minutes.”
They each stood behind Enoch, leaning forward to see the screen. “They’re not driving anymore?” Miles asked.
“Don’t appear to be. The GPS has her stationary for about five minutes or so.”
“Looks like she’s in the slums,” Justice complained.
“The program can’t show me exactly where,” Enoch explained. “But if you get near the area you should be able to pick up her signal on this cell phone.” He handed it to Leese.
Brand took it from him.
No one said anything about it.
“I have access to some funds,” Enoch explained. “But I doubt it’ll be enough to pay off kidnappers.”
“Let’s wait and find out how much ransom they demand, then we’ll decide what to do.”
The waiting went against the grain for all of them, but until they got that call, it was all they could do.
“If Sahara was here,” Enoch stated, “she’d ask me to get coffee, so that’s what I’m going to do. All of you, make yourselves comfortable and I’ll be right back.”
* * *
THE VAN BUMPED over rough ground, taking her farther and farther away. No one spoke to her, but the four men riding in the cargo area continually watched her.
She pretended not to care and merely looked back, making note of what she could. Even sitting, their height was discernible, and under the dark sweatshirts and jeans, she could guess their weight.
One man had pushed up his sleeves and she saw that he was freckled. Another had darker hands, as if he spent a lot of time in the sun.
The man who appeared to be in charge was the only one not eyeballing her. He spent his time on his phone, not speaking but definitely perusing something.
When the van stopped, he pocketed the phone and moved to crouch in front of her.
“Give me your hands.”
Sahara glared into faded blue eyes. “Why?”
His answer was to roughly grab her, jerk her arms forward, then hold her wrists while another masked man wrapped them in rough rope.
Clearly, they’d never done this before because with a little wiggling, she’d be able to pull free. What good that would do her, she didn’t yet know. If she remained in the van with six men, two up front and four guarding her, she may as well be hog-tied.
For now, though, she held still and merely muttered, “I scare you that much?” She tsked. “And here I’m so much smaller.”
His hand came up to clasp her throat, not tightly but in clear warning. “You have quite a mouth on you.”
“Quite a brain as well.” Defiant, she stared at him. I will not let them cow me. “What do you know about Scott?”
Disgusted, he let her go with a slight shove and sat back against the metal wall of the van.
Sahara said, “You know something, obviously. I want to know what.”
The big man waited, watching her, and finally shrugged. “Do you believe your brother is dead?”
“No.”
He sat forward again. “Have you had any contact with him?”
“No.”
With a note of frustration, he asked, “Then what makes you think—”
“Somehow, if he were truly gone, I’d feel it.”
The freckled guy barked a laugh. “Female logic.”
She snorted. “Male logic would be an oxymoron, wouldn’t it?”
“Shut up,” the leader said.
The two men in front got out, closing their doors seemingly without fear of being heard. That told her that they must be someplace isolated...or perhaps they had a way of sneaking her out of the van without anyone noticing.
Seconds later the doors at the back of the van opened.
Sahara could see they were inside a large garage or warehouse. Dim, smelly and cold.
Three of the men climbed out. The leader, bent over in the confines of the van, took her arm and said, “Let’s go.”
For once her heels were a hindrance. With her hands tied, she couldn’t use them to help her gain her feet. He solved that dilemma by dragging her on her butt toward the doors.
“Brute,” she accused.
“I didn’t drag you by the hair, did I?”
No, and she didn’t want to prod him to it either.
When another man reached in, the boss said, “I’ve got her,” and everyone else backed off.
Sahara realized what he meant when he stepped down, then hauled her out and over his shoulder. With one muscled arm he pinned her legs behind her knees, and with the other... Dear God, he had his hand spread wide over her behind!
She reared up, using her bound hands to brace against his back. “So a kidnapper, and a perv, too?”
The swat he landed on her cheek stung, but she didn’t cry out. She just gritted her teeth and, as he possibly intended, kept quiet.
He carried her as if she weighed nothing, going down concrete stairs and into a smaller, colder, darker room. Along the way her hair spilled loose, draping down to cover her face. She also lost a shoe, but the man paused to pick it up. He turned a corner, careful not to smack her head on the wall, and went down more stairs.
Her heart started to pound nervously and her mouth went dry.
Someone turned on a light and she saw that her prison was even worse than she’d suspected. Very small, maybe eight feet square, all concrete.
She did not want to be alone here, but as he set her on her feet she quipped, “How quaint.”
The big man actually laughed.
Then he surprised her by bending down, clasping her ankle and helping her to step back into her shoe. From his kneeling position, he looked up the length of her body.
Grateful for her coat, which still covered her, Sahara tried to feign confidence. It wavered a lot when he came back to his feet, lifted her chin and gently brushed her hair out of her face. Sahara jerked away, but he only grabbed her upper arm and finished running his fingers through the unruly tresses, finding two pins still caught in her hair and pocketing them.
So maybe that wasn’t about inappropriate thoughts, but rather he didn’t want to take the chance that she’d know how to pick a lock.
She did, of course, but whether or not a hairpin would work depended on the lock.
Around them, she realized the others were working, turning on an overhead light—and blessedly, an electric heater. She moved closer to it, holding out her hands and trying to stop her shivers.
A cot was set up in the corner. It looked clean with a folded blanket and a pillow on top. One of the men added an extra blanket. Did they expect her to sleep here?
She hated that possibility.
“We realized after we had it arranged that you, being female, might find it too chilly.”
Clearly the freckled guy had some notions about “females.” In this case, since she was cold, she let it go.
When he continued to look at her, she said, “Thank you?” and he nodded in satisfaction.
Every second of this kidnapping got more and more bizarre.
Other than the cot, she noticed a portable toilet in the farthest corner, with a roll of paper on the ground beside it. Oh, no