The Marcelli Bride

It was hard to hear anything with the roar of the fire in the background, but he listened intently. A groan caught his attention.

He raced toward the sound only to find Mia on all fours. She’d just finished vomiting.

“My head,” she said weakly. “That bastard hit me on the head.”

“Who?” Joe asked, although he already knew.

“Ian. What the hell is wrong with him?” she demanded.

Joe felt her pulse, then touched the bump on her head. He stood and called for Lauren. “Mia’s been hurt,” he told her. “Get her to the cart.”

“Where’s Darcy?” Lauren asked frantically. “Where’s my sister?”

Joe didn’t know and thinking about the possibilities made his blood run cold. Who else had been part of the team? “Alex,” he yelled. “Alex!”

Paige joined him. “Where are they? Where are Alex and Darcy?”

Rather than answer, Joe hurried to the edge of the vineyard. There he saw the broken vines, ripped leaves. A struggle. He reached down and picked up Darcy’s security bracelet. Paige was behind him and to his left. She screamed.

“Alex’s been shot. He’s been shot.”

21

O nce again Darcy found herself tied up in the back of a van. There was just enough predawn light coming through the back window for her to see the filthy floor, complete with a hole about eight inches across.

What was it with kidnappers that they couldn’t afford decent vehicles? she wondered, trying to be disgusted and angry instead of terrified. And if they had to buy some beat-up piece of crap, couldn’t they at least keep it clean?

The van took a corner at high speed. Darcy went sliding, along with candy wrappers, sheets of paper, and who knows what else. She didn’t want to think about things like rats and bugs, nor did she want to remember the easy way Ian had shot someone.

Not Joe, she prayed. Not anyone, but especially not Joe.

Ian! A kidnapper! It wasn’t possible. How had he ever shut up enough to plan anything? Oh God. Joe. Be alive.

She didn’t want to consider any other possibility, so she forced herself to think about something else. Like how she was gagging on the handkerchief. She pushed her tongue against the cloth and worked her mouth until she was able to spit it out. The cloth hit the floor, rolled, and fell out the hole in the bottom of the van.

As she watched it go, she wished she were small enough to simply fall out the bottom of the van. Any bumps and bruises from hitting the road would be better than what Ian had in mind for her.

Oh God. Fear exploded inside of her. She turned and twisted on the dirty floor as she tried to free herself. She screamed and screamed but knew no one could hear her. It was five or six in the morning on a narrow road in the middle of nowhere. Who was going to be around to listen?

Worse, did anyone even know she was gone? With the fire and everyone busy with that, it could be hours before they noticed she was missing.

Tears burned her eyes but she refused to give in to them. Be strong, she told herself. Tough. She’d already survived one kidnapping. Of course those kidnappers hadn’t wanted her, they’d wanted Lauren and—

Darcy sat up. Lauren had been right there at the winery. Ian could have taken her just as easily, but he hadn’t.

“This is not how I wanted to be the special daughter,” she screamed, kicking at the side of the van. “I was thinking more of an award or something.”

A few candy wrappers fluttered out the hole. Great. Now she was littering.

“Wait a minute.”

She stared at the hole, then at all the garbage in the back of the van. Could she use it to signal where they were going, or at least where they’d been?

She scooted so her back was against one of the walls of the van, and kicked a candy wrapper toward the hole. After counting to sixty, she pushed it out. Another minute later, she pushed out a rag.

Would anyone realize it wasn’t just trash? she wondered. Would the trash get blown away? She needed something bigger. Something more significant.

She looked around at the back of the van. Nothing came to mind until she looked at her feet. Her shoes.

While she didn’t like the thought of being barefoot, she liked the thought of being dead even less. She toed off one of her shoes and nudged it toward the opening. It slipped through and fell to the road. She would continue with the trash, then put out the other shoe in another ten minutes or so.

If only she knew how long they would be driving, she thought. Should she wait longer than ten minutes? What would happen when they got wherever they were going?

“Don’t think about it,” she told herself. “Don’t think about it.”

But there was little else to occupy her mind. Fearing and wondering if Joe were alive. After dumping out more trash, she debated removing her other shoe. Before she could decide, the van came to a stop. The fear returned and with it a certain sense of dread.

“Towels,” Joe yelled. “Thick towels.”

“They’re not sterile,” Tessa told him as she and Grammy M hurried around the kitchen.

“It’s fine. We need pressure.” He took the towel Tessa handed him and held it over the wound in Alex’s side.

The Secret Service agent looked up at him. “I didn’t see it coming. Should have.”

His color was nonexistent, his breathing labored. From what Joe could tell, the bullet had gone in and out cleanly. But what it had done while passing through remained to be seen.

He looked around at the frantic faces in the kitchen. Paige was on the phone, detailing what had happened. He felt a burning need to hunt down Ian and kill him. But until Paige was done, he was the only one in the house with the training to keep Alex alive.

“What should we do?” Colleen asked, her expression both worried and grim. “I can’t believe Ian took Darcy. Should we start searching the buildings?”

“No point. They’re gone. I saw tracks heading west.”

“Toward the interstate,” Marco said. “They could be anywhere.”

Goddamn son of a bitch, when he got his hands on Ian, he was going to rip him apart and watch him bleed to death.

Mia crouched in a chair. She was still woozy from being hit on the head and needed to be checked out. There was too much to do, he thought grimly.

Paige hung up the phone. “Okay, the team’s coming. Local, state, and federal law enforcement have been notified. Road blocks will be up within the half hour. We’ll have full tactical support in less time. The president has been notified.”

Joe didn’t want to think about that phone call or what the other man must be feeling. Joe had enough trouble battling his own worry, and he was a trained professional.

“I should have known,” he muttered.

Paige hurried to the kitchen table where she stared down at Alex. “We all should have known.”

“He checked out clean,” Alex said, his voice heavy with pain.

“Too clean,” Joe said. “I never liked him.”

Someone began to cry. He turned and saw Lauren. Grammy M and Colleen hurried to her. Lauren looked at him.

“She’ll be all right, won’t she? You’ll get Darcy back.”

He didn’t have an answer to that, but he nodded. “Of course we will.” He turned to Paige. “Get her team back here.”

The extra Secret Service agents had been at the hotel in town, the same one Captain Phillips had retired to the previous evening.

“I’ve already called them. The rest of Darcy’s team will be assigned to Lauren until we can get her out of here.”

“No,” Lauren said. “I’m not leaving. I want to know what’s going on.”

Paige shook her head. “You’ll be safer somewhere else.”

“No. You can protect me here. I want to know what’s happening.”

“We’ll all be here to protect her,” Marco said. “Anyone trying to kidnap Lauren will have to come through us.”

Joe appreciated the sentiment, but it wasn’t going to be much help against trained experts.

He replaced the blood-soaked towel with a fresh one. “We don’t have time to argue,” he told Paige. “She’s staying until the team arrives. Then let them deal with her.”

“I’m not leaving,” Lauren said stubbornly.

Joe glanced at her. It was the first time she’d reminded him of Darcy.

Darcy. Fear crashed in on him. He’d never felt anything like it before. Sure, he’d worried about his team, but he’d never felt this icy, crushing sensation in his chest. If something happened to her…

Brenna limped into the kitchen. She cradled her belly with one hand and leaned against Nic. “So, ah, how is Alex getting to the hospital?”

“Helicopter,” Paige said, pressing on the bleeding wound from the underside.

“Is it big enough for two?”

Joe turned to look at her. Really looked. It was only then he noticed the dark stain down the front of her maternity dress.

“My water broke,” she said. “I guess I’m in labor.”

In the second between when the van stopped and Ian opened one of the doors, Darcy heard an odd sound. It was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Something rhythmic and swooshy. Then the door swung open and she saw they were parked on the beach. The thick fog added a sense of the macabre to the otherwise perfect view.

Why here? Why not some airport or a freeway?

“Come on, Darcy,” Ian said. “Let’s get going.”

Her instinct was to fight them. There were only two of them. Then Ian pulled out his gun and smiled.

“I’d prefer you didn’t make trouble, but if you do, I’ll shoot you. Not to kill, you understand. Just enough to slow you down. I’ve never been shot, but I’d think it really hurts. Especially if I mess up and it goes through bone. So you don’t want to be a problem, right?”

She looked at him and nodded slowly.

“Then get out of the van.”

She did as he said, sliding forward on her butt until she reached the open door. The other man, tall, with dark hair and cold eyes, grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet.

Darcy looked between them as a horrifying thought occurred to her. She could see their faces. Which meant she could easily identify them. Which led to the logical conclusion that they didn’t plan for that ever to happen. They weren’t going to let her go.

She wasn’t ready to die, she thought frantically. Not now. Not like this. Joe was…

Joe might be dead. No, she couldn’t think like that. He was strong; she would be strong, too.

Instinctively, she twisted away from the man. She managed to get free, but with her feet tied, she couldn’t run. She teetered, then fell to the sand. Seconds later, something hard slammed into her ribs as Ian kicked her. She screamed.

“That was a warning,” Ian said coldly. “Next time I will shoot you.”

She couldn’t catch her breath. The pain was incredible. It was like fire along her rib cage. Had he broken something?

Ian stood over her. “Here’s the thing, Darcy. You’re our prisoner, and there’s nothing you can do about it. If you cooperate, I promise to make your time with us as pleasant as possible. If you don’t, I’ll hurt you. Those are simple rules, right? You can understand them.”

She nodded slowly. “What do you want?”

“To use you as a bargaining chip.”

Not good, she thought as she sucked in air. Not good at all. “The president doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that. I’m guessing I can change his mind. See, it’s a great policy right up until someone you love is kidnapped. We’ll start with polite requests, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll send you back to him in pieces. I know that sounds scary and I’m sorry about that. We’ll give you something for the pain, but it’s probably still going to hurt. We can’t help that. The point is when we send your finger or your ear or your hand to the press, your dad is going to be a whole lot more willing to give us what we want.”