Page 3 of Sin of Silence

He stiffened, then shifted his arm, his shoulder flexing beneath the supple leather of his coat. He trained the gun on the bed, on the boy. Shaun moved to stand between the child and the gun. He’d have to shoot her to get to the boy. He lowered the gun a few inches and waved it at the door again.

What was he trying to say, and why didn’t he just tell her what he wanted?

He took a threatening step toward her and impatiently reached up to drag the sunglasses off his face. She stared, her heart pounding in terror. Without them, he should look more human, but he didn’t. His eyes were a startling deep blue, so dark they looked almost black, like the bottom of a frozen lake. He shoved his sunglasses in his jacket pocket and took hold of her arm in a painful grip. He gave her a shake and waved the gun, first at the boy, then back toward the door.

“You want me to go with you?” she asked breathlessly.

His eyes seemed to darken and he nodded, jerking his head again. She really didn’t want to leave the room with him, but she couldn’t allow him to shoot the child either. Maybe if she went with him, she could reason with him once they were away from other people.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s go.”

“I couldn’t find the prednisone, but we have…” Danilo walked into the room holding a bottle in his hand. When he caught sight of the man and the gun he stopped, his back against the door as it swung shut behind him. “Doctor Patterson?”

Her name was the last thing he said as a bullet went through his right eye, killing him on the spot. His body was still falling when the gunman dragged Shaun forward, forcing her to step over her dead colleague and out into the hallway. She twisted around to look behind her, catching the wide, terrified eyes of the boy, now sitting up in his bed and staring after them.

“You killed him!” Shaun yelled, yanking on the arm he was holding tightly.

He swung her into a wall, which shook ominously when her weight hit it. The whole structure was nearly as thin as carboard, meant to come down and go up quickly and easily. She would be a lot more than winded if he’d just thrown her into a real wall. He was much bigger than her and he was using his strength to force her compliance.

“Shaun – ”

Shaun looked over, her head moving against the wall. Janet was rushing down the hall toward them, heedless of the gun coming up toward her. Shaun threw herself against his arm, knocking his aim to the side. A bullet slammed through the opposite wall; the bullet meant for Janet. He shoved Shaun away from him and brought his arm back up, but Janet had flung herself into one of the exam rooms. Instead of going after her, he took Shaun’s arm again and hauled her against his side, running with her down the hall.

He was after her specifically it would seem. He could have grabbed someone from the reception area if he wanted any medical professional. Instead he’d gone to the trouble of searching her out in the hospital, putting himself and everyone else at risk. They rounded a corner where a patient was standing in the hallway.

“Get back!” Shaun screamed, not wanting him to get shot.

The man took one look and ducked out of the way.

They hurtled through the hospital at such a dizzying pace that Shaun lost track of where she was until they were standing outside, the sky a bright blur above them. She tried to look around, figure out what was happening, but her captor wrapped an arm around her middle, picked her up off the ground and flung her toward a white paneled van. Someone else grabbed her and dragged her inside.

She managed to let out one more scream before the gunman jumped in the back of the van, slammed the door shut and brought his hand down on the driver’s shoulder. The driver nodded his acknowledgment and the van started moving. The gunman turned back to look at her. She curled her legs protectively underneath herself and pressed her spine against the metal panel. The look on his face was a weird mix of satisfaction and despair.

Chapter Three

Oh god, they weren’t blindfolding her or anything, which meant they didn’t care if she saw where they were driving. They didn’t care if she saw their faces. Which probably meant that they weren’t planning on letting her live.

Despair, fear and anger rushed through her. She didn’t want to die. She was only thirty-four; she’d finally managed to claw her way out from under a mountain of student loan debt. She was widely considered one of the world’s most up and coming neurosurgeons, at the head of her field in successfully using cutting-edge technology during surgery. She wasn’t ready to lose all that.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, trying and failing to keep the fear from her voice.

Her captor glanced at her, his cold gaze sweeping her briefly before turning away. He was sitting on a bench across from her, his elbows on his knees, his body tilted toward the men in the seats at the front. He looked completely composed, as though murdering a nurse and kidnapping a doctor from a hospital was an everyday event for him.

“Please,” she tried again. “Talk to me. Tell me why you did this? Are you looking for ransom? Is someone hurt? Do you need a doctor?”

Nothing in his face indicated he was listening.

She tried appealing to the men up front, inching her way toward them, glancing over their shoulders to get a better look at her kidnappers. She hadn’t been able to see much during the hectic moments when she was dragged into the van. Her heart sank as she peeked at them. They looked almost as scary as the man who had taken her… the man who shot Danilo in the face.

A wave of nausea hit her and she pressed her hand against her stomach to keep it from climbing up her throat and spewing out of her mouth. She felt grief for Danilo, a young man killed in the prime of his life, and a nearly overwhelming fear for herself. The man who'd grabbed her was not afraid to kill, and he seemed to be in charge. Whatever they were kidnapping her for, once her usefulness ended, she would die.

“Please help me,” she begged, her eyes on the man who’d grabbed her, but her appeal aimed at the men in the front seat.

The passenger twisted around and shot her a glare. “Shut up and sit back.”

He spoke English with a thick accent she couldn’t place, but she didn’t think it was local. She’d been surrounded by Ukrainians for months; this man was different. From some other Eastern European country.

“Please, I don’t know why I was taken,” Shaun pleaded. “I think you have the wrong person.”

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