Page 10 of Rescuing Nathaniel

Just as she passed by an alley that ran behind the row of businesses, including the bakery, Ava was vaguely aware of a delivery van stopping too close. While she loved living in the heart of Manhattan, it also meant putting up with a lot of traffic. Sometimes she missed the quieter neighborhood she’d grown up in. Coming from a very well-off family who ran a successful investment firm had come with a lot of advantages, including the leafy neighborhood with the huge house, the enormous yard, and an amazing pool she’d enjoyed as a child.

It also came with a lot of disadvantages.

Like being expected to marry for business rather than love and being kicked out of the family when you refused.

That was what was running through her head when hands grabbed her.

Working for Prey and being surrounded by highly trained former special forces operatives meant she knew self-defense. It had been drilled into her from the time she took the job six years ago. In fact, Eagle insisted that all employees who weren't part of an active team and ran their own drills attend self-defense lessons once a month.

She was actually pretty good at it.

Granted, she’d never had to put it into real-world situations, but she knew all the right things to do depending on how she was grabbed and held, and if the person had a weapon. She’d always been confident she had what it took to get out of a bad spot.

It turned out she was wrong.

The attack was perfectly coordinated.

Lasted for no more than a few seconds at the most.

Someone grabbed her from behind with an arm banded around her chest, pinning her arms at her sides as a hand clamped over her mouth. Something pricked her neck, and almost immediately, the world shimmered around the edges.

Ava fought.

At least, she thought she did.

But her efforts were uncoordinated at best, completely belying her training, and the worst part was, she wasn't sure if it was because she’d been drugged or because of the fear coursing through her system that made her forget everything she knew.

Her last thought as whatever drug had been injected into her system sent her floating into unconsciousness, was that she had failed.

Failure that was going to get her killed.

If only she’d known what awaited her on the other side of consciousness. That it wasn't rape and a quick death, but something so horrific she had never really contemplated it as a possibility. Already these men had taken one of her organs, and now she was going to lie there helplessly tied to a bed waiting for them to take the next, then the next, and the next, until there was nothing left.

“Ava. Come on, Aves, wake up for me. Wake up, Ava. Now.”

The insistent voice yammered in her ear, but she did her best to ignore it.

She didn't want to wake up.

Who would?

At least while she was asleep, she didn't have to think about how she was lying in a bed with an IV in her arm, and nothing to do but dwell on the fact that she hadn't saved herself. That all the training she’d done over the last six years had been useless the second she was no longer in the gym at Prey’s main office working out with her friends and people she trusted.

A failure.

That’s what her parents thought she was, and they were right.

“Please, Aves, wake up for me.”

The voice, so soft, so insistent, so the opposite to the way she’d been spoken to since she was thrown into the back of that van and woke up a prisoner of an organ trafficking ring, nudged her gently toward consciousness even though it wasn't what she wanted.

“There you go. You're doing great. Open those pretty eyes for me. They’re blue, aren't they? It’s hard to tell in the dark, but they looked blue. My favorite color.”

Blue was her favorite color too.

There was something so soothing, so calming about it.

Her parents hated that. Apparently blue was not an appropriate favorite color if you were a girl. She’d never understood why. Colors were just colors, there was no right or wrong when it came to your favorite. Girls could like blue just as boys could like pink.

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