Page 4 of Her Eternal Warrior (Omega Sky #7)

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Jenny didn’t know how long it had taken her to roll to the side of the truck and prop herself up so that she wasn’t wallowing in sticky blood.

Too long.

She’d spit so much, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to pee again. Maybe, possibly, she wouldn’t end up with the world’s worst disease. Just thinking about it made her try to spit some more, but it was no use. She’d already tried to grab hold of her shirt collar with her mouth, but her hands were tied too tightly behind her back to allow her to reach forward.

“I’m fucked.”

“I’m so fucked.”

Thankfully, she’d found one of the wheel wells to brace herself against, but damn near every time the truck ran over another boulder she cracked her head against the side of the truck. At least she wouldn’t fall over.

Now she was going to suffer from a brain bleed along with some heretofore unheard of infectious, parasitic disease. She’d be written up in medical journals around the world.

Yeah, if they ever find my corpse.

“Snap out of it! You’ve faced worse challenges than this! Okay, maybe a backhand or punch from dear old Dad wasn’t worse than this but still. You survived.”

She shivered. Really?

“How in the hell can I be shivering in Bangladesh during the hot and sticky monsoon season?”

Bang.

Her head crashed against metal again and Jenny saw stars. She thought she might have actually passed out for a moment. She took a deep breath.

Dammit!

She’d breathed through her nose.

Gah! I’m going to throw-up. The stench.

For a moment she wanted to cry as she forced herself to take three steady breaths through her mouth.

No crying. She could breathe. She was alive.

Ahmed. How could she have forgotten Ahmed? They’d shot him.

But she’d only heard the one shot before they’d gotten in the truck. That meant that Sabina and Sonia were safe. They would be going for help. They’d tell people what had happened. Or would they?

How could they possibly go to the police and say they saw men in police uniforms shoot their brother and kidnap their co-worker? Who would possibly believe them? What’s more, if they ended up talking to police who were being bribed by the Awami League, wouldn’t they be targeted? They hadn’t heard the men say that they were actually kidnappers, only Ahmed had heard that.

This time when her head hit against the side of the truck, she wasn’t sure if it was because the truck went over something, or she was hitting her head against the side in frustration.

Does it really matter?

Shifting again, her elbows found an empty spot between the wheel well and the side of the truck, and she sighed with relief. Jenny tried to think of something good. Anything good. Closing her eyes, she started to take slow, deep breaths through her mouth. In, then out.

Soon she wasn’t breathing in the scent of warm copper.

She imagined herself at the top of Duke’s Run, in Breckenridge.

She savors the cold air as she sucks it in. Jenny crouches down. She looks, and her skis are in perfect position, and her heart starts racing.

The slope stretches out before her, steep and demanding. She feels a tremor of excitement and trepidation run through her body.

It’s go time.

Her poles dig into the packed snow and she starts to gain momentum. Her breath comes in quick bursts, and she grins as she sees trees streaking by her. She feels a sense of flow, a rhythm, as she twists and turns around the obstacles in her way.

I’ve got this.

She’s in total control, her speed increases and her heart pounds as she flies. It’s her and the mountain.

Together.

She’s not there to conquer the mountain, she’s there to connect with it. The wind whips against her cheeks. She relishes the purity of skiing, it was just her.

Her body.

Her mind.

Concentrating on nothing else but the cold air, the taste of pine and her ability to navigate every twist and turn.

She nears the bottom and begins to slow. She feels the burn in both legs as she presses against the hard-packed snow. She tries to stay upright despite the pain. Her knees absorb every dip and bump. She slips in the watery snow and her head hits the metal wheel well.

“No!” she wails. Her daydream melts away.

Jenny clenches her hands into fists, doing everything in her power to stay upright and push against the truck bed so that she can get back into an upright position.

Who was that moaning?

“Hello?”

Fuck, that’s me.

“Shut up, Rivers. There’s no crying when you’re kidnapped, remember?”

“We were just brought in,” Lieutenant Kostya Barona, of the SEAL Team Omega Sky said as his second-in-command, Gideon Smith, moved to the next picture.

Brax looked up at the screen and saw a photograph of a woman who was wearing no makeup. She was holding a staff in one hand, and she was wearing a backpack. Her hair was in one of those messy buns that so many women sported these days, but some strands had gotten loose and trailed halfway down her chest.

“This is Jenny Rivers. Two weeks ago, she went missing after hiking with a co-worker, Sabina Banik, along with Sabina’s brother and sister, Ahmed and Sonia, in the Sreemangal National Park in Bangladesh. The brother was shot and killed outside Ms. Rivers’ home. He wasn’t found until four days after the hike took place.”

“When was he killed?” Brax asked.

“The authorities in Bangladesh estimate four days prior. That would be consistent with when Ms. Rivers went missing, and the hike ended.”

“Was it a group hike?” Jase asked.

Kostya nodded. “A group of ten. They talked to some of the other members of the hike, and they said the Baniks were going to drop Jenny off first since she lived in a suburb of Dhaka, and then they would proceed home to their parents' house in the city. This hike was on a Saturday, and Ms. Rivers missed work on the following Monday without calling in.”

“What about the sisters?”

“They insist they left Ms. Rivers and their brother off at her house safely.”

“That seems suspicious. Even if there was something going on between the brother and Ms. Rivers, she would not flaunt it in front of one of her co-workers. Even if she was his sister. As a matter of fact, that would make it even worse,” Brax pointed out.

“Nah. If the Baniks lived in the capital of Bangladesh, they probably had more lax attitudes about that sort of thing,” Ryker McQueen said easily.

“No, Brax is right,” Gideon said as he looked up from his computer. He was the one operating the slide show. “It’s not just the fact that Jenny wouldn’t want her co-worker to know. A brother would never want his sisters to know about his sex life. That kind of thing is still kept hidden.”

“If that’s true, then their brother was killed in front of them,” Brax breathed out what they were all thinking. “Why wouldn’t they go to the authorities?”

“We’ve got to assume whoever shot the brother, took Ms. Rivers,” Gideon said.

“Is there a reason?” Ryker asked.

“Nobody knows anything for sure at this point. Currently, the two sisters are being detained at the American Embassy to be questioned again, to see if they will tell us what really happened that day,” Kostya said.

“Until then, are we just in a holding pattern?” Brax asked.

“Yes. I was advised about this today. The powers that be didn’t think I needed to brief you on this.”

“But you have a feeling, right?” Brax asked.

Kostya nodded.

“She is in charge of public relations for New Era Cyber Tech. Before she disappeared, she was the highest-ranking person for the company in Bangladesh.”

“Someone in public affairs?” Linc asked. “That sounds fishy.” Linc’s wife was a translator who worked all over the world. Not just for the US Government, but also for big companies. Brax would bet that he had been picking up stuff about how big companies worked.

“It is fishy,” Gideon nodded. “Just before she disappeared, the true executives for the Bangladeshi arm of the corporation had been pulled out, then the police came in and questioned Jenny at the office twice. This isn’t just fishy, it’s a bucket of three-day-old dead fish.”

“Why are the higher ups holding off on us going in?” Brax asked.

“Because her company has sent in their K&R team.”

“Please don’t say they’ve hired a subsidiary of Kraken,” Jase begged.

“Nope,” Kostya assured him. “The CIA has shut down every tentacle of that hydra. There is no way that some unwitting person will ever hire them again.”

“Yeah, we only have to worry about Lloyd Hicks,” Jase growled.

“The CIA and Interpol are on the lookout for him. They’ll find him,” Kostya assured his men.

Brax and Mateo exchanged a look. After what had happened almost a year ago, they were never going to believe they were safe until Ephram Brady’s baby brother Lloyd, was captured, or better yet, killed.

“So, get your go-bags ready, and stay close to home.”

Everybody nodded. If Kostya had a feeling, you could take it to the bank.