Hellfire Drop (Brimstone Cycle Book 2)(10)
Considering the things I had done to Tom and the rest of his men, personal wasn’t going to be a good thing for me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The inside of the van stays mostly quiet after that. After a few minutes riding in silence, I can feel a series of cramps starting to settle in, and start wiggling a little to relieve some of the strain. Diner Boy puts his authority voice on whenever I move. His orders are direct and with few variations beyond “show your hands” or “stop moving your feet.” I ignore him for the most part, until twenty minutes into the drive, when he suddenly stiffens, grabs my neck, and presses me down even harder to the floor of the van.
Bags over your head do a pretty decent job of obscuring what’s going on around yourself. They’re not perfect, though, because it’s hard to block out all flickers of sight that a hooded person may catch without being blindfolded. It’s something that even I would do, and I’ve never even considered organizing a kidnapping.
The last bits of sunlight, which initially penetrated the canvas sack with a vague, featureless glow, weakened until I was left in sporadic, near darkness. On occasion, I can still see brief light that seep in from the edges of the bag. Most of what’s been passing me by has been the plain and uneventful flashes of passing car headlights. What I see now, however, is a flickering splash of blue and red - police cruisers in the distance and, judging by the growing wail of their sirens, approaching fast.
The lights coming closer are a new option for me. It’s a long shot, but if I can rise up high enough to draw even with a window, the cops outside may take notice of the not very common sight of a hooded woman being held at gunpoint in a car.
I tense my legs in anticipation of raising myself upright. The flickers of light are growing brighter, closer. Almost there.
A very loud and very hard to mistake sound interrupts my planned leap. I recognize the metallic double click as the sound a double action revolver makes when the hammer is cocked back less than a foot from my head.
CHAPTER NINE
That sound freezes me in my tracks for a moment. It’s not a long one, but even that’s enough for the glowing lights of the passing cop car to fade out of my limited view. A hope that I hadn’t been aware of harboring dims along with the glowing red and blue. Dwelling on the missed opportunity won’t get me anywhere, and besides, I have more pressing matters to deal with in this particular moment.
Moving slowly, I turn my head in the direction of the gun, and tilt my head to the side as if asking a question. “Don’t mind me,” is the impression I try to project. Just wiggling through my cramps.
The Three Letter Agency woman’s voice answers me, this time pitched loud enough to carry over the engine noise and the screech of the police sirens blaring nearby.
“I’m here to bring you to the boss. She’d prefer your arrival in a state that’s somewhat more lively than dead. That said, if you make trouble, I’ll put a magnum slug in your arm. If you try to get me arrested, like just now, I’ll add another to your head.”
I swallow hard and try to come up with something smart, or at least coherent, to say. Another voice answers before I can get myself into trouble.
“Put it down, Killer.” says the older mercenary driving van. Something about the way he says the last word leaves no doubt in me that it’s more than just a passing phrase.
“No deal, friend.” says the woman. “We can’t finish the mission if we’re rotting in a cell.”
The last comment is pointed, and seems to be aimed over my head and to Diner Boy on the other side of me.
“Oh, I don’t know.” he says, and I can detect a bit of shaky humor in his voice. Like most good Marines, he seems to be trying to make light of the situation, de-escalate the tension until the risk of impulsive shooting dies down.
“Three square meals,” he continues. “plenty of exercise. It’s almost like a spa if you think of it that way.”
His words draw a snort of amusement from the woman, and a full throated bark of laughter from the older driver up front. Personally, the joke doesn’t seem funny to me, but I can feel the tension bleeding out of the cramped, stinking quarters of the van nonetheless.
I remember enough about kidnappings to know that tense hostage holders are more prone to make mistakes. I already know that I’m on thin ice as far as the woman is concerned, so I’ll take any easing of itching trigger fingers that I can get.
The period of relief lasts longer than I’d like. Throughout the whole drive we’ve been clocking high speeds, punctuated by every curve or patch of rough road. That speed starts to lessen, though, a few minutes after the Diner Boy dispenses with his joke, and within moments, we’re still - the car engine moaning like a drunk from the stress we’ve put it through.
Changes in patterns tend to put my nerves a bit on edge. I’ve almost gotten used to being tossed around in the back of the van, and now that we’ve stopped, I half wish that we could have kept driving for a little while longer. Stopping here, wherever here is, means that we’ve probably come to our destination. While my captors, hungry for payment, may be happy with that, I am definitely not.
A shift in the sounds of the car tells me that I’m missing something, though. There’s tension in all three of the mercenaries again. I can feel it in the rigid muscles of Diner Boy on one side and the woman on the other. I can hear it in the sudden, seemingly forced regularity of the driver’s breathing. In people who are more than used to doing violence, breathing easy and steady isn’t the result of a lack of concern. Quite the opposite in most cases, including this one, where I think he is trying to keep himself calm.