AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER ONE
THE man looked good enough to eat.
Gulnar forced her lids to open wider and her focus to lock and steady. The man didn’t disappear. He was really here.
His every unhurried step was eloquent with calm authority, every line of his formidably proportioned body with controlled, fluid power. He was a graceful, gorgeous being, even if his clothes hung a bit from the expanse of his impressive shoulders and his uncompromising face was too raw-boned. In fact, the asceticism only added to his impact.
She huffed an incredulous exhalation. Had her mind finally disintegrated with starvation and heat exhaustion?
That man was a murderer. A terrorist!
And he was preceding six more terrorists across the municipal building’s main hall, towering a whole head over the tallest among them. But he was on a far higher level from his henchmen in every other respect. An Olympian among orang-utans.
She clamped her bone-dry lips, exerted all she had left on steadying her quivering muscles as his head turned this way and that, his hewn face exhibiting no reaction, his eyes sweeping the crowd, sparing no one a lingering look.
Look at me! she heard a voice yelling, and for a moment shriveled in horror that it was hers. It was. But only inside her head. Get a grip, Gulnar. She should be praying he wouldn’t notice her. God only knew what he’d do if he did!
In the next second she lost whatever control she had on her long-frayed nerves. He was heading towards her!
The heart that had long decelerated into the sluggish rhythm of resignation zoomed behind her ribs, the transition so sudden she felt her grip on consciousness softening…
But the man stopped a few feet away, by the group of people she’d just left, where Mikhael, her last remaining gravely injured casualty, was. His terrorists fanned out, protecting his back, his height keeping him visible above their tight grid.
Fury burst in her chest, cascaded throughout her body. How could she have thought him anything else but a bully, coming in here surrounded by his henchmen, terrorizing the already bludgeoned and broken people? He probably looked good enough to eat because she was hungry enough to eat a rat!
Which she’d probably resort to before long. She wouldn’t have to worry about finding one. Rats were becoming braver as the huddled masses grew still and squalor soared. She’d woken up from her shallow slumber at dawn when one had scampered across her chest. Good thing rats didn’t faze her. Not much could. Not any more. She was destined to live—and live. And lose. Being held hostage was just one more thing to survive.
And she’d been held hostage with over four hundred people since the militants had erupted into the building three days ago, in a storm of gunfire and thundering threats on the public address system. The place was rigged with explosives. They would shoot anyone who moved.
What had followed had been total pandemonium. When the gunfire had stopped there had been thirty-two people down.
The only hostage with medical experience, overwhelmed and unequipped, she’d raced among the casualties, trying to set up some form of triage, some measure of emergency intervention.
Some had been killed outright, some had had injuries beyond the help of her improvised measures. But the ones who’d ruptured her heart with loss and futility had been those whose injuries would have been controllable had she had access to even the most basic emergency supplies. But there were none, and she’d lost eleven of the injured she was tending. Mikhael was the only one she hadn’t lost. Yet. It was a matter of time, and the ones with lesser injuries would follow.
She’d tried to talk reason to the only woman militant, pleaded for the injured to be turned over to the security forces who now besieged the building. It was one thing to kill people in the heat of the moment, another to let them die such slow, agonizing deaths. They’d still have hundreds under their power to bargain with.
Nothing had worked. No concessions would be offered before the militants’ demands were met. Gulnar had almost laughed in the woman’s face, could have told her how this would end.
Hostage situations often ended with everyone losing and everything far worse than before, the ever-expanding shockwaves of retaliation and counter-retaliation only creating new generations raised on oppression, hatred and intolerance, perpetuating the vicious circle of violence, strife and death.
Her mind was wrenched back to the moment as one of the man’s henchmen handed him a suitcase. No, that looked like…a huge emergency bag? He kneeled on the floor, opened it and—it was!
What did that mean? Were there reporters around? And were the militants putting on a show of mercy for their benefit?
So what? The man had an emergency bag and that was all that mattered. All she needed.
Brutal hope tore aside her remaining tatters of self-preservation, propelled her to her feet. A burning torrent of pins and needles almost sent her to the floor again. They hadn’t been letting them up to even go to the bathroom.
Ignoring the debilitating electricity, she limped over to the man, her hands raised in the universal gesture of surrender. “Please, let me use the emergency supplies!”
One of the militants’ gazes swept over her, rabid, defiling. “Sit down now!”
