Page 24 of Her Wicked Hero

“Yes, why?” Marcia asked.

“Querida, your face,” Zed gently cupped her cheek. It felt inordinately warm to the touch, he prayed to God that none of the bones in her cheek had been broken.

“This is nothing,” Marcia smiled grimly. “I’ve had worse when I played goalie on my soccer team. It’s Hana we have to worry about.”

“Fair enough,” Zed kept his laugh quiet. “Tell me what happened,” he said as he dropped his hand.

“I shot Raymond three times, but I failed. I didn’t manage to kill him.” Zed could tell that Marcia had been replaying the events in her mind and was angry at herself. She needed to calm down.

“Marcia, start at the beginning. Take me through what happened after Raymond kidnapped you. I especially want to know anything he might have said about why he took you, and what he planned to do with you.”

Marcia didn’t immediately start talking, she took a deep breath to collect her thoughts. She reminded him of one of his colleagues who was going to brief their lieutenant.

“After he took me, it was what you would expect. He tied me up, and it was a forced march to the river.” Marcia looked off into space for a moment, and Zed knew there was more than she was telling him, but then she continued. “The important thing is, I finally figured out how to get information from him.”

“How?”

“He likes women to be all subservient. As long as I kept up that attitude, I could ask him questions. He didn’t tell me much, but he said some things. It was frustrating. When I tried to get more from him, he caught on and got angry.”

Before he could ask her what, she was continuing.

“Did Mr. B. fill you in on the off-the-books ops he’s been running?” she asked.

Zed nodded.

She took a deep breath and nodded. “Raymond was in on the one that went south, the one where the Saudi palace was bombed. His friends died, but he got out alive. He’s holding a major grudge. At the heart of this, he wants Mr. B. to suffer, so torturing his daughters is high on his list, but the guy is greedy too.”

Zed waited.

“There’s somebody named Jefferies. I couldn’t get a bead on who that was, but apparently, Raymond thinks Jefferies will pay for me. I don’t know what my value is to him, or what he’s going to do for me.” She gave Zed a hard look, “I never let on that I wasn’t Lesley Brockman.”

“Good girl.”

Suddenly she wasn’t in report mode. She raised her eyebrow. “I’m not a dog.”

Zed bit his lip. “Well okay then,” he drawled. “The phrase good girl has now been wiped from my vocabulary.”

“Good boy.” He raised an eyebrow, and she sighed.

“Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, Jefferies. He said he could get a really good price for me. He said something about Mr. B. having access to a slush fund for his ops and being able to funnel money for my safe return. That’s all I got before we got to the river…” She bit her lip.

She went silent, lost in thought.

“What happened?”

She shook her head.

“Marcia? How’d you get on the boat?”

She was still silent. Something had happened, but for some reason, she couldn’t share it yet. Zed tried another tactic.

“How did you get a gun?”

“After we got on the boat, Raymond was demanding I make him food. Then he wanted something to drink, so I went into the galley. In one of the cupboards, I found a really old pistol. It was loaded, so I hid it in my jeans.” She pulled it out of her pants and handed it to him.

“Jesus, Marcia, this is a relic. It could have gone off at any time and killed you.”

She tried to pull it back out of his hand, but he wouldn’t let go of it. “Hey, I wasn’t stupid. I made sure the safety was on. Anyway, what the frick else was I supposed to do? Raymond was a murderer.”