Contents
Cover
Title Page
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Epilogue
Announcement
Prologue
About the Author
By Lynsay Sands
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
Pain dragged Jack back to consciousness, bone deep agony all over his body that made him grimace before he even opened hiseyes. Unfortunately, grimacing just added to his suffering, so he flattened out his features again to avoid it and openedhis eyes instead. That caused a new flare-up of pain, but he ignored it and peered out of sore swollen eyes at the dark openspace he was in.
Glow-in-the-dark paint covered the walls in some imaginative graffiti. But he knew there was more that wasn’t glow-in-the-dark.He’d seen it the last time he was conscious thanks to the light his captors had brought with them. He’d also seen the brokentile floor his chair sat on.
He was in an old abandoned building somewhere. Jack had decided that the last time he’d been awake. He had no idea where, though. He’d been unconscious when they brought him here, a result of a sucker punch he’d taken while distracted by Lacy having a gun to her head.
That thought was quickly followed by the sound of a whimper from across the room and Jack shifted his head until he couldsee Lacy. She lay curled up on the floor against the wall. The position and her whimpering cries had worried him the firsttime he’d regained consciousness. He’d feared their kidnappers had hurt her while he was unconscious. But it had turned outthat wasn’t the case. She was just frightened. Jack understood, this hadn’t exactly turned out to be a dream date, but hecould have done without her sobbing, weeping, and wailing as the men had beaten him. That had made him want to slap her. Hewas the one who’d gotten his ass kicked, but she’d carried on like it was her being beaten within an inch of her life.
Sighing, he closed his eyes briefly, thinking that his partner, Deedee, would have been untying him and fighting at his sideto get them out of there, but not Lacy. She wasn’t tied up, and hadn’t been hurt, but wouldn’t move from the spot they’d placedher in when they got here no matter what Jack had said to try to convince her when he’d first woken up to find them alonethere. She was too scared to listen to him, too scared to save herself, let alone both of them.
It made him wish he’d kept fighting rather than stopping when the gun had been put to her head and he’d been told to stop or her brains would be blown out. At the time, Jack had thought, or hoped, he might find a way to get them both safely away later if he gave in then. A preference to seeing her killed. Now he knew that wasn’t likely, and wondered if he shouldn’t have risked her being shot and kept fighting. At least, one of them would have survived then, and really, if she wasn’t even going to try, did she deserve to survive this?
Guilt drenched Jack’s mind at these thoughts. Lacy was a teacher, not an FBI agent like himself. She had no training, or evenany experience in dealing with high stress, dangerous situations. Unfortunately, she also apparently had no survival instinctat all.
Used to ball-busting female agents who could handle most any situation thrown at them, Jack had found her helplessness appealingwhen they met. She’d seemed delicate and ever so much a lady to him, like a fragile flower. He’d found that ridiculously attractive . . .until tonight. Christ, even roses had thorns, he thought as Lacy released another shuddering whimper.
Mouth tightening despite the pain it caused, Jack shifted his attention to the rest of the room, looking for something tohelp them out of this. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, but it didn’t help. Unfortunately, their captors hadn’t thoughtfullyleft a weapon lying about, or anything that might be used to remove his ropes. It was just a large, empty room, the only furniturethe chair he was tied to, and the only light came from the streetlights outside. Not much of it was making its way throughthe filthy windows. They were probably in an old abandoned government building, or one of the empty structures at or nearthe university, he thought and then let the thought drift away as unimportant. It didn’t matter where they were if he couldn’tget loose and get them out of there.
Jack’s gaze slid back to Lacy as she whimpered again, and he was about to try one more time to convince her to at least flee for help and save herself if not him, when the sound of rusty hinges announced a door opening and the return of their captors.
“Awake, I see.”
Jack considered closing his eyes and pretending he’d passed out again, but doubted it would work. So, instead, he raised hischin and glared defiantly at the speaker. Grizzly Adams, as he’d come to call him because he was huge with a lot of facialhair, was leading four men toward him while four more were spreading out around the room to keep an eye out the windows.
Just to be sure they weren’t caught by surprise by someone hearing his screams of pain and approaching the building, Jacksupposed.
“Your boss still not here?” he asked with more bravado than curiosity. Although, the attempt at bravado made a poor showingwith his words coming out slurred and somewhat garbled by his swollen mouth and possibly broken jaw.
“Nope. He’s been delayed,” Grizzly Adams said with a grin. “Good news, right? Means we get to play a little longer.”
Since getting to play meant Grizzly Adams could continue to pummel his face and chest with his big meaty fists while Jack sat there helplessly taking the blows and trying not to scream as he waited to pass out from the pain, he didn’t really see that as a good thing. He’d almost prefer for “the boss,” whoever that was, to show up and kill him or whatever the endgame was. It seemed obvious he wasn’t going to escape. Might
