Page 61 of Jacob

He opened the door and they rushed into the room. The empty room. “Clear,” Jacob croaked. Nick came back in from the bedroom and bathroom. “Clear. She’s not here.”

Jacob met Nick’s eyes. “She’s been taken. She’s in the hands of terrorists.”

ChapterThirteen

Her head hurt. Her hands hurt. Her shoulder hurt. Her left biceps hurt. Everything hurt. A deep pain that had come from nowhere.

She lifted her head, and blinding pain lanced through her head like a lightning bolt. For a horrible second, she thought she was going to throw up, as her insides rebelled against the pain.

But she would throw up in her lap, which would be horrible, because she couldn’t move. Swallowing back the bile, she looked down at herself. In an upholstered armchair but tied with cloth around the chest to the back of the chair, so she couldn’t stand up. Her hands were bound, too, with cloth. Even if she wanted to stand up, she couldn’t. And she didn’t want to. There was no strength in her body to stand up, to do anything. She could barely keep her head up. All her muscles were lax but hurt.

What had happened? She’d been working at her computer in the hotel room, she’d heard a sound and then… her mind blanked. And then she’d woken up here without any idea how she’d gotten here.

Where was here? It hurt to move her head and even her eyes, but she tried to take stock of the room she was in.

A… lab. She was in a lab, the kind of lab she was familiar with. A very advanced lab, every instrument the latest version. There was at least ten million dollars of equipment in this room, maybe more.

It was chilled, as labs had to be, and it even had that lab smell. Of electronics and fixing agents and ozone and, underlying that, disinfectants. She was starting to panic, but the familiar smell calmed her a little.

A clock on the wall said 12 though she had no idea whether that meant noon or midnight. The room was without windows. The last thing she remembered was checking her watch at 11:15 am, thinking she might have an apple. Would that be today? Yesterday?

Her watch! Ohmygod! Her watch had a tracker! Bless Jacob for thinking of it. She still had her watch, no one had taken it. She couldn’t lift her arm to look at it, but she still had it.

She didn’t know where she was, but Jacob would find out. He would find out and come get her.

But… something about the quality of the air hinted at being underground. Or at least encased in concrete. Could the tracker’s signal be picked up if she were underground or in a room with thick concrete walls?

What did she know about tracking signals? Was it like a car’s transponder? Could Jacob…

“Alex?”

She whipped her head around and instantly regretted it. The pain was so intense she blacked out for a moment. Her hand wanted to rise to her head but it couldn’t. She could only sit and suffer through it.

“Alex?”

That voice again. Familiar?

She slid her eyes to the right and gasped. “Elias!”

She almost didn’t recognize him. He’d lost weight and had a cadaveric look—skin gray, lips blue. He didn’t look injured but there were bloodstains on his lab coat.

He started sobbing. “I’m so sorry, Alex! My life is ruined! What have I done?”

The stabbing pain in her head had scaled down to a throbbing pain. Her mind felt dull and unresponsive but she could think again. A little.

“Elias, are you hurt?”

He lifted his hands. They were handcuffed, not bound by soft material like hers. His ankles were tied together. He seemed to forget that, and stood up and tried to walk to her, but he had to sit down again, hard.

“It’s been so horrible, Alex!”

The clouds in her head were dissipating. She was still in pain, but at least her head was starting to function.

Elias hung his head. “So awful. It’s been so awful.”

Well, Elias, bless him, was a scientific genius but he was also a narcissist and a bit of a prick. So far all he’d said concerned himself and what was clearly remorse at having been such a moron.

Finally, he made the connection. Alex, his colleague. Here, in Vostokova, if that’s where they were. And tied up, a prisoner. He frowned at her. “What are you doing here, Alex?”

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