“Look, Zack, I—”
A scream stole the words from her lips as a burly, tattooed man reached out from the back door and yanked her backward into the van.
“Rebecca!” Zack pelted toward the van. For a second he could still see her legs kicking and prayed she’d break free. Then the van door slammed, trapping Rebecca inside.
A second heavily tattooed man leaned out of the driver’s window and fired a semiautomatic. Bullets flew past Zack’s head. Rebecca’s screams filled the air.
But neither shook Zack anywhere near as much as the two-headed black-and-red bird-of-prey tattoo on the driver’s bulging arm.
These men were members of Black Talon, a highly dangerous Eastern European organized crime syndicate.
And they’d just kidnapped Rebecca.
The hollow sound of the door slamming echoed in Rebecca’s ears. The van was picking up speed. The burly bearded thug who’d manhandled her into the vehicle pressed a gun to her temple. But it was the huge hand holding tight to her throat that filled her with such blinding pain that for a moment she couldn’t begin to find a way to fight back. He shoved her down into the cold empty back of the moving van and pinned her to the floor.
Help me, Lord. I need to escape this van before it gets to wherever they’re taking me.
She looked around. Inside the vehicle she could see two guns, two kidnappers, but nothing within her reach that she could grab as a weapon. Outside the vehicle was the muscular bulk and courage of the one guy she would’ve trusted with her life. Would he rescue her now?
She looked up at the man now holding her down. There was a crude, vaguely Eastern European tattoo on his neck, of two red-and-black eagles that almost seemed to be crawling out from under his shirt, and the word Ivan.
He yelled something to the driver, but it wasn’t in English. Then the van lurched forward. “Ivan” let go of her body but kept his weapon aimed at her face.
“You down! No move!” The order came from the driver. The same bird-of-prey tattoo was on his arm, this one with Dmitry.
Were those their first names? A family name? Or some other distinction?
Dmitry was trying to drive forward with one hand and shoot backward out the window at Zack with the other. He shouted something at Ivan in a language Rebecca couldn’t understand.
Ivan shouted back in heavily accented English. “She’s down! She’s not going to move!”
Oh, how little those men knew her.
The sound of a bullet cracked the air outside the van. Zack was returning fire. Then the back window shattered in a spray of class. She sprung to her hands and feet in a racing stance, prayer crossing her mind even as glass rained down around them. Ivan swore. The van swerved. Rebecca glanced back through the open gap in the shattered glass and saw Zack running after her, gun in hand.
His body strong. His face fierce.
I still don’t know what’s going on. But, old sparring partner, I’m glad you’ve got my back.
Zack was getting smaller and smaller in the distance, though, as the van kept driving. Ivan fired through the broken window, the explosion filling the metal vehicle like an echo chamber. Dmitry turned back and screamed at Ivan. But it was all the distraction she needed.
Rebecca leaped to her feet and charged. She grabbed the driver from behind and pressed her fingers into his eyes. Dmitry swore. The van spun wildly. Forcing the van to crash would be dangerous. But the van still hadn’t picked up that much speed, and something told her she was far safer in a collision with Zack running to her rescue than she would be going wherever these men were taking her. Ivan grabbed her hair. Dmitry stomped on the breaks. The van slammed to a stop, throwing Rebecca against the seat and tossing Ivan across the floor. Rebecca recovered first. She ran for the van’s back door, her feet crunching on broken glass. She could hear her abductors shouting behind her. She grabbed the door handle. The door flew open, wrenching the handle from her hand.
It was Zack. She nearly fell out of the van into his arms. Zack’s free hand grabbed her waist, just long enough to help her onto the ground. But then, before letting go, he whispered in her ear, “I need you to trust me and do whatever I say, without question.”
“What?”
But Zack stepped back. His head tilted in her direction. “You! Get down! Now!”
Zack was shouting at her. Not at the men who’d just abducted her. She hesitated. Her feet weren’t two steps away from the kidnappers’ van. Thick, endless forest spread out around her on every side. And Zack just expected her to drop to the ground instead of running?
Dmitry climbed out the driver’s-side door. Ivan stumbled across the back of the van toward them. Zack’s eyes cut sideways at Rebecca.
“Do it!” Zack said. “Trust me! Just get down.”
Her head shook. “But—”
Ivan’s bulk filled the van’s back door. With one large, steady hand he aimed his gun at Zack’s face and barked something in a foreign language. Zack didn’t move a muscle. Dmitry walked around the side of the van, slowly.
“She’s coming with us.” Dmitry trained his gun on Zack’s face.
Zack paused a long moment, without moving or speaking, as if he didn’t even see the guns or the men behind them. Then Zack shrugged and shook his head.
“She? You mean, this one?” Zack pointed one finger at Rebecca, shook his head and tapped his chest in a slow, exaggerated motion. “No, no. She’s coming with me.”
Ivan laughed. It was an ugly sound bordering on a snarl. His finger hovered on the trigger. “No, I kill you. She comes with me.”
Rebecca stood, with broken glass under her boots and legs tensed to spring. Zack was so calm and so in control, it was as if he was haggling over the price of meat instead of fighting for her life. Something within her tugged at the corner of her heart, reminding her of the sweet, sensitive man who she’d once trusted enough to spar with. She’d trusted Zack with her life back then. He was the first man she’d ever really trusted.
But how could she trust him now?
He’d kept secrets from her. He hadn’t told her who he was. Her life was in danger and he was being so casual about it, he was almost cold. Zack hadn’t just transformed his body to look like the jocks who’d once made them both feel worthless. Now he sounded just like them, too.
Zack shrugged again, rolling his shoulders up and down in a slow rise and fall that seemed to accentuate every curve of his muscular chest.
“This one, she’s a bit difficult. Clumsy, you know, and a chatterbox.” He made a mouth with his fingers and flapped it up and down in the same dismissive “talking” gesture Seth had once used to hurt and belittle her. “But I promised my boss I’d take her somewhere. You understand how this works. You have a job to do. I have a job to do. Maybe we can figure something out. How much is your boss paying you for her?”
The question hung in the air. Ivan and Dmitry glanced at each other. Neither answered. And now, Rebecca was too angry to even let the fear she was feeling even take hold. Zack didn’t look at her. One of Zack’s hands still held the gun firmly in its grip. The other was just inches away from it. She used to feel so safe in his arms. She didn’t doubt either the speed or aim he’d be able to pull the trigger with. But now, standing next to him, she felt anything but safe. She felt like that awkward, clumsy female in the martial arts class nobody wanted to get stuck with.
No, worse than that. She felt like a worthless scrap of meat in a dogfight.
“Ivan,