“May I please have some more water?” she asked meekly.
Goldeneyes passed her a bottle of water without comment.
She downed it and added the bottle to the pile of trash growing in the back of the van: food wrappers and soda cans. These men’s discipline clearly did not extend to picking up after themselves. Either that or they planned to ditch the van at some point. Still. There would be fingerprints and DNA all over that trash.
With darkness, the team had taken off their sunglasses and hats, and she’d seen all their faces now. She’d watched them all evening, learning each man’s features from many different angles. The bump on the bridge of a nose, the angle of a jaw, the shape and fullness of lips, even the timbre of their voices.
She was confident she could pick out any of these men from a lineup if it ever came to that. Now she just had to make sure she stayed alive and got away so it could.
All of them except Goldeneyes were black haired, dark eyed, and their skin was caramel toned, in keeping with a Middle Eastern heritage. Two of them looked quite young, in their early twenties.
The other three looked hard as nails and closer to their midthirties in age. The older men reminded her of Gunnar Torsten. They all had the same hardness and cool, lethal confidence as her boss. She made a mental note not to mess with any of the older men.
As for Goldeneyes, he was the odd man out. Besides his fair coloring, he looked about thirty years old, and he carried himself differently than the others. At least, he did now.
When he’d stormed into the school office, he’d exhibited all the deadly confidence of the older men. But now, he slouched in the back of the van, eyes down, shoulders hunched. As if he was trying to make himself invisible to the other men. Odd. He didn’t strike her as the submissive-follower type. At all. But he was clearly acting like the low man in the pecking order.
The van slowed and turned off the winding two-lane road they’d been following up and down mountainsides for the past hour. It commenced bumping and banging over what was obviously some sort of bad dirt road.
They spent two or three more minutes getting tossed all over the back of the van, and then, just like that, the vehicle stopped. The driver turned off the ignition.
They’d arrived. Wherever that might be.
The silence and stillness were a shock to her system after spending the last twelve hours or so in the rumbling, vibrating van.
“Out,” the one called Mahmoud ordered.
Bijan, one of the young ones, opened the double back doors, and Piper glimpsed the dark silhouette of a decent-sized log cabin with a long porch across its front. Trees—deciduous, she noted—crowded close, and there was no ambient light in the sky to indicate a city of any kind nearby. Yup. These guys had brought her out into the middle of nowhere to hold for whatever dastardly purpose they had in mind for her.
Goldeneyes hopped out of the van in front of her and turned around to help her out. She was tempted to shake off his hand, but her legs were numb, and as she stood on them, they tingled so badly she wasn’t sure they would hold her full weight. She clung to his powerful forearm while circulation returned to her aching limbs. After a few seconds, she let go of his arm.
“Better?” he murmured under his breath.
“Uh-huh,” she muttered back.
He stepped behind her, efficiently twisting her arm behind her, but putting no pressure on it that would be painful. His intention was clear: if she didn’t fight him, he wouldn’t hurt her.
For now, at least. As long as their silent truce held.
She didn’t for a second believe these terrorists had brought her out here solely to enjoy the fresh air. They had some agenda up their sleeves. She just couldn’t fathom what it was.
Which led her back to the same question that had been preoccupying her all day. Why her?
It didn’t take long after the report of armed men at Southdown Elementary School in Houma hit the news for the Medusas to put two and two together. They were taking a water break in the woods when Rebel, glancing at her cell phone, exclaimed.
Tessa piped up, asking, “Whatcha got, Reb?”
The communications specialist looked up from her phone grimly. “I just got a breaking-news alert. Armed men burst into Southdown Elementary School in Houma this morning and kidnapped an unnamed woman. She’s described as tall, blonde and in her mid-to late twenties.”
Tessa lurched upright from where she’d been lounging on a patch of moss. “That’s got to be Piper!”
Major Torsten cut in. “Where are Captain Ford’s cell phone and class ring locations now?”
Rebel answered, “I’d have to go back to the ops center to answer that, sir.”
“What are you waiting for, then?” Torsten snapped.
Tessa got that he was worried about Piper. But he didn’t have to bite their heads off!
Her train of thought derailed abruptly. Torsten was always tough, but he’d never been this snappish before. She traded worried looks with her fiancé, Beau, and his thoughts clearly mirrored hers. He was worried about the boss, too. Beau had worked for Gunnar Torsten for several years before being asked to help train the new Medusa team. If even Beau was worried about him, something was definitely wrong with Torsten.
When they hustled back to the vehicles to drive back to base, she made a point of climbing in the front passenger seat of the Hummer Torsten was driving.
“What’s up, sir?”
He glanced over at her and bit out, “I’ve got a missing and possibly kidnapped team member.”
“Besides that,” she replied carefully.
“Isn’t that enough?”
“You were way more tense than usual even before we thought anything was wrong with Piper...sir.”
He exhaled hard and turned his eyes back to the road. “I got an intel report last night.”
“And?”
“It indicates that Abu Haddad may not be dead.”
“What?” she and Beau squawked simultaneously. The two of them had by a hair escaped dying in the explosion that had killed Haddad last year. The international, and very illegal, arms dealer, had to be dead! His entire yacht—and everyone on it—had been blown into bits not much larger than her finger. Beau had set the charges himself.
Torsten replied heavily, “We never did get a confirmation of death.”
Beau leaned forward from the back seat and ground out, “That’s because nothing but matchsticks and the occasional chunk of meat were left when I was done blowing up that bastard’s yacht.”
Tessa frowned at their boss. “Why does someone think Haddad may be alive?”
Torsten huffed, clearly as unhappy as she and Beau were. “A rumor has surfaced that the Haddad network may be doing some sort of big secret deal with a Middle Eastern nation. The source apparently has it on good authority that Haddad himself is expected to close the deal. It’s possible that one of his flunkies has taken over the business. But there’s also a very small chance that the bastard is back.”
“What country is this deal with?” she asked.
“Rumor places the deal in Iran.”
“For