She was ready.
She found Tania waiting for her out in the hallway, Javier and Janet standing beside the door.
“This way.” Tania led her toward the news set. “You’ll be on for ten minutes with one commercial break. Gary will introduce you, bring our viewers up to date, and then head into the questions. Will you need help with your earpiece or mic?”
“No.” Laura hadn’t been out of the game for that long. “I can handle it.”
They entered the studio, which was dark apart from one set—the main news set. It featured a desk with the newspaper’s logo and a backdrop of Denver’s nighttime skyline. A dark-haired woman named Diane introduced herself as the floor director and then left Laura to get settled, while Tania disappeared into the booth.
Laura quickly clipped the mic to her dress and put in her earpiece, hiding the wire beneath her hair and letting it trail down her back. She nodded in the direction of the booth—bright lights made it impossible to see far beyond the edge of the set—then spoke, enunciating clearly so they could set sound levels. “This is Laura Nilsson. I’m here for my interview with Gary Chapin.”
“That’s great,” a man’s voice said in her ear.
Laura glanced over at Javier one last time and saw encouragement in his eyes. He and Janet stood just out of range of the cameras. Beyond them, off the edge of the set, she could just make out the station’s management—Temple, Martin, and others in suits watching her as if she were a celebrity interview. Maybe she was.
She willed herself to smile, her heartbeat racing as she faced the camera. It stared at her, lens dark, the teleprompter screen blank, the tally light off.
Gary’s voice came on in her ear as he closed one segment and the station cut to a commercial break.
“Two minutes,” Diane said.
Laura’s heart was beating so hard now that she could hear it over the chatter in her earpiece, a rapid thrum.
She would
The director’s voice sounded in Laura’s earpiece, counting down the last few seconds. The tally light blinked red. Diane’s hand dropped beneath the camera.
And they were live.
JAVIER FELT HIS chest constrict as Laura spoke easily with her former anchor, who introduced her and welcomed her back to the news program. He knew she’d been nervous about this, but she was handling it like a pro, her smile warm, her eyes bright, her voice clear and strong.
From the moment she’d stepped out of the dressing room, Javier hadn’t been able to take his gaze off her. Her blue dress hugged her sweet curves, its color bringing out her eyes, its neckline giving him a hint of what was hidden beneath. Her long, slender legs were sheathed in sheer panty hose, her feet in dressy heels. She looked sophisticated, polished, good enough to eat.
It was interesting to see how it was all done. Laura sat alone, looking at the camera, but what viewers saw on the television screens at home was a split-screen image with Gary Chapin, who was in Washington, D.C., on the left and Laura on the right, the two seeming to make eye contact when they weren’t even in the same state.
“Laura, your abduction happened in the middle of a live broadcast, terrifying the millions of viewers who witnessed it. Let’s go back to that moment. What we are about to see is quite disturbing, so viewer discretion is advised.”
The side-by-side image of Laura and Chapin was replaced by footage Javier remembered only too well, Laura’s face in a small frame at the top right of the screen where viewers could see her reaction.
“In the past five years,” said the Laura from the video footage, “Sabira Mukhari’s organization had documented more than seventy-five hundred cases of women being burned in ‘stove accidents’ within a two- hundred-mile radius around Islamabad and—”
A nearby door burst open, the room exploding with AK fire.
Laura screamed, dropped to the floor.
Men’s shouts in English and Arabic.
“Cover her! Cover her!”
A man in a black T-shirt threw himself over Laura, M16 rifle fire answering the AKs—only to stop short as her security detail was slaughtered.
A man cried out, groaned, blood spraying across the camera lens.
Women’s screams came from the background, gunshots drowning out Laura’s shouts for the women to flee.
Two men in olive-green jackets with scarves around their heads blocked the camera’s view. They lifted Laura off the floor, dragged her toward the door.
She kicked, fought, screamed, her desperate cries sending chills down Javier’s spine. “No! No!”
This wasn’t supposed to be part of the broadcast. Javier had seen the questions, had heard Laura talk through them with Chapin on the phone. He had agreed that he wouldn’t ask her about her abduction or the shit she’d survived in Afghanistan.
Chapin had ambushed her.
Javier’s gaze shifted to the real, live Laura. She was pale, her pupils dilated, her face frozen into an expressionless mask. One of her hands rested lightly on the desk, but from where he was standing, he could see that the other was clenched tight in her lap.
Chapin’s image returned to the screen. “This is the first time you’ve seen that footage, isn’t it?”
Somehow she managed to answer. “Yes.”
“Can you tell us what was running through your mind three and a half years ago when that door burst open and your attackers opened fire?”
“I was just trying to comprehend what was happening. It was over so quickly.”
Beside Javier, Martin whispered. “Oh, this is great stuff. Great stuff.”
It took every bit of willpower Javier possessed not to turn and slam his fist into Martin’s face. He didn’t give a damn about Chapin’s ratings, the station’s ratings, or the sweeps. If Laura gave him any sign she wanted to leave, he would take her by the hand, and they would go, live broadcast be damned.
“When they dragged you from the room, you must have been terrified.” The false sympathy in Chapin’s voice sickened Javier.
If the bastard truly cared about her, he wouldn’t be putting her through this.
“Of course.”
“What did you think they would do to you?”
Laura’s voice held no emotion when she answered. “I assumed I would be killed or held hostage for ransom, as other journalists had been.”
“But that’s not what happened, is it?”
“No.”
“Can you tell our viewers what
Laura’s voice was calm, steady. “As your viewers already know, I was held captive for eighteen months, beaten, sexually assaulted, and threatened almost daily with beheading. I was eventually rescued by a team of Navy SEALs.”
Chapin seemed to wait, hoping she’d say more. When she didn’t, he looked gravely at the camera. “Beaten.
