Chapter Fourteen

Leah slowly became aware of her surroundings. Everything blurred and muffled, at first, like coming out of a bad dream. People—men’s voices—spoke around her, but it wasn’t in English. Her head swam as she lifted it. Drugged. She remembered that now. After she and Marcus surrendered to the black-clad mercenaries in Indonesia, they’d injected her with something and the world had gone black.

She blinked and realized the fuzziness over her eyes was a blindfold. No, a bag. She had a bag over her head and panic spiked through her, hot and wild, counteracting whatever drug they’d given her.

How much time had passed?

Where was she?

Where was Marcus?

Rough hands grabbed her suddenly and a small, terrified sound slipped from her lips. She hated it. Made her sound like a weak little mouse and she wanted to be strong and brave and capable and not so frightened that tremors shook her to the bones.

Someone whipped the bag off her head. Light assaulted her eyes, blinding her for several long seconds.

“Mrs. Leah Giancarelli,” a Russian-accented voice said directly in front of her.

She focused on that spot as her vision cleared. The man who came into view was…not what she had expected. Young, mid-twenties, his silk shirt halfway unbuttoned to show a chest that was almost concave, the kind of thin that came from a lot of drug use.

This was the man who controlled Volkov Group? Who had bested Marcus?

It didn’t make sense.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked with a snake-oil smile.

Was she supposed to? Should she lie? No, best to stick to the truth. While he wasn’t the boogeyman her drug-addled brain had dreamed up in the seconds before the hood came off, he wasn’t exactly harmless, either. There was a sliminess to him that set her teeth on edge.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t.”

“It’s okay. I would be concerned for you if you did. I’m Dmitry Volkov. My father is the founder and CEO of Volkov Group.”

Ah. His father. Now that made sense. Dmitry wasn’t the leader. He was simply a rich kid working for daddy.

“Have you heard of us?” he asked.

This time, she decided on the lie. “No, I don’t know who you are. I don’t know why I’m here.” She let some of her inner terror seep out to wobble in her voice. “I just want to go home.”

“That’s good. So far, I see no reason you can’t go home. Keep answering questions the way I like, and I’ll make sure you get back to those beautiful kids.”

He’s lying. She didn’t know how she knew—he didn’t give off any obvious tells, but the fear tap-dancing down her spine told her he didn’t plan to release her.

Dmitry walked around the edge of a desk and sat behind it. Maybe to make himself look powerful, but it didn’t work. The desk was the only furniture in the otherwise empty room, and he looked small behind it. Like a child sitting at the adult table for the first time.

“Do you know Alexander Cabot?” he asked.

Again, she decided on the truth. “I met him one time.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Nothing.”

“Yes, he did. He gave you something. Information that could be very damning for certain individuals I work with.”

Leah shook her head. “He gave me nothing. I swear.” Which was kind of the truth. He gave her the flash drive, but she never saw what was on it.

“What about your husband? How long was Cabot involved with him?”

“Involved?”

“As an informant.”

“My husband died a year ago.”

“I’m aware.”

A cold ripple of fear worked its way down her spine on a bead of sweat. He was aware of Danny’s death—but was he involved? Marcus told her the man who had pulled the trigger was dead, but HORNET never found who had hired the killer. Could she be standing in front of him now?

“I don’t know anything. Danny never talked about work.”

Dmitry leaned back in his seat and steepled his hands in front of his mouth. He had heavy gold rings on all of his fingers and they clinked together when he abruptly clapped. “Let’s see what Cabot has to say, huh? Maybe he’ll talk with new motivation.”

The men grabbed her again and dragged her outside into the pouring rain. Her feet sank ankle-deep in mud. She’d lost one of her shoes somewhere between Indonesia and…wherever she was now. Not Indonesia. The weather was different, the lush green jungle replaced with high grass and scattered trees. Despite the barrage of rain, this was a drier climate than Indonesia. The rainwater didn’t so much as soak into the ground as run over it in small streams.

God. Where was Marcus? Had they killed him?

She was so hollowed out by the thought, so numb, she didn’t make a sound when her captors shoved the bag back over her head. It smelled of sweat and the heavy musk of fear. She wondered how many other people had worn this sack over their heads in the last minutes of their lives. Her captors manhandled her into the back of a truck, cuffed her to a bar, and left her.

Alone.

She stood up and tried to pull at the bar. It didn’t budge. With a rumble, the truck jerked forward and she lost her balance, crashing into the wall and wrenching her shoulder. She tried to steady herself, but every bump felt like a ravine and strained her arms against the cuffs. And, God, there were so many bumps.

Something brushed past her bare foot. She shivered and tried to jerk away, but a hand clamped down on her leg. She drew in a breath for a scream that froze in her lungs when the bag was ripped from her head. She blinked and a face swam into focus.

The woman from Indonesia. The one who had helped them. The one Marcus hadn’t trusted.

Mercedes something.

“Jesus,” the woman said, a melodious hint of Spanish in her voice. She took Leah’s chin in her hand and turned her head each way. “That’s a shiner, chica. What did they do to you? Did they…” She hesitated, which seemed very unlike her. “Did they hurt you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not the way you mean, at least. I was drugged until I got here. Have you seen Marcus?”

“He’s probably dead.”

The words were a blade. First Danny, and now… If she lost Marcus, too, she’d lose the little bit of sanity she’d managed to preserve over the past year. “He’s not.”

“You sound so sure.”

She had to be. The truck hit another bump and pain screamed through her shoulder. “Mercedes, let me go. Please.”

Mercedes sat back on her heels and just looked at her. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

Leah saw the bag coming and panicked. “No, no. Stop! Please!”

“Shh,” Mercedes whispered harshly next to her ear. “You tell them I’m here, you won’t like what happens, chica. Keep your mouth shut and everything will be just fine. Trust me.”

Trust her? Her loyalties seemed to shift with the wind. How the hell was she supposed to trust the woman?

The truck bumped to a sudden stop and through a worn part in the bag, Leah saw Mercedes’s outline melt away into the shadows near the front of the truck. She should call attention to the woman. Maybe it’d win her favor with Dmitry.

Her stomach lurched at the thought. She didn’t want the favor of the man who may have killed Marcus. And possibly Danny, too. The two men who meant the world to her.

No. She wouldn’t rat Mercedes out. For now. But if it came down to her life or the other woman’s she planned to do everything in her power to go home to her kids.

One of her captors crawled into the back of the truck. Leah held her breath, wondering if Mercedes’s plan was to attack while the guy was busy unhooking Leah from the bar. But nothing happened. The woman didn’t appear with a gun to save the day.

God. She was sick of waiting for others to save the day. She should’ve let Danny teach her self-defense. He’d always wanted to, but she’d always found excuses to put it off. She always told him she was too much of a flower child, having been raised by a hippie, to feel comfortable with learning how to hurt another human being. How naive she’d been. Her naiveté must have kept her poor husband awake at night with worry. No wonder Danny had swaddled her from the horrors of the outside world, shielding her from the worst aspects of his job. If she lived through this, she was signing up for the first available class when she got home.

Leah’s arms fell away from the bar and collapsed like lead weights in her lap. There was something wrong with her shoulder. It screamed with every small jostle, and she didn’t seem to have any control over that arm. Dislocated. She’d first done it as a teenager during gymnastics practice and now it happened at least once every few years. It hurt like hell to pop back in, but while out, it just felt…useless. Except maybe it wasn’t. She could manipulate her arm in ways she couldn’t while it was properly attached to her shoulder.

Her captors yanked her out into the rain and mud. She didn’t fight. She shuffled along, keeping her head down so she could see a sliver of the ground through the gap at the bottom of the bag. They led her inside a building, and only then did they pull off the hood. Except for the lack of a desk, this room looked the same as the one she’d just left—mud brick walls, dirt floor, and corrugated tin roof. For all she knew, they’d driven her in circles, removed the desk, and brought her right back to where she started. There were a couple of ragged chairs strewn around the edges of the room, and in the center of it all was a bound man, his head covered. Dried splotches of red in the hard-packed dirt floor underneath him showed they hadn’t been kind to him.

Bile burned her throat. “Marcus?”

He looked up sharply at the sound of her voice. No, it wasn’t Marcus. His coloring was too pale, and his muscle tone was all wrong.

“Who’s there?” he asked in a British accent.

One of her captors strode forward and yanked off the man’s hood. His dark hair stood up on end. His left eye was swollen shut, and his nose dripped with fresh blood. Still, she recognized him instantly.

Alexander Cabot.

The whole reason she’d gotten dragged into this mess in the first place. Part of her wanted to rail at him. The other part—the mother, she supposed—wanted to rush to his side and make sure he was okay. Yes, he’d gotten her involved in this mess. But he’d also saved her life back in Malibu.

Cabot’s one good eye widened when he spotted her, but he recovered quickly and dismissed her like she wasn’t important. “Who is she?”

Dmitry walked in then, shaking off an umbrella. He grinned at Cabot. “Don’t play stupid, Cabot. Of course you recognize her.”

“I don’t,” he said in a tone of tired resignation. “I swear I don’t know this woman.”

Dmitry motioned one of his men forward with the tilt of his head. The brute slammed a fist into Cabot’s face with all the concern of swatting a fly.

Cabot’s head snapped back, then lolled forward as more blood dripped down his chin to splatter on his clothes. He gurgled a laugh. “Hitting me won’t improve my memory, mate.”

The brute wound up again and, this time, something crunched under his fist with the blow. Cabot fell silent, obviously unconscious, but the brute pulled back to hit him again.

Leah didn’t think he could handle another punch like that. Not in the state he was in. She should follow his lead, pretend she didn’t know him, but she wasn’t about to watch him get beaten to death. “Wait.”

Dmitry held up a hand in a halt gesture. The brute backed off, though he didn’t seem pleased about it. He enjoyed causing pain.

“Do you have something to say?” Dmitry asked her.

“Don’t hurt him anymore,” she said softly. Was this the right thing to do? She had no idea. She just knew she couldn’t watch him die when he’d saved her life once. “He does know me, but like I said, I met him only the one time. That day in Malibu at the house I was showing.”

“When he killed my men.”

She swallowed hard and nodded. “I honestly don’t know anything about anything. He just showed up and so did your men. I don’t know what’s happening or why you think I’m involved. Until this week, I hadn’t even set foot outside the U.S. since my honeymoon. That’s the truth.”

Dmitry studied her for a long moment. Finally, he inclined his head. “I believe you, Mrs. Giancarelli.”

“Then, please, let me go.”

“Mm. We’ll see.”

Dammit, she was beginning to hate that phrase and promised right then she’d never again use it on her kids.

“Did Cabot give you anything?” Dmitry asked.

“A flash drive.” She saw no reason to lie now.

“And where is it?”

She again saw it sliding from her hand, disappearing into the koi pond. “It’s gone. Destroyed. But I didn’t look at it. I didn’t want to know what was on it.”

“You weren’t curious?”

“It got me into this mess. I wanted nothing to do with it.”

Again, he studied her face as if searching for deception. What did he think, she was a spy, a master manipulator? Jesus fucking Christ, she was a real estate agent. She could spin a good tale to sell an ugly house, but that was as far as her manipulation skills went.

Dmitry finally nodded at his men and they strode forward to scoop up Cabot’s listless body.

Oh God, was he already dead? She couldn’t tell.

Had they done this to Marcus?

Her stomach lurched and she had to swallow hard to keep anything from coming up. “Where are you taking him?”

“Don’t worry.” Dmitry tossed a smile over his shoulder before locking her into the windowless room. “He’s going to hospital.”

Something in the way he said the word hospital raised goose bumps of fear along her skin. They were going to kill him. She was sure of it. And they weren’t going to release her. That had been wishful thinking on her part.

Overwhelmed, she sank to her knees and stared at the bloodstains on the floor.

Would they torture her as well or did they have even worse things in mind? She’d noticed the way the brute leered at her bare legs, all but slobbering over her like a dog with a steak.

Either way, she wasn’t going home.

She’d never see her babies again.

They’d lost their father and now their mother. Would they think she ran away and abandoned them? Would they grow up hating her?

No.

No!

She wasn’t just going to lie down and give up. If she didn’t make it home, Maya and the boys would at least know she fought like hell to get back to them.

She climbed to her feet and tested her dislocated shoulder by tugging on the cuffs. Pain blazed through the joint, but it was nothing she hadn’t felt before. She sat on her butt and very carefully folded herself in half until she could slip her cuffed hands past her feet and bring them to the front.

Thank you, yoga. When she got home, she had to send her therapist a gift basket for suggesting it. Despite all of her years of gymnastics as a teenager, she never would have been able to contort herself like that without the past year of yoga classes.

She was relieved to see her captors hadn’t used actual handcuffs, but zip ties. Although she’d never accepted self-defense lessons from Danny, she did remember the one thing he told her about zip ties…

They break.

It was going to hurt, but not as much as waiting here for rape and/or death. She sucked in a sharp breath through her nostrils and held it as she staggered back to her feet. She raised her arms over her head and brought her forearms down hard toward her hipbones.

Nothing happened. Other than the ties gouging into her skin.

Damn shoulder. With it out of socket, she couldn’t get enough leverage to snap the plastic. And it was starting to tighten up. She glanced around, looking for something—anything—that could help. She had to snap her shoulder back into place or else she had no chance of escaping.

The edge of the doorframe was her only option. She pressed her shoulder to it and leaned in. The joint groaned and protested but then—pop!

Tears filled her eyes and she gave herself a moment to breathe through the pain. She couldn’t take more. There was no telling when Dmitry or the brute would be back.

She tested her shoulder. It burned with each roll, but it worked. For now. It was going to lock up eventually and she’d need a handful of painkillers and a sling for a week or so, but that was a worry for later. She again lifted her bound hands above her head and used all her strength when she slammed her arms down.

The zip ties broke.

She was free.

Now what?