Gail Barrett - Seduced by His Target

Which meant she was on her own. She had to decide on a plan, then help Henry escape while they still had the advantage of surprise.

Assuming he was alive.

Her eyes swung back to their captors. The men continued to lounge around the campfire, still not looking her way. But they didn’t need to keep watch. They’d blocked the mouth of the cave, trapping Henry and her inside.

Her hands bound, her movements awkward, she fought her way to her knees. Then she crept across the cold, stone ground toward Henry. Several difficult yards later, she reached his side.

“Henry,” she whispered, kneeling beside him. He groaned, and she tried again. “Are you all right?”

His eyes fluttered open, and he clutched his head. “Nadine?” He sounded dazed. “What the hell...?”

“Shh. We’ve been kidnapped. How do you feel?”

“Awful. Like a mule stepped on my head.”

She could imagine. “Can you loosen this scarf? My hands are tied.”

Grimacing, he released his head. “I’ll try.”

“Hold on. Don’t move.” She swiveled around, leaning close enough for him to reach her wrists. Then she waited while he fumbled with the knots.

“It’s wet. I can’t... Wait. Here we go.” A second later, the scarf slithered free.

Prickles stabbed her arms. She gasped at the rush of pain, then bit down hard on a moan. Hunching her shoulders, she rubbed her arms and hissed as the circulation began to return.

“Are you okay?” Henry whispered.

Still wincing, she sucked in a breath. “I’m fine.” Better than he was, at any rate. Trying to ignore her discomfort, she turned to him again. “Come on. Sit up so I can check your head.”

Scooting closer, she wrapped her arm around his waist. Then she slowly tugged him upright and leaned him against the wall. She slanted a quick glance at the men outside, but they weren’t paying attention to them. Yet.

“I’ve got a penlight,” Henry said. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled it out.

“Wait.” Nadine crawled around Henry, positioning herself between him and the cave’s entrance in case their captors looked their way. Then she clicked on the tiny flashlight and trained it on his scalp. “You’ve got a knot and a nasty gash. Look at me.” She angled the light toward his eyes. “Your pupils look good. Do you have any nausea? Dizziness?”

“Both. I probably have a concussion.”

“Hopefully a mild one. Does anything hurt besides your head?”

He grimaced. “Isn’t that enough?”

“Definitely.” A concussion combined with altitude sickness would cause anyone tremendous pain, let alone a man his age.

She eyed his head again. “We really need to clean that cut. I don’t suppose these guys have a first aid kit.”

“Doubtful.” He craned his neck to see the men outside the cave. “So who are they?”

“Good question.” One she didn’t have a clue how to answer yet. “I’m guessing it’s the drug cartel the agency warned us about.”

“I thought they’d moved out of the area.”

“That’s what they said. Obviously, they were wrong.”

Henry slumped back against the rock and closed his eyes. “So what are we going to do?”

“Get you to a hospital, for one thing.” He needed medical attention at once—an oxygen tank, a CT scan and several days of bed rest, preferably at a lower altitude.

But how could they escape? Henry wouldn’t last on foot. A jolting race down the mountain on horseback would make his concussion worse. And even if they could slip past their captors, where would they go? She had no idea where they were. She couldn’t roam aimlessly around the Andes in the darkness with an injured man in tow.

But neither could she leave him behind.

Her gaze gravitated back to the men. She didn’t want to bargain with their kidnappers. But what other choice did she have? And maybe they’d made a mistake. Maybe they’d captured the wrong people—and she could convince them to let them go.

“Stay here,” she murmured to Henry. “Let me deal with this.” Inhaling to gather her courage, she rose and walked to the entrance of the cave.

The captor with the turban stopped sharpening his knife at her approach. His gaze pinned hers, and she abruptly stopped, a stark chill scuttling through her nerves. His eyes looked cruel and utterly ruthless, as if every trace of humanity had disappeared from his soul. And she knew instinctively that this thug would kill her in a heartbeat without a qualm.

He muttered something she couldn’t hear to the dozing man. That man roused himself and sat upright, and her disquiet edged up a notch. He had the same full beard and swarthy skin, but he was heavier, with a coarse, flat nose and fleshy lips. He also wore a scarf, the black-and-white-checkered kaffiyeh that the Arabs wore. His silver tooth winked in the light.

Shuddering, she crossed her arms, the impression that they were Middle Eastern growing stronger now. But even with their head coverings it didn’t make sense. They had to belong to a drug cartel. She was in the mountains of Peru, not the Middle East.

But the way they continued to stare at her with something akin to hatred in their eyes...

Memories bubbled up, fragments from news reports she’d read—how Middle Eastern terrorists had formed partnerships with South American drug cartels who smuggled them into the United States.

Nonsense. She couldn’t go off the deep end and let paranoia skew her thoughts. She squared her shoulders and raised her chin. “Oiga,” she said in Spanish. “Excuse me.”

Neither man answered, and her belly made a little clutch. They had to understand Spanish. Unless they spoke an indigenous language, like Quechua or Aymara...

She racked her brains, scrambling to remember the handful of phrases she’d learned. “Imainalla-kashanki. Hello. Do you speak Spanish?”

The third man lumbered to his feet. He turned, and his gaze slammed into hers. And for a moment, she couldn’t move. The intensity in his eyes held her riveted, cementing her in place. Startled, she took in his dark, slashing brows, his collar-length coal-black hair, his high, bold nose in his chiseled face. He was tall and lean, with broad shoulders tapering to a flat belly and muscled thighs. His mouth was hard, his onyx eyes unreadable, not providing any hints of his thoughts. But his hot black eyes simmered with intelligence, prompting another flurry of nerves.

This was the man who’d attacked her. She couldn’t mistake him. The scratches she’d carved on his cheeks gave him away.

He wasn’t exactly handsome. Taken individually, his features were too rough-hewn for that. But he was striking, incredibly so, from the sharp perception in his unwavering eyes to the day’s growth of beard stubble darkening his jaw. He reminded her of a primitive warrior, an ancient desert sheikh.

A man she’d do well not to underestimate.

He skirted the fire and headed toward her, then stopped a few feet away. This close, she could see the straight, inky lashes fringing his eyes, the stark grooves bracketing his grim mouth, the sensual shape of his bottom lip. Her nails had barely missed his left eye, and one long scrape ran from the upper edge of his cheekbone into his beard stubble, adding to his ruthless look. He was half a head taller than she was, putting her at eye level with the hollow of his muscled throat. She tilted her head back to meet his eyes.

For several seconds, he didn’t speak. Instead, he continued to study her, spurring her heart to an off-kilter beat. Then he lowered his gaze, letting it travel slowly over the length of her, causing her heart to race. His gaze flicked back to hers, the impact no less powerful this time. And she couldn’t mistake the sexual awareness flitting through his eyes.