Hunting (5 page)

“
It’s a start. I need you
to untie me.” They hadn’t bound her. That told him they didn’t see
her as a threat. But they would have had to have known she’d untie
him. So, they obviously thought they had them pretty well contained
in this room.

It took her clever hands
less than two minutes to have the knot worked free. He bit back the
curse as the blood flowed back into his mangled hands. He’d struck
a few faces hard enough to bruise his knuckles. She rubbed his
hands and fingers gently. “Can you feel every finger?
This?”

She ghosted one finger
lightly against his palm. Malachi shivered. She frowned.

“
Yes, Julia, I felt
that.”

Her eyes shot to his.
“Good. That means they didn’t damage your hands.”

That wasn’t what Malachi
was concerned with at the moment. He wanted her to continue
touching him, in spite of where they were. That wasn’t good. He
coughed. “We need to get thinking.”

“
I know, but where do we
even begin? This is not my game, remember? I deal with dead people
who’ve been found.” Her words trembled. He tangled his fingers in
her hair, scooted closer on the thin mattress where they’d been
tossed. It was most likely that of a futon or hideaway bed. Cheap,
tossed on the bare basement floor. One thin blanket and a sheet was
all that had been provided.

Thankfully, the room did
appear to have some sort of heat coming through the one lone vent
high above their heads. There was nothing to stand on, nothing to
let them look out the window ten feet above the floor.

There were two doors; one
had been left open and Malachi could see the edge of an olive green
toilet. He stood and explored the bathroom. The faucet worked, not
well, but it did function. The toilet flushed. The light switch
worked. They had some heat and running water. If they were stuck
there for a while they wouldn’t dehydrate and they wouldn’t freeze
to death. He opened the cabinet beneath the sink.

Various canned meats with
current dates were crammed into the small space. No dust covered
the labels—they were fresh. Prepackaged individual containers of
raisins, applesauce, plastic spoons, and crackers were also jammed
in the linen closet. No, whoever their captors were, they didn’t
intend to kill them right away.

It gave Malachi hope, but
also puzzled the hell out of him. What was going on?

Jules shivered again as she
watched her companion explore the room. She cataloged his
movements, half afraid he’d keel over, leaving her to face whoever
it was responsible for them being there in the first
place.

His ribs were injured. His
face was scuffled, worse than she’d ever seen him. He’d lost his
glasses somewhere between his home and here—where ever here
was.

He bent over, and his face
tightened. His left hand rose to hold his ribs. Julia jumped to her
feet, ignoring the slight ache in her head. She was sore, but they
hadn’t hurt her too badly. Instead they’d focused on
him.

He frowned at her as she
moved closer. She ignored his protest as she pulled his arm down.
She poked and prodded around his chest and ribs. The man was solid,
his body strong beneath the once white shirt.

“
I think it’s cracked, not
broken.” Jules gave her final diagnosis. “Do you hurt anywhere
else?”

“
Stomach. I think they
kicked me a few times.” He pushed her hands away, but she was
undeterred. She pulled the shirt free from his waist. He had an
actual six-pack under his clothes—who knew? She pushed that thought
out of her head and dropped his shirt back into place.

“
I don’t think there’s any
internal bleeding, but I’ll check again later.”

* * *

Her hands had felt good
against his skin, the connection reminding him that he wasn’t the
only one in this situation. That was a mixed blessing for sure. He
wanted nothing more than to get her out of there, take her home
where she’d be safe, then come back and find the men responsible
for putting that scared expression in her pretty eyes. He led her
back to the thin mattress in the corner and they sank down on it.
He leaned against the wall and pulled her closer, vaguely surprised
when she didn’t protest. A few hours earlier and she would have
ripped his arm off at the shoulder if he’d tried to touch her. But
now it was obvious she was terrified and needing some sort of
familiar connection. Even if it was just him.

He grabbed the thin blanket
and wrapped it awkwardly around her shoulders. She dropped her head
to rest against him for a moment. That, more than anything,
concerned him.

“
What’s this about?” She
trembled against him. “Did you recognize any of them?”

“
I don’t have a clue.” They
had to have been after him, not her. Why else would they have been
at his home? “I’m sorry they’ve involved you in this.”

“
We need to figure a way
out of here, before they come back.”

“
I don’t think we can.” He
looked around again. They couldn’t reach the window easily and the
door had apparently been dead-bolted—from the other side. Until
someone opened that door, they weren’t going anywhere.

He wasn’t wearing a watch
and only the angle of sunlight passing through the window helped
him keep any sense of the time. Hours passed. They spent most of
that time in silence. Occasionally, she would ask him how he felt,
then try to examine him for internal injuries.

Malachi had never been more
aware of a woman in his life.

“
Do you think they’re any
closer to finding us?” she asked around what he thought was noon.
She’d grown steadily paler and Malachi had insisted she sit
down.

“
I don’t know.” What could
he tell her? That most kidnapping victims not found within
twenty-four hours were never found? At least, not found alive? She
would already know that. He’d reviewed her Bureau personnel file.
She may work forensic pathology, but she’d excelled at
Quantico.

“
Hell is probably going
through cases for the last year, looking for a connection.” Her
voice held hope and it hurt him. “He’ll find something and connect
the dots. George says he’s the best.”

He felt a small twinge of
hurt pride. “One of, yes.”

“
What do we do if they come
back before Hell finds us?” Hazel eyes stared into his.

“
Play it by ear,” he said.
“You cooperate. I don’t want you making them the least bit angry.”
It was a fact—she was ten times as likely to be sexually assaulted,
and he was in no true position to protect her. A rush of impotence
hit him. He’d die before he let anyone hurt her.

“
I get it,” she said. “I
wish we had a freaking weapon of some sort.”

He thought for several
moments then removed the porcelain lid from the toilet. She
followed him into the bathroom and watched curiously. “What are you
doing?”

“
Go back and close the
door. I don’t want you getting hit.” He waited until she obeyed
before dropping the lid from chest level. It shattered, leaving him
with several larger pieces perfect for what he had in
mind.

“
Are you done yet?” she
called through the door.

“
The facilities are all
yours, my dear.” He held up his loot and smiled. “I’ll need some
toothpaste and a roll of toilet paper.”

“
So you do have some uses
after all.” She grabbed the supplies and followed him back into the
main room. They sat down on the crude bed, and he laid the
porcelain shards on the concrete floor by their feet. He took the
toothpaste and coated one end of porcelain with the green cream. He
wrapped it in several layers of toilet paper and squeezed, forming
a rustic handle.

He repeated the process
with three other shards. She must have grasped his intent and took
the first shank and delicately, but methodically began sharpening
it against the rough concrete of the cinder block walls.

“
Be careful not to break
them by sharpening too much.”

“
I’ve got good hands, you
know. Comes from cutting up dead bodies.” He heard the irritation
in her voice. It gave it a husky tone that had his stomach
tightening.

“
Sharpen half of them,
then. Make them better for slicing.” He finished his sixth
creation. “We’ll set a few in the window to dry then can hide them
throughout the room.”

“
Bet you were a boy scout.”
She took a seventh shard, smaller than the rest and repeated his
actions. She held it up triumphantly.

“
Of course.” He held up
his. It was three times as large as hers. He grinned at her, not
surprised to see her usual smirk hit her lips.

“
Ah, but I have nothing to
compensate for. Now what, MacGyver?”

“
Now...we wait.”

She flopped back onto the
mattress. “Great.”

Her movement caused the
flirty little dress she wore to ride up, revealing her pretty legs.
The shredded stockings did little to detract from their shape or
smoothness. He swallowed, forcing himself to look away.

It was just proximity
making him imagine what those legs would feel like wrapped around
him. It was just a variant of Stockholm Syndrome; that was
all.

She stood, then disappeared
into the bathroom, returning after a moment. She held two of the
bottled waters and several packages of crackers and
raisins.

* * *

Malachi had a dazed
expression on his face Jules wasn’t used to seeing, and it puzzled
her. They finished their small dinner in relative silence. He kept
his wicked looking weapon close to his side and kept himself
between her and the door at all times.

Jules wasn’t used to being
so obviously protected. She hated it; it made her feel so horribly
vulnerable.

She shivered as she opened
the lid on another bottle of water. They’d been provided with two
types of drinks, bottled water and bottled beer. The room had grown
steadily colder, at least to Jules. It must have dropped twenty
degrees in the past two hours.

Malachi surprised her by
wrapping the blanket around her shoulders. She didn’t protest; she
was still freezing and the headache she’d woken with had tripled.
She felt progressively worse as the day went on.

Finally, she couldn’t take
it anymore. The mattress beckoned and she curled up in the middle
of it. She gave up—at this point, the headache was much worse than
the threat of danger.

* * *

Malachi watched her all
afternoon, hoping he was wrong. Only when she nearly collapsed on
the mattress did he accept the truth. It wasn’t just Georgia and
half of Hellbrook’s team that had fallen victim to the
flu.

Julia looked far from good.
He leaned over her, brushed the hair off her forehead. Pretty eyes
blinked up at him. Feverish eyes. “Oh Julia, you never make things
easy, do you?”

“
Don’t call me Julia,
please. Only Rick did.” The words were a sad whisper as her eyes
drifted closed. He continued to stroke her hair. “It makes me
remember.”

Her skin burned beneath his
hand. She was ill, they had the one thin blanket between them, and
no access to the outside world.

Malachi had felt fear
before, both on and off the job. None of that compared to the
terror gripping him right then.

He’d spent sixteen months
planning out every move he would make against Malachi, in this—the
final portion of their game. He hadn’t planned on incompetence of
his pawns.

These fools cost him the
game, and he would not forget that.

The news had wasted no time
on reporting about the missing FBI hotshot Dr. Malachi Brockman’s
disappearance.

Or that of one of the
nation’s best forensic pathologists.

The woman hadn’t been part
of the game. She was an unknown variable, one that he was not
prepared for—nor happy about. Because of her, Malachi would once
again triumph.

His plan to keep Malachi
for weeks, until the man died from simple starvation and wasting
away of perfection was finished. He hadn’t counted on a second
person being in the room with Malachi, especially one with whom he
took no issue.

He’d met the woman and
respected her a great deal. He hadn’t wanted to harm her.
Therefore, Malachi would be the winner of this game by
default.

He fondled the two chess
pieces he’d altered to suit his needs. It was from his favorite
chess set, one that he’d been given as a gift when he was no more
than eleven years old. Malachi’s mother had purchased it, and he’d
treasured it for decades.

Now he would be sending the
last two pieces to Meredith’s son…

Would the other man get the
significance? Or was he just insignificant to Malachi?

He placed the pieces in the
envelope and wrote in a neat, block letter style, the name of the
third unintended victim of those idiots.