on for weeks, months…or longer. “Find someone else. Someone who can see the job through. Please.” He didn’t care that he was begging. He couldn’t afford to.
“I’m asking you. I trust you.”
Jared slumped against the desk and clenched his fingers beneath the edge, dimly aware of the air ripping through his lungs as he worked to keep the tremors from racking his body. Of his heart hammering against the wall of his chest. Of the ice-cold void closing in as his remaining dignity died.
“I’m sorry, son. I know Janice shouldn’t have called me, but she did. Even then, I’d hoped—”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
Terse silence locked in once again. But this time, it was his. And this time, he was the one who finally broke it.
“All right. I’ll do it.”
Chapter 1
The world had gone dark again.
Silent.
No…it was her. She remembered now. Her eyes, they were closed. She tried opening them, but her lids refused to cooperate. She was still so very tired. She forced herself to fight the exhaustion deep within her bones and gather the dregs of her strength. It seemed to take forever, but she finally managed to pry her eyes open, to focus. The world wasn’t dark. It was light.
White.
And it wasn’t silent.
She could make out the constant hum and occasional clicks of machinery. The high-pitched, steady whine of electronics. A door opening and then closing somewhere in the distance. Voices. Muted and conversing in a clipped, guttural language she didn’t recognize, but voices nonetheless.
Thank you, God.
She searched the white and finally realized she was staring at portable, floor-to-ceiling curtains. That’s right. She remembered those, too. If she turned her head to the left, she’d be able to see the rest of the hospital room. Unfortunately moving her head took so much effort. So much energy. Energy she couldn’t seem to muster.
Do it.
Somehow she did—and gasped softly. The man was still there, handcuffed to the safety rails on the bed beside hers. He’d been beaten. Viciously. He was unconscious to boot. Or was he sleeping? She hoped so. She opened her mouth to call to him, to find out, but nothing came out. She tried again. This time, she managed a hoarse rasp. Evidently she still couldn’t speak. But at least someone had removed the oxygen and feeding tubes from her throat. She wet her lips, wincing as the saliva caused her flesh to sting. Her lips were as dry and raw as her throat. Cracked. Desperate to make contact with the man before she lost consciousness again, she tried whispering.
An explosion greeted her. Then another…and another.
In a hospital?
Sweet mercy, what was going on? Just where was she? And how long had she been here?
More importantly, why couldn’t she remember?
She traced the intravenous line from the distended vein on the back of her left hand to the bag of clear fluid hanging upside down beside her bed. Disappointment swamped her as she realized she couldn’t understand the handwriting on the label.
Another explosion rocked the room. The blast was so intense the resulting vibrations caused the steel frames of the curtained walls to separate and roll several inches apart. She forced her stare to the foot of her bed, horrified as the musty odor of bargain basement sanitation sealed her suspicions. The tangled roll of expended, bloody hospital gauze. The pile of soiled bed linens. Half a dozen bags of IV fluid, all empty. The nest of discarded needles and syringes.
This was not your typical hospital.
She shifted her right arm. Two inches later, it jerked to a stop. Bemused, she stared at the gleaming cuffs locking her own wrist to the rails on her bed. The heck with sanitation—this was not your typical hospital restraint. She flinched as another, louder, explosion reverberated through the walls of the room, hammering through her skull. The curtains parted another foot, affording her a partial view of a scarred slab of wood.
A door.
Where did it lead?
Before she could ponder the possibilities, much less gather the strength to find out, she heard the voices again, jangling keys scraping against the lock.
The other patient.
She swung her head to the left as another explosion rocked the room. The man’s eyes were still closed, but he shifted, moaning softly as he twisted his battered body toward the side of the bed. Toward her. Her lips stung as she opened her mouth—but the door flew open, as well. She slammed her eyes shut instinctively. Dizziness swirled in along with the dark. She eased her lids up. Just a crack. It was enough. She watched as two men she didn’t recognize shoved the hospital curtains aside. Two more men followed them through. All four wore camouflage fatigues.
Soldiers?
Perhaps. But not American.
Americans wouldn’t be brandishing Romanian Kalashnikovs rifles. One of the thugs shouted something to his buddies as he raised the barrel of his AK-47. The thug then sighted the automatic rifle in on the battered head of the man in the opposite bed and shouted again. She had no idea what he’d said, but the dialect wasn’t Romanian. The largest of the two thugs dragged the woozy man from his mattress, wrenching his arm behind his back as the smallest thug unlocked the steel cuffs. The man groaned in protest as his shoulder popped. He received a fresh bash to his skull in return. His glasses flew off, landing at the thugs’ boots with a slap. A distinctive crunch followed.
Crude laughter filled the room.
Another thug shouted above the din as they dragged the now moaning man from the room. Yet another responded. As before, she had no idea what the men had said, but a split second before the door slammed shut and silence reigned within, she caught several mangled syllables she did recognize.
A name.
Alexander Morrow.
She stiffened, the implications of that memory alone giving her the strength to bring her free hand to her face. Dizziness and shock gave way to searing confusion as her fingers collided with the thick swaths binding her head.
That pile of expended, bloody gauze was hers?
Was that why she couldn’t remember where she was, much less how she’d gotten here?
She searched the contours of her face, hoping for clues. Desperate for answers. But all she gained was another question. And this question burned more deeply than all the others combined. If the man those camouflaged thugs had just dragged from the room was Alexander Morrow—
Who the hell was she?
“Four minutes to the drop zone!”
Jared adjusted his oxygen mask and flashed a thumbs-up toward the plane’s crew chief. He double-checked his parachute and gear one last time before latching on to the succession of safety straps dangling from the overhead as he worked his way down the belly
