Seize me From Darkness (Pierced Hearts Book 4) (27 page)

“What? Say it slower,
meisie.
”

“The doctor...he said I had a drug
implant in my arm. Under here.” She touched just below her armpit on the side near me. “It means I can’t get pregnant. Works for ages. Did you know?” Her look was imploring, hurt, uncertain. “Did you know they’d done this to me?”

“No, I didn’t.” I
frowned. It was invasive, but what did it have to do with what I’d just said? “This bothers you?”

“Yes.” Her toes seemed to fascinate her. “Even here, I’m not rid of
there
, of what they did to me. What you did. I need you to go, Pieter.”

I shifted higher. “Hey. I’m your friend.
You know that.”

“I need you to leave.” She sat up then slipped off the bed, wiping at her eyes. “Please.”

Fok
this. “I need your name. Your address. You have to say.”

“No. I don’t. Go.”

“If you don’t tell us. We can’t let you go.”

But she only folded her arms and glared.

Shit.
Stubborn bitch, alright. She was having some sort of emotional upheaval and it seemed I hadn’t a clue how to fix it. Forced hugs wouldn’t work this time.

“Dinner is in an hour. I’ll come get you.”

“Send it up. I can’t face eating with anyone.”

What the hell?
She was going to hide up here, totally? Like we were lepers?

“Please?” Her tone was so wobbly that I switched from wanting to chastise her to wanting to help her in a second flat.

“Okay.”

I closed the door and stood there for several minutes staring at nothing. How was I going to make every
thing right again?

Dinner was strained without her, though that was more my effort than Glass’s.
Within seconds of my return downstairs, after I delivered her meal, he sat down at the table and tucked into his plate of takeaway.

“Tomorrow I’ll know anyway,” he told me, around a
mouthful of fried rice.

“How?” I poked my plate with the fork. Eating should be a high priority after the crap I’d had for a month. “How will you know?”

“My IT guy is running the hard drive through his algorithms, or something. He says it should pop sometime tomorrow. Then we’ll know who the bloody hell she is anyway.”

“Uh-huh.” I took a swig from the
bottle of Aussie beer he’d served, then read the label.
Eumundi lager
? It had a weird Australian tree on it, which actually...looked South African. But it was ice cold and delicious, and I was pretty sure my finger felt better already. Maybe I’d stick to beer for dinner.

“She’s stupid. Thinking we can let her go without knowing who she is.”

“Stupid?” I leaned back at a steep angle onto the chair, crossed my legs. She wasn’t that. “No. She’s just hurting, doesn’t trust us...me.” It was the
me
that pained me. “I sort of understand.”

To
morrow I would know who she was and...
Surprise, surprise.
That knowledge had sent not dread, but a thrill of anticipation into my balls. With my thumb, I smeared the cold droplets on the glass of the bottle. If I knew who she was, maybe I could find a strategy to keep her here?

Weaknesses might yet be found in this woman. In the past, her weaknesses had been engrossing.

“How are you taking it?” He pointed with his fork at my finger. “This and all the rest, it wasn’t standard operating procedure for combat. I know you can handle that, but what I saw up there...crazy shit.” He shook his head and waited.

I chugged down some more beer.

“I don’t know. It has fucked with my head. Given my priorities a shakeup. I’m not seeing everything the same way.”

“Yeah?” He drank from his own
bottle. “If there’s anything I can do? More work? I know you need money? That job for Vetrov led to this? Right?”

“It did. It was exactly what you saw back there. Women being caught and sold...tortured. Only Gregor got out of hand over here. I can’t imagine his boss expected torture like he was do
ing it.”

“The other women were fine according to what I saw. Just traumatized. I’m sure they were raped but not tortured.”

Maybe it was just her and the cop that Gregor got carried away with? Screaming wasn’t exclusive to people being tortured. The women would perhaps have been worth tens or even hundreds of thousands to the right buyer. They had this huge set-up. Implanted them with contraceptives. So for them to make an exception for Jazmine, the Client must have been paying a lot of money. Why?

I jerked forward and sat up. “If you have a job or two, I’d consider it.”

“More than that. You know if you want to commit, I can let you in for regular work that pays very well. I need reliable men for shotgun duty. You can share a house in the compound with Jurgen and his lady? Or even bed down here?”

“Okay.” I nodded. It was
either this or I could try construction work. I had some possibilities there too. It paid less, but it was legal. “Tomorrow, as soon as you find out, tell me who she is.”

“I will. Though the way you said that, you don’t think you know who she is.” Flat statement, but he’d hit the nail on the head.

“No. I don’t.”

“That’s...not comforting.”

“Yeah. So true.”

I drank the last of the beer, rested it back in the circle of condensation on the polished timber table. That gap in my facts was scary and frustrating but finding out the truth, now that was exciting.

Confronting her might make my day.

The strip of plastic I’d found was from a clothing label, from the looks of it. When wriggled into the door latch, it’d let me, eventually, after hours of fucking around with it, open the damn thing.

My one advantage – this house wasn’t made to be a prison, just secure against criminal gangs like the
raskols. From memory, most of the foreigners in Papua New Guinea lived in these secured compounds.

The house was dark. Early still. Too early and the darkness would terrify me. I just knew it woul
d. The crime rate here was high and a foreigner on the streets in the early hours after midnight, especially a woman, would be robbed, assaulted, and raped. As a journalist I’d heard all the stories coming out of Port Moresby.

I needed money, maybe a pho
ne.

In the early dawn, I sneaked downstairs
with a small purse, empty, but it made a good prop, and to my desperate relief, found a wallet in a bowl in the side room near the front door. Being in a secure compound had obviously left Glass certain no one could rob him.

But no phone.
Shit.
I was going to have to take a chance.

What was I going to do?
If this place was alarmed, I was up the creek with no paddle. I opened the front door and tensed, waiting for the blare...nothing. I shut it behind me quietly, and set off down the short road toward the obvious entry, my little tan sandals
clip-clopping
.

A guard stood there in a khaki uniform. Sparrows pecked at and swooped across a stretch of mowed lawn to the side. The sky...was so blue. I smiled and felt buoyed up by this unexpected dose of beauty.

“Excuse me ma’am. Where would you be going?”

Be bold. “I’
m a...lady friend of Glass and I need to get to the nearest corner shop. Is there anywhere open yet?” I smiled and flipped my hair off my shoulder, trying to act like a pretty girlfriend and not an escaped prisoner.

“I think so, yes. Can
I call you a taxi? I have a friend. He’s honest and a good driver.”

Oh god, oh god. Yes!

I broadened my smile. ‘Yes. Please do that.”

“Did you know you didn’t turn off the alarm before you opened the door?”

Fuck. Think!

Did he suspect me? If he did I was screwed. I made myself
not
look past him. That might be a red flag that I was thinking about escaping into the street. If I ran, if the guard didn’t catch me, Glass and Pieter would. Or if not, I’d still be lost in the streets.

“Damn. No I didn’t. Can you fix that? I wanted to surprise him with a proper cooked breakfast and all the man has i
s canned stuff.”

Sweat prickled my forehead and I clutched my purse like it was a lifeline.
Believe me, please.

“
Ahhh
. Lucky man. I can do that yes.”

“Thanks.” I attached another smile to my face.

Five minutes had never taken so long.

When the taxi pulled up,
I slid into it as sedately as the queen on an outing, arranged my dress, and waved to the guard. We drove off. Thirty seconds later, I leaned forward. “Do you know where the Australian embassy is?”

“Y
ou mean the high commission? Yes, I do.”

He spoke English
, and he was right about it not being an embassy. A smart taxi driver.
My luck was turning.

“Take me there, please.”

“Sure. Though I don’t think they open this early. It’s way across the city.”

Fuck.
“It’ll do.”

I could wait.

And so, I left Pieter, my fellow captive, my rock, and maybe the only love of my life, behind me. But you couldn’t really love a killer, could you? It was just a phase. Had to be.

It was Stockholm
syndrome. The realization jarred me. The taxi, the surge of the engine, the bumps as he drove, the smell that said used-by-a-hundred people, it all faded. I was a fool. How had I missed that? Years of journalism under my feet and stories filed about kidnap victims, I knew Stockholm syndrome back to front. I’d missed it.

Why? Because he’d gotten deep under my skin, into me, and
so logic made as much difference as a grain of sand in the ocean.
Pieter.
I’d never forget him.

I
cleared my throat of the sudden thickness then sat up straighter, staring out the window and seeing little through my blurred vision.

My life was moving on. My Pulitzer Prize was waiting.

He was back there. I wondered if he would understand.

The door banged open and I jerked my head off the pillow.

“Get your ass in gear. Your lady friend has escaped.”

I blinked away sleep crud. It was Glass, dressed, grumpy, and as determined as a bloodhound on a trail.

Ma se
poes. Escaped?
“Where the hell is she going?” I flung back sheets and rolled to my feet. That she’d run from me, rather than trusted me, was the cruelest part of this. And damn if I didn’t want her back. The need had never hit me so hard.

How dare she
slip away without talking? I yanked on shorts and a T-shirt.

“Where? The
high commission. Hang onto my mobile phone.” He tossed it to me. “Tell me what the guard sends us. Luckily he thought to double-check her story. He’s down as
Security two
.”