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He didn’t give a damn about her cooking skills—they could eat frozen dinners or fast food every night for all he cared. But he suddenly saw a vision of the two of them messing around in the kitchen together after a long, hectic day—teaching for her, an agency investigation for him. He wouldn’t be able to share much about his job with her, but then she had never pushed him to tell her things; she respected the boundaries he couldn’t cross. And she wouldn’t be able to share much about her job with him, either. Not because of security restrictions, but because her specialty was beyond his comprehension—if he’d learned nothing else attending her classes while guarding her, he’d learned that.
But those things didn’t matter. She just wanted to belong to him...and have him belong to her. Simple...yet profound. Wasn’t that what he wanted, too?
He pulled out his wallet and picked up his cell phone. He had to call information to get the number, and the last-minute purchase put a dent in his credit card balance, but fifteen minutes later he had a flight to Zakhar booked for New Year’s Eve, the earliest flight available.
Exhaustion tugged at Trace and he made his way slowly into the bedroom, afraid he still wouldn’t be able to sleep. But whether it was because he’d never brought the princess to the bedroom in his cabin, or because he was literally weaving on his feet or because his conscience was finally at peace now that he’d made his flight reservation, he slept the clock around and then some.
When he woke the next evening he had a vague memory of waking once or twice and stumbling to the bathroom, then falling back into bed almost immediately, but he couldn’t have said exactly how many times it had happened. Now when he woke he was aware of two things: the sun was already setting and he was ravenous. He tried to remember if he had any food in the kitchen. He didn’t feel up to driving in to town to one of the restaurants there, but he would if he had to.
I should keep this place stocked better, he told himself a few minutes later as he dumped a can of Beefaroni into a pot with a can of green beans, both cans near their expiration dates. He stirred it all together and watched impatiently until it was warm enough to be edible—he was too hungry to wait for it to be truly hot. Then he stood over the sink and wolfed the mixture down. It was surprisingly good. Or maybe I was so hungry old shoes would have tasted good, he thought humorously. He had just run water in the pot to let it soak before washing, when he heard a faint sound at the front door.
He automatically reached for the SIG SAUER in his shoulder holster and cursed when his hand came up empty, then remembered he’d left his gun on the coffee table the day before. He made a diving leap for the gun just as both the front and back doors burst open. And that was the last thing he remembered clearly for a long, long time...
* * *
Drugged. They’d kept him drugged. He’d been trussed up like a chicken, blindfolded, drugged and transported. Where? For what purpose? And who was it? The New World Militia? The Russian mob? Someone else? And why? Why bother transporting him? More dangerous that way, more likely that something would go wrong and they’d be discovered. Why not just kill him and get it over with?
He didn’t realize he was floating in and out of consciousness. Didn’t realize that after the first time he was no longer bound, gagged or blindfolded. Just drugged. He didn’t realize he’d been fed three separate times, and that the drugs had been administered in his food. He also didn’t realize a physician had carefully monitored his vital signs the entire time he was a captive.
But some part of him had recognized he was on a plane—that droning sound was unmistakable, and in his drugged state he sometimes thought he was back in the Marine Corps, flying in a military transport into and out of Afghanistan. Other times he thought he was dead, waiting in limbo for God to decide his fate—heaven or hell. He examined his conscience and figured it was a toss-up, unless God gave him the benefit of the doubt for good intentions.
He woke for the last time as he was being strapped down on a stretcher, then carried gently out of a plane. His first confused thought was that he’d woken up in Brigadoon, the fairy-tale city of stage-and-screen fame that only appeared once every hundred years. Snow-capped peaks ringed the city around him; the air was fresh and pure; and quaint, winding streets led upward from the airport toward a palace on a hill. Then he knew where he was. And unless he was much mistaken, he wasn’t about to die anytime soon.
* * *
Trace was ushered into a long, spacious room, and the door was closed behind him. His kidnappers had given him time to recover, time for the drugs to be completely washed from his system, but they hadn’t told him a damned thing. His clothes had been taken, cleaned and returned to him, although he felt partially naked without his shoulder holster and gun—he’d gone strapped for so long he didn’t feel dressed without it. Then they’d brought him here...and left him.
