Perfect Stranger (17 page)

At that moment, a heavy sounding metal door
banged open to his left. Jericho listened intently. There were five
men approaching them. They were about fifteen feet away.

A few seconds later the black bag jerked
from Jericho's face, and he blinked, squinting. Dim light filtered
around them, coming from a row of three windows to their right set
high on the concrete-block wall. The sun was rising.

Jericho took in all his surroundings.

He swept the room for Chloe, and his eyes
flared as he found her. She was exactly where the little sound had
come from. The sight of her tore at his insides. His blood pumped
faster and harder in his veins, and a fury overwhelmed him of a
sudden.

If he got free, he wouldn’t need the use of
a sidearm, his SCAR, or any weapon. He would take personal delight
in squeezing the life from each of these bastards.

Jericho's gaze shot back to the men
surrounding them. Their amusement grated against his raw anger.

Chloe's arms had been bound behind her back,
a thick rope wound around her torso, and a meat hook had been stuck
under the rope at her back. A chain attached to the hook held her
aloft in the center of the room.

One of the men lifted the bag from her face
then, letting her hair spill around her shoulders. There was dried
blood where a crimson streak had dripped from her temple.

Chloe instantly cried out upon seeing her
captors. She twisted to find him. He heard his name against her
gag.

The man who had removed the sack chuckled,
lifting her chin, but Chloe jerked away from him.

Their Arab dialect indicated these were the
same men from the group he had reconned for months. The men who
worked with Conyers.

Jericho ground his teeth. He couldn’t wait
for one of them to come close enough.

One man, dressed in a suit, came forward
then and stepped in front of Chloe. He clasped his hands at his
front and snorted in humor at Jericho as he took a step to circle
around her. He stopped behind her back and pulled out a knife,
grinning at the gleaming curved blade.

Jericho narrowed his gaze.

The man ticked his head to the others then,
seeming to take charge of them. He leaked an air of confidence as
he spoke rapidly to the hostiles.

Chloe cringed away as best she could as the
man returned his attention to her and slowly brought the blade
against her cheek, trailing the sharp edge down her neck. She
flinched from him, and the leader suddenly grasped her by the hair
and jerked her head up. The chains holding Chloe clanked above, and
he bent down to look at Jericho from beside her, grinning at
him.

Jericho growled low. He
silently vowed to kill that one last,
after
he tortured him.

The man brought his face very close to
Chloe's, slowly running his nose along her neck, causing Chloe to
cringe.

"I can smell her fear, Sergeant." His eyes
flashed at Jericho then, and the leader snarled, letting Chloe's
head drop. She cried out as the screeching chain swung her ever so
slightly. "You made it very hard for me to operate, my friend. For
this, I shall make her suffer." The man chuckled darkly, circling
Chloe. "And you shall watch," he said, fingering the blade he held.
He cast a grin over his shoulder at Jericho.

Jericho jerked at his bonds, rattling the
chain all the way up to the beam.

Something dark and furious rattled inside
him along with the chains holding him.

The man's eyes flickered to the long chain,
but then back down to Jericho and then to Chloe's back. He ran his
hands over her ass, smiling wickedly.

Chloe flinched, shutting her eyes hard, and
turned her head away. Jericho jerked forward in a mighty tug. The
chain screeched loudly, metal on metal. Jericho jerked at the bonds
again and again, infuriated.

The idea alone of that man touching her was
enough, seeing him do it….

The chain gave a lurch above, and Jericho
gained a foot closer to Chloe. His head shot up to the rafters to
see the chain was only looped over a beam and not affixed.

Unexpectedly, a man behind him struck the
back of his knee with what felt like a metal rod.

Jericho roared against his gag. His leg bent
forward, numb with pain, and useless for the moment. Jericho panted
against the ache, pushing any weakness away. Chloe screamed for him
against the tape over her mouth. As their stares met, her
expression cried out to him, too. She was afraid for him, and
afraid for herself.

Chloe's fear brought strength back to his
limbs, and Jericho slowly forced himself to stand, shaking off the
blaze of stars filling his vision.

Footsteps approached as the man came from
Chloe's back and walked over to Jericho then, bending down with his
hands braced on his knees beside him. Jericho opened his eyes to
glare.

"Ah, I see you like
the
emra'a
,
sadiqi
.
I see how you look at her." He
chuckled low. "What if I have my man rape her, right now, in front
of you? Would that make up for all the trouble you have caused me,
hmm? For all the lives of my men you have taken?" His words rolled
in a heavily accented murmur.

Jericho inwardly snorted at this man's sense
of reason. He had sent those men to kill Chloe and himself. Did the
man not think he would do all in his power to keep Chloe and
himself safe? So what? He had sent them on to be with a thousand
virgins or whatever. Shouldn’t their leader be happy for them?

If he didn’t have his gag in, he would spit
in the bastard's face.

Having heard what the
leader had threatened to do, Chloe screamed what sounded
like
my God
against her gag and kept up a steady stream of muffled curses
and threats of her own, whimpering and crying, too.

Her cries tore at Jericho's heart.

The son of a bitch beside him laughed sickly
in his ear. Jericho had had enough. Chances were, he would die
anyway, and if that were so, he was taking as many of them with him
as possible.

He head-butted the man, breaking his nose
and sending him stumbling backwards.

As the leader incredulously, and furiously,
brought his hand to cover his bleeding face, Jericho pulled himself
up by his bonds, and in a leap, kicked the man across the room with
his bound feet. Pain shot through the back of his injured knee, but
Jericho ignored the staggering throb.

The others started toward him, and Jericho
kicked one of them, too, head-butting another. A third came at him
swiftly.

"
Kahlass!
" their leader shouted,
still holding his nose. His shout stopped the others' onslaught on
Jericho. He howled angrily and stalked across the room to grab the
metal rod from the man who had used it on the back of Jericho's
leg. He angrily pushed the man away and then turned, stalking back
to Jericho, lashing the rod across his face in a backwards
sweep.

Jericho's head struck to the side, and he
moaned against his gag, shaking his head to clear the pain. Blood
beaded and steadily began to drip from his cheek where the rough
end had left a gash behind. Chloe was screaming again, furiously
and hysterically now. He could discern his name against her gag,
and he had the feeling she would be trying to claw the men's eyes
out if she could.

Jericho fought for his vision to clear,
shaking his head as the men began to circle them more fully
again.

Jericho was ready for a fight now. He wanted
to feel their blood on his hands. He wanted to hear their bones
snap, their cries as he caused them pain.

The man he had kicked first, the apparent
leader, threw down the rod and came around to jerk Jericho's head
up by his hair. That was when Jericho noticed the one man from the
cabin whom he hadn't killed, the one he had left in the yard
unconscious for the sake of getting to Chloe.

The man bared his teeth at him.

The leader shook his head,
gaining Jericho's attention. "
She,"
he thrust a finger behind him at Chloe, "killed
my son, Aariz, when she threw the grenade in the jungle. For this
she must pay, too! And you, you and those infidel bastards you
brought along on your
mission
, Sergeant." He sighed hard.
"If not for you, we would have completed our cause," he yelled,
spittle flying from his mouth. "This is only the beginning,
Eden."

Jericho stilled at the mention of his men.
The asshole holding him tightened his hold on his hair, smiling
with dark humor as though he read Jericho's mind.

A moment of concern and uncertainty shrouded
Jericho then. He narrowed his eyes.

"I killed them all," the leader said slowly,
tauntingly. He dropped his hold on Jericho and went over, kicking a
lever to a crank on the wall. "Now I kill her, after torture."

"
No!"
Jericho yelled against his gag
and twisted in his bonds again as Chloe fell to the concrete floor
with a sickening thud. She whimpered at the impact.

"Cut her bonds," the man said. "I want him
to watch the fight leave her eyes as she dies slowly." He bent and
ripped Chloe's gag away, and she choked as she spat the wad of
cloth away.

She rolled over instantly, trying to crawl
away, but the man laughed, watching her a moment in amusement. He
stood then, and pushed her over with a boot to her ribs. Another
man came over her and slipped a knife under her bonds. As they fell
slack around her wrists and ankles she instantly reached up to grab
the man's wrists as his hands closed around her throat, lifting her
from the floor.

A man stepped in front of Jericho, partially
blocking his view, but he heard the strike as the leader of the
group slapped Chloe hard, sending her head to the side.

Something broke inside Jericho then, and he
gathered his remaining strength, kicking the man in front of him,
knocking him to his knees. Quickly, Jericho put his feet on the
man's back, and in a leap, unhooked himself from the chain above.
He landed in a roll and quickly spun back to the man, both his feet
impacting on the man's head.

Jericho jerked a knife from his belt,
slicing through the bonds around his ankles. The man scrambled to
regain his position, but Jericho lashed out with the knife,
implanting the blade in the man's neck. He gurgled, scuttling
backwards, and slouched to the floor.

Jericho stood as the other men clambered,
talking rapidly in their native tongue, coming at Jericho all at
once, yet they were more unsure now. They glanced between him and
their dead comrade as their leader yelled at them fiercely.

In the moment of their hesitation, Jericho
seized his chance and knocked one to the side with a strong blow
from his bound wrists, then closed his arms around another's throat
in a chokehold.

As the others attacked him and he fended
them off, Jericho watched in horror as the leader backed away with
Chloe. The man looked all too panicked and angered. The leader's
mouth opened on another threat to Chloe, but as he crossed to the
door, a bullet embedded into his forehead with a thunk.

Chloe screamed as the man's body slid down
her back, and she tumbled over with him. At the same time, Jericho
caught an assailant as the other man flew at him, knocking them
both into the wall. Jericho took his head to bash into the concrete
wall, then let go and slammed his fists into the side of the man's
face, causing him to stagger back.

His other combatants began yelling and
backing away then, too.

Confused, and a little amazed, Jericho
swiveled to scan the room again.

A very familiar camo pattern flooded the
entry, weapons raised.

A Special Forces team
rushed the hostiles, shouting orders for the men to get on the
floor and spread out their hands. As one raised his weapon,
shouting, "
Allahu akabar,"
he, too, took a bullet to the head and crumpled
to the floor alongside his leader.

Jericho sank against the wall, closing his
eyes. He didn’t risk moving any further until the room had been
cleared. He could hear a soldier assisting Chloe and removing her
bonds, asking if she were all right.

In a few short moments, when the hostiles
were all down and in check, their weapons gathered, Chloe rushed to
Jericho just as one of the Special Forces team freed his hands.

Jericho threw his arms open, and Chloe
jumped into his embrace. He wrapped her in his arms, breathing in
her scent from her hair.

Outwardly, he was relieved, but on the
inside, he shuddered at how close they had come.

Chapter Sixteen

0700 hours, Wednesday

Unknown location in Brazil

Chloe melted into Jericho, disbelieving they
had really been saved. As she locked her arms around Jericho's
neck, felt the strength of his embrace, she swore she would never
let him go if she had the choice.

The scene around them felt like a dream
washing over her as their rescuers swarmed the room. They captured
the men lying on the floor, zip-tying their hands behind their
backs, and photographing them before hauling them from the room to
who knew where. Chloe didn’t care if the Special Forces team
escorted those men all the way to hell. She only knew she never
wanted to see those evil men again.

Jericho stood with his arms protectively
around her while they waited. She noted he rested most of his
weight on his uninjured leg. Chloe wanted to kiss him so badly, but
they were quickly interrupted by a man in military gear and ushered
out of the meat-processing factory and onto the roof where
helicopters awaited with more men.