Expose, p.16
Expose, page 16
What happened with Jaxson? Was he all right?
I didn’t want these men to know that he meant anything to me, not if they’d use that against me too.
“How much am I worth?” If they were after money, I could convince them I had a bucket of wealth offshore. All they had to do was let me live.
Did they know who I was, what my ex-husband had been convicted of, or was this bounty because of my work with the agency?
The younger of the two men, the one whittling a long, sharp stick, pulled out his cell phone. “Buyer says she’s worth the same dead or alive.”
“Lucky for us,” the second man said, his eyes lighting up with the prospect of my death.
“Whatever he’s willing to give you, I can double it!” Would they see my bluff?
The man who stood above me tilted his head to the side and leaned down, knife in hand. The blade scratched my cheek. His putrid breath smelled of stale coffee.
“Yes, but I enjoy listening to the screams of a helpless woman when I stab her repeatedly. What fun is it for me if I let you live? This way, I get the money and my fun.” He winked at me.
I leaned forward, coughing up bile.
His fingers yanked at my hair, pulling me to stand. He did nothing to help the throbbing sensation in my head except make it worse.
I clutched my forehead with one hand and the wall behind me with the other to keep from losing my balance. “Let me go.” I would not be helpless.
I kicked him in the groin. He was swift, the blade of the knife pressed on my neck, my body tight against the cold cement wall.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” he asked, leaning in, his sick breath against my cheeks.
The hairs on my arms stood on end, and a chill ran down my spine.
I’d had plenty of practice fighting at the agency with a dummy knife, but under pressure, everything was different.
Fight or flight, and I froze.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jaxson
Her faint scream brought me back and focused. I lifted my gloved hand, latching on to the mask around my face and yanking it off.
“You need to lie back down,” the paramedic said as he hovered over me.
“The hell I do.” I coughed as I pushed him away and stood, watching the ambulance tires spin on ice and snow before flying down the mountain road.
“You’re not… where are you taking her?” I took several deep breaths, in through my nose and out through my mouth.
Already, I was doing better, more alert, less cloudy.
Whatever had been in that canister, it wasn’t oxygen. They’d tried to drug me.
Two firefighters were dousing the smoking remnants of the cabin, keeping it from lighting ablaze again. They were chatting amongst one another; I couldn’t hear them over the rush of water pounding the rubble.
The paramedic had to know something. He must have been involved. He didn’t seem the least bit stressed or surprised that his vehicle had just been stolen with a woman in the back, screaming for help.
I landed a forceful blow to his face, wrestling him to the ground, pinning him down and keeping his hands far from his medical bag just a few feet away. I didn’t know what he had in there, whether it was a gun or a sedative, but I would not let him touch me.
Another firefighter came up from behind the paramedic with a spotlight. He turned on the light, the brightness forcing the paramedic to shield his eyes, blinding him as I kept him pinned to the snow.
“Get off me!” the paramedic shrieked. “You’re crazy.”
“You ain’t seen crazy,” I spat.
“What the hell is going on?” the firefighter asked. “You’re not local EMS. You okay, sir?” He kept the spotlight on the paramedic, but his attention was now trained on me.
He tossed me a set of zip ties from his pocket. He recognized something was amiss as well.
There was only one ambulance in all of Breckenridge. The Adams family ran the EMS unit, and being a member of Eagle Tactical, I knew every one of the Adamses.
“I will be.” I rolled the assailant around onto his stomach and tied his hands together before I stood. “What do you want with Ariella?” I yanked him around, making him sit in the cold, mushy snow.
“There’s a bounty on her head. She’s just a payday.”
How many people were after her?
I pulled my phone from my pocket, dialed Lincoln and the rest of the Eagle Tactical team. I patched them through on a conference call together.
“Hey, what’s going on, man?” Lincoln asked.
I’d left him at my house, just a few yards away, and he didn’t know what had just transpired.
“Yeah, where are you?” Mason asked.
“Ariella’s house burned down. We got caught up in the smoke and someone posing as a paramedic forced her into the back of the ambulance and took off with her down the mountain pass,” I said. I further went into detail, demanding for them to call the local Breckenridge sheriff’s office and block off the road.
“I’m on it,” Declan answered.
“I also need a sheriff’s unit brought up to the old cabin, the one Ariella purchased. One guy pretending to be a paramedic is in zip ties.”
I didn’t have cuffs handy, and while I could have easily dragged his ass down to the station, I needed to get to Ariella and protect her.
“You going to question him?” Lincoln asked.
I wanted to strap him down and interrogate him, shove the barrel of my gun against his bare skin. That would take time, and it wasn’t something I had a lot of right now.
“I’m leaving that up to the sheriff.” There were too many witnesses with the fire department standing just a few feet away.
The type of interrogation I wanted to do would be off the books and highly illegal.
I rushed back between the tree line and over the bridge, skirting the house. The smoke had diminished. Lincoln approached the car. “I’m driving,” he said.
I started the engine with my key fob and climbed into the passenger seat.
Lincoln didn’t miss a beat, hurrying into the driver’s side. The moment he shut the door, he had the vehicle in reverse and whisked us away from the house.
I yanked the seatbelt, securing it while Lincoln rushed us down the mountain pass, the road slick and wet from ice and snow. My stomach sank at the danger that lurked ahead.
“We’ll get to her in time, don’t worry.” Lincoln’s hands were tight on the steering wheel.
My foot tapped against the floor mats, anxiety creeping in, making the drive seem longer. “Were Izzie and Skylar okay?” I hadn’t forgotten about them back at the house.
“They’re fine. Izzie went down for a nap. Skylar was reading a book when I left her.”
“Okay.” I let out an anxious breath I hadn’t realized that I’d been holding.
Lincoln flew down the mountain pass, a pro at taking the switchbacks in haste. He slowed as we drew near. A mess of vehicles were smashed and driven through, the ambulance already having left its wake.
“Look there!” Lincoln pointed at the tire tracks off the road and the ambulance down at the bottom of the ravine on its side. He pulled off the road and hit the brakes.
I threw open the truck door and hurried down the ravine, my boots skidding down the side of the mountain along with me. I didn’t care if I landed on my ass, as long as I found her.
Mason and Aiden were already down by the ambulance with the sheriff and several other townsfolk conversing.
“Ariella!”
Mason spotted me first and shook his head no.
My stomach sank.
I didn’t know if that meant she wasn’t there, or if worse, she didn’t make it. I refused to accept that she’d died. There wasn’t a body as far as I could see. Unless she was in the back of the ambulance?
“Where is she?” I shouted, sliding down, my feet slipping under me, but I caught my balance. My arms out, I steadied myself before running the last leg of distance toward my buddies.
“She’s not here,” Mason said, his eyes filled with sorrow. He didn’t want to be the one to convey bad news, but someone had to tell me what happened.
That wasn’t enough of an answer for me. I needed more. “Where is she?”
Lincoln came up from behind, having followed me down the slope of the ravine. He poked his head into the ambulance bay, examining the scene and any evidence left behind.
I exhaled a loud breath, my heart hammering in my chest. “Any leads?” I wouldn’t abandon Ariella. She needed me more than ever.
“Declan is back at Eagle Tactical, running surveillance and scouring the dark web for leads. Although he pulled down the bounty earlier from the net, it’s clear someone saw it and acted on it while the information was still fresh,” Mason said.
Lincoln shoved his hands into his coat pocket. “There’s not much to go on other than the ambulance was definitely not used for medical purposes. The equipment is pretty scarce in there, which means there likely wasn’t anything she could have used as a weapon, either.”
“She’s smart.” She worked for the C.I.A. at one point, and I trusted that she’d do everything in her power to stay alive.
She just needed to survive long enough until we found her.
Shoving my fingers into my coat, I kept my head down, examining broken branches and a single set of footprints that appeared to be a size 12 men’s that were farther from the group.
I followed the trail, not sure what to expect. “Look, there’s one set of prints.”
The footprints sunk into the ground, potential evidence that she’d been carried and unable to walk. There didn’t appear to be a second set of prints coming back, either, which meant it couldn’t have been the sheriff or anyone else helping with the search party.
“The mountain pass runs just south of here. They could have gone down the road to another pickup point. There’s no way they planned on keeping the ambulance and not being seen,” Mason said.
“Maybe, but south is that direction.” I pointed south and then continued to follow the footprints that led west. “They didn’t go to the road. It’s possible they got turned around.”
If we were lucky, they were still in the forest. I held up my hand, signaling to wait.
Crouching down, I examined droplets of fresh blood on the snow. “She was here.” I’d never been more certain in my life.
I hurried, following the trail of footprints and droplets of blood that were mixed and mottled, difficult to find with branches strewn everywhere.
Lincoln, Mason, and Aiden followed at my heel as we scoured the forest, making sure we weren’t being played and the tracks had been a diversion. That didn’t appear to be the case.
I wanted to scream out for her, but if we were close along with the assailant, I didn’t want to further put her life in danger.
In the distance, a cabin sat nestled in the woods, four black SUVs in the driveway. “Any chance you guys brought a gun?” I didn’t want to go in outnumbered and unarmed.
“Did we come armed?” Lincoln laughed under his breath.
He lifted his shirt, showing me his gun. He then reached for his ankle holster, retrieving his spare weapon and handing it to me. “Looks like I’m saving your ass again, Monroe.”
“Just like old times,” I joked, “where you think you’re saving me, but in actuality, I’m rescuing you.”
With his gun drawn, he moved behind a tree as we grew closer. “Keep thinking that,” Lincoln said.
Aiden crouched down, pulling a switchblade from his pocket. “I’ll slash their tires and keep them from getting away.”
“Good thinking.” We didn’t want them taking Ariella off the property. I gestured for us to fan out. We needed to surround the cabin, find out what awaited us inside.
The car door of the SUV slammed shut. I snuck behind a tree, doing my best to camouflage. When I woke up this morning, I hadn’t thought this was how my day would go. I bet Ariella didn’t think the same, either.
Slow and even breaths. The cold sucked the air out of my lungs and burned, but I ignored the pain in my chest.
Our footprints were fresh, but that didn’t worry me as much as the sound of branches cracking under our boots. My foot came down slow and cautious as I moved from one tree with my sight on another to use as a minimal form of protection.
Aiden needed to be careful with the men outside by the SUV.
I held my breath.
He stabbed one tire before moving around the vehicle to hit another.
The men stood outside and talked, oblivious to what happened around them. That was good. It meant they were distracted.
We just needed to keep them that way while we found and rescued Ariella.
I took another step closer, coming up to the cabin. I crouched beside the window and peered in, careful not to be seen. There were gruff voices, but no one in the room faced the window.
A loud, feminine, ear-piercing scream echoed through the house.
I didn’t wait any longer; I rushed toward the nearest entrance and barreled in through the back door, gun drawn with Lincoln and Mason right behind me.
They had heard her cry for help too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Ariella
Fear drenched me to the core of my existence.
I trembled under the blade of his knife. The smirking bastard with breath old and putrid nicked my neck, reminding me he was in charge.
I could do this.
I had to do this. I talked myself up, my hands in fists at my sides, gathering strength.
I stomped on his toes, his boots thin, then shoved my knee hard up into his groin.
He doubled over in pain to grab his family jewels when the knife clanked to the floor. I yanked my knee hard up again, this time into his face, before ramming him headfirst into the wall.
He fell like a ton of bricks.
I bent down and snatched his knife. The handle trembled in my hands. It was my only line of defense to get out of the cellar.
“Nice one. You know if you kill him, it means more money for me,” said the second man who had sat on his stool whittling his stick. He stood, the sharp instrument in his grip.
I stepped over the imbecile, keeping my back to the wall for protection.
There were no windows in the basement. The small space closed in on me like a coffin.
My fingers grazed the cement, reminding me it wasn’t moving. The dizziness was all in my head.
The room was constrictive, and as car doors slammed, beads of sweat trickled down my forehead.
“Let me go,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster. “I told you I have money. I can give you far more than anyone else will for killing me.”
I’d tell a million lies if it would save my life. Would he fall for it?
“Unlike Carter, I don’t want to kill you. I prefer to play with the merchandise.” He snickered and unfastened his belt.
My eyes widened, and my stomach somersaulted. I gripped the handle of the knife until my knuckles turned white.
“Come here, girly,” he said, stalking toward me.
I screamed loud and hard. My lungs burned from the pain. My throat would be hoarse tomorrow, but I didn’t care if it meant that I lived to see another sunrise.
I screamed again, hoping to bring the men from outside down to the cellar. They wanted me dead, and while I didn’t want to end up six feet under, I also wasn’t about to get raped by a madman after a payday.
I skirted the wall, my gaze finding nothing, the only weapon in my defense a blade that was smaller and meant getting closer than his sharpened stick.
“We could play a game,” he whispered. He was grabbing my arm and pinning it back above my head, forcing the damned weapon to fall. At least he didn’t have his shaft.
It took all the courage I had to muster the words he wanted to hear. Could I convince him to let me go? “I like games,” I said and swallowed the lump that formed in my throat.
His decrepit hand stroked my cheek, and I turned my head away, refusing to look at him. He grabbed me by the chin and forced my face to look at him. “Doesn’t look like you enjoy this game very much,” he said.
He leaned closer to me, his body just inches from mine.
The room spun.
Had the thermostat been suddenly turned up? Sweat licked my skin and my stomach recoiled.
I stomped his foot, but he wore steel-toed boots, offering him protection and only making the bottoms of my feet throb.
I winced but didn’t let him see my discomfort or surprise that the maneuver hadn’t worked.
His hand that had been on my chin fell to my knee. “Don’t even think about fighting this, girly. You know you want it.” He leaned toward me.
“I could never want anyone like you!” I spat in his face and squirmed to escape his grasp.
The knife lay on the floor out of my reach with my hands pinned above my head.
He kept me trapped, and though I attempted to use the force of my entire body to fight him, he was taller than I was, heftier, and had me restrained.
“I do like a girl who fights,” he said and snickered.
The other man who had attacked me earlier and had been lying on the ground stirred awake.
He grabbed my legs, keeping me from kicking either of them again.
I screamed again, and the bastard who had me pinned to the wall and my hands clamped above my head shoved his hand over my mouth.
I bit down on his fingers, unwilling to give in to his demands or temptations.
“You bitch!” he snarled and threw his hand back, smacking me hard across the face. “I’ll show you,” he said, unzipping his pants.
Heavy footsteps pounded against the ceiling of the cellar. “Help!” I screamed, thrashing as I tried to break free of both men.
“Ariella!” Jaxson’s voice was music to my ears, the sweetest symphony I’d ever heard in my life.
His boots slammed against the stairs. He and his buddies came tearing down the basement to help.
“What the hell?” The man spun around, pants at his ankles.
