CHAPTER 3
Gage tried to downplay the concern he felt for Alexa as he stood near the door of the Delos Gulfstream jet at Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C., a week later. She and her newly hired assistant, Sarina Elstad, were boarding the jet. Before they’d left for the airport, he’d wanted to give Alexa a farewell kiss, but she’d been cold to him since she’d awakened, barely speaking to him. Their wonderful time on the hill above the farmland was now just a dream from the past. He’d wanted it to last, but knew it never did. Two days afterward, Alexa had cycled down into that PTSD pit of high cortisol once more. It was painful to watch her being tortured by it, all her emotions distorted and making her edgy, irritable, and argumentative over nothing. And that’s exactly what had happened at the office yesterday. Gage didn’t want Alexa to go to Paris because she was still raw and healing. She bull-doggedly forged ahead and told him she was going. Worse? She erupted over dinner at their home when he tried to gently bring it up once again, hoping she would be more reasonable. But that’s not what happened.
Miserable, Gage knew he hadn’t exactly approached the issue very well himself. He loved Alexa, and he was overprotective of her for a lot of good reasons, but she saw it as suffocating her. That had hurt him deeply. And they were still reeling from that fight. Now, she was cold and distant with him, equally hurt by his words and his trying to get her to stay home and heal. Gage knew Alexa had an undue responsibility to others. It had been bred into her by her global family, who believed in serving those who had less. It was not only a calling, but a duty. And Alexa took her obligation seriously. Sometimes, he felt, far too much. There was a time to fight and a time to stop and heal. She didn’t know her own limitations yet, and that’s what bothered Gage the most.
The late September sky was cloudy, and it began to rain before dawn. Pulling the sheepskin collar of his leather bombardier jacket up to protect his exposed neck, Gage watched Alexa disappear inside the jet. His heart broke a little more, not wanting to part like this.
He’d tried to talk her into not going to the sex trafficking conference held in Paris, because he knew she wasn’t ready for it. Instead, he’d tried to persuade her to let Sarina go by herself to represent Artemis Security. The Norwegian blonde, a blue-eyed beauty of twenty-eight, was a Ph.D. from Harvard whose whole life had been dedicated to battling sex traffickers, and she had one of the highest profiles in the world, which was why Alexa had hired her for Artemis.
Sarina would be given the job of managing the sex trafficking department under Alexa’s Safe House Foundation, a division of Artemis. After Alexa had told Gage one night after dinner that Sarina’s sister, Kiara, had been kidnapped at the age of fifteen and forced into sexual servitude, Gage fought his instinctive reaction to go out and find the bastards who’d done it.
Sarina’s father was a wealthy shipping magnate in Norway and had spent millions trying to find his youngest daughter. Finally, she’d been spotted by a hired security contractor over the small European country of Malgar, bordered by Macedonia and Albania. Her father recaptured her and brought her home to Oslo, Norway, after five years of enslavement. Kiara had been brainwashed, drugged, and sent to “sex school” to learn how to please her future master. She’d been given a designer sex drug known as Compliance twice a week, just in time for the clients’ arrivals. Although she was abused sexually, because of Compliance, she would never have any memory of what had happened. Gage supposed that it was actually a blessing in disguise.
Frowning, Gage turned away, walking back toward the gate as the jet’s engines whined to life. In Alexa’s case, she had also been given a drug during the physical exam performed by the monsters who had planned to sell her to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, that drug had rendered her body so weak, she couldn’t fight back. Her mind, however, was left clear, so the abuse would be held in her memory forever. And to this day, it lived within her, which is how she developed PTSD symptoms.
Sticking his hands into his jacket pockets, Gage turned at the gate. As the jet was given clearance and headed out toward the runway, he lifted his hand to Alexa, whom he saw in one of the small, round windows. She had been so looking forward to this conference. Sarina had brought together a high-powered group of human rights directors, all of whom were passionate about shutting down sex trafficking in their particular country.
The jet slowly trundled away, and Gage felt his concern morph into ice-cold fear. He couldn’t get the words or images of Kiara’s capture, torture, and brainwashing out of his mind. One of the major sex traffickers in the world was a billionaire named Valdrin Rasari, who made his “legitimate” money in oil, textiles, and steel mills. He hid his dark activities in the country of Malgar, where the government left him alone because of the money he poured into their needy coffers.
Kiara had been kidnapped by Rasari’s men, predatory animals walking the streets of nearly every country in the world. They looked for girls and boys as young as age twelve, kidnapping them right off the streets. The victims were then brought to Malgar, to a town called Lugina Pisha, or Pine Tree, where Rasari had his compound.
Gage hunched his shoulders, turned, and walked through the guarded gate. Outside was his gray Kia SUV. Had it only been a week ago that he and Alexa had taken that unforgettable hike and made love to one another in the woods?
Concerned that Alexa was diving into this lurid, monstrous business too fast, Gage had talked with Becka yesterday, who had cautioned Alexa not to go to the conference; she agreed with Gage that she wasn’t emotionally prepared for it.
Gage climbed into the SUV, rain dripping off his face. Shutting the door, he watched as the jet rolled along the runway toward a distant takeoff point. Alexa was in a downswing in her PTSD cycle, that was clear, and Gage couldn’t reason with her when she became emotional and at times, almost hysterical.
Last night, Alexa had exploded angrily at him, telling him she wanted to sleep alone and that he could sleep on the couch. Damn it, he hated when she was at the mercy of a hormone known as cortisol.
Feeling hurt and upset, he’d barely slept last night out on the couch. Gage didn’t blame Alexa for her reaction to his attempt to keep her safe. He was becoming familiar with the stages of her suffering. Now she needed to prove to herself that she still had the courage to confront her own traumatic experience.
Of course, Alexa didn’t need to prove anything to him or anyone else. Gage wearily moved his fingers through his dark, rain-soaked hair, started the Kia, turned on the wiper blades, and watched for the Delos jet to safely take off.
His mind swung back to Valdrin Rasari. The man was a huge black hole. Kiara had been the most extensive source of information about him and his infamous compound. Until her, no one had ever escaped from it, and lived to provide such lurid testimony.
The compound had been hidden in a narrow valley covered with pine trees, mountains ringing three sides of it, and a lake on the fourth side. Kiara had said that the compound was really a breeding facility. Men called “breeders” impregnated the women, known as “broodmares.” The children produced were cruelly taken from their sex slave mothers at three months old. Those children were already sold and sent to their respective parents in some other part of the world. At that time, a broodmare would be bred again to have another child by a selected breeder.
Gage could hardly believe what he had heard. He was equally stunned by the complex infrastructure Rasari had created.
Malgar was a third world country into which Rasari poured billions. The government, as far as he was concerned, was merely a puppet whose strings the sick monster pulled. He had created his evil facilities without government oversight, and because Malgar was not in the European Union, it answered to no one.
Women like Kiara, then in her teens, were the most highly prized and sought after on the street. They were physically mature and able to provide sexual services. They were usually beautiful and still young enough to be brainwashed, threatened, and forced into sexual slavery. Gage could barely stand hearing about what these young children were put through. His heart ached for all of them.
Wiping his face, he knew why he couldn’t get through to Alexa. She was driven and committed to her work, and he agreed with Tal, her big sister, that this trip would be a distraction for Alexa. She was running away from her trauma, trying to bury it beneath the traumas of others, which was somehow easier to deal with.
Jesus, what a mess. Alexa was in free fall, heading for a darker place if she didn’t pull out of this dive. The conference would traumatize her even more, he was sure of that.
The jet taking her to Paris, its yellow and red stripes proclaiming its identity, took off, disappearing into the rainy gray sky. Frowning, Gage drove out of the parking lot. This was one miserable day. He should have kissed Alexa goodbye, even though she was pissed as hell at him. He should have told her he loved her. But he’d done neither. And she’d been icy and withdrawn, her glare accusatory, as if he weren’t supporting her when she needed him to be there for her. He’d had no intention of forcing himself upon her, but regrets were always a mean son of a bitch.
*
Valdrin Rasari took one last look in the mirror of the Fontainebleau Hotel, only blocks from the famed Eiffel Tower. He smiled coldly into the full-length gold framed mirror. His mouth curved even more at the irony that he, one of the major sex traffickers in the world, would be a wolf in sheep’s clothing at this conference on sex slavery. He could easily travel the world in disguise with forged passports. Right now, fifty countries had him on their no-fly list. Only third world countries were open to him buying the best children from parents who were starving. Sell me your child, and you will live to put food on the table for a year for the rest of your family. It’s a good trade.
Tonight, at the cocktail party in the huge chandelier ballroom downstairs, no one would recognize him. At six feet tall, muscular without being muscle-bound, he would carry a cane, under the guise of Dr. Analius Revig from the University of Oslo. His injury was from a “skiing accident” in his twenties, of course. Today, his short black hair was dyed gray, and his square-jawed face now sported a sporty gray mustache. His brown eyes had blue contacts over them, covered further by a pair of fashionable wire-rim glasses. After all, he was pretending to be a sixty-five-year-old man . . .
Since his alter ego was a professor at the University of Oslo, he dressed in a fashionable brown wool sport coat and black wool trousers. Valdrin was exceedingly sensitive to anything touching his flesh, so beneath the black trousers he wore the world’s finest silk boxer shorts. Never mind that they cost a thousand dollars—they were worth it. His cock was long, thick, and super-sensitive to touch or material covering it. Under the elegant coat, he wore a white cotton shirt that had been ironed to perfection; it gave him a professorial look. He wore a black bow tie that was in keeping with the look he desired.
He was looking forward to prowling the huge gathering, eavesdropping, and seeing who was there. Valdrin took great enjoyment in being undercover. He spoke six different languages, Norwegian being one of them. Placing his old leather wallet into his coat pocket and his passport in an inner pocket, he adopted the proper slump and slight lean to the right, his cane in his left hand. Fortunately, he had one of those nondescript faces that no one would ever recognize. In fact, he had destroyed any photos of himself for the last thirty of his forty-five years. No one really knew who the monstrous Rasari was or how he looked, even while he was on every country’s radar.
He left his bodyguards behind, a door between the sumptuous rooms. They were handlers from the compound who also looked nondescript, nothing like the usual hulking guards. He smiled, ruffling his hair so it looked like an older person’s hair. Perfecting his slump to the right and engaging a proper limp, he walked around the huge suite until he felt comfortable with his disguise.
The ballroom was packed with men in black tuxedos and women in tasteful European gowns or pantsuits, but Valdrin didn’t worry about his appearance. As a university professor, he would be easily forgiven for such fashion oversight. He limped slowly, skirting the outside of the gathering. Wine was flowing, but not much hard liquor. He knew this group quite well, because he was their number one focus among the world’s most loathed sex traffickers. He smiled faintly, keeping his head bent slightly as he looked up through his false bushy gray eyebrows.
A redheaded woman with a blond woman beside her caught his attention. Moving out of the walkway, he leaned casually against the heavily brocaded gold wallpaper and watched. Who was this woman? He’d not seen her before. Over the years, Valdrin had learned and committed to his impeccable memory all the major leaders in the human rights movement. This woman was new. Some of his interest was doused as he saw the blonde beside her was none other than Sarina Elstad. His lips twitched, remembering how lush and sexually hungry her sweet little sister, Kiara, had been. For two years, she had been his favorite BDSM sub—and what a fine sub she had been. At first, she’d fought him, but he would give her the drug Compliance and watch her turn from fiery fighter to a whimpering, sexually starved woman who would do anything to attain an orgasm.
One of the nice side effects of Compliance was that a woman’s womb began to cramp, as if she were having cramps during her menstrual period. The gnawing, edgy pain was actually the body hormonally wanting to be bred so a woman could become fertile.
Kiara had become pregnant four times in those two years. And each time, Valdrin had given her a pill for her to abort the fetus, after which she would be understandably sore and tender for the next few days. He never wore a condom when one of his personal sex slaves was on Compliance. In fact, he disdained condoms completely. They robbed a man of exquisite sensations and pleasures.
Hatred mixed with desire for Kiara. Her sister, Sarina, was now one of the most influential women on earth, giving passionate speeches about the effects of sexual slavery upon men and women. She used her anger over her sister’s capture and consequent imprisonment well. Valdrin often wondered just how much Kiara remembered of his BDSM sessions with her. There was no “safe word” for her. He did as he pleased to her, wreaking pain and pleasure upon her.
When Kiara was on Compliance, she had loved the pain, as it heightened her sexual experiences times ten. But when he didn’t use it, she would scream. He hated that!
As he watched Sarina smile, shake hands, and talk to the eager attendees surrounding her, Valdrin was reminded of Kiara, who eventually broke beneath his relentless weekly BDSM sessions. He found she actually surrendered more easily without Compliance. He supposed it was the pain threshold that had broken her most quickly. Kiara had been a fighter, and he preferred a woman who fought back. They always lost, of course, but their struggles boosted his sexual pleasure.
Someone like Kiara, who had been kidnapped while riding her bike from school, was unskilled, untrained, and inept. Slaves like that were far more volatile and rebellious, always fighting and trying to escape. He had clients who liked them that way, as he did.
Valdrin smiled even more, watching the redhead. She was probably in her late twenties, curvy, nice looking in that purple sheath she wore. It wasn’t provocative, but he sometimes liked to role play with his sex slaves, dress them up and then undress them. He’d like to undress this redhead. She had fine, flawless, white skin. When she partially turned his way, he saw that she was a true beauty.
Instinctively, Valdrin placed her in the “natural woman” category—the outdoorsy type. Her breasts were a nice size, probably 34Bs, and she was fluid and graceful as she moved toward a table close to where he was standing.
As she drew closer, he nearly lost his suave control, which was unusual. He saw on the woman’s name tag that she was Alexa Culver. THE Culvers? His heart started to beat harder. His gaze narrowed to the words beneath her name: Delos Charities. It felt as if the wind had been torn out of his chest for a moment. Valdrin suddenly moved and caught her in a sideswipe. He grunted, falling hard to his knees, cane flying out of his hand.
Alexa gave a cry as she bumped into the older man. She was horrified that she hadn’t seen him and had accidentally knocked him down. What was wrong with her? Feeling guilty, she quickly righted herself, flying to his side, kneeling down beside him. He was on his hands and knees, looking as if he were shaken. She placed her arm across his shoulders, her hand on his right arm. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Are you hurt? This was all my fault. I wasn’t watching where I was going!”
Valdrin smiled and shook his head. “No . . . no, my dear . . . I will be all right. Just give an old man a moment.” He twisted, looking directly into her huge hazel eyes fraught with apology and anxiety. Groaning, and not from pain, his cock swelled swiftly. She had lips that were sheer perfection. Valdrin snapped himself out of his sexual fantasies and sat up slowly, leaning back on his heels. Someone else came over, a man, and offered to help him up. He allowed him to do just that as Alexa Culver picked up his cane.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” She peered at his suit coat and looked at the name tag on it. “Doctor Revig?” Pressing the cane into his hand, she whispered, “I’m so very, very sorry.”
“Tut-tut. Call me Analius.” He turned and thanked the gentleman who had helped him to stand, then nodded in a courtly manner and walked away, feeling Alexa’s long, slender hand around his arm, steadying him.
“Would you be so kind as to help me back to my hotel room? I’m afraid my one knee feels very weak.” He saw her expression grow crushed over his admittance of being injured. It always amazed him how gullible people were. He was a wolf, and she was the sheep in his sights. A thrill went through him as she nodded her head.
“Of course, Dr. Revig. It’s the least I can do. Are you sure you don’t need me to get the house doctor, or a wheelchair?”
“No, no,” he said, leaning a bit on her arm, limping. “You will be my house doctor, my dear Ms. Culver.”
“Oh please, call me Alexa. I just feel so terrible about this. I see on your nametag that you have a Ph.D. in human rights from the University of Oslo.”
He hobbled expertly, and they left the ballroom. At the bank of elevators, he pressed the tenth-floor button. “Yes, but I am also an international lawyer by trade, Alexa.”
Alexa helped him into the elevator. “Is this your first conference with human rights?”
“Oh,” he chortled. “No, no, my dear. I have been involved in this all my life.” He laughed to himself, enjoying the charade, seeing how stupid and accepting she was. He knew a lot about the Culver family, but had only a photo of each of the children when they were in the military.
Alexa was a combat pilot flying the A-10, known as the Warthog. He was having a tough time reconciling the shaky, unsure woman before him with the image of a combat pilot. The two did not mix. Interesting. She captivated him. She would be someone he’d choose for his BDSM group. Although she wasn’t trained, he would look forward to training her. Because once he got her to his room, he would drug her and call his nearby bodyguards, and they would leave the hotel immediately, flying her back to Malgar.
Wait until his friend, Zakir Sharan, found out he’d stumbled upon one of the Culver children! He was sure Zakir would try and buy her off him, hell-bent on torturing any of the Culver children for the death of his two beloved sons, Raastagar and Sidiq. Matt Culver had also murdered his son, Agnon, as well. Both Zakir and Valdrin had a blood revenge against the family, as well as Delos Charities in general. No, he would keep Alexa Culver for himself and extract his own kind of revenge against her. He smiled to himself.
After he grew weary or bored with getting his revenge, if she survived, Valdrin would sell her to his friend, Zakir. He was sure Alexa would not survive at Zakir’s hands very long. Valdrin knew Alexa was not responsible for killing Zakir’s sons, but that didn’t matter. He could still slyly use her to make the Culver family suffer for years to come.
No, he would not kill Alexa Culver. Instead, he would, over time and with drugs, brainwash her, make her compliant to his BDSM demands, and teach her to be subservient to him, the dominator. And of course, while he was taming her into submission, videos would be taken of her, and those tapes would find their way onto Robert and Dilara’s computers. His revenge was going to be painful and ongoing for the Culver family.
He almost laughed over his plan. Alexa would become like the rest of the sex slaves at the compound. She would surrender to him and become subservient, never even thinking of escaping or wanting to leave. She would spend the rest of her life with him, until he either grew tired of her or had extracted the maximum amount of vengeance upon the Culver family.
Valdrin and Alexa walked down the carpeted hall to his suite. As he slowly handed her the card to open the door, he smiled pleasantly. “My knee feels a bit better.”
“That’s good!” she said, relief in her voice as she opened the white door surrounded by gold, ornate trim.
Valdrin liked her maternal caregiving. He might even, after a few years, have her bred to one of his superior breeder studs. He even entertained the thought of impregnating her himself so she would carry his child. Now wouldn’t that be sweet revenge against the Culvers—to make monthly videos showing Alexa being impregnated by him until she conceived! And then monthly updates showing her swelling belly, culminating with actual videos of the birth of his son coming out of her.
Ah! A thrill arced through Valdrin. To him, that would be the ultimate revenge. And the Culver family would never see their daughter again. Yes, he liked that idea quite a bit. Zakir would be angry, but so what? He would have a son born from his archenemy, whom he could teach how sex and pleasure were a natural, daily occurrence and to be acted upon, just as his mother had done with him.
*
Gage was at his desk at Artemis, having just come inside when his landline phone rang. He’d had lunch outside at a group of picnic tables beneath some trees that had nearly lost all their leaves. Tal and Matt had joined him, and they had discussed their concerns and worries for Alexa. They had sought Gage out to ask him questions about what they could do to support and help her through this rough period in her healing process. Tal and Matt wanted to speak further with him, following him to his office. Gage had just shut the door to his office and when the phone rang.
“Hunter here,” he said, standing again.
“Gage Hunter?” The voice sounded halting, tremulous, riddled with anxiety.
He frowned. “Sarina? Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s Sarina. Gage, Alexa was kidnapped! Thank God, the French gendarmes quickly found out where she was located, and she’s safe. It was Valdrin Rasari!”
His heart leaped, and he pressed a button on the phone. “Sarina, Tal and Matt are here with me. Tell us what happened. Is Alexa all right?” He knew the name Valdrin Rasari, and his gut clenched into a painful, tight fist. Matt and Tal were instantly on their feet, standing close to the desk as Sarina breathlessly told them what happened.
“Yes, Alexa is going to be all right. They have taken her by ambulance to a nearby hospital, which is where I’m calling from. The doctor later came back and said she’d been given a drug. He called it a date rape drug. But when the police broke into Valdrin’s suite, she was fully dressed and appeared untouched. Alexa is still coming out of the drug state and isn’t fully coherent yet. When she is, I’ll get her to call you.”
“Then,” Gage rasped, “she wasn’t raped?” He hated even saying the word, bitterness coating the inside of his mouth.
“The woman doctor who is caring for Alexa has talked to her. She has no memory of being touched at all, but of course, with a date rape drug, you usually have no memory. Alexa consented to an exam, and the doctor said there is no evidence of penetration. She thinks that the man who did this had just given it to her and was waiting for the drug to take full effect before he acted.”
Relief plunged through Gage. He wiped his face, sitting down, his knees suddenly weakening. “Thank God,” he whispered. Looking up, he saw the relief on Tal and Matt’s grim faces. Both had paled, and he was sure he didn’t look very good himself. “But she’s going to be okay?” He couldn’t help but ask it again.
“Yes, the doctor found no marks, no bruises, or anything on Alexa.”
Tal made a signal to Gage.
“Hold on, Tal wants to speak. Matt is also here, Sarina.”
Gage choked on bile and looked away as Tal launched into details about getting Alexa transferred from the hospital to the Delos company jet at the DeGaulle Airport. Matt came around the desk and gripped his shoulder, giving him a concerned look. Nausea rolled through Gage. His mind whirled with the implications of this attack on Alexa. There was a fatwa out on the three Culver children by Zakir Sharan. But Sarina had said this was Valdrin Rasari? How did that monster get into that hotel? How?
Tal nodded when she finished speaking to Sarina. “Okay, once you find out when Alexa can travel, let’s get her to the Delos jet and get her home. After that, I think everyone will rest a little easier.”
“I agree,” Sarina said. “I just feel so sorry for Alexa. She was semiconscious and seemed to realize what had happened to her. This is just awful, Tal. She’s just trying to come out of that first sexual assault. Now this. I . . . I’m sorry I didn’t go with her. The police think it was Valdrin Rasari. He’s known to go into disguise, fooling everyone.”
Matt stepped forward, hands on his hips. “Sarina? Matt here. Do you think Valdrin Rasari recognized Alexa as being a Culver?”
“I-I don’t know. Of course, we all wore name badges at that conference. He could have read it and realized who she was. Maybe we can find out when Alexa gets home?”
Matt’s mouth twisted, and he glanced over at Tal. “We’ve suspected that Zakir Sharan and Valdrin Rasari knew one another. That’s why I asked. It could be that Rasari knew Alexa would be at this conference and came in disguise to kidnap her, drug her, and take her somewhere. Maybe to Pakistan or Malgar.”
Gage sat there hearing the heaviness in Matt’s voice, seeing the concern in his golden-brown eyes. Tal stepped over, protectively settling her hand on her younger brother’s tense broad shoulder.
Gage felt gutted. He was both relieved and totally bewildered. What kind of emotional shape was Alexa in? What did she remember, if anything?
“Tell us how it happened,” Matt said to Sarina.
“I saw Alexa go toward the wine table, and she accidentally bumped into an older gentleman. He fell and she helped him up, very apologetically. I saw her help him to his feet. He was older, maybe sixty-five or so, gray-haired, with a cane. I didn’t recognize him, and I know most of the people in human rights and sex trafficking who attend these conferences. That bothered me, so I dug out my cell phone and put a call in to Alexa.
“She said she was in Dr. Analius Revig’s suite at the hotel, helping him get settled because he’d wrenched his knee in that fall. She told me he was a professor of human rights at University of Oslo. That set off alarms in me, because I am on the staff of the Human Rights Department at the university, and I did not recognize his name. I had a horrible feeling and followed my gut, calling the hotel police, and then they called in the French gendarmes.”
“How long between Alexa leaving the ballroom and when the gendarmes broke into the suite?” Tal demanded, scowling.
“Probably fifteen minutes maximum.”
Gage breathed heavily. That wasn’t enough time to drug and rape a person, was it? He knew so little of sex trafficking, the drugs, and the monsters who were the worst kind of predators in the world. He saw Matt’s face show relief. Tal’s did, too.
“In your opinion,” Tal asked, “is that enough time to drug a victim and then rape her?”
“No. Depending upon the dosage of such a drug,” Sarina said, “it takes at least twenty minutes to actually take effect and render the victim unconscious.”
“When the gendarmes broke into that room and found Alexa,” Matt asked, “was she unconscious?”
“No. I was there. She was still awake. Not very coherent, quite confused, but not unconscious.”
“Did you apprehend those who did this to her?” Tal demanded.
“No, he slipped into the next room and escaped the gendarmes. There were three men, and they ran for the exit stairs and got away.”
Matt muttered a curse, his hands flexing into fists. Tal nodded, her eyes flashing with anger.
“Let’s just get her home,” Tal ordered. “I’m calling in two of our security contractors who work the Paris area. I’ll have them there at Alexa’s hospital room within an hour.” She picked up her cell phone, found the addresses, and quickly gave the two men’s names. “At no time,” she warned Sarina in a dark voice, “is Alexa to be out of sight of our Artemis team. Is that understood? We don’t know who tried to kidnap her, even though your suspicions may be well founded.”
“Oh,” Sarina said. “I fully agree with your plan, Tal. It’s a good one. Right now, two gendarmes are standing guard outside her hospital room door. I’ll tell them what will be happening so they know to expect these two Artemis contractors.”
“Good idea,” Tal said. “But I’ll have Matt call them and get them up to speed, probably in another hour. Will Alexa be more coherent then?”
“For sure. I know the doctor gave her an IV full of medication to wash whatever they gave her out of her bloodstream faster. The doctor also took blood samples, so she’ll know what drug Alexa was given as well.”
“Absolutely,” Tal said. “Have that doctor send Becka, our therapist, the results here at Artemis, okay?”
“Of course. Well, listen, I’m going to go—there are two French detectives coming down the hall toward me. They might have more information. If there is, I’ll call you immediately, Tal.”
“Do that,” she growled, scowling.
Tal looked at Matt and Gage after hanging up. “The good news is Alexa was rescued and she wasn’t raped. The bad news is that this is happening to her again in a very short space of time. Dammit, anyway!”