The Marcelli Bride

21

Once 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.”

She was going to pass out. The good news was, she wouldn’t have to listen to Ian anymore. He was speaking so calmly, she thought, unable to believe any of this was really happening. How could Ian be doing this? Ian, who had stayed at the Marcelli house. Ian, who had dated Mia and driven them all crazy with his talking.

“They’ll find you,” she said.

“I don’t think so. They won’t know where we are, and I’ve found a spot they’ll never even look.”

He nodded at the other man, who then pulled her to her feet, bent down, and shoved his shoulder into her midsection. When he stood, the pain of her bruised side nearly made her pass out. She thought she was going to throw up.

They started walking toward a small boat pulled up on the sand. She didn’t like boats, especially small ones. She didn’t like being kidnapped, either, she thought grimly.

“We’re going to a cave,” Ian said. “I found it years ago, when I went fishing around here with my grandfather. I used to think it was a really cool hideout, but I never thought I’d use it for a headquarters.”

She slipped free of the man’s shoulder and felt herself falling and falling. When she hit the boat, the impact was hard. Her head cracked against a wooden seat.

“Watch it, Jesse. We don’t want to kill her.”

Not yet, she thought as the world started to fold in at the corners and then fade to black. Not yet.

Joe stared at the maps spread out on the counter of the kitchen. Where would they take Darcy? They had an hour’s head start, which gave them a lot of leeway. Still roadblocks were already up, and the heavy fog meant all regional airports were closed.

Would they try to get distance between themselves and the winery or were they holing up close by? What would he do?

Joe touched the largest map, but he couldn’t think, couldn’t figure out the plan. Ian had done this. He’d been the enemy all along, and no one had noticed.

Had he planned this from the beginning? Joe didn’t think that was possible. No one had known Darcy was coming here more than forty-eight hours before it had happened. Which meant Ian had taken advantage of a lucky break.

Who was he? The name had to be false, along with the identity. He’d been completely clean. No one that clean pulled off something like this.

“The bleeding’s slowed,” Paige said, sounding relieved. “Hold on, Alex. The helicopter will be here soon. You, too, Brenna.”

Brenna waved from her sprawled position on a kitchen chair. “Don’t worry about me. I’m sure I’ll be in labor for hours. I appreciate the ride, though. Right now the thought of a thirty-minute car trip is very disheartening.”

Nic crouched next to her and held her hand. “Just breathe, okay.”

She smiled at him. “I can breathe and scream. I’m good at both of those. It’s the whole birthing process I’m worried about. And the fact that I swear I can feel more than two feet pressing against me.”

Joe blocked out the conversation and concentrated on the maps. But before he could figure anything out, Mia walked over and touched his arm.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He took a second to give her a hug. “It’s not your fault.”

“Yes, it is. I’m the one who brought him here. I can’t believe I didn’t know who he really was. I traveled with him, I slept with him. I should have guessed.”

“You can only see what you see. You can’t read minds.”

She shook her head. “I should have known. Somehow.”

Joe led her into the dining room. “Did he ever say anything about his family? About friends? Do you have any names?”

Mia stared at him. “No. He talked about his grandfather all the time. The one who took him fishing. But not his parents. He was more interested in mine. I just…” She stifled a sob. “He was so excited about meeting Darcy. I thought he was starstruck. Then, later, he asked me all kinds of questions. I figured he had a crush on her or something. But it wasn’t that. Now Alex is shot, and they have Darcy, and it’s all my fault.”

She began to cry. Joe pulled her close and kept his mouth shut. A part of him did want to blame Mia, but he was as guilty as she.

Darcy regained consciousness when she was carried from the small boat and put onto a canvas chair in the middle of a cave. Her hands and feet were still tied and her ribs ached, along with her head. If this kept up much longer, she was going to be one big bruise.

She waited until Ian and someone she hadn’t seen before walked away, then she raised her head and looked around. The cave was larger than it looked from the outside, for which she was grateful. She’d grown to dislike small, dark spaces.

The boat had been tied up next to one just like it on the side of the cave, not that far from where she sat. On the other side were a couple of tables covered with electronic equipment. Bottled water and canned foods filled a pallet by the rock wall.

She could hear men talking, which made her nervous. She didn’t want to know who they were. She wanted to be set free and not be able to identify them later so they wouldn’t have to kill her.

The cave itself seemed to bend around, perhaps creating a second room. She wasn’t sure, as she couldn’t see it, but that’s where the voices came from. Maybe the rest of them would stay there, she thought.

Ian reappeared. He walked toward her and held out a length of chain with bands at each end. “For your ankles,” he said cheerfully. “So you can’t get away. Oh, in case you’re wondering, these are heavy. If you head for the water, you’ll sink right to the bottom. No swimming for freedom, Darcy.”

He was so calm, she thought. Calm to the point of pleasant, which just wasn’t right.

When he bent at her feet, she thought about kicking him but decided it wasn’t the time for an escape. Not when she was tied up and didn’t know how many other men were around. He secured the chains around her ankles, then unfastened the ropes. Finally he used a smaller chain to attach her left arm to the chair itself, leaving her right arm and hand free.

“Thirsty?” he asked, motioning to the bottles.

She nodded.

He brought her water and opened it, then crossed to the table of communication equipment. “I’m going to call your dad,” he said as he put on a headset. “I don’t mind you screaming, but you can’t tell them where we are. And as I don’t trust you…”

He motioned with his hands. Jesse appeared with a gag. Darcy tried pulling away, but she was weighed down by the chains and the chair. Jesse quickly secured the gag, effectively silencing her.

Ian hit a button on a console. Instantly the sound of a dial tone filled the cave. He punched in a phone number, then waited until a woman said, “This is the White House operator. How may I direct your call?”

“I need to speak to the man in charge,” Ian told her. “President Jensen. I’m the guy who has his daughter. She’s right here. I’d let you talk to her, but she’s all tied up.”

He laughed at his own joke.

“One minute, sir.”

There was a moment of silence, then a man picked up. “This is Special Agent in Charge Allister. Who is this?”

“I’m Ian Welton, Allister, but you already knew that. I’m sure the folks back at the ranch, or winery in this case, have already told you all about me. And you’re not who I want to speak with. I called for the president.”

“He’s not here right now.”

Ian glanced at Darcy and raised his eyebrows. “Daddy’s not home. Where do you think he is?”

Darcy didn’t have a clue.

“I’m sure you can patch me through to him,” Ian said, returning his attention to the call. “Which I want you to do. I have a list of demands. And before you tell me you don’t negotiate with terrorists, I’ll remind you I have his daughter here. He only has the two, so I think he’d miss this one if we had to return her in pieces.”

Stay calm, Darcy told herself. Stay calm. People were looking for her and they would find her. She would be okay. She had to be. For Joe. Because if he’d been shot, he would need her. And if he hadn’t, then he would come find her.

“Threats don’t help your cause,” Allister said. “What do you want?”

“Right now I’d like a really good burger, but instead I’ll take the release of Jonathan Misner from prison. He is to be picked up by helicopter and taken to the county airport. There you will have a plane waiting, along with two million dollars in cash.”

Misner, Misner. The name was familiar, but she couldn’t place it at first.

“The domestic terrorist?” Allister asked.

Then she remembered. Jonathan Misner was responsible for the bombing of a large suburban Chicago mall nearly three years ago. Dozens of people had been killed and hundreds injured. He and his men had been opposed to money being sent abroad for foreign aid. They’d wanted the funds to stay home, along with jobs and technology. Their demands had been for the United States to isolate itself from the rest of the world.

Misner had been captured nearly a year after the bombing. It had been one of those quirks of fate-a routine traffic stop had brought him to the attention of a small-town deputy. Later, the deputy had followed him to a local motel and called in federal authorities. Several of Misner’s men had gotten away, but the leader had been captured. He had been arrested and convicted, and was on death row in federal prison.

“We see him as a revolutionary,” Ian said calmly. “Imagine what the king of England thought of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Not an original argument, I’ll grant you, but accurate. You have twelve hours. If I don’t see Misner staring on CNN as he’s led out of prison, I’ll have to hurt Darcy.”

Ian glanced at her and gave her an apologetic smile. “Funny thing is, I really don’t want to do it. I like her a lot. But the cause is bigger, and I want Misner out of prison. If he’s not released by”-Ian glanced at his watch-“seven-forty-three P.M. Pacific Time, I’ll have to make my point. We’ll start small. Her little finger from her left hand. She’ll be gagged, so you won’t hear her screaming, but trust me, she will be.”