Free Fall (Elite Force #4)(6)
Author: Catherine Mann

A captor with hard muscles and harder eyes walked inside, tossing another unconscious student in a heap in the corner. He paused in front of Stella, one lip lifting in a sneer.

“Once we finish with the last of your friends, you are next.”

Jose’s fist closed around the coin. Bloody hell.

***

She was next.

Next to be tortured.

Next to be killed?

Time was running out for a Hail Mary rescue. That didn’t mean she intended to go down without kicking in some teeth on her way out of this world. Sure, the local government had asked for international help in dealing with the warlords, but that wouldn’t guarantee her presence would be actively acknowledged. Field operatives disappeared sometimes. It was a hazard of the job. Would these stone walls become her funeral crypt, entombing her here with other dead bodies and priceless artifacts?

The door closed, giving her a temporary reprieve to search the room, to prepare herself and hopefully launch more warnings. When she’d identified the nanotechnology surveillance equipment, she’d allowed herself to hope her messages would get through in time. And if not? She’d relayed as much information as possible. Some might not have noticed her blinking and tap codes, but she’d bargained on Jose remembering their conversations. She’d scrambled for every idea possible to leave clues that she needed him brought in to watch the surveillance feed.

Had he seen her?

Regret chewed her gut over the way she’d ended things, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he felt the same. Even if they weren’t meant to be together, she’d hurled horrible words at him and those could be the last she spoke to him. Was there a chance to tell him if he was on the other end of that video feed? Would he recall the good times between them, their exotic dates over to Queen Elizabeth National Park and up into Egypt? Heaven knew she would never forget the sound of his laugh. His easygoing approach to life, the way he cared for the people around him had drawn her to him from the start.

She pressed her hands to her eyes, dizzy from lack of sleep and minimal food. What if she was hallucinating about the whole mini spy drone? Charlotte’s Web up there could be wondering what the hell was going on. And damn, she really was crazy if she focused on anything other than doing everything possible to get out of here. It wasn’t just her life on the line.

She blinked a final Morse code in the direction of “Charlotte.” Details about the guards and discussions she’d overheard, everything possible to protect the rescue team coming in. Would it be enough to help an extraction team before her turn at the inquisition?

She’d taken her fair share of knocks from her three big brothers while playing basketball, football, and pretty much any other sport, because if she didn’t join them, she got left behind. She’d always punched right back. She’d held her own with her fists, fingernails, and whatever else she could lay her hands on. She would do the same here.

Searching for any other possible tools among the stolen artifacts, she continued her rambling litany in hopes good guys were on the other side of that nano spy bug. “If somebody doesn’t send some antibiotics back here we won’t last long enough for you to ransom us off to our country in exchange for whatever the going rate is for students.”

Rambling on for whoever might be listening, she pocketed the preserved jaw of some small animal to use like spiked brass knuckles. The tip of a tusk went in her sock.

Too bad they hadn’t stashed her in the ancient war tools room. Just as she’d expected from the beginning, they were gathering artifacts to sell on the black market to fund their separatist group, headed by a radical warlord. The same group that had recently blown up the American ambassador’s private residence, hell-bent on stirring unrest.

But they were planning something more here, something big. Maybe for when the vice president’s wife came to visit to bring national attention to the plight of women in the region? Stella had made progress with one of the guards by pretending to be a student sympathetic to their cause. But somehow, they’d grown suspicious or been tipped off.

Years ago her mother had tried to help the same people who now held her hostage. Talk about irony. And she was still no closer to figuring out missing details from the day her mother died.

The door opened again. Her stomach plunged. She tucked her ankle behind her other leg, just in case they caught sight of the bulge in her sock. The scariest of her captors—not the sneering bastard, but the man who showed no expression at all, a short lean man who should have appeared harmless but reminded her of a cheetah rather than a lion. Just as fast, strong, and lethal.

Wordlessly, he grabbed her arm in a vise grip and hauled her from the room. Would the surveillance bug follow her? Was she on her own now? How close was help? She had to operate on the assumption she was being watched and that help was on the way.

If she could just stay alive long enough.

“Where are we going?” Down a dank hallway, past the two dead Americans tossed in the corner like sacks of garbage, not even a hint of dignity given to the lifeless hulls that once housed a human soul. She vowed to do everything in her power to make sure their families got their bodies back. “You really don’t have to do this. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

She looked up at the camera in the hall. The enemy’s camera. She’d been left alone so far. The captors had gone for the older ones first, assuming she was a junior agent, low-level status, which meant less intel. They’d gone for the big fish first.

Or maybe they hoped the sounds of torture would soften her up, make her break faster.

She couldn’t weaken. Too many people in the field depended on her silence. Names. Lives.

Guilt weighed her down. She’d been selfish to come to this region of the world with her own agenda. She’d accepted the assignment in hopes of uncovering more about her mother’s death in the region fourteen years ago—distracting enough. Then she’d met Jose and her focus drifted even further.

Her eyes shot back to the dead bodies—an innocent student and a CIA operative. Had a lapse on her part cost them their lives? She’d been so damn sure their cover was rock solid. Even when the separatists had taken the group of students hostage, she’d prayed that was their only agenda. That they didn’t know they’d also landed four undercover operatives as well.

And there was still hope they didn’t know about her. How ironic that she’d come here to retrace her mother’s last days and now she was walking in her footsteps in a more literal way. Her mother’s battered body sent home in a box, the cause of death labeled a car accident. And Stella never had the chance to say good-bye, to apologize for sending her mother off that last time by screaming how much she hated her for leaving them again.