snuck a peek over her shoulder, as if seeing him on the phone would help her understand his conversation.
“You’ll make the arrangements, then?” What arrangements? she wondered. She watched his nostrils flare with an impatient breath. Sensing his growing distraction, Whitney quickly finished dressing. “Fine. No. I’ll call you.” With the next pause, she sized up the shortest route into the trees. “We have an agreement, you and I.” Chilton’s voice rose with tightly controlled anger. “Don’t cross me in this.”
The instant he turned his face into the phone to make his point, Whitney took off running. She dashed through the bushes and clambered up and over a pile of rock before she heard the rapid fire of bullets behind her. She dropped to her haunches and scooted off the other side. Either he was a lousy shot, or he hadn’t been aiming directly at her. She doubted the first was true.
“Stop her!”
Chilton’s command made no sense. But she’d hit the low brush now. She hurdled a shrub and lengthened her stride, closing in on the treeline. More shots jarred her eardrums. The bullets slapped the earth beside her feet. Whitney stumbled, touched her fingers to the dirt and righted herself.
She pulled up short as another man, taller and thinner than Chilton, emerged from the woods, holding the same type of boxy gun, pointed directly at her.
Whitney heard her own startled breath rasp in her lungs. She shifted direction, splitting the distance between the two men, and ran the way she had in high-school track. She pulled away from her pursuers, hearing the static of bullets, coming close but never hitting her, like shouts from the crowd, urging her on.
She could see the big trees now, rushing closer. She put her hands up in front of her face and shoved her way through a stand of baby pines.
And smacked into the unyielding chest of a third man. Short and stocky. Dressed in black and armed like the others.
Feeling the burn of muscle in her thighs now, she backed up into the pine branches, spun, and returned the way she’d come. Five strides. Ten.
Another man in black rounded a granite boulder and blocked her path.
Four men!
Her abductor was not alone in his abandoned hideout.
Tears of shock and unwilling surrender mixed with her panting gasps, making deep breathing impossible. She turned. The stocky man walked through the pines. She jerked another ninety degrees. The tall man. One more turn and she faced Dimitri Chilton.
The circle closed in on her. Whitney’s gaze darted from one man to the next. Helpless as a rabbit trapped in a snare, she could only wait for her inevitable demise.
With a wall of men surrounding her, Chilton snatched her under the jaw, lifting her up onto her toes. His hard fingers dug into her cheekbone on one side, while his thumb left its bruising imprint in the other side.
“I grow tired of your defiance.” The refined breeding she’d noticed in his voice earlier was eclipsed by the thick accent of his native tongue. “I am not always a patient man.”
He threw her to the ground. The wrench on her jaw and the impact of dry, hard dirt left her ears ringing.
“Tape her and gag her.”
Whitney gathered her senses long enough to realize what was happening to her. She was aware of every hard touch and unkind word. One man bound her wrists, another taped her at the ankles. The third shoved a handkerchief into her mouth, thrusting her tongue back and pinching her lips against her teeth. He rolled her face into the dirt and tied the handkerchief behind her head, catching a few strands of hair in the knot and plucking them from her scalp.
“Wait.” Chilton punched in a number on his cell phone and knelt beside her. He ripped the gag from her sore mouth and pressed the phone to her ear. “Say hello to your father.”
Fearing some kind of trick, but brutally aware of the four guns trained on her, she obeyed his command with a dutiful whisper. “Daddy?”
“Whitney? Is that you?”
Hope surged through her at the sound of her father’s voice. “Daddy!”
But hope was snatched from her as quickly as it was given. Chilton shot to his feet.
“Mr. MacNair. It’s so nice to finally meet an American powerbroker like yourself. I think I have a deal you will be interested in…”
With a succinct hand signal, Chilton walked away, carrying all thoughts of rescue with him. Before Whitney could make a plea, the gag was shoved back into her mouth.
Without the blessing of unconsciousness, she endured the gut-wrenching dizziness of being tossed over the stocky man’s shoulder and carried back to the cabin. Inside, he dropped her with an unceremonious plop onto a dusty mattress in the corner.
Moments later, Chilton filled the doorway, an ominous shadow blocking out the sunlight. He snapped shut his cell phone and smiled at her in a way that made her skin crawl. “Your father sends his best.”
Then he looked to his men. “Return to your post.” Chilton gave the word and they disappeared into the vast and varied camouflage of Beartooth Mountain.
More fearful than ever, too confused to do otherwise, Whitney didn’t move away when Chilton knelt on the floor beside her and spoke. She decided she preferred his anger over this deceitful guise of civility.
“Now, if you are very good, and do not defy me again, I will give you water at sundown and take you outside to relieve yourself.” She closed her eyes against the hateful caress of that soft glove on her cheek. “But, if you make a noise, if you move without permission…I will kill you.”
Whitney nodded her understanding. When he slammed the cabin door behind him, she turned onto her side and buried her nose in the moldy ticking. She curled up into a fetal position, and let her own silent tears keep her company.
Chapter Two
Though she hadn’t expected it, Chilton kept his word. As the sun faded and darkness claimed the cabin, he came to Whitney and helped her sit up. He loosened the gag and let it hang around her shoulders like a necklace. While she worked her jaw to restore feeling to the muscles in her mouth, he opened a canteen.
He held it up to her lips and let her drink her fill. A slop of excess water dribbled down her chin and pooled on the front of her sweater. But Whitney was too smart to mind. She’d had an entire day to do nothing but think. Chilton had to ransom her sometime. He had to trade her for his freedom or revenge or whatever purpose this kidnapping served. But she intended to keep her strength up. She intended to be ready and able to run again, in case he changed his mind about letting her live.
“Rashid will take you outside.” The short, stocky man she’d seen before materialized like a shadow in the creeping darkness. Chilton freed her feet, but left her wrists bound together. Before she left, he whispered one last warning. “Do not provoke him.”
Though she could speak, she chose a submissive nod to answer him. Rashid and his gun escorted her to the far side of a pile of ancient rocks. She made no effort to ask for privacy. She allowed him to undo her belt buckle and zipper, then turned her back to him and dropped her pants.
She
