matched similar looks Mosi had given her. But the horrifying intent behind the gaze belonged to Iniko, and Iniko alone. Mosi would never have regarded her in this manner.
He continued to deliberate. His head swiveled back and forth. Toward the front room. Back to her. He seemed to be weighing choices, the same way she’d seen a tiger with his prey, worried by a pack of jackals.
“Boss. It’s Barnes. Says you’ll want to hear what he has to say.”
Barnes? My employer?
“Fuck.” Iniko stood, adjusted his pants, and said coldly, “Don’t go anywhere.” He stalked from the room, slamming the door behind him.
Tears trickled from Kennedy’s eyes as she listened to Iniko shout.
“What do you mean my father’s looking for me? How do you know?”
His words grew softer as if he moved further away. Then he returned, his voice clipped and harsh. “We need to speed things up. Take her to the place I told you about. Wait until dark.”
“I don’t know, boss,” one of the other men spoke in a quavering voice.
“Do it,” Iniko said, in a deadly voice. “Or you’ll be joining her. Don’t fuck this up or the entire lot of you will be joining her, got it?” He stomped from the room, slamming the door forcefully behind him.
Where’s he taking me? What’s going to happen to me? Silent tears slicked Kennedy’s cheeks. Bizarre thoughts swirled through her pain. In Africa, at the game reserve, she witnessed life and death in all its harsh glory. Death I can deal with, she thought. It’s dying a complete victim that sucks. She sobbed. I don’t even get to fight for my life. Feeling helpless, utterly powerless, completely alone, she slipped into that space she knew so well—the one that lay far, far from her body where no one, not even Dante at this point, could reach her. She drifted into a disconnected space, separate from Big Jim, from her tigers—and far away from Dante.
