Chapter Two
“Move. If you try to draw attention, I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
Head down, Isabella Strickland peered through her lashes at the man waving a black pistol in her mother’s face. Tanned skin, black hair, and a trimmed beard. He spoke in heavily accented English.
Not Greek.
None of the men were. That much she could tell. He was of average height for a man, maybe five-eight, but everyone was tall compared to her.
He herded them below deck of the yacht her father had rented for an evening dinner cruise.
Cold sweat dampened her forehead before anger rushed through her body, dulling the sharpest edges of her fear.
This cannot be happening. Not again.
A loose strand of honey-brown hair brushed Isabella’s cheek. She tucked it behind her ear and grimaced at the tremor in her fingers before wiping them on the hem of her white tank top.
Think. You aren’t a scared little girl anymore.
Her sister-in-law, Annalise, sobbed next to her, long dark hair clinging to her wet cheeks as she clattered down the varnished wooden stairs in a bright pink sundress and white sandals. She clutched her infant son, Brooks, who wailed, sensing his mother’s distress.
Their kidnappers had taken Isabella’s father and brother Rory to a different section of the yacht.
The two men assigned as her father’s security detail were dead—ambushed back at their vacation villa.
The man with the gun herded them into a bedroom cabin that smelled faintly of cool, stale air, diesel, and salt water. “You will remain here until it is time.”
“What have you done with my husband and son?” Isabella’s mother, Janet Strickland, was pale, her blonde bob slightly mussed, her short-sleeved blue shirt and white tennis skirt rumpled.
But her voice was steady, and it helped Isabella tamp down the scream that lodged in her throat, waiting for a chance to break free.
The cold grin and fanatical gleam in the man’s eyes iced Isabella’s blood. “The Great Satan believed the martyrdom of General Salehi would go unanswered. We will bring justice before the eyes of the world upon the criminal and the son who profits from his aggression.”
Isabella’s stomach cramped.
Annalise sobbed even harder.
When the cabin door slammed, closing them in, Isabella’s mother wrapped her arm around her daughter-in-law.
“Hush, Annalise, you need to be strong for the baby.” She guided Annalise, still cradling Brooks, over to the king-size platform bed.
Annalise settled against the pillows. She raised her tear-stained face. “I don’t understand. Why are they doing this?”
Isabella answered. “They blame Dad for the death of a senior Iranian military commander. He was targeted in a US drone strike when Dad was secretary of defense.”
This wasn’t the first time someone had blamed her father for a military action that had ended lives in the war on terror. Although no one in the US would mourn Salehi and the terrorist groups he’d helped fund and train.
The warm beige wood paneling and brown leather accents of the stateroom did little to soothe her tattered nerves.
Isabella skirted the bed and found the remote that opened the semi-sheer drapery covering the sealed rectangular window embedded in the hull just above the waterline, fighting the déjà vu crushing her chest and clogging her throat.
Her mother’s gaze found hers, filled with memories of another time and place. “Sweetheart…”
Isabella’s fingers curled. “I’m okay, Mom.”
Losing control was not an option.
Not for any of them if they were going to survive.
She forced air into her lungs, then released it slowly, counting each measured breath.
Stepping onto the bed’s crisp white coverlet, she peered out through the tinted glass. Although she had a feeling no one could see inside, she waved frantically, then pummeled her fists on the window in case the men standing at the far end of the dock could see or hear her.
No one turned in the yacht’s direction.
Annalise gripped Isabella’s ankle, her manicured French tip nails digging into Isabella’s skin. “What are you doing? If they hear you, they’re going to come back and shoot us.”
With a sigh, Isabella gave up and sat next to her mother and sister-in-law, the events of the past hour replaying in her head like a bad movie she couldn’t switch off.
Four men had gate-crashed the exclusive villa her family was renting.
It had all happened so fast.
Cracks of gunfire.
Men shouting.
She’d been in her room, on her laptop. By the time she’d raced downstairs, two men she didn’t recognize were holding her mother and Annalise at gunpoint. Two others herded her father and brother outside and into a white van.
A fifth man joined them at the harbor, on the yacht.
Their leader.
“What do you think happened to the crew?” The brochure Isabella had read last night said the yacht carried a crew of five.
Annalise’s eyes lit up with desperate hope. “Maybe they escaped. Maybe they’ve gone to the police, and a hostage rescue team is getting ready to storm the boat.”
Isabella stared at her fingers. “Maybe.”
Or maybe they’re all dead.
“We have to be prepared to save ourselves, if necessary,” her mother said.
The engines rumbled, vibrating the floor beneath the bed.
Isabella scrambled to her knees and peered back out the window as the yacht left its slip and passed through the narrow opening of a rough-hewn stone seawall that served as the harbor’s breakwater.
A circular medieval stone tower stood sentry on one side of the channel, a defensive battlement from a bygone age. Water slapped the hull in an angry rhythm, and the boat swayed as it passed from the calm, still waters of the harbor into the open bay.
She’d always wanted to see Greece.
Too bad she’d spent most of the trip on her computer. Not that it was anything new. She traveled internationally a few times a year for work but spent most of those trips inside convention centers and hotels, catching only glimpses of the cities beyond.
She’d been to Paris three times and never saw the Eiffel Tower up close.
“They’re taking us out to sea.”
Their chance to escape was slipping away with every yard the yacht put between them and land.
She had no doubt these men intended to kill her father and brother. What would they do to her, her mother, and Annalise?
Her gaze fell to the baby in Annalise’s arms, his wailing reduced to hiccups.
What would happen to her nephew?
Leaning over to press a kiss to his downy-soft hair, she breathed in the sweet scent of baby powder. “It’s okay, Brooksy.”
Even though it wasn’t.
Her father had wanted one last family vacation before his re-election campaign kicked off in earnest with a fundraising gala in Charlotte and consumed all their lives.
A gala her parents had asked her to oversee.
All that was moot now, wasn’t it?
Unless a miracle happened, her father and brother would be murdered, their deaths internet propaganda, and she, her mother, sister-in-law, and poor baby Brooks consigned to some unknown fate.
The news had made brutally clear what happened to women taken as spoils of war.
She swallowed down the bile that coated the back of her throat.
Death would be preferable.
Damn her father for doing this to her.
To his family.
Again.
As soon as the thought surfaced, it drowned in a wave of guilt.
None of this was his fault. He and her brother would likely die today, and she wouldn’t let her last emotion toward her father be resentment.
Isabella blinked tears away before her mom or Annalise noticed. If she allowed herself to be weak, she might fly apart in a million pieces and this time, not be able to put them back together.
Her fingers pressed into the smooth skin of her inner thigh, just above the hem of her khaki shorts. She pinched hard, letting the spike of pain center her.
Ever since the…incident when she was twelve, she’d built her life around order.
For it to end like this?
And who would miss her other than her best friend of nearly eight years, Talia?
These days, Talia was probably the closest thing Isabella had to family outside her parents, Rory, Annalise, and Brooks. Somehow, over time, she’d drifted away from the few close friends she’d made in high school and college.
Now she wished she’d had the courage to do at least one wildly impetuous thing.
Had dared to step outside her comfort zone.
Danny.
Her one impetuous thing.
It had been thirteen years since she’d seen Danny Mayhew. Yet their last evening together remained tattooed on the inner recesses of her brain.
Why had it chosen now to resurrect that memory?
A frown creased her brow. This must be what people said about one’s life flashing across their eyes when they thought they were going to die.
She’d dated. Stable men. Bankers. Attorneys. An accountant with a color-coded calendar.
They were exactly the kind of men she wanted.
None of them had ever made her feel half as alive as Danny.
Outside the window, the turquoise water deepened to cobalt as the yacht moved further into the bay toward the open water of the Aegean Sea.
Isabella paced the small confines of the cabin while her mother and Annalise huddled together on the bed with Brooks. “We’ve got to find a way to call for help.”
“Our phones are back at the villa,” Annalise reminded her. She’d stopped sobbing, but her red eyes and shell-shocked expression told Isabella she was barely hanging on.
“Your father…” Her mother’s voice hitched for the first time since they’d been abducted. She cleared her throat and tried again. “He and Rory will do everything they can to stay alive and buy us time to be rescued.”
“Who even knows we’re missing?” Isabella asked. “The security detail is dead. We’re on a boat with armed men and nowhere to run.”
She stopped pacing. Turned toward her mother and sister-in-law, a faint spark of hope igniting. “Dimitra—she’s probably called the police by now. They’ll be scouring the island and any boat traffic looking for us.”
If Dimitra was still alive. The housekeeper had come with their rental villa. Isabella hadn’t seen her when she and her family were taken.