Sandra Hill (29 page)

The smell of her perfume he would recognize anywhere. A light flowery scent that was not unpleasant, but it held no allure for him now.

She looked at him with a puzzled expression on her face. “Can we talk?”

“I’m in a hurry, Jen. Can we make it some other time?”

“There was a time when you would have fit me in.” She pouted, which she probably thought was attractive.

He shrugged. “Those days are long gone.”

“Really?” She sidled up closer to him so that her breasts pressed against his chest and he felt her breath close to his chin.

“Really,” he said and put her several feet away from him.

He could tell she was shocked. It wasn’t the first time she’d tried to hook up with him since her divorce, but it was the first time she’d gotten this close. “Is there someone else?”

He didn’t even have to think. “Oh, yeah!”

“You loved me once.”

“I wonder.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means, sweetheart, that now I’ve found the real thing, I think what we had was a poor imitation. In fact, I have a lot to thank you for.”

She folded her arms over her chest, probably embarrassed and angry at the same time.

“I think Maddie is the first woman I’ve ever really loved. Oh, and did I mention, Maddie is my wife.”

Jennifer looked as if she might say something nasty to him, but she spun on her heel and stormed away.

He did not care, not one bit.

As he walked toward the exit, his cell phone rang.

“Mac?”

“Yeah.”

It was Geek.

“If you ask me if I know what my wife is doing, I think I might scream,” he teased.

“She’s gone,” Geek said without preamble.

“What do you mean, ‘gone’?” He raked his fingers through his hair and felt like pulling it out by the roots. The woman just could not stay put.

“I think she was taken,” Geek went on.

The blood drained from his head and extremities and he had to lean on the wall for support.

The other guys came up beside him, noticing his distress.

“I was in the office,” Geek continued. “You told me the danger was over hours ago. Then I heard your car come into the garage, and I heard Maddie talking to someone, then the sound of the door closing and the car taking off.”

“It was not my car,” he said icily.

“I know that now. I saw the license plate. It had New York plates. I called you as soon as I realized what happened. Dammit, Mac, this is all my fault. I wouldn’t blame you if you recommended me out of SEALs. What a fuck-up!”

“Take it easy, Geek. It’s more my fault than yours. If I had come home right away, or if I’d taken her along like she wanted, none of this would have happened. I’m on my way home. Call the commander and tell him to send some of those CIA super sleuths, as well. They claim they can track anyone. Let’s hope that’s true.”

Ian hung up and looked at his buddies. He didn’t have to explain what had happened. As they made plans to go back to the base and regroup while he returned home, there was only one thing Ian could think:

Where are you, Maddie?

If only she had her favorite sword …

Five days later, Madrene was bored to the point of barminess.

Oh, these miscreants had slapped her face back and forth a few times, and one of them had kicked her in the thigh, and one of them even punched her in the jaw, not to mention the large lump on her head from the piss-tole blow that first day in the car. But those various aches and pains were naught compared to what could have happened, or might still happen.

They questioned and questioned and questioned her about her knowledge of terrorist secrets. No matter how many times she told them she knew nothing, they refused to believe her.

The Shepherds of Allah—the name they gave themselves—were waiting for word from some important villain in their terrorist group. She shivered to think what methods he might use to get her to answer the ridiculous questions. He was coming here by airplane from a country called Eye-ran.

In the meantime, she had been moved from an upstairs bedchamber to this small storage room in the basement. Her captors claimed her constant nagging was giving them a headache. She told them they were giving her an arse ache. That was when she’d been kicked.

She was unrestrained down here because there were no windows, but upstairs her hands had been tied behind her back. She’d learned something interesting while up there. They were in a house in Ian’s neighborhood. Although the man who’d captured her had driven away from this area, he must have been trying to confuse her. Once she was unconscious he must have doubled back.

She had been blessed with one bit of good luck. The reason why the shepherds were not molesting
her or harming her was because they believed she was pregnant, and men of their religion revered breeding women. Little did they know, and she was not about to tell them, that she was barren. Who ever would have thought she would be thankful for a weak stomach, but she had been vomiting since that first day, probably due to the head blow. And her stomach had been roiling since then at the unpalatable food they gave her and the fetid air. They put so much garlic in every dish they cooked that the house fairly reeked with it.

All of the men had felt the need to touch her breasts to see if they were real—
there was something about men and breasts
—and one of the lackwits proclaimed that they must be so big because they were filling with milk for the babe. Men were such halfbrains betimes. This reprieve would not last forever, of course, especially if she got her monthly flux whilst in captivity.

Why do things like this always happen to me?

Where is Ian? Is he worried about me? Is he searching? Of course he would search in the beginning, but has he given up?

I wish I had not been so cold when he was leaving.

At this rate, I will never get back to Norstead.

She closed her eyes and tried to visualize Ian standing in his solar.
Come to me, dearling. Here I am. Please come.

There are surprises and then there are SURPRISES …

It had been a week and there was still no sign of Maddie. In fact, the CIA and SEAL command were talking about giving up the search. The D word was
not used, but Ian knew they thought that Maddie must be dead.

Operating on coffee and very little sleep, Ian made his way into the base and went out for a solitary five-mile run on the beach. But today, even the mindlessness of long-distance jogging did nothing for him.

He showered, then tried to get some paperwork done in his office. He just kept staring at the picture of himself and Maddie which had been taken by Dan Sullivan in Baghdad. When he’d received it in the mail two days ago, probably from the slimeball, he’d slipped it into the frame which had previously held a picture of himself and his sister and two brothers.

His father, to his surprise, had been a rock for him. Somehow, the man who had been so hard on him seemed to understand his feelings for Maddie. His father had finally flown back to D.C. last night, but he’d pulled every string he could to keep the search going.

Ian heard a soft knock on the door.

“Max! When did you get back?” It was his sister’s brother-in-law, Torolf Magnusson. Normally Cage’s partner, Max had been a pain in the butt to Ian during BUD/S training, and, although he had become a colleague since then, Ian found his constant clowning an irritation. But then Ian suspected he was far too serious himself.

“This morning. Holy crap! I just heard everything that’s been going on here. You got married?”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, you probably also heard that I couldn’t hold on to the woman.” He figured he’d better throw that in before Max made a joke of the situation.

“Don’t go blaming yourself.”

Ian shrugged. Everyone told him that, but it didn’t make him feel any better.

“Is that her?” Max asked, walking up to the side of the desk.

“That’s Maddie,” he said, handing Max the framed photo to look at.

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!
Oh, my God!
” Max cried out, alternately hugging the picture to his chest and gazing at it with incredulity. “It’s impossible. Yes, it’s possible, but, oh, my God! After all these years!”

Ian stood and came around the side of the desk to stand before him. “What’s the problem?”

“Problem? It’s no problem. It’s a miracle.” Max swiped at the tears that were welling in his eyes. “That’s my sister, Madrene.”

Ian felt as if he’d been sucker punched. “No! She said her name was Madrene Olgadottir, not Magnusson.”
What an idiotic thing to say!
Then, he thought of something else.
Wouldn’t it be really ironic if I was now related to this bozo by marriage? Ironic? More like hellish.

Max shook his head. “Women take their mother’s names in my country.”

“Oh.”
Another great brainiac observation!
Suddenly Ian remembered what had been niggling at his memory from the first time he’d met Maddie. An eerie prickle rippled over his skin. There was a perfect image in his mind of the mesmerizing Norse noblewoman in the painting at Blue Dragon Vineyard. He’d seen the artwork done by Dagny Magnusson, another sister, when he’d attended his sister Alison’s wedding three years ago at the vineyard estate.

Maddie was the woman in the painting.

The Vikings are coming … and coming … and coming …

Within twenty-four hours, Ian felt as if he were living in a Viking psycho ward.

It started the morning after his meeting with Max. He was awakened before dawn from a deep sleep, the first he’d had in a week. And he’d been having a strange dream, too. Maddie had been calling to him, “Come to me, dearling.”

Was she really dead, as others concluded, and calling to him to join her in death? Or was it one of those telepathic messages some people believed in?

Whichever! He made his way out of bed and stumbled groggily to the front door, where a loud pounding was going on nonstop. When he opened it, he jumped back. Five big, fierce-looking men stood there, wearing weird leather battle armor. They carried big-ass swords and battle-axes.

He knew who they all were, having met them before, but they scared him nonetheless. It was like a bad Halloween nightmare. Torolf and Jorund Magnusson, Maddie’s brothers, stood in the back, but up front and way too much in his face were Magnus, Jorund and Geirolf Ericsson, Maddie’s father and uncles, respectively.

“What have you done with my baby?” Magnus asked him gruffly as he faced him nose to nose, backing him up against the foyer wall. Ian was tall, but this guy had to be six-foot-six, and he had a hundred pounds on him. He was
big
.

“Are you referring to my wife?”
Good Lord! I must have a death wish.

“That remains to be proved,” one of the uncles proclaimed.

Uh-oh!

“We’re here to help find her,” the other uncle said.

With swords? Oops! Hope I didn’t say that out loud.

Max and Ragnor were grinning at him.

Magnus came into the hall, dropped his sword and battle-ax to the floor, probably breaking some tiles, and took Ian into a tight bear hug which lifted him on tiptoes. “Do not be afeared, son. We will find Madrene.”

Ian wasn’t sure if the tears in his eyes were from relief or from being crushed by Attila the Viking.

But then, at the same ungodly hour, his father showed up. He was out of uniform, which was in itself a rarity. He took Ian by the shoulders and said, “I had to come. I couldn’t just sit on my ass in Washington without trying to help.” His father going outside the strictures of military protocol—it was a miracle to Ian, or a nightmare.

Of course, his SEAL buddies showed up, too. What was going on here? Was he sending out psychic messages for help? There were so many people at his house by six a.m. that Ian could barely move. Cage and Omar were cooking scrambled eggs and bacon. Geek was in Ian’s office, showing Ragnor and the uncles the work they’d done so far on locating Maddie. Sly, JAM and Slick were doing sit-ups in the living room. Pretty Boy was making Magnus laugh over Maddie’s makeover. Everyone was drinking beer, at this ungodly hour. One of them, Geirolf, was eating Oreos with his beer.

To top off his nightmare, Sam was behaving really
weird. She kept coming up to him and meowing like crazy. He let her outside a dozen times, which he normally didn’t do, but she would immediately scratch to come back in. Like right now. She was screeching like a banshee at the front door. Maybe she was in heat or something. If she got pregnant, he would kill himself. He was pretty sure Jen had had her fixed, but God only knew if that was true; Jen had told him so many lies.

In the midst of all the chaos, Ian went to his bedroom and closed the door firmly. He needed some time to himself. Of course, Sam, who was on her outside rotation, came up to the sliding door on the deck, meowing for entrance. “Make up your mind. In or out,” he grumbled as he let the cat in.

Sam just gave him her look.

Ian flopped down on the bed and folded his arms beneath his neck, staring at the ceiling. “Please, God, let me find Maddie.” He wondered if he should promise to be good, or offer some bribe. He hadn’t done much praying in his sorry life. He settled for just a simple plea. “I don’t know for sure if You’re up there, or if I deserve Your help, but please.” Just for insurance, he added, “You, too, Odin.”

Sam chose that moment to jump onto the bed—which was a real feat for such a fat cat—then walk up his body from thigh to stomach to chest. Putting her cat face right in front of his, she meowed dolefully.

“You miss her, too, don’t you?”

Sam hissed as if she were exasperated with him. She scratched at his chest with one paw, gently, then started to walk away. Looking back at him, she meowed some more. Then she came back and repeated the exercise. Pawing at his chest, walking away,
looking at him, then coming back. Sitting up and furrowing his brow, he asked the cat—
That was a sign of how far gone he was … talking to a cat!
—“Do you want me to follow you?”