Page 81 of Midnight Secrets

The lights went out.

Isabel looked around briefly and felt something cold against her wrist. She looked down and saw a white ceramic knife with a very sharp blade pressed against the inside of her wrist. Held by Hector in such a way that with one swipe he could slice right through the artery. She’d bleed out in seconds.

She looked back up into that face, not bothering to hide her hatred anymore. She could barely see him. It was dark in the restaurant, people murmuring, stirring. She blinked twice.

“I am getting away with it. I’m not here at all. I have all sorts of people back in Washington willing to swear in court that I am there. Not that it will ever come to that, of course.”

“People know you are here.”

“Yes?” He looked around. “I don’t see anyone I know. If you have friends who are watching this over a video feed, too bad. Because I just killed everything with a chip in a hundred-yard radius. Nothing is being recorded, nothing will be recorded and you—” He pressed down hard on the sharp knife and she felt him slice through the skin. Blood welled up at the knife’s edge. “You are coming with me.”

“No.” She looked up steadily at him.

“Developed a backbone, have we?” Hector murmured, words muffled by the scarf. “Be the first one in your family. Just so you know, I have a sniper watching through night vision optics and he can see perfectly clearly. The first person who comes up to you gets one right through the head. Maybe a waiter, maybe someone you’ve recruited, maybe even a friend, but someone gets killed. So move.”

Joe was seconds from running over to her.

Heart thudding, Isabel stood.

Hector was good. He managed to keep the knife at her wrist without it looking awkward. They walked to the door and Isabel kept her gaze down, at the floor. A sign she desperately hoped Joe would interpret asstay away!

Hector had already cost her everyone she loved. Mother, father, brothers. Aunts, uncles, cousins. She wasn’t going to give him Joe, too. Not sweet, brave Joe. She’d rather die herself.

It was dark inside the restaurant and outside, too. No lights at all. If Joe was coming out, he was coming out blind. He’d shown her night vision and she knew that whoever was out there with a sniper rifle could see just fine, and they were blind.

Whatever Hector’s plan was, though, Joe and his guys were smarter.

They were crossing the threshold of the restaurant, Hector pushing open the door into the cold night. Behind her, restaurant patrons were murmuring. She knew her team would be scrambling to deal with the situation.

“Forget about anyone coming after you,” Hector said, bending toward her. An uncle out with his beloved niece. “I just set off a limited EMP. That same EMP that killed video cameras and cell phones and any tracking devices you might have on you? It also killed any vehicles with electric circuitry. But I have acquired a vehicle that doesn’t have electronic circuitry. Ah, here we are.”

A dilapidated van screeched into the driveway, backed up. The rear doors opened and before Isabel could react, she was shoved inside and Hector climbed up next to her.

The doors were pulled shut and she bounced against the hard steel wall as the van took a corner and sped away.

Hector was wrapping something soft around her wrists in a figure eight. He knotted the ends and let her go. She tried to free herself but they were like handcuffs, only soft.

The van was moving fast. Every few minutes the driver took a sharp turn. She was lost in minutes.

Hector was looking out the back window with binoculars. “Don’t even think of trying to get away, my dear.” He put the binoculars down and spoke to the driver. “Nobody following us. We’re clear.”

She was trapped in a van with a man who wanted to kill her. Who had killed her entire family. Nobody knew where she was and no one could find her.

Hector was going to win this.

“Fuck!”Joe wanted to scream but he knew he couldn’t. Silence on an op had been beaten into him. He was blind. And deaf, he discovered as he tapped his earbud and got a whole lot of nothing. Complete silence. He couldn’t go running toward Isabel in the restaurant, that would tip Blake off.

What was happening out there?

Joe had to find out the old-fashioned way. By looking. Actual looking with his actual eyes because sure as fuck his electronic eyes were shot to hell.

He peered around a corner, trying to find Isabel and Blake in the sudden gloom in the restaurant. People were standing up, having patiently waited for the lights to come on. Now that they weren’t, they were getting agitated.

With the restaurant-goers milling around he couldn’t see the table at the front windows where Isabel sat. He moved through the diners as quickly and unobtrusively as he could, head on a swivel and as he moved toward the windows he saw Isabel and Blake outside. Who knew what he’d done to convince her to go with him but the fucker was wrong if he thought he was going to be able to kidnap Isabel.

In a fury, Joe took off, but in the darkness, a couple stumbled in his way and by the time he’d shoved them aside, Isabel was gone.Gone.In an old van with mud on the license plate, red brake lights winking as it took a corner. It had come racing to the entrance and in a second, Blake had pushed Isabel in then climbed in after her.

He hadn’t had a straight shot otherwise he’d have killed the fucker.

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