What He Bargains (What He Wants, Book Nineteen) (57 page)

She was more likely to injure herself walking around with a weapon that she had no clue how to use.

Raven got dressed, even put on her shoes. She didn’t like feeling so naked and vulnerable. At the same time, she was regretting not going with Jake when he’d offered. If she was going to just be afraid and awake anyhow, she might as well have gone with him.

But it was true she’d have slowed him down considerably.

Sitting down once more beside the fire, Raven instead watched the flames dance and crackle, concentrated on keeping the fire burning bright and remembering that each minute passing by was one minute closer to Jake’s return.

Before long, the darkness receded as the shadows retreated from the dawning sun outside. Raven smiled as she looked out the window and watched the daylight beginning to creep over the world, the bright yellow orb clearing the tall trees now.

She was heartened by the presence of sunbeams falling across her floorboards, and the fire in the woodstove didn’t seem quite as necessary anymore.

Her eyes began to droop a little. She was quite tired, and now that the cabin was less frightening, her heart rate slowed and her weary muscles relaxed again.

Eventually she even snuck back under the blankets, smelling Jake’s scent and smiling to herself.

If it wasn’t for the awful circumstances that had brought them to this cabin, Raven could almost have convinced herself that she enjoyed this place. There was a serenity in the stillness, and the silence was less threatening in the morning.

Jake
, she thought, picturing him vividly in her mind as sleep began to overtake her once more.

Jake would be walking through the forest, his eyes determined, his body sure, moving easily, like a jungle cat in his natural habitat.

Soon he would be back and everything would be better.

Jake was going to take care of everything.

“
G
et up
.”

The voice was deep, masculine, and completely unfamiliar. Raven’s eyes snapped open and she saw a man standing above her, his expression one of detachment and disdain, like he was watching a scuttling cockroach.

He gave her a nudge with his booted foot and she sat up, screaming out for Jake.

“Shut up,” another voice said, and then she felt a hard thump against her back, causing her to sprawl forward on her stomach.

Raven turned and saw another man, shorter and stumpier than the first. His face was strangely young, tufts of a beard and mustache appearing irregularly on his chin and cheeks and upper lip, as if he wasn’t capable of growing a full beard yet.

She was frightened, more frightened than she’d ever been. She had to restrain the urge to pee herself, and that made her even more scared.

“Don’t hurt me,” she begged, hating the mewling sound of her own voice.

“Shut up and get up,” the first man said, his hooded eyes still looking down at her with a pitiless unblinking stare.

As she got shakily to her feet, she took in the fact that there only appeared to be two people inside the cabin with her. She also noted, with steadily growing horror, that both people were dressed in camouflage and heavy black boots, and both men had guns.

One was holding a pistol and the youngish one had a rifle casually hoisted on his shoulder.

“Who are you?” she said.

“You don’t want to know,” said the younger one with the terribly erratic beard, “but you can call me Joe and this is my friend Dave.”

Raven saw that the younger one, who called himself ‘Joe,’ was lying, and his eyes were cruel. He was teasing her so he could look tough in front of his older buddy. His eyes were hateful, while the one he’d called ‘Dave’ simply looked cold, like a walking talking barracuda.

“Joe, please don’t hurt me,” Raven said. “I’m not going to call the police. Take whatever you want but please let me go.”

“We can take anything we want?” Joe asked, smiling through his wispy mustache, glancing at Dave, who simply stared at her with no expression.

Dave’s cheeks were riddled with old acne scars, and his dead eyes took in everything about her without showing any emotion.

“Yes, anything,” she gushed frantically. “Take the clothes, food, anything. There’s even weapons. Take it all and I’ll just leave.”

“But you said we can take
anything
,” Joe replied, and grabbed her arm with a tight grip that made her cry out in pain. “And we want to take you. So you start walking, and don’t make a sound or I’ll take my rifle and break your fucking nose. Got it?”

“Pl—pl—please don’t,” she whispered.

“Boss, she ‘aint moving,” Joe said.

Dave turned and looked out the window and then to Raven. Slowly, emotionlessly, he raised his arm and pointed the pistol at her face. “Start walking or I’ll splatter your brains on the walls, ma’am.”

Raven’s legs were numb and she was certain she would faint at any second, but she somehow controlled her body enough to force it to move. Her legs didn’t want to follow orders, and everything in her was protesting at full volume.

She knew that she was going to her death, but didn’t seem to have a say in the matter.

As they exited the cabin, Dave took hold of one of her arms and then Joe moved out front and perched the rifle on his shoulder and started to check the vicinity, swiveling to and fro, his body tense and ready to shoot.

Raven wanted to shout out a warning, just in case Jake was somewhere nearby. But Dave must have sensed this, because just before she yelled, his cold hand wrapped itself over her mouth and squeezed like a vice, making it impossible to do anything but grunt and moan inside her throat.

After what seemed an eternity, Joe removed the rifle from his shoulder and relaxed. He gave Raven a wink and smirked. “All clear, boss,” he said to Dave.

Dave took away his hand from Raven’s mouth.

She was sobbing quietly, her entire body seemingly collapsing in on itself.

“We have to keep moving,” Dave told her stiffly. “Come on, quickly.”

Raven looked over her shoulder and saw that Dave’s long, drawn face was incredibly serious.

“I just want to be left alone.”

“A little late for that,” Joe sneered.

She didn’t move and Joe sighed. “Boss, should I break her nose and show her we mean business or what?”

There was hesitation as Dave considered the question. “Too much blood,” Dave replied, finally, and that was what got her feet moving again.

The way he’d responded hadn’t been with disgust at the idea of bashing her nose in for the hell of it—his only objection had been that it would be too bloody. And that made Raven realize that these two men weren’t fooling around. They were waiting for her to give them a reason to hurt her, and she didn’t want to supply it.

Then and there, she decided to bide her time and wait. At some point, they’d screw up and make a mistake and she would find a way to escape.

Until then, she intended to be a model prisoner.

T
hey kept
Raven marching for a long, long time. Minutes turned slowly into hours, and the day grew hot and she struggled to keep pace.

They weren’t in apparent contact with anybody on a phone, walkie-talkie, nothing. They seemed confident, though. Dave occasionally stopped progress to take a drink from his canteen and offer her some, which she refused until she was too thirsty to keep saying no.

He also checked a compass and a map every so often, peering at the sun in the sky, squinting like some old sea captain trying to guess the wind’s direction.

Mostly, though, they just walked, the three of them.

Raven wanted to ask if Club Alpha had sent them, but she figured they’d only lie to her. They had a plan, and it didn’t involve killing her immediately, which was good. But she didn’t know just how long they intended to keep her alive, either, which was bad.

She’d initially hoped that Jake would hear them or spot them moving through the forest on his return back to the cabin, but as the hours passed and the sun first rose high above them and then began its steep descent over the treetops, Raven’s hope diminished and turned to hopelessness.

If she was going to get out of this, she’d need to do it herself.

Nobody’s coming to save you.

It was a chilling thought and it matched the dip in temperature, as night began to fall once more and the daylight slipped eerily away.

“How much longer, boss?” Joe asked, as Dave called a halt to the action, sipped from his canteen and then handed it off to Raven, who drank from it, hating the metallic taste of the warm water and knowing that Dave’s saliva was mixing in the with it.

But she was so tired and thirsty and she was badly in need of a long rest. Her legs were weak and the muscles had begun burning. Inside her shoes, her feet were raw and she could feel blisters on her toes.

“I think we should call it a night,” Dave said, after checking his map and the sky once more.

“Can I start a fire?” Joe asked him.

Dave thought about it for a long moment and then nodded once. “I’m gonna take a leak,” he said. “Watch the girl.” He walked off a few paces and unzipped his pants, his back to Raven.

She glanced uneasily away from the sight of him and saw Joe leering at her, as he cradled the rifle in his arms. “Hey, baby. How you like it out here with a couple of mountain men? You enjoying yourself?”

“No,” she said.

Joe laughed, a big belly laugh. “Awww, that’s too bad. Because I’ve really enjoyed watching your ass swing when you walk, and your boobs bouncing too. You have some swag, girl.”

She looked away from him, feeling her stomach lurch and her eyes flutter. She wanted to vomit but held it down.

Don’t give him the satisfaction. He’d laugh and laugh if you puked right now
.

Raven managed not to vomit, a small victory, and then Dave was back, taking his canteen from her and spinning the cap back onto it. “Okay,” he said, “let’s settle in.”

J
oe was definitely not
in charge. He spent the better part of an hour making a fire and then taking a few cans of beans and putting them in a tiny pot, which he used to cook the beans over the modest fire pit.

Joe served the beans to them in the empty cans they’d come from in the first place, and as he handed Raven a small fork to use, she considered stabbing him in the eyeball with it.

“Not even a thank you for cooking this delicious grub?” he chuckled, grinning as bean sauce dribbled down his erratic beard, leaning toward her, almost begging her to stab him.

“Thanks,” she muttered, and then shoved the fork down and scooped up the lukewarm beans and began eating like a starved orphan.

Joe sat down across the fire while Dave sat slightly behind Raven and ate, presumably to keep an eye on her.

When she was done eating, she had to pee and told Dave. “Come on,” he said, getting up stiffly. “I’ve got to keep an eye on you.”

“I’ll do it,” Joe called out.

Dave gave him an annoyed glare and Joe mercifully shut up. Raven didn’t feel quite as nervous with Dave nearby, as he seemed the more professional of the two, even if he was a cold fish. She walked far enough away to be out of Joe’s sight, behind some bushes, and Dave carried a flashlight. “That’s enough, you can go there,” he said.

Raven dropped her pants and squatted, urinating with relief. “Do you have to do this to me?” she asked, as she pulled her pants up again. “Isn’t there something else? Can I pay you or something?”

Dave held the flashlight so that the beam fell in her eyes and caused her to squint. “Shut up,” he replied tersely.

They walked back to camp and Joe had a flask out and was sipping from it. He held the flask out to Raven and she shook her head. She could smell the alcohol from across the fire.

“No?” Joe laughed.

“I told you not to start with that shit,” Dave told him.

“Come on, we’ve been so wound up for days now,” Joe told him. “Have a victory drink with me.”

“The mission’s not done yet,” Dave said.

“Come on, just one swig.”

Dave gave Raven a baleful glance and then walked around the fire and took the flask and drank from it for a long time.

When he was done, he swiped his arm across his mouth. He glared at Joe and then Raven. He seemed angry and his eyes had turned less detached and more predatory.

He sat down next to Joe and across from Raven, watching her as he passed the flask back and forth between he and his fellow mercenary.

Joe grew more jovial and laughed more as they drank from the flask, while Dave seemed to get quieter and somehow meaner, without saying much.

Raven hoped they might get drunk enough to pass out. That would make her task far easier.

And where will you go when you run away? You don’t have a clue where you are or how to get back to the cabin. You’ll end up dying alone in the woods.

Well, that’s the chance I’ll have to take, Raven thought, as she watched her two captors drink without being obvious that she was looking to closely at them.

At one point, Joe cried out and fell off his backpack, and then lay on his side laughing like a maniac.

Dave, sitting on another pack, gave him a hard kick in the ribs with his boot, and Joe got up and stared at him. “Why’d you do that?” he said, the laughter gone.

“Because,” Dave said, watching him without emotion.

“Because why?”

“Because I felt like kicking you,” Dave replied.

The mood had turned sour, and Raven had to admit, she was rather glad. If they started really fighting, she’d have her chance.

“I should put a bullet between your eyes,” Joe muttered.

“What?” Dave asked, sitting forward.

“You heard me.”

“Say it again,” Dave demanded. “Say it again and see what I do to you.”

Joe seemed to cower, even though he was standing and Dave was sitting. The humiliation of it sunk in and they younger man’s lip curled. At that moment, for some reason, he turned his attention towards Raven.

“I’m sick of this uppity bitch giving me that look,” Joe said. He pointed at her. “See that look?” he asked.