Free Fall Read Online Free Page B

drawn her to him from the start.
    She pressed her hands to her eyes, dizzy from lack of sleep and minimal food. What if she was hallucinating about the whole mini spy drone? Charlotte’s Web up there could be wondering what the hell was going on. And damn, she really was crazy if she focused on anything other than doing everything possible to get out of here. It wasn’t just her life on the line.
    She blinked a final Morse code in the direction of “Charlotte.” Details about the guards and discussions she’d overheard, everything possible to protect the rescue team coming in. Would it be enough to help an extraction team before her turn at the inquisition?
    She’d taken her fair share of knocks from her three big brothers while playing basketball, football, and pretty much any other sport, because if she didn’t join them, she got left behind. She’d always punched right back. She’d held her own with her fists, fingernails, and whatever else she could lay her hands on. She would do the same here.
    Searching for any other possible tools among the stolen artifacts, she continued her rambling litany in hopes good guys were on the other side of that nano spy bug. “If somebody doesn’t send some antibiotics back here we won’t last long enough for you to ransom us off to our country in exchange for whatever the going rate is for students.”
    Rambling on for whoever might be listening, she pocketed the preserved jaw of some small animal to use like spiked brass knuckles. The tip of a tusk went in her sock.
    Too bad they hadn’t stashed her in the ancient war tools room. Just as she’d expected from the beginning, they were gathering artifacts to sell on the black market to fund their separatist group, headed by a radical warlord. The same group that had recently blown up the American ambassador’s private residence, hell-bent on stirring unrest.
    But they were planning something more here, something big. Maybe for when the vice president’s wife came to visit to bring national attention to the plight of women in the region? Stella had made progress with one of the guards by pretending to be a student sympathetic to their cause. But somehow, they’d grown suspicious or been tipped off.
    Years ago her mother had tried to help the same people who now held her hostage. Talk about irony. And she was still no closer to figuring out missing details from the day her mother died.
    The door opened again. Her stomach plunged. She tucked her ankle behind her other leg, just in case they caught sight of the bulge in her sock. The scariest of her captors—not the sneering bastard, but the man who showed no expression at all, a short lean man who should have appeared harmless but reminded her of a cheetah rather than a lion. Just as fast, strong, and lethal.
    Wordlessly, he grabbed her arm in a vise grip and hauled her from the room. Would the surveillance bug follow her? Was she on her own now? How close was help? She had to operate on the assumption she was being watched and that help was on the way.
    If she could just stay alive long enough.
    “Where are we going?” Down a dank hallway, past the two dead Americans tossed in the corner like sacks of garbage, not even a hint of dignity given to the lifeless hulls that once housed a human soul. She vowed to do everything in her power to make sure their families got their bodies back. “You really don’t have to do this. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
    She looked up at the camera in the hall. The enemy’s camera. She’d been left alone so far. The captors had gone for the older ones first, assuming she was a junior agent, low-level status, which meant less intel. They’d gone for the big fish first.
    Or maybe they hoped the sounds of torture would soften her up, make her break faster.
    She couldn’t weaken. Too many people in the field depended on her silence. Names. Lives.
    Guilt weighed her down. She’d been selfish to come to this region of the world