Chapter Twenty-Three

Rowan couldn’t stem the fear surging through her. Couldn’t stop her mind from spinning out of control as she lay on the floor of the van while it bumped over the pavement.

They’d been driving for what seemed like a while, maybe around an hour, she wasn’t sure. There were so many places they could be by now, and so far no one had tried to pull them over. Did the van have plates on it? Surely one of the FBI agents had reported it if anyone was still alive.

A shudder sped through her. She hadn’t tried to fight anymore, not after the shot to the side of the face where her cheekbone still throbbed like it had its own heartbeat.

She rolled a little as the van made a left-hand turn. This time the driver went slower. They were no longer on the highway. The road here was bumpier. It had either some stoplights or stop signs, judging by the slowing and acceleration pattern. Were they getting close to their destination? They’d taken her alive for a reason. What were they going to do to her once they got there?

Horror curdled in the pit of her stomach. Details of what they had done to Victoria filled her mind. No, stay strong, she reminded herself. But when the van finally stopped and at least some of the men exited the vehicle, panic slammed into her like a wrecking ball.

Rough hands grabbed her by the arms and hauled her upright. She held herself rigid as they dragged her out the back. The moment she felt the breeze on her bare arms and legs, she struggled, survival instinct taking over.

“Help!” she cried, twisting, kicking. “Somebody help me!” She kicked out behind her, hope surging when the man holding her grunted. If she could get free, maybe she could run—

Pain sliced through her ribs as a fist slammed into her right side. She doubled over, the air knocked from her lungs. Growling male voices echoed around her but she couldn’t understand them, too overcome with the fight for breath to focus on anything else.

Slowly the swimming sensation faded, a clammy film of sweat coating her skin. There was no escaping the cruel, iron hold on her arms and legs, the men’s fingers biting deep with bruising force. They lifted her. Carried her quickly.

Their footsteps shuffled along pavement, then a door squeaked open. The man holding her legs let go. She stumbled, her knees slamming into the hard, unforgiving floor. Then the man holding her arms yanked her upright, shoved her backward and down. Her rear hit something hard, the unexpected impact jolting up her spine, making her teeth clack together.

A man muttered something in Spanish. The door opened again, then shut. A cold bead of sweat trickled down her ribs, her heart slamming against her breastbone.

Someone grasped the hood and roughly jerked it from her head. Rowan flinched and squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden brightness, but fear forced them back open, her entire body on red alert as she took in her surroundings.

She was in some kind of a small hut with no windows. A single bulb surrounded by a wire cage suspended from the middle of the ceiling.

Movement to her right made her snap her head toward it. A man stepped in front of her. Late twenties or early thirties, with bronze-colored skin and a dark moustache and goatee. His eyes were dark brown, almost black, and the evil gleam in them made her skin fucking crawl.

“Miss Stewart,” he said in a thick Spanish accent. “So good to finally meet you at last.”

Through her terror, it took a moment to place him. But when her brain at last snapped into gear, the chill inside her turned into an arctic blast.

Juan Montoya. Manuel Nieto’s chief enforcer. One of the most feared and notorious criminals within the entire Veneno cartel. Vicious even by cartel standards.

Even though she was shaking inside, she met that awful stare and raised her chin, refusing to give him the satisfaction of allowing him to see how terrified she was. He needed something from her. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of kidnapping her.

One side of his mouth tipped up in an amused smirk. “I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to retrieve you, puta,” he said softly. So softly the tiny hairs on Rowan’s nape prickled in warning. “You’d best not disappoint me after all this.”

Her spine was rigid as a steel rod, her muscles locked tight as she stared up at him. It was almost worse that he was a good looking man, his attractive exterior at complete odds with the evil that lurked underneath. But it showed in those dark, gleaming eyes that made her want to recoil. Only by sheer force of will did she hold her position.

He took a step closer. She braced herself for a blow, for him to grab her by the throat, but he merely placed his hands on his jean-clad thighs and leaned forward at the waist slightly, bringing his face closer to hers. “Where is Oceane?”

She’d expected this. Still, her mouth went dry. He wasn’t going to like her answer. “I don’t know.” Her voice was faint but surprisingly steady.

His face tightened. The evil beneath the polished façade rippling just under the surface. “Don’t lie to me, puta,” he spat. “Where is she?”

There was no harm in telling him what she did know. It wouldn’t put Oceane in any more danger than she already was. “I don’t know. She was supposed to meet with me this morning at the building, but her security team must have diverted when mine saw your van and got suspicious.”

He searched her eyes. “And?” he prompted.

“And when y-you attacked—” Damn, her voice was shaking a bit now. “Her team would have taken her back to the WITSEC facility.”

His eyes narrowed. “Where is it?”

“I don’t know.”

He bared his teeth, his patience slipping, and seized a handful of her hair, wrenching her head back painfully. “Tell me where it is.”

“I don’t know!”

Releasing her hair with a rough yank, he reached behind him to withdraw something from his pocket and crouched in front of her, that frightening gaze freezing her in place. A quiet snick sounded as a bright silver blade sprang free from the switchblade he held in his hand.

The blood drained from her face, her entire body shrinking away from it.

“Do you know what my men did to Anya yesterday?” he asked silkily.

God, yes. She couldn’t control the shudder that ripped through her.

“Ah, you heard. And who do you think taught them what to do, hmm? How to inflict that kind of damage without killing the victim outright?”

The monster poised in front of her.

“You don’t want to find out firsthand what that felt like for her, do you? Such a waste, to have all this pretty white skin sliced up. ” He eased the lethally sharp point of it toward her neck.

Rowan lurched back in her chair, cowering from that blade, but he merely set its tip to the notch between her collarbones. Her throat moved in a convulsive wave as she swallowed hard, her heart about to explode, the tiny prick of the blade nothing compared to what she feared was coming.

Then he jerked his wrist, narrowly avoiding her skin as the blade sliced through the fabric of her blouse like a laser through paper, exposing her cleavage to his roving gaze.

Slowly, so slowly it was agony, he eased the blade away from her skin, toying with it in his fingers as he dragged his gaze from her breasts up to hers once more. “Very nice. Classy, even. I’d prefer not to have to cut you, Miss Stewart,” he continued in that scary as hell tone, “but that will depend on whether or not you tell me what I want to know.” His features tightened. “So start talking.”

Her heart pounded so hard she felt dizzy. There didn’t seem to be enough air. She was gasping. Tiny, shallow breaths that came too fast. Too fast.

She couldn’t slow it down. Couldn’t tell him what he wanted, and if she lied he’d just kill her anyway when he found out. The truth was the only thing that might save her.

Or it might hasten her death when he decided she was no longer of use to him.

“I don’t know where it is. No one does,” she blurted, “not even the witnesses themselves. They’re blindfolded each time they come and go from the facility. Only the Marshals Service knows the location. That’s why WITSEC is so successful.”

He stared at her for a long, agonizing moment while she held her breath, waiting. She exhaled in a relieved rush when he lowered the blade, only to cry out when he seized a handful of her hair again and dragged her from the chair. She stumbled after him; it was either that or have a huge chunk of her hair ripped out of her scalp.

He yelled for someone named Javier. Two steps from the door, he yanked the hood back over her head, plunging her back into darkness.

The door opened and he rammed a solid palm into the middle of her back, pitching her forward. Without her hands to catch herself, she hit the ground hard.

A fresh wave of pain shot through her and she tasted blood in her mouth. Dazed, she struggled to lift her head. Could barely stand when someone hauled her upright. The world spun, worsened because she couldn’t see anything.

Montoya said something else in rapid Spanish, his tone curt, annoyed. Whoever had her flung her up and over his shoulder and began carrying her off.

Exhausted, trembling all over, Rowan hung there limply in her prison of darkness and clamped her teeth together to keep a helpless sob from escaping.

“Hey, what are you doing?” someone called out in English, sounding far away.

Montoya let out a savage curse and Rowan jerked when gunshots sounded a moment later. Someone had seen her! Had Montoya shot him? Please no, whoever it was might be her only chance. If he was unhurt, maybe he was calling for help right now.

“Undele,” he barked, and the man carrying her broke into a jog.

She bounced up and down, his shoulder slamming into her tender ribs and stomach with every step. She tensed her muscles to minimize it, but it didn’t do much good.

Just when the pain got so bad that she had to grit her teeth to keep from crying out, she was dumped onto something softer. A seat of some sort. Then a door slammed and an engine started up and the car sped away, its tires squealing. Not the van. It smelled different. Cleaner.

This time the drive didn’t take long, only a few minutes. She was thrown once more over that thick shoulder and carried somewhere else. The man was climbing now. Winded. Where were they? Had the man who’d spotted them called for help?

Montoya’s voice snapped out a command. Metallic doors squealed as they opened and she was dumped inside. Even through her hood the smell hit her. Stale air. Unwashed bodies. Sweat.

Fear.

The doors squealed shut and someone ripped the hood off her. She winced against the bright beam of a flashlight aimed into her face. It lowered, and as she blinked her vision began to clear, filling in the details of where she was.

Her heart lurched when she saw Montoya towering over her…and the frightened faces of the handful of naked young women all cowering against the far end of what appeared to be a shipping container.

“Meet your new traveling companions,” Montoya said to her, the satisfaction in his voice unmistakable. “You’re going to be part of my next shipment—if I decide to let you live that long.” His boot caught her square in the chest, knocked her backward hard enough that her back slammed into the metal floor. Her skull bounced off it, and a cry escaped her tight throat.

Montoya planted the sole of his boot against her sternum, pinning her in place as he stared down at her with pitiless black eyes. “Now are you going to give me any worthwhile information that I can actually put to use to find Oceane? Or will I have to use my powers of persuasion after all?”

Instead of pulling out the switchblade, this time he drew a pistol from the back of his pants and chambered a round, the deadly sound echoing throughout the container.

****

Too much time had passed.

Mal sat silent at the back of the briefing room, alone, his eyes on the analog clock on the far wall. Too much damn time had passed between when Rowan was taken and now, yet to him it felt like they were still sitting here on their asses while every other law enforcement agency in the city was mobilized, conducting grid searches, roadblocks, monitoring CCTV or satellite footage, red light cameras.

His commander and teammates were all in the room speaking in hushed murmurs, giving him a wide berth so he could have a little privacy as he struggled to compose himself. He bounced his knee up and down in a rapid rhythm, the movement uncontrollable. While inside, he was slowly coming unglued.

The cops and the FBI had sightings on the van using various cameras throughout the city, but they didn’t have a current location yet. By now the kidnappers would undoubtedly have ditched the vehicle. And they’d also had more than enough time to do…other things.

He swallowed past the baseball-sized lump in his throat, dragged a hand over his mouth and chin. The waiting, the inaction, was killing him. It sliced him up inside to think of Rowan frightened and alone, facing those fucking animals and the things they had repeatedly proven they enjoyed doing to female captives.

Fuck. He lowered his head into his hands, closed his eyes and struggled to clear his mind. In place of all the horrific things he feared Rowan was facing right then, images of them together replaced them. Her smiling up at him. The soft look on her face after he’d made love to her. The trust and hope in her eyes.

“Hey, man.” A hand landed gently on his shoulder. Mal looked up at Lockhart, who lowered himself into the chair beside him. “You hanging in there?”

He nodded. “Yeah.” Barely. I don’t know how the fuck to handle this. Exhaustion, sleep-deprivation, hunger and pain, he could handle. But not this. He couldn’t accept that there was nothing he could do to help Rowan. Nothing to study or get ready. Everything was done. All he and the others could do now…was wait.

Lockhart didn’t say anything else, just leaned his head back against the wall and maintained that solid, silent presence Mal was so used to but hadn’t fully appreciated until that moment. He couldn’t have handled being around the others right now. They all meant well, were all good, solid operators and he liked them all a lot as people.

But if someone like Maka or Granger came over and tried to lighten the mood with some lame attempt at humor in an effort to lighten the moment, Mal was afraid he’d punch them out. He was that keyed up. So having Lockhart sit beside him quietly while his mind screamed in the silence was actually a relief of sorts.

“We should have heard something by now,” he finally said, feeling the need to say something. Someone had to at least know the van’s current location. That would be a start.

“Taggart’s holding the updates until we get something solid. He and Hamilton are monitoring all the channels.”

Mal glanced first around the room, then at Lockhart, and realization hit. Taggart and Hamilton were missing. Running interference on the investigation from another room, probably Taggart’s office, hoping to make it easier on him.

Mal exhaled hard, appreciative of their efforts and annoyed at the same time. “They don’t need to do that.” He was point man and a former SEAL. He didn’t need to be shielded or sheltered from any of this. “But Christ, I want to be out there searching for her, not sitting here doing jack.”

“We need to be here so we can deploy as soon as we get a solid lead. When that call comes, every minute’s gonna count, so we need to be ready. And we are. Hamilton and Taggart are both on top of it. Let them do their jobs, wait until they have something concrete to give us.”

He opened his mouth to respond but the briefing room door suddenly burst open and Hamilton came in, Taggart a few paces behind him, speaking on his cell phone. “Okay, boys, listen up,” Hamilton began, his gaze halting on Mal. “We just got confirmation from a witness that someone matching Juan Montoya’s description was seen carrying a female hostage from a warehouse district near the Port of Baltimore. At the time of the sighting, she was very much alive.”

Mal’s heart leapt, his attention riveted on his team leader. Thank you, God.

“Montoya shot at the witness, then took off in another vehicle and headed northeast, toward the port itself. Witness got a partial plate. FBI has confirmed the vehicle’s location via CCTV footage. They’re moving in on the port right now, with two of its SWAT teams. HRT is on standby, but because of Montoya, we’ve got precedence.”

Yes, Jesus, just let them get moving—

“Helo crew is readying two aircraft for us right now,” Taggart added, lowering his phone. “Let’s get moving. I’ll brief you with any updates on the way.”

Mal grabbed his gear and ran for the door, desperate to find Rowan in time to free her from Montoya’s clutches and a fate worse than death.