Page 68 of Love Undercover
“You’re taking note of where we are,” Santiago said, smirking, bringing her attention back. “It’s smart, but it’s unnecessary. I’ll tell Chase exactly where we are. No need to worry your pretty little head about it.”
Oh, she would worry her pretty little head. Because that sounded ominous as heck, and a knot twisted in her stomach at the realization that she was to be the bait to lure Chase into a trap.
Santiago was smug, though it was hard to tell since it was his normal state of being. She had yet to see him ruffled or angry. But the smugness was magnified by the satisfaction rolled off of Rat Face in the front seat.
Regret about going with them surged through her again.
Though she figured going willingly or not wouldn’t have mattered much in the long run. She probably would’ve ended uphere regardless, so she tried to convince herself that she’d made the right choice. This way, they hadn’t used force, and possibly pain, to motivate her—drug her, knock her out, whatever means they might’ve used to get her to come with them. She was alert, whole, unharmed, physically fit enough to run if it came to it.
Her ankle presented a problem, but she could push through. Right?
It wasn’t until they were tearing down the highway in areas she fully didn’t recognize that Santiago made the phone call to Chase, taunting him, though she didn’t understand why he would give him the address to their destination.
To trap him? To trick him?
The dread grew heavier in her gut the longer they drove. Time crawled by, and like the disappearing sun leaching the heat of day, despair sucked all the hope out of her body.
She fought for the will, lugging the determination up to keep herself alive. Be sneaky, watch for opportunities, play them. Anything to survive and help bring them down, whatever that looked like for an inexperienced hippie kindergarten teacher who had a serious and unexpected passion for the undercover FBI agent who’d kidnapped her.
What a weird turn of events. She certainly would have something exciting to share when she started back to school in the fall. Assuming she’d even be able to tell them about this little misadventure. Maybe it would be one of those NDA deals, and if she told anyone, they’d have to kill her.
They didn’t really do that, right? And this wasn’t some spy ring.
Jail, then, probably.
As they tore down desolate country roads, she began to wonder just how far out from civilization they would take her. The sun was nearly down when they finally turned off onto a dirt road.
There wasn’t much to see other than the lonely stretch of land on one side and the smattering of trees on the other as they rumbled down the drive toward a squat warehouse. It was innocuous enough, but given her situation, it stirred a latent terror inside her that made her heart kick up a notch.
That building meant death.
She felt her impending demise so strongly in that moment, pulsing through her veins like a ticking clock, counting down the moments she had left. Each pump of her heart was numbered.
Santiago pulled out some kind of key fob, pressed a button, and what looked like a garage door rolled up, allowing the building to swallow the car. Her breath stuttered when the door shut behind them, engulfing the car in darkness. Only the dashboard’s illumination lit the cab of the SUV, casting the faces of both men in an eerie, unnatural glow.
She swallowed as Santiago turned toward her, leaning forward in the dark. She pressed her back against the door as her heart climbed into her throat.
His hand brushed her breast—deliberately?—as he reached. For the door handle, she realized when the door fell away from behind her. She tumbled backward out of the SUV. Landing hard knocked the breath out of her, and Santiago’s sadistic laughter permeated the blanket of darkness that was both terrifying and suffocating.
She choked on oxygen as she tried to suck it back into her lungs, and hands lifted her from the ground. The dark chuckle at her ear meant Santiago was sticking to his promise that Rat Face wouldn’t touch her.
The feel of his hands on her still made a shudder run through her body. They felt too hot through her clothes, too charged with whatever intention he kept barely concealed inside of him. But she couldn’t see his face or gauge what it might be in thedarkness as he walked her through a door and into another frighteningly dark room.
The hands disappeared, and she was left standing alone in the room, her breathing too close against the living, writhing blackness that surrounded her.
And then a light flashed on, and she flinched. Even though it dimly lit the room, she still found herself squinting after being immersed in such a deep darkness.
The light revealed a medium-sized room and no windows. Very little was kept here, and she struggled to understand what its purpose might have even been. All she knew was that the air was stifled and likely toxic without having windows for fresh air. It was a situation where she’d start mentally shopping for air purifiers if she had to spend a significant chunk of time in it.
The thought was stupid and intrusive, but it was all she could think about as Santiago prowled the room, moving like a mountain lion along the far wall to the desk that sat in the corner, which she hadn’t noticed before. There was also a small, black sofa that sat just to the left of it. It looked infrequently used and incredibly uncomfortable.
Travers hovered near the door through which they’d come, his beady eyes trained on her. Instead of a rat, he now reminded her of a hyena. It was like she was the gazelle that the lion—Santiago—had taken down and claimed, and Travers was the scavenger waiting for his turn.
But neither of them approached her. They’d given her a wide berth, and Santiago seemed like he was paying little attention to her at all.
Which made her feel more nervous than if he stared at her like she was his next meal as Travers did.
How long would Santiago keep his promise, she wondered as she looked at the creep again. The longer they stood there, the more restless he became. His eyes grew hungrier as they tookher in. Over and over, his gaze traced her shape, and she wished for Chase’s baggy clothes to bury herself in.
