This was different.
This wasn’t fear of bullets and bombs. This wasn’t fear of danger and destruction. This was fear of?—
Stop it!
The words thundered through her head.
Stop it right now!
Letting herself fall prey to panic was a sure-fire way to lose her damned mind. And she needed her wits about her. Needed to keep sharp. Stay steady.
How long have I been here? she wondered, knowing it had been hours. But how many? Two? Twenty?
It was impossible to tell.
Also…where is here?
She’d been blindfolded and handcuffed in the chopper. Chopper! The Black Knights had a motherfucking helicopter, and Bishop hadn’t bothered to tell her about it.
He hadn’t bothered to tell her about a lot.
She’d been flown…somewhere. She’d counted twenty minutes before she’d lost track. Her ears had popped twice during the descent.
But where had they landed?
O’Hare airport?
No. Somewhere smaller. More private.
There’d been no roar of jet engines. No beep, beep, beep of cargo trucks backing up. Just the distant buzz of the city and the occasional muffled conversation.
Then came the trunk. She’d fought to keep from being shoved inside. She’d kicked and screamed. But all that had gotten her was a sweaty length of fabric shoved into her mouth and a strip of duct tape slapped over her lips.
In the end, she’d been folded into the cramped space like human origami. Every bump in the road had jarred her bones. Every breath had seemed to lack enough oxygen to feed her brain. She’d kicked at the enclosure until her thighs ached. But…again…she’d gained absolutely nothing.
And now…this.
She sat strapped to a metal chair. Ankles bound. Wrists cinched tight behind her back.
At first, her nostrils had flared at the scents pressing in on her. Wet concrete. Musky mildew. Fish? But she’d long since gone nose-blind to the smells. And now, the only thing that reached her nose was the slightly chemical odor of the duct tape beneath it.
A soft plip-plip-plip told her water dripped nearby. It reverberated. Echoed into empty space.
But it wasn’t a large empty space. She could feel the cold, hard presence of rock walls—or maybe concrete?—hovering around her. Over her.
Had they left her in a cave? An old bomb shelter? A bunker?
She was underground. She was certain of that.
Somewhere deep. Somewhere hidden. Somewhere where silence echoed, but there was no light. No time. No certainty.
Just…thoughts.
That was always the worst part of capture, of confinement. Not the pain. Not the thirst or the hunger. Not even the not-knowing.
It was the thinking.
Thinking about the mission. Thinking about where and how they’d gone wrong. Thinking about her team. Dead. All of them down to the last man.
