Chapter 29 #2
“I acquire leverage.” He said it without inflection. “I watched your camp, Dr. Calloway. Not just the patrols. The camp itself. I saw how he stays close to you. I saw how he looks at you. You’re not just a colleague to that man.”
My throat was dry. I swallowed against it, and it ached.
“As long as I have you, the man with the training and the guns has a reason to stop using them. He keeps his rangers in the bunkhouse. He lets my crew finish what we came here to do. And when we’re done, he gets you back. Unharmed.”
“And if he doesn’t stop?”
Nasser held my gaze. “Then this becomes less pleasant for you. And he’s the one who will have made that choice.”
I studied him while he talked. His forearms still on his knees. His shoulders loose. No tension anywhere in him. I’d spent years reading predators. A cat displaying aggression is loud—ears flat, fur up. A cat that’s genuinely dangerous goes quiet and still.
Nasser was quiet and still.
The calm wasn’t a performance. This man would hurt me if it served his purpose, and he wouldn’t if it didn’t. I was sitting in this chair, and he was merely looking at an asset on a ledger. A variable in his operation. Something with a value determined entirely by what it could produce for him.
“You don’t know him,” I said.
“We’ll see.”
He stood and crossed the room. He picked up a satellite phone, punched in a number from memory, and held it to his ear.
Two rings.
“Mr. Hughes.” Conversational. Almost warm. “You’re missing something this morning, and I have it.”
I strained to hear. Donovan’s voice came through the phone’s small speaker, a low vibration I couldn’t separate into words from where I sat.
“You’re going to listen carefully,” Nasser said. “Pull your rangers back. Every one of them. No patrols. No waterhole watches. No interference with my people. If you prevent me from having what I want, I will prevent you from having what you want. Forever.”
Donovan spoke. I caught the pitch but not the words.
“She’s right here.” Nasser lowered the phone and held it toward me. “Say hello.”
I leaned forward.
“Donovan.”
His voice came through. Just my name. Just Sarah. And everything underneath that single word told me he already knew. His control clamped down over something barely contained.
“Where are you? Are you—”
“I’m okay,” I interrupted. “I’m not hurt.”
I looked up into Nasser’s face. His flat expression. His hard eyes.
“Don’t give him anything.” The words came before I could weigh them. “Donovan. Don’t give this man a single thing.”
Nasser’s open hand came across my face.
The impact snapped my head sideways. A flat, hard crack that whited out my vision and sent a bolt of pain from my cheekbone straight through my jaw. I cried out before I could stop myself.
Donovan heard it. Whatever control he’d been holding broke apart on the other end of that phone.
Nasser pulled the phone back to his ear.
His free hand went to the back of my head.
His fingers closed in my hair at the base of my skull and pulled, hard, wrenching my head back until my throat was exposed and the ceiling filled my vision.
I swallowed down the groan of pain. He held me there and spoke to Donovan with his face close to mine.
“Listen to me.” The words were spoken in the same measured tone. “If I see a single patrol. If anyone interferes with my crew. She pays for it.”
Then his voice dropped, his breath hot against my cheek.
He told Donovan what his men would do to me. He described it in explicit detail. What they would enjoy and how long they would take. He said every word of it calmly, close enough that each syllable reverberated against my skin.
I kept my eyes on the ceiling. I listened to each statement spoken about my body as if I weren’t in the room. As he was cataloging what could be broken and how.
The businessman was gone. What stood in front of me was the rest of him. Everything the composure and the business-meeting introduction had been built to conceal. And he’d shown it to me deliberately. He’d wanted me to see it. To feel the contained anger pulse in the air.
Nasser ended the call. He let go of me. My head fell forward, and pain flared across my scalp where the roots had torn. He set down the satellite phone, straightened his collar, and walked to the door. He stepped through without a single glance back.
The door closed behind him. A soft click that was deafening in the silence.
I was alone.
The left side of my face was swelling. The skin tightened, heat building from my cheekbone up toward my eye. My scalp throbbed from where he’d held me. My wrists were raw where I’d wrenched against the bindings without realizing it.
And his words were still in the room. Hanging in the space between the walls. What his men would do. How they’d do it. Spoken about me, in front of me, while he held me down.
Donovan had heard all of it. He’d heard the hit.
He’d heard the sound I made. He’d heard Nasser describe what would happen to me in language designed to burn a hole through a man who couldn’t do anything to stop it.
Right now, wherever he was, that call was tearing him apart.
And the worst of it was that I’d made it harder.
I’d told Nasser he wouldn’t get anything, and Nasser had made me pay for it with Donovan listening.
He would have come for me, regardless. I knew that.
I just made sure he heard what would happen if he did.
My breathing was shallow and fast. My whole body trembled, a vibration that started in my fingers and climbed into my shoulders and wouldn’t stop.
Stop. Stop it.
I closed my eyes. Breathed in through my nose. Held it. Let it go. Again. The trembling didn’t stop but the breathing steadied, and the breathing was what I could control.
I opened my eyes. Or tried to, at least.
My left eye was pushing half shut from the swelling. I flexed my fingers behind my back. They still moved.
Falling apart was something I could do later. Right now, it wouldn’t keep me alive.