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“You’d better know,” Demopoulos said. “Otherwise, you are useless to me.”
“I... don’t... know,” she eked out, barely able to force air past her vocal cords. With the ceramic knife gripped in her hand, she could shove it into Demopoulos’s neck or stick it in the ribs of the man behind her, but that would only make it worse. She was trapped inside the SUV with a bigger man who would rip her apart as his boss had indicated.
For another long moment, Demopoulos stared at her as his thug squeezed her throat.
Little oxygen made it to her brain. Jasmine’s vision blurred. If he didn’t release her soon, she’d pass out and maybe die.
Demopoulos’s eyes narrowed. “Your man will give me the scroll in exchange for you.” He lifted his chin. “Don’t kill her,” he said to the man whose arm remained tightly locked around her neck.
For a long moment, the man didn’t loosen his hold.
Light faded from Jasmine’s vision.
“Let her go,” Demopoulos said as if from the end of a tunnel.
The arm around her neck loosened.
Jasmine dragged in huge gulps of air, oxygen filling her lungs. Her vision cleared.
Demopoulos nodded. “You will be my bargaining chip. But I will need you alive to negotiate.”
Jasmine slumped back against the seat, breathing air into her lungs, thankful to have a little more time to figure a way out of captivity and get back to her son.
Then she realized that in the process of being choked half to death, she’d dropped the ceramic knife. She felt around on the seat but couldn’t find it.
Now, with no weapon to defend herself and a pissed-off crime boss with all his henchmen, she’d have to be more creative to make her escape.
Chapter 13
While Ace hammered his fist into one man’s face, the other came at him, swinging the butt of his weapon, aiming at Ace’s face.
Ace grabbed hold of the man he was punching and pivoted in time for the weapon to hit the man he was holding instead of his own head.
The man slumped in Ace’s hold.
He shoved him at the other guy.
That guy staggered backward.
Ace leaped toward him and tackled him to the ground. The man hit hard. He lay for a moment, his eyes wide, mouth open as if trying to take in air.
Ace sat on the man, pinning him to the ground.
“Ace, catch!” Fearghas yelled.
Ace looked in time to see several white strips flying toward him and land at his feet.
Zip ties.
Ace grabbed the one closest to him. He rose off the man beneath him, flipped him onto his belly and secured his arms behind him by zip-tying his wrists. He flipped the other man, who lay unconscious, onto his stomach and secured his wrists. Not leaving things to chance, he secured their ankles as well.
Fearghas had his two guys either dead or secured with zip ties and was staggering to his feet. He launched himself at one of the two men Dmytro was struggling to subdue.
Ace turned toward Jasmine. She’d shoved her guys toward the shadows the last time he’d seen her.
“Jasmine!” he called out.
When she didn’t answer, his breath lodged in his throat. He stumbled to his feet and ran toward the last place he’d seen her at the edge of the beach where trees and bushes cast shadows.
