Maggie K. Black - Kidnapped At Christmas

Then the world stopped shaking and all Samantha could hear was the steady beat of Joshua’s heart and his ragged breath inches from her face.

“You okay?” he asked. His voice was gruff, but soft. He slid off her into the snow.

“Yeah, you?”

“Yeah.” He stood slowly, reached for her hand and helped her to her feet.

“Everyone okay?” Alex called. He and Zoe were running toward them.

“Yes.” Joshua let go of her hand. “Thankfully the land mine wasn’t that strong. Though I’ll have to have a word with Daniel about reinforcing his windows if he wants to convert this place into a safe house.”

Both men smiled at his weak attempt at a joke, but she could see the worry filling their eyes. A hole lay on the porch in the place where her body had been. Judging by the mass of broken glass, the land mine had launched the cement bag through the front window. A high-pitched alarm was ringing from somewhere inside the house.

“I’ll go sort out the alarm.” Zoe ran toward the back.

“Make sure the police are called, if the alarm doesn’t do that automatically,” Joshua called after her, realizing as he said it she was probably already thinking two steps ahead of him.

Alex’s eyes ran from Joshua to Samantha and back again. “I’m going to go see if I can find something to tape the window up with until we can get some new glass installed.”

He disappeared after his sister. The alarm stopped. Joshua and Samantha walked around the side of the house. Rays of winter sunlight stretched across the snow around them. They stepped through the back door and into a warm welcoming kitchen. Even the shattered window on the other side of the house couldn’t dampen its hominess—and its heat.

The clock over the stove read eight fifteen. The smell of fresh bread and unbrewed coffee grounds filled the room. She slid off his jacket and gloves. “Thank you for these. I hope you’re not frozen.”

“I’m fine. There was enough adrenaline to keep me plenty warm.” Joshua kicked off his boots and brushed the snow from his hair. It was light brown, the color of maple syrup, short on the sides as she’d expect of a soldier, but just long enough on top for someone to run their fingers through. The eyes that now searched her face were the same hazel-green as a forest pond. Muscles rippled through his shirt. But somehow they didn’t make him look hard, only strong. An old-fashioned coffeemaker stood on the counter. He filled it with water. “I was going to make myself coffee. But would you rather have tea or something like that? There’s a whole box of different colored ones around somewhere. Also, there’s fresh banana bread. I threw it in the bread maker last night.”

“Coffee is perfect, thank you.” A slight smile crossed her lips. “Your mother raised you well.”

“Nope.” His smile grew tight. “Grew up in an all-bachelor home with just my gramps and dad. But they taught me well enough.”

Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth, like she should apologize. But before she could even start to figure out what to say, he kept talking.

“The closest hospital and police station are over an hour away.” He leaned back against the counter and slid his hands into his pockets. “But Alex used to be a paramedic and Zoe’s probably giving the police directions on how to get here as we speak. Now, you said you have no idea what happened or what you’re doing here?”

“That’s right,” she said. “I’m a journalist from Toronto. My job is researching and fact-checking mostly. Making sure those hotshot Torchlight reporters can actually back up what they’re writing about with cold hard facts. I was heading into work this morning to grab a tablet when I was abducted. But I don’t remember what happened exactly and I don’t know what whoever did this to me wanted.”

Light dawned behind his eyes and with it came an almost reflexive grin that warmed something inside her.

“If you’re a reporter,” he asked, “does that mean you work with Olivia Ash?”

“Yes! Olivia is my editor at Torchlight.”

“This is her country house.” His eyes grew wider. “My friend is her husband.”

No doubt she’d feel terrified later about what that could mean about the motives of the men who’d kidnapped her. Right now, she was just too relieved to discover she was in the home of someone she already knew and trusted.

“They’re staying at their apartment in the city until the baby’s a little bigger and the roads improve,” he added. “Which you probably know given you work together. I’m just thankful that I was here, and the house wasn’t empty.”

She dropped into a chair as the sudden joy she’d been feeling evaporated just as quickly. “Yeah, me too.”

“So, I’m guessing whoever did this to you wanted to get your boss’s attention and didn’t know Olivia wouldn’t be here. Did she have you working on anything dangerous?”

“I see pretty much every story before it goes to the press,” she said, “and I fact-check all the big ones. I’m like the factual safety net for our front-line reporters. It’s my job to comb through each article and circle every fact with a red pen that a reader might question, just to make sure our backs are covered. Of course, our reporters write about everything. But in my job, almost everything I work on involves something criminal. I even built what they call an ‘intranet’ database, called ATHENA, that pulls all of our stories and background research together in one place on our online server, where only Torchlight reporters can see it. It even includes pointers on understanding human behavior, criminal pathology and body language to help reporters figure out whether or not the people they’re interviewing are telling the truth. It’s like a simplified version of the ways police detectives learn to analyze criminal traits.”

But what would police make of her inability to remember how she’d even gotten there? She couldn’t remember a single thing about how or where they’d grabbed her.

It had been the same back in college when that guy from her floor had broken in. She’d barely remembered anything afterwards. And while they’d eventually caught the culprit and he’d admitted to being high at the time, thanks to her faulty memory they’d only given him a slap on the wrist. She’d been forced to switch schools and start over.

Then, the nightmares had started.

Joshua pulled his right hand out of his pocket. There was something gold and glittering between his fingers. It was a ribbon. And with a start she realized it must’ve been the same one that her abductor had gagged her with. He looked at it carefully, holding it by the very edges.

“If you were on your way to work, it’s entirely possible they were after any Torchlight staff they could get their hands on, and you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said. “But it’s also entirely possible this has nothing to do with the newspaper you work for and someone tried to abduct you for a completely different reason. Does this mean anything to you?”

He laid the ribbon over the table in front of her and for the first time she saw blurred streaks of what looked like Magic Marker. Between the snow and the struggle whatever had been written on the ribbon was smudged beyond recognition, except for the last two words:

always,

Magpie.

His eyebrow rose. He didn’t even have to ask the question.

“I have never heard of Magpie.” She could feel her lower lip quivering but it was more from frustration than fear. She should know. If there was someone out there upset enough at Torchlight’s reporting to abduct and threaten one of their journalists, she was exactly the one person who should already have a whole file of stories and research on them in the ATHENA database. “I have no idea who or what that is.”