Secret Assignment (21 page)

Focus. You’ve had the training. What would a Cooper Security operative do in this situation?

First, figure out how she was bound.

Both hands and ankles were secured together by something hard and biting. Her hands were behind her back, the stress on her shoulders making them ache. By bending her wrists inward, she managed to touch her bindings with a couple of fingers. Hard plastic with ridges—flex cuffs. Better than metal cuffs at least, but still a bear to get out of.

She’d do better if she could get her hands around to the front, although thinking about the contortion required to do so made her head swim. She took a deep breath, trying to relax as much as possible, and tucked her knees up as close to her chest as she could in the cramped space. Her joints protested, making her wonder just how long she’d been lying immobile and contorted in this car trunk. Had more time passed than she believed?

Her shoulders felt stretched to the limit, but she managed to swing her arms forward, under her tucked up legs, until they were in front of her body instead of behind. She went limp for a few seconds afterward, letting her aching joints relax.

The pain subsided and she felt instantly more in control.

Had they thought to search her? Her GLOCK was gone—that was a given. But would they have thought to pat her down for other weapons?

She kept a small folding utility knife with her at all times. That wasn’t a Cooper Security thing—her father had given all his kids utility knives as safety tools. Her particular version had a couple of flat blades, a saw blade and bottle and can opener blades. The saw should work on the flex cuffs, if her captors hadn’t thought to look for weapons beyond her pistol.

She didn’t keep the knife in a pocket, fortunately. She usually kept it tucked in her bra, snug against her skin where it wouldn’t be seen. That particular trick
was
a Cooper Security thing—her sister Megan had taught her the wisdom of that hiding place. “You ever get grabbed by bad guys, the bra’s the last place they’ll think to look, unless they’re looking to rape you. Then you got more problems than where you hide your knife.”

She found the lump of the knife still there in her bra, tucked below her right breast. She released a soft breath of relief.

But before she could do anything, she heard the scrape of metal on metal, surprisingly loud in the darkness. A moment later, gray light flooded the area where she lay, blocked by a dark silhouette.

She blinked, her eyelids straining, against her will, to shut out the light.

She fought to keep them open, willed her eyes to adjust to the light more quickly. The dark silhouette remained where it was, looking down at her, until she started to make out more details.

Male. Dressed in all black, a knit balaclava covering the lower half of his face. A narrow oval of skin and eyes showed above the knit mask, revealing hooded hazel eyes and thick, sandy-brown eyebrows. She didn’t recognize him, but there was little chance he was anyone other than one of the men Damon was working with.

“Look at you. You been busy,” the man said with a flat Midwestern twang. “Got yourself all untwisted.”

“My shoulders were aching,” she retorted.

“No matter. You’re not going anywhere anyway.”

She didn’t struggle when he reached into the car trunk and roughly grabbed the flex cuffs, using them to pull her up to a sitting position.

A second man came around the car and stood behind Midwest. Dressed in identical clothing, the only identifying features she could make out beneath the black mask were broad, high cheekbones, narrow eyes and the bridge of a straight nose. His skin color was ruddier than Midwest’s, with a scattering of freckles across that straight nose. He didn’t speak.

“Help me get her out,” Midwest ordered.

She tried to remember what Margo had told her about the four men from the Azimut yacht. Damon, she knew already. And she’d described the man named Leo as a handsome charmer with blue eyes. Neither of these men fit that description. Damon had told them the fifth man, the yacht’s pilot, was African-American as well.

So these two must be Raymond and Craig. Raymond was little, Margo had said. Craig was big and tall. The silent guy was definitely big and tall, and she supposed that under the ski cap, Raymond’s hair might need a cut.

So, Raymond and Craig. Raymond was the one Gideon believed held a grudge against him. She’d have to remember that—not let him think there was any particular connection between the two of them. No need to invite more difficulties when she was in a bad place already.

“What do you want with me?” she asked.

Craig grabbed her around her hips, hauling her out of the trunk and down to the ground. He held on to her, enclosing both her wrists in the palm of his big hand. He must be the muscle, Shannon thought, wincing at the sheer strength of his grip.

It was raining now, a slow drizzle that created a false twilight of drab gray. They were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on most sides by thick, piney woods, dotted in places with big, old hardwoods draped by silvery Spanish moss. The ground was soft beneath her feet, the air around her smelling of swamp. The car that had been her prison was an older model four-door Buick Regal. Black, with dark red interior. She memorized that image as well.

“Into the shack.” Raymond nodded toward a small one-story cabin constructed of weathered gray pine. It looked rickety and old, and she had grave doubts about the rusty tin roof’s ability to keep out the rain.

“We’re not waiting for L—” Craig began to ask.

“Shut up!” Raymond snapped. “Just keep your mouth shut.”

Craig’s grip on Shannon’s wrists tightened painfully, and she felt the tremble of barely chained violence in his hand.

“Where are we?” she asked aloud.

Raymond just gave her a withering look. “Don’t worry about that, brown eyes. Shut up and do what we tell you. No questions.”

She did as he said, knowing confrontation, however satisfying she might find it personally, would get her nowhere. The less she appeared to be a threat to them, the more they’d drop their guard, giving her a better chance to escape.

She did have one more question she decided to ask, however, thinking this might possibly be an answer they’d be willing to give. She waited until Craig settled her inside the shack and hooked her ankle cuffs to a chain set into the wall. She almost smiled at the criminal lack of forethought in that act. They apparently did see her as an easy mark.

It made her wonder how much they knew about her identity. She assumed they knew her name, probably even where she worked. Cooper Security might have given them pause—until they found out she was a computer geek who worked in IT, not as a field operative.

Please underestimate me,
she pleaded silently.

As Craig stepped back and looked down at her, his narrow-eyed expression hard to read, especially with half his face hidden behind the balaclava, she asked, “What are you going to do with me?”

It was Raymond who answered. “You’re leverage, sweetheart.”

About what she expected. But she might as well play it with feigned ignorance. “Leverage for what?”

“You don’t know?” he mocked.

“I don’t,” she said as innocently as she could. “I’m supposed to be on my way home right now. If I don’t get there, my family’s going to come looking for me, you know.”

“Not soon enough.”

Her stomach tightened into a knot at the hard promise she heard in his words. “We don’t have money. It’s all tied up in the company, untouchable. I don’t know what you think ransom will accomplish.”

“We don’t want money,” Raymond said, a mean smile dancing in his hazel eyes.

They want the journal,
she thought. But aloud, she asked, “Then what?”

“That’s not your concern.” He nodded for Craig to follow him. “Let’s go. We’ve got things to do before you-know-who gets back.”

As they went through the open door, she called out, “Are you just leaving me here? Where are you going?”

Neither Raymond nor Craig turned around. The door shut behind them and she heard the rattle of a lock engaging.

She sat quietly for a couple of minutes, until she heard the sound of the car engine firing up outside. It purred a minute, then was gone, fading into the distance.

She pulled up the hem of her shirt and slid her fingers under the bra band, retrieving the knife. Listening anxiously for any sound outside the shack that might suggest her captors were returning, she fumbled with the knife, nearly dropping it twice, before she managed to flip open a small but sharp saw blade. She went to work on the cuffs, scraping her wrists a few times when the blade slipped but snapping them open in just a few minutes.

She rubbed her bleeding wrists for a second to soothe the pain, then went to work on the flex cuffs binding her ankles, freeing herself from the chain that held her in place.

Outside, rain was falling harder, but running through a downpour sounded a lot better than holing up inside that shack, worrying about who’d show up next.

She didn’t try the locked door, opting for one of the windows. With a little effort, she climbed out and landed lightly on the ground outside the cabin.

All she had to do was make her way out of these woods and back to some place with a phone.

It was a simple plan. Simple plans were always the best.

But only when they worked.

* * *

T
HE BATHROOM WINDOW
at Margo’s Diner opened to a small back alley used primarily for deliveries and garbage removal. A narrow margin of summer-dried grass lay just beneath the window, giving way to gravel within a couple of feet.

The falling drizzle hadn’t yet penetrated the sun-hardened soil enough to create a muddy surface for footprints. Gideon stared in painful impotence at the open window and tried to picture what had happened.

Someone had ambushed her in the bathroom. Subdued her somehow—force, perhaps, or even something like a knockout drug. Just enough to get her outside without a fight.

How had they known she was in the bathroom?

“Gideon?” Margo’s hesitant voice, just a few feet away, snapped his attention her way. He saw she was standing next to a skinny teenaged girl with lanky dark blond hair and tear-reddened blue eyes.

“What?” he asked, trying not to let his fear and anger show.

“Go on, Deenie, tell him,” Margo urged the weeping blonde. “He won’t bite, I promise.”

Gideon struggled to keep his expression calm. “What is it?”

“This is Deenie Albertson. Tell him what you told me.”

Haltingly, Deenie spoke, her voice hitching with quiet sobs. “I swear, he said it was just a joke! And I needed the money to help pay my way to the choir competition this winter, and I didn’t see any harm—”

“Who said it was a joke?” Gideon curled his fingers into fists.

“He said his name was Ray, and he was so funny about it—told me his girlfriend had been waitin’ and waitin’ for him to pop the question, and he wanted to make it memorable. He was going to jump through the window into the ladies’ bathroom, see, while she was in there and propose right then and there—’cause it would be real memorable, see?” Deenie wiped her eyes.

“How was he supposed to get in there?”

“I went and unlocked the bathroom window. I was supposed to get her in there somehow if she didn’t go alone, but then she just went by herself and I had to hurry outside and tell him she was in there.”

“I didn’t see him in the diner,” Margo murmured.

“He didn’t go inside,” Deenie said. “He caught me outside, pointed her out through the window and then gave me twenty bucks to do it. But I didn’t know it was a lie!”

He said his name was Ray.

Gideon bit back a profanity and turned away, his stomach in a knot. If Raymond Stephens had Shannon, and had any idea of the connection between them, she was in serious danger. Ray’s grudge-holding had been legendary in the marine unit where he’d spent his aborted military career.

How far would he go, what measures would he take, to make sure Gideon suffered for the unforgiveable sin of thwarting Raymond Stephens?

“Did you see what he was driving?” he asked Deenie.

She shook her head.

The faint trill of a phone filtered past his worry, drawing his attention to the ground nearby. He hurried over and found a small black phone—the exact make Shannon used.

He picked it up, saw the name on the display. Jesse Cooper.

He hit the answer button. “Cooper?”

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line, filled with the loud roar of some sort of engine. Jesse’s voice finally came, raised to override the background noise. “Stone?”

“Yeah,” he answered, dreading what he had to say next.

“Where’s my sister?” Already, Gideon heard a tone of accusation in the other man’s voice.

He felt an answering flood of guilt wash through him as he spoke the words he never wanted to say.

“She’s been taken.”

* * *

O
VERHEAD, THE SKY
was only partly cloudy, the rain easing off for the moment. A watery sun came out, turning the woods into a sauna, but the heat was enough to start drying Shannon’s clothes to a bearable dampness.

Unfortunately, as she headed south in search of civilization, the soft, loamy ground beneath her feet gave way to marshland, soaking her sneakers and bottom half of her jeans. Mosquitoes and flies buzzed through the air around her, a constant nuisance, but she couldn’t take time or attention to bat them away, for with marshlands came far more immediate dangers, like water moccasins and alligators.

All roads south led to the shoreline. If she could get to the shore, she could find civilization, for there were few pieces of the Gulf Coast shoreline left undeveloped. But apparently the only way to get to the Gulf was to wade through the increasingly swampy wetlands she was slogging through. If she didn’t watch her step—

A soft hiss was all the warning she got.

She hit reverse immediately, barely avoiding disaster as a small mossy-backed alligator rose up from a nearby bog, snapping at her with an explosive crash of massive jaws and deadly sharp teeth.