Chapter Six
Thursday, July 23
Unknown location
Tiffany’s mouth was bone dry. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a drink, and every time she drifted off in her small, dark cell, she dreamed of jumping into a crystal clear lake and sucking it dry. She always woke up thirstier than before she fell asleep.
It had been days since the man with the blue eyes and red-blond mustache jumped her outside the lab. At first she’d been kept in a basement room with a toilet in one corner. Food and water would appear twice a day in the slot on the prison-like door.
So at least they didn’t want her dead. Yet.
Then two days ago, she’d been blindfolded and hustled onto a plane. She could be anywhere in the world at this point—though if she had to guess, she’d say they’d flown her to Martinique. For all she knew, she could even be in the conference hotel. She couldn’t hear any noise, though. At least, nothing like the typical sounds of a hotel—elevator doors, muted conversations and TVs, the rattle of a housekeeper’s cart. When she strained her ears, she thought she heard the sound of the ocean through the stone walls of her cell, but she couldn’t be sure.
Really, at this point, she wasn’t even sure of anything anymore.
She still wore the same clothes she’d had on the night her captor had abducted her, now stained and torn. She hadn’t been allowed to shower or change since arriving here, and it had been over twenty-four hours since anyone had fed her.
As another cramp of hunger twisted her stomach, she let herself fantasize about going to the bridal shop and putting on her gown. All that satin and lace and pretty beadwork. She’d felt like a princess. Her mother and grandmother had cried and she’d known it was the right dress.
She’d never wear that dress again. With each passing day, she was more certain she wasn’t going to live to see her wedding.
She wondered about Paul. He had to be worried sick about her, searching for her. She hoped he was at least taking care of himself. He had a tendency to neglect himself when she wasn’t around to remind him.
If he was alive. She couldn’t ignore the fact her assailant had had his phone.
And Claire? God. She probably didn’t even realize anything was wrong. Had no idea she was walking into a trap. Once these men had them both, once they had Akeso, there was no telling what would happen.
The door smacked open suddenly, flooding her little cell with a wash of orange evening sunlight. She blinked against the assault on her retinas and gasped when a body landed with a dull thud in front of her.
Paul. It was Paul.
He scrambled to sit up and glanced around with an expression of shock and confusion on his pale face. When his gaze found her, his eyes widened. He launched across the few feet separating them and gathered her up in his arms. “Tiffany! Oh, honey, I thought you were dead.”
She snuggled against his chest, torn between happiness and terror. She was too dehydrated to cry. Her eyes felt grainy, like they’re been washed in sand. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know. I was walking to my car after work, and the next thing I knew I woke up on a plane with a gag in my mouth and my hands tied together.”
“No! No, no. You can’t be here. You can’t…” Hysteria threatened to overwhelm her. She thought seeing him again would be the happiest moment of her life. She was wrong.
“Honey.” He gripped her by the shoulders and pushed her back. “Listen to me. These men are going to ask you to do something, and you’re not going to want to. But you have to or they’ll kill us. Do you understand? They will kill us.”
She drew away. Something about his tone wasn’t right. She’d been hysterical and terrified during her first few days of captivity, but he was strangely calm about the whole thing. He was clean, too. If he’d been taken shortly after her, wouldn’t he be just as filthy?
An old niggling fear wormed its way back into her heart. There had been times when she thought Paul wasn’t being truthful with her. Times when what he said and what he did didn’t match up. She’d shaken them off as her own demons trying to ruin a good thing—she’d always had a tendency toward jealousy in her relationships, and hadn’t wanted to scare him off by being too demanding or asking too many questions. But now…
The door opened again. Paul scrambled out of the way of the two men who entered. They blew right past him, like he wasn’t even crouching there.
When the men yanked her upright, neither her legs nor her eyes wanted to cooperate. She stumbled along in the sand, and couldn’t focus on her surroundings. She only caught glimpses—she’d been in some kind of storage shed, and they were dragging her toward a small concrete house. She did hear the ocean, though she couldn’t see that either. The setting sun was too bright.
Once inside the house, one of the men pushed her into a bathroom. “Clean up.”
She staggered and caught herself on a glossy pedestal sink. Her reflection in the mirror was startling—if she didn’t know she was looking at herself, she’d never have guessed who the woman staring back was. Deep shadows colored the skin under her eyes, lines that weren’t there before creased her forehead and dug grooves around her mouth. Her hooked nose had always been slightly beak-like, but now it was downright hawkish. Her eyes were too big and spooked. She looked as if she had aged ten years.
She slowly lifted her gaze to the man still standing guard in the open door behind her. She didn’t recognize him.
Just how many of them were there?
He lifted an eyebrow. There was something mean and weaselly about him, and a chill scraped across her skin as he watched her expectantly. She glanced at the shower and dreamed of stepping under the hot spray, but there was no door and the weasel didn’t seem inclined to give her privacy.
She wrapped her arms around herself. “Will you at least turn around?”
He didn’t move, other than to pull a pack of gum from his back pocket. He folded a stick into his mouth, leaned a shoulder on the doorframe, and made a rolling motion with one hand for her to get on with it.
Nope. He wasn’t leaving.
Okay. She turned her back to him and slowly stripped off her dirty clothes. She used her stained and torn lab coat as a cover, holding it around her as she stepped over the tiled lip of the shower. The showerhead and knobs gleamed under the inset lights overhead. The walls sparkled with pretty green glass tiles. It all looked new and shiny, like it had never been used. She turned the lever and hot water streamed on, quickly filling the small room with steam. She checked over her shoulder, saw the weasel still leering at her, but decided she wanted the shower too much to care. She dropped the lab coat and stepped under the spray, letting it stream over her hair. Dirt sloughed off her body and circled the drain in gross brown water.
As she lathered her hair with the hotel-sized shampoo, she started to feel human. By the time her fingers started to prune, she almost felt like herself again.
She didn’t want the shower to end. It was warm. It felt safe wrapped in a blanket of steam. But all too soon, weasel strode forward and reached in to shut the water off. He gave her body one long assessing look—he didn’t appear impressed—before tossing a towel at her and finally stepping out of the bathroom. She caught the towel and immediately hid her nakedness behind the thick terry cloth, pathetically grateful for the cover.
Now what?
Tiffany glanced at the filthy clothing on the floor. They couldn’t possibly mean for her to put those back on after she’d just washed off all the dirt…could they? She stepped out of the shower and over the pile, picking her way toward the door.
Weasel reappeared there with a stack of clean clothing. He shoved them at her. “Put these on.”
She clutched the clothes to her chest. “Why?” Not that she was complaining, but what was the point of all this? If they were going to kill her, why let her shower and give her a change of clothes?
“Just do it.” He pulled the door shut.
She was alone for the first time since weasel pulled her from her prison. Trembling, she dropped the clothes and spun in a circle, looking for…anything. A window. A skylight. Any means of escape.
There was none. For as pretty as the bathroom was, it was just as enclosed as her prison had been.
Deflated, she bent to grab the clothes again—and froze.
They were hers. The denim capri pants, one of her favorite pairs. They had been in the wash the night she’d been taken—she distinctly remembered putting them in the machine before leaving for the lab. The Wonder Woman T-shirt was the same one she’d picked up at San Diego Comicon last year. She knew it was the same because she’d spilled coffee on it and had never been able to scrub the faint stain out of the fabric. The comfy sports bra, the underwear, the slide-on sneakers—all hers.
Her clothes.
Exactly the kind of outfit she’d wear while traveling.
How was that possible?
Her hands started to shake and she drew a long, slow breath. In and out. The only person who had access to these clothes was Paul. The only person who knew what she’d wear while traveling was Paul.
It all circled back to…Paul. She’d texted him the night she’d been abducted. She’d told him Akeso worked on human cells, and then her attacker showed up with his phone.
Oh my God.
She didn’t have a chance to dwell on the betrayal. A thunk sounded on the other side of the door and she scrambled to dress before Weasel returned. Except when the door opened, it wasn’t Weasel. It was another man, fifty-ish, blond hair, angular jaw, and reddish beard. He was the man who had kidnapped her. She was sure of it, and the fact he didn’t see the need to cover his face now had bile surging into her throat.
He had a hard look to him, like he’d lived through things she could only imagine.
She swallowed hard, choking down the fear. “What do you want with me?”
He smiled and rolled a suitcase—her suitcase—out to stand in the space between them. “You’re going to meet Dr. Oliver as planned, and you’re going to convince her to take you to her room, from where you’ll call us.”
Claire. God, she had no idea the danger she was in.
Tiffany shoved the suitcase away with her foot. “No.”
“Need I remind you, we have your fiancé. Make one wrong move, alert Dr. Oliver in any way, and he’ll die.”
Horror zinged through her, but it was only a quick gut-reaction that she squashed. Yes, they had Paul all right. He’d probably been in their pocket all along. If “Paul” was even his real name. She was really starting to doubt that. She’d known him for two years—he’d come into her life just as she and Claire were trying to get initial funding for Akeso. Now she had to wonder if she’d ever really known him at all.
No wonder he kept pushing the wedding date back.
She’d been such an idiot. A blind, lovesick idiot.
Tears filled her eyes and she let them come. Anything to help her look more convincing because she was about to put on the act of her life. “Please, don’t hurt him.” She grabbed the suitcase’s handle. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
Red Beard nodded. “That’s a good girl. Follow me.”
Tiffany steeled herself before leaving the bathroom. She had to make this convincing. Because while she was positive she wasn’t getting out of this alive, she was going to make damn sure Claire would.