Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
July 12 th
3:40 P.M.
A sharp intake of air was the only sign Willow gave that anything was wrong.
But he’d heard it.
Heard the slight snap as one of the delicate bones in her finger was broken.
Rage, unlike anything Cooper had ever experienced, flooded his system. These men would pay for hurting Willow. Pay with their lives. Every single one of them. He would hunt them all down and rip them to pieces with his bare hands.
It wasn't until he heard laughter that Cooper realized he was growling at the men.
“Seems like he cares a little too much about a simple broken finger,” the man said, clearly amused.
“Because he’s a good man,” Willow said, her breathing heavy, but determination flashing in her turquoise eyes. His little fighter was still standing, and while he absolutely hated that she was trying to protect him when it should be the other way around, he was so proud of her.
Again.
Even when he thought he was already as proud of her as he could be, she went and upped the bar again, proving that she was every bit the warrior he had trained to be and without the grueling training he’d gone through.
It was just who she was.
“He’s a thief,” their tormentor said. “He took something that didn't belong to him, now he has to pay the price for that.”
“I don’t belong to Professor Mahmoud,” Willow snapped, sounding completely offended by the insinuation. “He kidnapped me, held me against my will, and beat me daily.”
“You thought you could take him on, and he proved to you that you lost,” the man said with a shrug.
“Only I didn't lose, did I?” Willow said, goading the man even though she had to know that would only make things worse for her.
“Seems like you did.” The man pressed down on the hand that was still on Willow’s almost definitely broken arm. Her face tightened, pain bracketing her lips as they were pressed into a thin line, but she didn't cry out in pain, and the determination in her eyes only grew.
“Because now you kidnapped me?” Willow asked. “Doesn’t change anything.”
Annoyance flared in the man’s black eyes. “Tell me what you did.”
“I'm sure you can figure it out,” Willow shot back.
“You were only gone a few hours, less than a day, you could not have done anything drastic,” the man said, although there was a thread of doubt in his voice.
Willow rolled her eyes.
Straight up rolled them like she wasn't cuffed to a chair, littered with bruises, with a freshly broken finger. Cooper didn't know if he wanted to cheer her on for her bravery or spank her pretty little backside for being so irresponsible as to invite their attacker to cause her more pain.
“Yeah, because there’s no such thing as phones and the internet. I already did what I needed to do,” Willow told their abductor .
With a snarl, the man grabbed the finger he’d just broken and twisted it viciously. Willow sucked in a pained breath, and even from where he was, Cooper could see tears of pain shimmering in her eyes, but somehow, she managed to stop them from falling.
“I told my boss to go ahead and publish what I already have if he doesn’t hear from me in a week. It’s already over,” Willow said, triumph in her voice.
Cooper had no idea if that was true or if she was just playing their captors. He had lent her his phone, and she had contacted her boss after she’d told him what she knew about the professor and how he was radicalizing students at his university. Maybe she had told her boss that, or maybe she was bluffing, either way, Willow was right, it was already over for Professor Mahmoud. There was nothing to be gained by abducting them. Even if Willow was dead, it wouldn't stop the story from being published, and he had no doubt she knew enough to make the man’s life hell.
“You may as well let us go, it won't change anything, and I don’t care about you. You're just mercenaries, I don’t even know if you’ve worked for the professor before. Maybe this is your only job for him, or maybe you're part of Allah’s Warriors along with him. Either way, he’s the head of the snake and the one I'm after. You don’t have to go down with him, you can walk away now, let us go, and put as much distance as you can between yourselves and the professor so you don’t go down with him. Doesn’t matter how many contacts he has, he's not getting out of this.”
Willow spoke so confidently, and that she could do it while in pain, spoke only of her strength. She believed in this fight, and she was going to keep fighting until she took her final breath.
He just had to figure out how to ensure that didn't happen today.
So far, there were no opportunities he could use. Given enough time, he could probably get free from the zip ties binding him to the chair, but to do that, he’d need them to be left alone long enough. If he could get free and get his hands on a weapon, he could get them out of there.
If he could .
But right now, he couldn’t.
Which meant he had no choice but to watch as the enraged man standing before Willow clamped a hand around her neck, squeezing as he let out a string of what Cooper assumed from his limited Arabic were curses.
“You have ruined everything, woman,” the man snarled at Willow, getting right in her face as it turned red, her body lacking the oxygen it needed.
“Can't kill her now,” one of the other men said, stepping up and resting a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Boss wants that honor himself.”
While hearing that made his blood turn to ice, at least Cooper knew they had a little time for him to try to figure something out. Professor Mahmoud was likely already on his way, but he wasn't there yet, and that meant they at least stood a chance.
However small a chance he’d take it.
At least it was something.
Breathing hard, the man stepped away from Willow, looking down at her with furious disdain. “You think you're so smart.”
“I'm smart enough to figure out what your boss was doing and gather proof,” Willow said, voice raspy from a man’s hand around her throat for the third time in less than twenty-four hours.
“Proof that my boss can make disappear,” the man countered.
“I don’t think so. Not this time. Not with me disappearing while in Egypt following him. That’s too big a coincidence to ignore. There’s no way to paint me as incompetent, or as having some sort of grudge, or even just crazy if I'm nowhere to be found.”
Willow was right.
Unfortunately, Tarek Mahmoud was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. If he killed her, it only gave credence to Willow’s claims. But if he didn't and he let her go, she would back up everything she had to say with the fact that only a guilty man would abduct her and try to kill her.
The man knew it too because he cursed again and then his fist flew toward Willow’s head, connecting with her temple. Her head snapped to the side, and her eyes rolled back in her head as she passed out .
“You should have left it alone,” the man told him. “Because now you're going to suffer the same fate as her.”
With a final snarl in Willow’s direction, the man turned and stomped away across the room, no doubt to call his boss and deliver the bad news that life as they knew it was already over, they were just waiting for the clock to countdown and their world to implode.
Looking at Willow’s still form, slumped forward, held in place only by the cuffs on her wrists and ankles, Cooper couldn’t have disagreed more. If this was how his life ended, he knew he would have made both his parents proud. Helping an innocent in need was who his mom and dad had been, and they would both have adored Willow.
With her determination to do what was right regardless of the danger it put her in, and her strength in the face of fear, she was everything anyone could want.
Which was why he had to find a way to get her out of this alive.
She’d tried to protect him, lied to try to save his life, he would give her no less in return.
Whatever it took, he was going to find a way to get her back home to her life even if it meant he died in Egypt.
July 13 th
1:05 A.M
Thankfully, they’d been left alone after the leader of their band of abductors had knocked her unconscious.
Willow had no idea how long she’d been out, but it was enough for Cooper to start panicking.
Since she didn't really think of the former Delta Force operator turned Prey operative as a panicker, she knew he was truly worried.
Not that he was the only one.
As they’d sat tied to the chairs in the big empty warehouse, they’d watched through the windows as the sun sank and the room grew dark as night fell. She thought the professor would have arrived by now. They couldn’t have driven for more than two hours or so, possibly less, so they weren't all that far away from Saqqara, which was only a thirty-minute drive or so from Cairo.
Why wasn't he here?
What did that mean for them?
Despite her lies that Cooper didn't know what Professor Mahmoud was up to, no one had attempted to let him go. Maybe they’d set him free after they killed her.
No.
They weren't going to do that.
Whether she lied or not, they’d never been going to let him go.
They couldn’t.
Whether he knew what had brought her to Egypt or not, he knew she’d been held against her will by the professor. That alone was enough for him to be killed.
A grumbling sound had her lips curling up into a small smile despite the direness of their situation. “Hungry?” she asked, looking over at Cooper who shot her a sheepish smile.
“I'd say no, but my stomach gave me away.”
She huffed a small chuckle, wincing as the small movement aggravated the pain in her head. Blood had flowed down her face from the wound the blow that knocked her out had inflicted, and the feel of it sticky and crusty against her skin was almost as annoying as the pain itself.
At least there was one benefit to a concussion.
Nausea had stolen her appetite, and even though she hadn't eaten for hours, and before that had been half-starved for two weeks straight, the thought of food made her ill.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Just because Cooper kept telling her that none of this was her fault she couldn’t stop feeling otherwise.
They were here because of her.
That was just a fact.
How was she supposed to be okay with it?
Sure, it had been Cooper’s choice to investigate when he no doubt heard Darius strangling and spanking her, but she had been the one who had allowed herself to get kidnapped in the first place. She should have been smarter, should have been stronger, should have done something differently.
“Don’t make me say it again, honey,” Cooper told her. “You know this isn’t on you. You didn't force Mahmoud to join a terrorist cell. You didn't force him to start targeting young men at the university to convert them. You didn't force him to come up with a plan to plant radicalized young men in various places in our country and then coordinate an attack. And you certainly didn't force him to abduct and torture you. None of this is on you. The blame lies squarely on the shoulders of one man.”
“Why isn’t he here already?” she asked, even though she knew Cooper couldn’t know the answer to that question.
“Don’t know, but I'm going to count it as a blessing. He’s already played with fire and almost gotten burned, I don’t think he’s going to drag things out this time.”
Willow swallowed down a rush of bile.
She knew exactly what that meant and she agreed.
This time the professor wasn't going to keep her alive for weeks while he had his fun doling out daily beatings and watching her wither slowly away.
This time he was just going to get the job done.
Kill her.
Dispose of her body.
Try whatever he could come up with to mitigate the damage her article was going to cause.
It would be one thing if she was going to be the only one to suffer that fate, after all, this was her fight, but knowing that Cooper would suffer along with her was too much.
Tears leaked out of her eyes, and she didn't bother to fight them back.
It hurt too much knowing this man who had risked everything for her was going to wind up dead because of her.
“Shh, honey, don’t cry,” Cooper whispered, his voice soothing only this time it couldn’t wash away the knot of terror lodged in her chest. “It’ll probably be quick. ”
“Not why I'm crying,” she said through her tears. “I'd take a long, painful death if it meant you got to live.”
“You're crying over me?” Cooper asked like he couldn’t comprehend that.
“Of course. You saved me and now you're going to pay the ultimate price for that.”
“I'm not giving up yet,” Cooper said fiercely, and as she looked at him through the tears filling her eyes, she could see new determination on his face. “As long as we’re alive, there’s still a chance.”
A chance, maybe, but not a big one.
They were still cuffed to the chairs, the men were on the other side of the room whispering amongst themselves, with their weapons slung over the backs of their chairs. Any move they attempted to make would be seen and stopped before they could do anything. And even if they could somehow silently slip out of their bonds, they would never make it to the warehouse door without being shot.
Lapsing into silence, both lost in their own thoughts, Willow’s head jerked up when she heard the loud, unmistakable sound of an approaching helicopter.
For a second, she wondered if somehow Prey had managed to dredge up their location and mount a rescue. That idea was quickly squashed when she saw the expression on Cooper’s face.
This wasn't his people coming to rescue him.
Which meant it was likely a herald of Professor Mahmoud’s imminent arrival.
So, it really was over.
Death was mere minutes away.
Maybe the professor would torture her a little first, try to find out exactly what she had on him so he could try to formulate a plan on how best to wriggle out of the charges that would no doubt soon be coming.
But even if he did, it would only delay her death by minutes at the most, and possibly not delay Cooper’s at all.
When the men began to approach them, Willow was caught off-guard. She would have thought they’d head outside to meet their boss. The roar of the helicopter’s blades was deafening, it must have been landing right outside the warehouse .
There was no way to protect her ears from the too-loud sound, so instead, she focused on trying to look strong and brave as the men stopped before them.
“End of the line,” the leader snapped, a look of glee on his face. It was clear these men worked for the professor and weren't just a random group of mercenaries he’d hired for this particular job. Willow hoped whatever investigation was started because of her article wound up bringing these men to justice as well.
She wanted all of them to pay.
For Professor Mahmoud’s entire house of cards to come tumbling down.
If it was the end of the line, at least Willow knew she could be proud that she had fulfilled her promise to her father. Her life had meant something, she’d taken what evil had been done to him and turned it into something good. Her article would dismantle a dangerous terrorist group. Sure, another would rise to take its place, but she had still done something good.
Instead of standing beside them, two of the men moved forward to cut the ties binding both her wrists and ankles to the chair, and Cooper’s. Hands immediately clamped around her shoulders, pulling her to her feet and over toward the door.
She stumbled, partly because her limbs were numb, partly because she was in pain and dizzy from the concussion, but also partly because of shock. This was the room where she believed she would take her final breath, but it looked like she was wrong.
It looked like they were going to be transported in the helicopter because Professor Mahmoud hadn't entered the building, and they were being led out of it.
Transferring them someplace else allowed for a margin of error.
A chance.
Hope.
Rejuvenated, Willow didn't fight as the men dragged her out into the still-warm night and toward the helicopter, just a short walk away. She had to be ready, Cooper would be formulating a plan, she knew he would, so she had to be on her game ready to do whatever he needed of her .
Once already she’d prayed for help, to be saved, and God had delivered in the form of a sexy special forces warrior who had saved her from certain death. Tonight, again, she had to believe that a miracle could be waiting for them, all they had to do was figure out how best to use this situation to their advantage.
Because if they didn't, if they allowed this chance to slip through their fingers, there wouldn't be another.