Page 6 of No Way Forward

“Wha—?” Shock took her ability to speak for a moment. “Z-zaid? H-how did you find me?”

“I—”

A shot rang out. Someone shouted. Something like a heavy thud filled her ears, and then Zaid collapsed against her. Because he was so much bigger, she went down to the ground, trapped under him. A prick in her arm made her wince. One of the men gave her a shot. Her head spun and vision blurred. Then she was out.

A groan woke her. The enclosed space unsettled her, throwing her against something bulky. She tried to bring her hands up, but they felt weighted. Another moan in the darkness, and she knew where she was. The bad men had stuffed her and Zaid in the trunk of a car.

Move, Novette. Come on. Get it together.

“Zaid?” she whispered. “Wake up, Zaid.”

“…vette.”

“Yes, I’m here. Please, wake up. I need you.”

She managed to feel around in the darkness and found that Zaid’s hands were cuffed but not hers. Recalling the gunshot, she checked his body the best she could but couldn’t detect a wound.

“Zaid, we’ve been kidnapped. If you don’t wake up, we can’t get out of here.” She touched his face, remembering every detail from five years ago. He’d looked older when she saw him earlier, but still crazy handsome.

Dark hair, silver eyes that had always looked like a person didn’t want to cross him in a dark alley, and a big hard build from years of training. Zaid had taught her the basics of self-defense after she begged him every day for a week. He’d said she didn’t need to learn anything because her dad had bodyguards and that he would always be there to protect her. Now look what happened? Not that she’d done very well getting away from the two men. Maybe she was rusty.

“We have to escape, Zaid. Do you have a gun?”

He came to enough to chastise her. “You don’t know how to shoot, and you’re afraid of guns.”

His speech slurred, making her nervous. She feared he had a concussion. It might be up to her to think of a way out of this mess. The car lurched again, and she fell against Zaid’s chest. He’d stopped speaking. She wrapped her arms around him and supported his head to keep it from hitting whatever clinked behind him.

Time slipped by slowly, and then the car stopped. She heard voices and strained to catch the words.

“We’ll get paid for this one way or another,” someone said.

“Maybe we shouldn’t turn her over. If we contact her family, we can get the ransom and keep it all for ourselves.”

“Stupid, we don’t know who she is.”

“But she’s someone important, right?”

“How could she be? You saw where she was living. My place is a hole, and it’s better than that.”

“So why did he pay us to grab her?”

“I don’t know. Let’s think about it over lunch. I’m starving. That girl nearly ripped my—”

The other men joked and laughed at the man Novette figured was the one who first grabbed her. Their voices faded away. She guessed the men assumed she would be unconscious for long enough to allow them to eat without causing trouble.

Whoever paid these men to capture her knew who her father was, and they expected him to pay to get her back. Novette wasn’t so sure he would. Richard Kagen liked to handle everything on his own terms, including his adopted daughter. She gritted her teeth thinking about the man who raised her. After five years, she thought she had it made so to speak. She believed she would never see him again.

We’ve got to get out of this trunk.

She felt around behind Zaid. Maybe the hard thing she’d felt earlier could be used to break the lock holding the trunk closed. The sound of heavy traffic in the near distance and a truck roaring by closer told her they must have pulled into a roadside diner. Under cover of the noise, she might be able to escape.

“Novette.”

She jumped. Zaid’s voice was clearer than before.

“You’re awake?”

“Yes, and I’m wondering why you’re hugging me.”

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