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A chuckle is the only response I hear.
“Fuck it.” I swing out, gun held straight out, aiming at the place where Constantine should be. But a second too late, a blurry shape moves just outside my scope of vision.
I turn, finding that Constantine is just behind me. He bleats out a laugh and his bald head shines in the Parisian sunlight.
He aims at me, just a hair more slowly than I draw on him. His reflexes are questionable and that’s his downfall.
I shoot towards him, but miss and he takes off running.
I turn around, looking desperately for Penny, but she is nowhere to be seen. Likewise, her father is also absent.
I start running toward the direction that I heard her scream, wishing like hell I knew where she was.
Chapter23
Persephone
When the car finally comes to a stop, I jerk awake. For a second, I am totally disoriented. I can’t place where I am and why it’s so dark.
My mouth tingles and tastes faintly of chemicals. I lift my tongue as I try to focus my eyes. My arms and legs can barely move, and I’m bound at the wrists and ankles.
I squint into the darkness. It feels a bit as though I am struggling to move through a sticky glue-like substance.
“Get her out of the trunk.” A man’s voice cuts through my daze.
Like a light switch being flipped, I remember everything. I suddenly know exactly where I am and what has happened to me.
I remember the rough hands that shoved me into the trunk of this car. The cold gleam of the barrel of the gun that was pointed at me while I struggled; the glint of the syringe as my captor brandished it; the sound of my panicked breathing and the sharp pain as the man jabbed it in my arm.
I remember screaming and thrashing until I was hoarse, until the rough carpet beneath my body rubbed angry welts into the exposed skin at my wrists and ankles. My arms grew heavy, and then my head, and then the entire world slid away. My head dully thudding. The loose black caftan I wear has twisted around my thighs and bunched under my shoulder blades. I can hear my captor rustling around in the car.
Think, Persephone! Move! Get ready to surprise the man somehow, with something.I wrinkle my face, bringing my bound hands up to press at my temple.
If only my thoughts came a bit easier. Right now, they come in clumps, all backing up on each other, getting snarled and tangled.
What was I just thinking I needed to do?
The car door opens, and I begin to tremble. I know this all too well now. I brace myself for the same set of rough hands to pull me from the trunk.
Whipping my head around, I try to think of where the opening to the trunk should be. I need to attack, I need to get free somehow… Sweeping my bound hands around the perimeter of the trunk, I hope like hell that my kidnappers have been stupid enough to leave a tire iron or… I don’t know, maybe a pencil?
Anything that I can wield against them.
But my captors have been too smart for that.
Shit. I suppose my next best option is to pretend I’m still unconscious, then. I try to stop the trembling in my hands and the rapid rise and fall of my chest.
Stillness may be my savior today.
When the trunk is flung open, I crack my eyelids just a little. Enough to see, but not enough to seem aware. Pitch black night sky is the first thing I see. Without moving my head, I try to scan the horizon. All I can make out is a large light gray building… an airplane hangar, maybe.
My captor steps into view and I lay eyes on the same figure dressed in head-to-toe black tactical gear. A shiver of fear races down my spine but I try my best to repress it.
When he reaches in the trunk for me, I play dead. I keep my eyes closed as I let him pull my limp form from the trunk without so much as a whimper. His clammy hands grip me as he tosses me over his shoulder as casually as a sack of flour.
Inside, I’m seething at his audacity. But I keep pretending that I am still knocked out so that I can take in my surroundings and maybe hatch a plan for escape.
That all ends pretty abruptly when I catch a snippet of passing instruction. “Take her over to Constantine.”
