would have loved to believe that. But he didn't know where I was. I doubted that the people who had taken us were dumb enough not to have checked for my tracker and removed it, so he wouldn't know where I was. As options went, it was either sit there with April Van Linsted or figure a way out. I couldn’t count on them launching a rescue mission for me.
You don't know Ben.
He might come for me, but the least I could do was give him a hand and try to rescue myself. Besides, chances were that if I didn't do something, April and I would both end up dead.
I tried to move my wrists and discovered April was tied to a chair behind mine. the chairs were fused together somehow and likely bolted to the ground to keep us in place. "April, can you move your hands?"
There was a bit of silence. "A little, why?"
"I'm trying to figure out if we can get out of our restraints."
"Are you joking?"
Through gritted teeth, I said, "Look, I know you don't want to be here. Neither do I, so we have to work together, okay?" She was the last partner I would have picked for anything, but she was all I had at the moment.
I was startled by a clattering noise. It sounded like metal grating on metal followed by a loud creaking sound and then a roar, and suddenly light poured in. I had to blink rapidly to adjust to the sudden brightness. Three men walked in, stocky, burly, and one of them looked vaguely familiar.
My stomach twisted when I realized it was the same man who had mugged me the night of the party at the Van Linsted estate.
He recognized me too. When our gazes met, he leaned forward, leered at me, and then said something to one of his partners, whom I didn't recognize. The guy he spoke to was even bigger, burlier. Built like a damn tank. I made a mental note to avoid him if at all possible.
Tussling with him would just be trouble for us later. When he spoke, his voice was low, guttural. His accent was vaguely Eastern European. I knew it wasn't Russian or Lithuanian. My mother had been posted in Russia at one point in my childhood, so I was familiar enough with the language to recognize it if needed. No, they were speaking something else. Not Slavic exactly. I mentally tried to catalog the languages and the accents of my mother's friends whom I'd met over the years. I couldn't place it, but I knew I would eventually.
As he spoke to his friend, he said the word Libret more than once. What the hell did that mean?
The stockier one continued to leer at me as he approached us. He and his friend had bottles of water, uncapped, and I knew better than to drink. So when he tried to place the bottle near my lips, I turned my head.
With an evil smile, he grabbed my hair tightly and forced my head to turn. I winced at the pain as he tried to force the bottle into my mouth. Some of it trickled into my mouth, which I immediately sprayed back out onto him.
His friend laughed. That humiliation earned me a sharp crack across the face, and pain exploded in my cheekbone. My body jerked with the force of it. Agony and fear made me want to crawl into a deep dark hole and pass out right then, but I knew I couldn't afford to let myself do that.
Whether she wanted to or not, April was depending on me. Ben was counting on me to come home. And I didn't fucking want to die. My head rolled and I tried to bring it back up. Behind me, I could hear the sounds of swallowing. Shit. There was no telling what kind of drugs could be in what she was drinking. I didn't know what else they'd given her.
April spoke to the person giving her a drink. "I-if you help me, m-my husband will reward you."
The man in front of her only chuckled low. “You cannot bargain with me,” he said. Then he and his partner left.
Of course she was trying to bargain for herself. I noted I hadn’t been included in that bargain. Because no way in hell Marcus Van Linsted would save me too. He was more likely to leave me here to rot. Yeah, right. Of course.