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Chapter Fourteen
Ariella
With my back pressed against the cold brick, I tucked my knees to my chest.
Hazel sat to my right, pressed tight against my body as we were crammed together in the lobby.
I’d trained with the C.I.A. on how to take out an assailant in a hostage takeover, but there wasn’t a class that involved eight armed men versus a tech operative. I’d never had any exciting field opportunities. I’d sat in hotel rooms in foreign countries listening with surveillance equipment. That had been the extent of my excitement.
This went beyond that, and quite honestly, I could have done without the thrill. I didn’t like high-adrenaline adventures, and this one was making my heart hammer in my chest.
Having autonomic dysfunction sucked on a normal day. Today it really wreaked havoc on me. It took every ounce of strength to force my body to stay calm, to not tremble even though the fight-or-flight reflex had taken over.
My breathing exercises sucked. Biofeedback was a great tool with the right equipment. Seated on the floor with masked men threatening us with guns was not the right time to use it.
I wished I would have had a weapon. Although what good would it have done? I wasn’t likely capable of stopping eight men, maybe one or two on a good day. Six had stayed with us, and the other two who had disappeared returned, but Mason wasn’t with them. Where was he? Was he alive? Had they tortured him?
I tried to think of anything else. Puppies. Summer sunsets. Surfing at the beach. Jaxson. The last one brought a faint quirk to my lips and it made my stomach flop. I hadn’t wanted to think about him.
The man who Hazel was afraid of cleared his throat. “How much longer are you going to keep us? Some of us have business to attend to.” He had a heavy accent, definitely Russian. I’d studied languages as part of my curriculum at the C.I.A.
The shortest of the masked men stormed over to the Russian and shoved the barrel of the gun into his chest, poised against his heart. “You’ll shut up!” the masked man barked.
“Or what? You’ll shoot me?” the Russian snorted a laugh, unphased by the threat. However, he didn’t physically fight back. “You don’t scare me. I’ve killed cockroaches bigger than you.”
“That’s Franco,” Hazel whispered into my ear.
She’d mentioned that earlier, but I hadn’t known which one he was until now. There were two greasy-haired thick men in suits who sat on the floor against the opposite wall.
If the bastard shot Franco, he’d be unknowingly doing all of us a favor.
“You may not be afraid of death, but what about if I kill your friend?” The masked man moved the barrel of the gun away from Franco’s chest to the other man’s head. “I’m itching to pull the trigger.”
“Go ahead and do it,” Franco said. He sounded bored.
Was it some form of reverse psychology?
I couldn’t see the masked man’s eyes from across the room. We all watched. A heaviness fell over the room. Several soft gasps of fear from hostages spilled out.
“Enough!” a larger man wearing a mask and waving a gun pushed the barrel away from the man’s head. He grabbed the shorter man by the arm and dragged him down the hallway.
“Coward!” Franco shouted.
My hands trembled as I expelled a nervous breath. The men holding us captive weren’t murderers. At least not yet. What were they doing taking hostages at the resort? What could they possibly hope to achieve?
One of the masked men whisked a woman, her hands bound behind her back toward us. “Let me go!” her voice carried down the hallway.
Emma?
Her long brown hair covered her red splotchy cheeks and eyes. Had she been crying?
“Leave me alone!” Emma slipped away from the masked man’s grasp and landed her gaze on me. She sniffled and collapsed onto the floor in a heap at my side.
“Did they hurt you?” I asked, my voice hardly above a whisper.
The masked man lifted the handle of his weapon and pointed it at my forehead. “Quiet!” he snarled.
Trembling, I lowered my gaze. I didn’t want to appear threatening. The last thing we needed was garnering Franco’s attention and him noticing Hazel beside me.