Page 1 of Forged in Peril

CHAPTER

ONE

The man eased his foot onto the gas pedal and rolled slowly up the incline, struggling to see the edges of his garage door through the darkness and the driving rain.

As he made his way through the gaping mouth of the door, the fly-encrusted tube light on the ceiling flickered, mocking him.

He should have changed it weeks ago, but he had no time for things like that. Not with the hours that his career demanded.

When he got his promotion, he would install new lights in the garage, clean the leaves out of the gutters, and repair the hole in the screen door that led onto the back porch. That was what he told himself.

He smiled at the thought as he listened to the door lowering behind him, shutting out the sound of the heavy raindrops pounding against his driveway.

His future would come, sooner or later, and whether or not he had more time was irrelevant. His higher paychecks would be more than enough to pay someone to do those sorts of things for him.

He opened the door of the car, and the grin fell away from his face just as quickly as it had come.

A man was standing there.

No, two men, but their faces were nothing but shadows in the dim light.

Before he knew what was happening, he felt rough hands against his chest, shoving him back down into his seat. He struggled against the assailant, but the man was stronger than he expected.

His heart was racing now, panic building as he struggled to force air into his lungs. He wanted to scream, but the sound caught in his throat.

He heard the man who was holding him down say something in Spanish over his shoulder, and the other replied. He struggled to think, to remember anything at all about the language that he hadn’t studied since high school, but his mind was blank, consumed with the sound of the blood pulsing in his ears.

He watched as the man outside the car passed his companion a long coil of rope.

“Gracias,” the strong man muttered.

The prisoner felt his hands being wrenched out in front of him, rope wrapping around them like a choking snake. The more he tried to shake free, the tighter his captor pulled the thick cord, pinching his skin until it burned.

He swore, and the man swore back in Spanish as he attempted to kick at him.

“Let me go! Do you know who I am?” he sputtered, the words finally breaking free of his lips. “Do you know who I work for? I’ll kill you, and your friend. I know people. Dangerous people that you don’t want–”

The other man leaned into the car just enough to fit the silvery barrel of his gun through the gap of the door, his finger poised against the trigger, waiting.

The prisoner stared at its round black mouth, imagining the bullet rushing through the chamber, his tongue going dry.

He let his hands be tied, and he no longer tried to kick as the strong man did the same to his feet.

The men were speaking to one another now in rapid Spanish, and he tried to listen, forcing himself to peel his eyes away from the gun and to look at their shadowy faces instead.

“Chica,” he heard one of the men say amid the rush of unfamiliar words. The other man said it, too, and he could hear the disdain in their voices.

He laid his head back against the seat, closing his eyes, desperately searching his brain for whichchicathey could be referring to.

There were a few contenders, but he couldn’t recall any latinas.

“I’m–I’m sorry,” he stammered, looking down as the man leaned over his feet, tying the final knots. “I didn’t know who she was–that she had people who cared, you know, a girl like that? Just a girl, just achica, like you said. It didn’t mean–”

In an instant, the man at his feet had retreated out of the car, and his friend with the gun had taken his place, leaning in toward the driver’s seat.

The gun was close now, the sight of it enough to shut him up, even before he felt it being pressed against his forehead, slipping on the sweat that had accumulated there.

“You will shut up now,” the man said in English, each word drawn out slowly as he held the gun in place.

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