Up in front of the van, the driver and his passenger chattered animatedly in a thick, Slavic-sounding foreign language. They had known enough English to agree to take her into the city when she'd flagged them down on the street outside the estate grounds, and at the moment that had been good enough for her. Except now that they had gone a few miles, she couldn't help but notice they had stopped smiling at her and trying to talk to her in broken English.
Now the driver cast furtive glances at her in the rearview mirror, and she didn't like the sound of the low-voiced, chuckling exchanges the two men shared as she bounced around in back of the darkened van.
"How far to downtown?" she asked, holding on to a crate of hard salami as the van took a left through a caution light. Her stomach pitched with the motion, her ears ringing, head pounding. She squinted through the windshield at the front of the vehicle as it headed toward the late-afternoon glow of the city in the distance. "The bus station, yes? That's where you said you'd take me. How far is it?"
For a second, she wondered if either of them could hear her over the loud rumble of the van's engine as the driver gave it more gas. The sound seemed deafening to her. But then the passenger pivoted around and said something to her in his own language.
Something that seemed to amuse his lead-footed friend behind the wheel.
A knot of dread formed in Jenna's gut. "You know what? I've changed my mind. No bus station. Take me to the police. Po-lice," she said, dragging out the word so there could be no misunderstanding. She gestured to herself as the driver flicked a scowling glance at her in the mirror. "I'm a cop. I am police."
She spoke with the no-bullshit edge that came to her like second nature, even all these years since she'd been in uniform. But if the pair of jokers up front picked up on her tone or what she was telling them, they didn't seem moved to believe her.
"Police?" The driver chuckled as he looked over at his companion.
" Nassi, nuk duken si ajo e policise per ju? "
"No," the one apparently named Nassi replied, shaking his head, thin lips pulling back from crooked teeth. His thick-browed gaze traveled in a slow crawl over Jenna's body. " Per mua, ajo duket si nje cope e shijshme e gomarit. "
She looks like a tasty piece of ass to me.
Jenna thought the dark leer that Nassi sent her must have been enough to tell her what he'd said, but the words seemed so clear to her. Impossibly clear. She stared at the two men as they began a private conversation in their native tongue. She watched their lips, studied the sounds that should have been entirely foreign to her--words that she couldn't possibly understand yet, somehow, did.
"I don't know about you, Gresa, my friend, but I could do with a bit of prime American tail," Nassi added, so confident that his foreign speech would slip right past her, he had the balls to look Jenna square in the eye as he spoke. "Take this bitch back to the office and let's you and me have a little fun with her."
"Sounds good to me." Gresa laughed and dropped his foot down on the gas pedal, sending the delivery van speeding under a highway overpass and into the throng of busy traffic.
Oh, God.
Jenna's feeling of dread from a few minutes ago went as cold as ice in her belly now.
The sudden jolt of acceleration threw her back on her ass. She scrambled to hold on to the crates around her, knowing her chances of escaping the fast-moving vehicle were nil. If the fall out of the van didn't kill her, the roaring cars and trucks flying by on both lanes beside them certainly would.
Making everything worse, her head was beginning to spin with the barrage of lights and noise from outside the van. Automobile exhaust fumes, coupled with the stench inside the vehicle, formed a nauseating olfactory stew that had her stomach turning on itself, threatening to rise up on her. All of her surroundings seemed amplified and too intense, as though the world had somehow gotten more vivid, more choked with detail.
Was she losing her mind?
After all that she'd been through recently, after all she'd seen and heard, she shouldn't be surprised if she was cracking up.
And as she sat back, miserable against the crates and cartons, listening to the two men discuss their ideas for her in eager, violent detail, she got the feeling that her sanity wasn't the only thing at risk right now. Nassi and his friend Gresa had some rather nasty plans for her back at their office. Plans that included knives and chains and soundproof walls so no one would hear her screams, if Jenna could trust her sudden newfound fluency in their language.
They were arguing over which of them would get to enjoy her first, as they wheeled the van off the main road and into a ratty section of the city.
The pavement narrowed, streetlights growing more sparse the deeper they traveled into what looked to be an industrial area. Warehouses and long, red-brick buildings crowded the street and alleyways.
The delivery van bounced over large potholes and uneven asphalt, the tires crunching in the iced-over brown slush that bunched on both sides of the pavement.
"Home sweet home," Nassi said, in English this time, grinning at her from around his passenger seat. "Ride is over. Time to collect our fare."
The two men laughed as the driver put the van in park and cut the engine. Nassi came out of his seat and started to head back inside the van.
Jenna knew she would have only a few seconds to act--precious seconds to disable one or both of the men and bolt.
She inched into a stable position, preparing for the moment she knew was coming.
Nassi smiled broadly as he walked farther into the vehicle. "What do you have to offer us, hmm? Let me see."
"No," Jenna said, shaking her head and feigning the helpless female.