Page 6 of Thorn

“We’d better scramble to case the area before the flight comes in,” Thorn said.

“Nutsbe will be your support. Report anything unusual,” their commander said. “Remember, foreign soil means foreign laws, and foreign prisons.”

Chapter Four

Juliette

Toulouse, France

Saturday, 12:29 p.m.

She was strapped into the back seat. One man drove. One man sat beside her. Neither man wore a seat belt. Juliette hoped they’d be in an accident. Both men would be tossed from the car. Injured. Maybe even killed. She willed that to happen. Pictured it and prayed for it. But the car just drove farther and farther down the road.

Juliette had her head in her hands. The elevation of her blood pressure had made her head throb. She could feel her pulse beating in her temples. She focused on the tips of her boots to try to still the vertigo that swirled her around.

She wanted to focus on something that would pull her attention away from her current physical distress, so her system could calm, but she kept going back to the memory that came up when she saw the men’s faces. It was startling to remember something that happenedbeforethe accident.Beforethe surgery. Something that was old.

Before these men showed up, all Juliette had was new.

Juliette had been at a conference. Wearing a black pantsuit, she remembered the teal colored blouse that she thought made her eyes look particularly bright. She had her lecture notes in her hand as she walked through the corridor, nervous but excited.

“Doctor, right this way,” the man had said in a thick accent. He was the one driving right now. At the time, he had placed his hand on her elbow to steer her. And because of his accent, she hadn’t thought anything of the gesture. Perhaps this man didn’t know he shouldn’t touch a woman without her permission.

They’d walked back toward the ball room, and then beyond. She’d spun and looked over her shoulder. Ballroom C. That was where she was supposed to speak. When Juliette heard a click and felt something hard at her ribs, she looked down. The man on the other side of her, the one who was guarding her now, had pressed a gun into her ribs. “Keep walking. Don’t draw any attention, or I’ll be forced to shoot you.”

Wait. He’d called her “doctor,” and she was going to give a lecture. That wasn’t right. Itcouldn’tbe right. She had been a veterinarian’s assistant before her accident. Her father had shown her a diploma and talked about how much she loved animals.

Why would she be seeing these images? Why did they seem so real?

Not just the faces but the voices.

On her grandmother’s street, the man had spoken to her in Russian, and she had both known it was Russian and known what he was saying. True, in the past her father had told her that she’d studied Russian in high school. But thatdidn’texplain the thing that she’d call a memory. And itdidn’texplain why this man sat there with a gun dangling between his knees.

In her memory, when she was wearing the black suit, he hadn’t spoken Russian. He’d spoken in English. “Doctor, right this way.” Maybe she had been with the veterinarian? Was there another person in the memory walking with them, someone else at gun point?

Had this man mistaken her at the time for someone she was not, and she was just too startled to respond? But she wasn’t startled. Nothing had seemed wrong until they passed the ballroom door.

Why did he point a gun at her then?

Why was he pointing a gun at her now?

How would these men even know she was in the suburbs of Toulouse visiting her grandmother?

Juliette heard a truck pulling up beside them.Please, tip over.She sent out her thought waves.Or don’t see us and push us off the side of the road. Hit us. Hit us!She thought so hard that the rat-a-tat-tat in her head became the booms of a kettle drum. Juliette panted so she wouldn’t vomit from the pain.

They kept driving and driving.

Never turning.

The same highway. It had been hours now.

They had stopped for gas, and the men had switched places.

They brought her some ginger ale and salted crackers; she must have looked pretty green to elicit that response. Juliette knew these men didn’t care a smidge about her comfort, they probably just didn’t want to have to drive in a car full of vomit.

Maybe I should vomit?Juliette discarded that thought. She was fairly sure the men would retaliate, and her body couldn’t handle much more. If she’d had her dog with her, would she be here? They’d probably have shot Toby there in the street. Toby would be dead. It was best that she’d left him at home.

Juliette leaned back and closed her eyes. She wondered if anyone would report that she was kidnapped from the streets of Toulouse.

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