Page 23 of Hayes (Voodoo Guardians #37)

“Where are you taking me?” asked Victoria. The rope tied around her wrists was rubbing the skin raw, her fingers aching from attempting to pull free.

When the doorbell rang, the bodyguards ordered her to the bedroom and to hide in the closet. She did as they asked, but it didn’t matter. When she heard the weapons being fired and the men yelling at one another, she knew they weren’t there for Hayes. They were there for her.

Immediately, she tapped her comms, but there was no response. Was it possible that these men were jamming her communications? She ensured her tracking was on, then held her breath as a man opened the door to the closet.

“Hello, beautiful. You’re going to make me rich.”

One of his men hit her across the face, knocking her out. The next thing she remembered was being dragged through the dark tunnels.

“Hey! I asked you a question. Where are you taking me? What do you want?” she repeated.

He turned with fire in his dark brown eyes and sneered at her.

“Do not speak to me in such a tone again. If you do, I won’t care how brilliant you are, I will kill you and leave you for the rats. Or better yet, sell you to the highest bidder.”

Victoria felt her stomach roil, then she straightened, pretending to be braver than she was feeling. She simply glared at him, then felt him tug at her arms once again.

The only thing Victoria could do to remain sane was to think of everything she could do to get a signal to those above. With her tracker on and with the comms device maybe working, maybe not, her hands were tied. Literally.

“Your boyfriend surprised me,” said Aamani. “His lieutenant bragged about his intelligence and his connection to my nemesis, the Voodoo men.”

Victoria said nothing, hoping to keep her expression blank. He laughed at her, shaking his head.

“But when he told me that he found letters written to a beautiful girl. Victoria. I knew that I had something more special. Something equally as brilliant.”

“You don’t know that I’m brilliant. I could be dumb as a box of rocks.”

“I highly doubt that,” he laughed. “No, he went on and on in his letters about how brilliant you were, how beautiful. He was right, at least about that. Yet he never mailed the letters. I wonder why?”

“We weren’t right for one another,” lied Victoria.

She was shocking herself at how easy it really was. The women had told her stories of being kidnapped, taken by hostiles, confronted by killers, and how they lied, schemed, and maneuvered their way out of things. She could do this. She could do the same.

“You love one another. I can tell these things. But he did anger me by getting away. When I went to find him and saw those tiny footprints, I knew it was a woman. A very intelligent, resourceful woman. I don’t care for women with those characteristics myself.”

“I’m sure you don’t. It’s never good to have a woman who’s smarter than you.”

He turned so quickly, backhanding her, Victoria didn’t have time to move. Her body slammed against the hard rock of the tunnel, and she felt the blood dripping from her mouth.

“Do not speak to me in such a manner.”

“If you’re going to kill me, just do it. That should make the Voodoo Guardians happy,” she said through tears.

“Kill you? My dear, I need you. Desperately.” He yanked her to her feet once again and began pulling her along the dirt floor.

“You are going to help me infiltrate their communications systems, both theirs and those they sold to the government. You’re going to help me get into the aviation systems, the computer systems, all of it. ”

Victoria stopped, pulling back on the rope. She started to laugh, and Aamani came toward her once again. She threw her shoulders back and stared at him.

“Do it. Hit me again. I can’t do what you’re asking. I don’t have the skill. Even if I did, even if I somehow figured it out, they would have everything changed by the time I was able to find a way in. You will never get in.”

Aamani stared at her, wondering if what she said was the truth or if she was just leading him along. She could be right about the speed at which they would change the systems and outsmart him again. But he had to try. This country belonged to him, and he would rule it one way or another.

“Either way, I get what is locked inside that brain of yours,” he said with disgust, staring at her youthful body. Just her fair complexion and hair turned his stomach.

“I have nothing in my brain worth knowing,” she mocked.

“Well, I have a drug that says we’ll find out if that’s true. A little serum and you’ll tell me your childhood phone number and address and your social security number. A little more and I’ll break every code your filthy company has.”

“What is it with men like you?” she frowned, shaking her head. “Are you not happy just having a regular job? Living a regular life with a wife and children?”

“Do you have any idea what my country has been through? Do you understand what my people have been subjected to?”

“No. I can’t honestly say I know it all. I know what I’ve read, what I’ve researched, but I don’t know it all. What I do know is that violence begets violence. Either the Voodoo Guardians will come for you, or the Iraqi government will. It won’t matter who. You won’t survive.”

“You know nothing of my abilities.”

“And you know nothing of mine. I don’t know about communications systems, or flight systems, or anything else. I’m a schoolteacher. Yes, I teach math, but I teach middle-school geometry.”

“You’re lying,” he said, staring at her.

“I’m not lying,” she said stoically. “I can talk about angles and parallelograms and hexagons. But that’s all.”

“You’d better hope that’s not true, or you’re going to wish you’d paid more attention in class.”