A dark premonition iced up her veins. “Where?”
For a moment he didn’t answer, and in the dim light of the cave, his eyes traveled from the top of her head and past her shoulders to her breasts, where he paused for a moment before moving down to her grimy, ripped, almost blackened linen trousers, to her severely tattered sandals and back up again.
With his lazy scrutiny, she knew exactly why there were only three beds on this side of the cave. His next words confirmed it.
“You sleep over there.” With his gun, he indicated a smaller cavern lit by a dim lamp and concealed by a soiled, torn, makeshift curtain, which she hadn’t noticed before. “With me.”
Chapter Two
Five days! She’d been missing for a total of five days!
Nick Andreakos recalled every second of the conversation with his head of security and the interminable phone calls that had followed, even now, forty-eight hours later. The longest forty-eight hours of his life, during which every subsequent report received from Jameson, his head of security, had brought worse news.
He raked a hand through his hair, his shoulders tense as he braced himself against the reinforced steel door of the cargo plane he’d hitched a ride on to keep from being thrown by the turbulence.
He looked around at the other occupants of the plane—seven men in all. Highly trained, highly expensive mercenaries. Men he wouldn’t normally interact with in his role as CEO of Andreakos Shipping, a conglomerate that spanned the globe and held a market position that made financial analysts drool.
These men wouldn’t hesitate to cut a man in half. They were the best of the best and exactly what he wanted. He would gladly pay ten, hell, twenty, times their going rate, if they guaranteed him success on this mission.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes to fight off the tension headache pounding his temples.
“I know you think you’re superhuman, but going without sleep before a mission like this is just asking for trouble.”
Nick didn’t open his eyes. He knew Alexandros, the cousin who was more like a brother to him, would be glaring at him with the same pained expression he’d used on Nick since they were kids.
“Yes, and I’m guessing all the sleep you got is the reason why you’re looking fresh-faced and perky right now?” he snarked.
Fact was, neither of them had slept in two days, not since Nick had made his phone call and Alex had canceled his plans and hopped on his jet from Athens to London.
Nick glanced over at Alex. Like him, Alex had Greek-American parentage, and they’d both served in the U.S. Marine Corps. For as long as he could remember, Alex had been there for him. Not that he wasn’t a pain in the ass when he chose to be. Like now…
“You forget I’m not vested in this gig. I’m merely coming along for the exercise. Sitting behind a desk day in and day out plays havoc with my six-pack,” Alex said.
Despite his lazy ribbing, Alex’s foot tapped impatiently on the bare metal floor. In fact, the only time either of them had sat down for longer than five minutes on this mission had been on the flight from London to Morocco, where they’d rendezvoused with the hired men. Sitting down made Nick feel like he was wasting precious time.
So he stood.
And he paced.
And he cursed Belle Winkworth-Jones Andreakos.
What on earth had possessed her to fling herself into the middle of a war zone thousands of miles from home? Granted, the unrest in Nawaka had only been minor when she’d first arrived there six weeks ago. But she could easily have returned home once the conflict escalated. Why the hell hadn’t she?
“Oh, and stop with all that pacing before you wear a hole in the plane. You’ll get your chance to interrogate her about all the things she’s done wrong when we bring her home,” Alex offered.
“I’m beginning to regret calling you. All you’ve done since you got to London is attempt to piss me off. Guess what? You’re succeeding.” The fact that Alex had guessed the reason for his angst rubbed him the wrong way.
Alex stood, too, his restless energy echoing Nick’s. “What did Wallace say when you called him?”
During the telephone conversation two days ago, his former commanding officer had brought him up to speed on clashes in the country neighboring where Belle had gone missing.
“Apparently, the skirmishes spilled into Nawaka only in the past three weeks.” Not surprisingly, Nawaka’s rich mineral deposits had finally proved too much temptation for the greedy few who wanted to exploit the country’s resources, and with the continued war and raging famine in that region, the porous borders had been very easy for the rebels to breach. “But the guy we’re dealing with, Mwana, has been in control of the area for the last five years. In the past year, he’s made inroads toward securing more and more of the country. Word is he also has a solid following.”
Alex cursed. “Theos, I hate that word—following. It’s a short step down from the word cult. And it almost always means you’re bound to do a crazy dance with one or two followers who’re bordering on fanaticism. Wallace say anything else?”
Nick shook his head. “His area of expertise is now Southeast Asia. He told me if Belle had gotten herself captured in Manila, he’d have been our man.”
Alex smirked and shook his head.