101 Nights Box Set: Volume Two Page 21

  “Not exactly,” I reply.

  The light in her eyes flashes out. “This place is horrible.” Her voice quivers, and I can see she’s close to giving up.

  “Alisha found you once. She’ll do it again,” I say softly. “Don’t worry, Natalie.”

  “Alisha,” she repeats warmly. “God, I miss her. She could always make me laugh, even at a time like this.”

  “Let’s talk about you for a moment. I know about your medical condition.” I glance at her belly, not wanting to say the words, in case someone is listening. “Blood sugar issues are no joke. Have you had to tell them?”

  She shakes her head. “My, uh, blood sugar’s been okay so far.”

  I relax a little. “How are you, Natalie?”

  “I need … to get out of here.” Her eyes fill with tears. “Is … EJ okay?”

  “He is. Alisha is. Everyone outside this box is, including Layla.”

  “Oh, thank god!” Natalie sighs and rests her head against the wall behind her. “Layla’s leg was hurting her bad here. We did all kinds of exercises and stretches, and she still cried herself to sleep every night. I begged Hasan to give her the prescription meds she needs. He refused. One day, he took her away.”

  “She’s at the palace now. I’ve got my people and Malika’s keeping watch over her.” I consider her gaunt features and what Layla said about her. The bruises look fresh. I have a feeling she got her ass kicked confronting Hasan about Layla.

  For a hostage going on two and a half weeks, Natalie is holding up better than I expected. They’re feeding her, even if the bare minimum, and she has two blankets and a collection of magazines, a stuffed animal the size of my hand and a toiletry bag in her corner. The blankets don’t surprise me, but the magazines and toy do.

  “You have a fan here?” I ask, lifting my eyebrows at the pile.

  “Sorta.” She sighs. “One of Hasan’s men doesn’t think the future queen of Nijala should be treated this way.” She held up the toy. “I guess this was his daughter’s, and the magazines are all in Arabic. Layla was teaching me the alphabet.”

  I climb to my feet and test my limbs. My right ankle is throbbing. It holds my weight at a walk but probably won’t if I have to run. I can fight despite my injured arm. “He’s how you pinged Alisha?”

  “Yeah. I asked him to dial the number she gave me. Told him I didn’t need the phone or to talk to anyone, just begged him every day for a week to dial the number.” Her voice breaks.

  I glance at her. She needs out of here soon. Mentally tough, she’s nonetheless starting to crack. Natalie always struck me as rational, stable and reserved, the opposite of Alisha. Both women are gentle and sweet, and I know Natalie’s relative calm demeanor counter’s Elijah’s more high strung energy. Alisha would be a mess in this situation, but Natalie appears composed. I sense more than see that her mettle is starting to fray. The worst thing that can happen for someone in captivity is to lose hope and become depressed. There’s a point the mind crosses that makes it impossible for someone to recover, no matter how much therapy they go to afterwards.

  I don’t want that for Natalie. She deserves better.

  “You want to play a game?” I ask her.

  “A game?” She blinks away the glassy expression on her features. “Sure.”

  The woman needs rescued, and my aching limbs and pounding head require rest before I can start to assess how to get out of this tin can of a prison. I could use some food and pain meds. I’m otherwise in good enough shape to fight or run or worst case, throw myself in front of Hasan’s goons to give her a chance to run.

  It’s Natalie I’m worried about at the moment.

  “How about twenty questions?”

  She smiles weakly. “Alisha likes that game, too.”

  The mention of Alisha sends my mind into overdrive. Any chill lingering in the container from the night on the bay is countered by the warmth of desire sliding through my blood. I struggled all day yesterday with what to do, think or feel about her. Walking away from her is an unbearable idea but one that’ll probably keep her alive.

  Knowing her wicked smile, gorgeous figure and intelligent mind could be mine all day, every day … that I could spar with the smartest woman I know during the day and sink my dick and tongue into her juicy, sweet cunt every night … fuck! I’m a fool not to see what’s in front of me.

  Alisha makes me want a second chance at happiness, and I want her to be the one I take it with. I don’t know if I can protect her any better than I did Tracy, or if I’m even ready for an us with anyone. What’s clear: I want Alisha in my life, no matter how fucking senseless it seems.

  But none of that matters if Natalie and I die in this box.

  “I have something in mind. Go ahead and start asking,” I tell Natalie. Sitting with my good ear facing her direction, I suppress every concern, emotion and stray thought in order to concentrate on Natalie. Being rescued won’t matter, if she’s mentally broken before we have the chance to escape.

  Come on, Alisha. I can get us out of here, but I need you to help me.

  Twisted

  (Serial 6)

  Chapter One: George

  TWO DAYS LATER

  I’ve given what little food someone has been pushing through a crack in the door to Natalie. We’re provided with enough water not to die and enough food for one person to eat a meal daily.

  It’s a technique I recognize from my Special Forces training, one meant to wear down the physical stamina and resistance of prisoners. Near starvation, combined with nights too cold to sleep and days in an oven, does a lot of damage to the body but also the psyche. My scrapes and bruises have slowed in the healing process, and I’m tired but familiar with this game. It isn’t affecting me the way it could – yet.

  Natalie, however, is suffering. She’s grown paler, weak, and at times, nonresponsive when I try to talk to her.

  Standing, I pace around the edges of the shipping box we’re trapped in. The direct sunlight of midmorning has chased away the ocean chill, and soon, the metal container will start to overheat and broil us the way it has the past two days.

  “Natalie, love, I know you don’t want to do this, but we’re doing some yoga,” I tell her.

  She looks at me, exhaustion clear on her features, and climbs to her feet. She’s off balance from hunger and probably, the tax of bearing EJ’s heir. If ever there was something poorly timed, it was her being two months pregnant while trapped in this metal box.

  I’ve been forcing her to move several times a day. She doesn’t resist, and her ability to focus returns when we’re done.

  “Ready?”

  She nods.

  We go through a slow, gentle yoga routine meant to keep her muscles from atrophy and to pull her mind out of the misery she’s been going through. It takes about an hour, and by the end, the heat of noon is starting to set in.

  “It’s getting a little easier,” she admits, a spark of life in her features. She sits heavily when we’re done.

  “Is it helping your mental clarity?” I ask.

  She nods and sips the liter of water that’s hers. We’re each provided with two liters a day.

  I continue on with some basic martial arts forms, pushups and ab work. I’ve been in much worse situations. The key for me to stay sharp and ready is to maintain harmony and a state of readiness between my physical and mental states – and to use the iron will of mine to block my body’s complaints.

  Even with all my experience in war zones, I’m not accustomed to being in such a situation with a female civilian who has no military background or survival training. I don’t like doubting myself; I hate feeling helpless even more.

  “What’re you thinking about?” I ask absently as I go through the motions of my routine.

  “Whether or not EJ and Alisha have killed each other yet.”

  I chuckle. “There’s a chance of that.”

  “I’d love to be a fly on that wall.” She’s smiling wanly. “I love t
hem both but I think we’re the grounded ones in this scenario.”

  “Agreed.”

  Two solid days trapped in a container with someone gives you plenty of time to talk. She managed to pull it out of me that Alisha and I might be a thing, as well as multiple stories about growing up in a royal household and my special ops experiences. It’s easier for me to talk than to tax her with storytelling, and taking her mind off our situation should help her cope better.

  A glance in her direction reveals the familiar look of desolation has crept into her features once more. “Alisha will find us, Natalie. If there’s one thing I know, it’s this, and no spat between them will keep EJ from rescuing us once she does.”

  “I know,” Natalie murmurs. “I’m just so tired, George.”

  “Hang in there, love.”

  The periods between up times are getting shorter, and that scares me. Natalie is tough, but she’s been trapped for over three weeks in a place like this. I don’t know if I can keep her spirits elevated much longer, and I can’t bear the thought of her breaking.

  “You’re a good man, George. I see why EJ trusts you.”

  I pause in my martial arts form before continuing. It’s a very rare day when someone calls me good.

  “You disagree,” she observes. “You and Alisha share that in common. You’re good people, even if you all don’t see it.”

  “There are more skeletons in my closet than I am willing to discuss,” I reply.

  “No amount of skeletons will change my mind.”

  “You focus too much on the good in someone, Natalie,” I say softly. “In a different scenario, I could easily be Hasan.”

  “You’re only fooling yourself, George, if you think that’s true.”

  I hope you’re right. I don’t know the depths of my darkness. I don’t know what I’ll do if what happened to Tracey also happens to Natalie or Alisha.

  I liked Natalie before, and I can understand now what made EJ willing to give up his wealth and throne for her. He needs someone like her to balance him, but she’s not going to last much longer.

  Hurry, Alisha, I mentally will the woman I know can find us.

  Chapter Two: Alisha

  “What is it?” EJ asks suspiciously.

  I roll my eyes without leaving the stovetop. “Macaroni and cheese.”

  “We had that yesterday.”

  “It’s got hot dogs in it today.”

  “Hot dogs? I’m Muslim. I can’t eat hot dogs.”

  “Omigod, EJ. You haven’t prayed once in the past two days and you’re an admitted man-whore with half a dozen sex tapes online! You draw the line at hot dogs?” I snap, fed up with the royal expectations of the man I’m stuck in a one-bedroom apartment with. “These are beef hotdogs, and it’s your damned fault for sending a white boy named Jonny from Nebraska to an Arabic grocery store. He can’t read those squiggles you call a language. Of course he’s going to come back with hot dogs and mac-n-cheese!”

  “I’m from Iowa,” the security team member grunts from the couch.

  “It doesn’t matter, James. She couldn’t find either of those if they were the only states on a map and labeled,” EJ retorts.

  “And my name is Josh.” George’s loyal employee flipped on the television, ignoring both of our glares.

  EJ returned his attention to me. “You’re Puerto Rican. Don’t your people eat rice? Why can’t you make that?”

  “Can you cook?” I snarl and sling half a cube of butter into the freshly drained noodles.

  EJ doesn’t respond.

  “That’s what I thought. So shut up and eat your mac-n-cheese!”

  Jonny-James-Josh clears his throat. “Sorry about that,” he says. He’s the only member of our security team who will come into the apartment instead of guarding the front door from the hallway.

  Not that I blame him. EJ and I do not get along. I want to say it’s nerves and fear for those we love, but it’s personalities as well. We’re both a little too high strung for our own welfares and unaccustomed to being idle, which is a dangerous enough combination. He also has the opposite approach to everything I do without the calmness of George to soften what he says and does.

  What’s making life unbearable, though, isn’t our clash. It’s the fact it’s constant, because we’re all but trapped in a tiny apartment together, stashed away until EJ’s aunt can finalize her master plan to take over the world and dethrone EJ’s father, who would kill both of us if he knew we were here.

  Well, he’d kill EJ, which isn’t sounding like a bad idea right now.

  I dump his half of the childhood staple into a bowl. He’s not impressed, even with the addition of hotdogs. My laptop is sitting on the counter beside him. He won’t go anywhere in the apartment without it, his attention focused on the unmoving dot that is our only link to George and hopefully, Natalie.

  With my usual suspicion about everyone, I placed a GPS tracker in every left shoe of George’s several days ago, which is coming in handy. We know where they are. We know who has them.

  Except EJ and I can’t act. It’s just us, until Aunt Malika – who dislikes EJ maybe a little more than she does me – is ready to launch her plan.

  Restless, agitated, I take my lunch and go to the window looking out over the city. Through the buildings, I can see a small, dark blue sliver of the bay housing the main port of Nijala. It’s so close … and I’m helpless. EJ and I could probably manage to rent or otherwise obtain a boat, but we couldn’t storm a tanker with just the two of us. Besides, we’d have to get close enough to get a more accurate read on which tanker it is. I imagine it might look suspicious if the two of us are trolling every ship in the massive bay.

  Josh’s phone buzzes. He answers, and EJ and I close in on him, anxious for word from Malika. He appears to be listening. I jostle by EJ to sit on the coffee table in front of the corn-fed, muscular Josh, who had proven to be patient, though he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.

  “Hot dogs are better than what you put in it yesterday,” EJ allows. He places his empty bowl in the sink and returns to the couch. He cleaned up after his ordeal being smuggled into the country and is freshly shaven once more, though both of us are wearing secondhand clothing.

  “Yeah, I’m not sure what that was. I couldn’t read the package yesterday.”

  “I could.” A flicker of evil amusement lights up EJ’s dark gaze. “You want to know?”

  “No.” If he’s smiling, it’s worse than the most disgusting thing I could ever imagine. And of course, he didn’t warn me. Seeing him pick it out should’ve been enough to tell me it wasn’t good, but I assumed he was being a prima donna. “Those hot dogs weren’t beef, either,” I reply.

  His smile fades.

  “I hope that means you go to Muslim-Hell,” I snap.

  “You are fortunate capital punishment was made illegal in Nijala.”

  I roll my eyes at him.

  Josh isn’t fazed by our back and forth like the other members of George’s team are. He hangs up the phone, and I gaze at him expectantly.

  “Malika has the paperwork ready,” he reports. “She’s sending a car to meet her off-site, and then you can discuss your plans.”

  “Thank god!” EJ strides away to grab his shoes.

  “Paperwork?” I echo.

  “She won’t make me king without ensuring her reforms stick,” Elijah answers.

  “I thought you could just declare it a constitutional monarchy.”

  He snorts. “She doesn’t trust me, and I don’t trust her. This ensures our roles are defined and the Kingdom’s wealth isn’t exploited by anyone.”

  Sometimes I remember he’s not just the asshole who hates mac-n-cheese, and I’m almost impressed by him. He could easily be the kind of man who takes the money and runs, or rules over the suffering Kingdom of Nijala like his father, or manipulates this entire scenario for his own benefit. He’s arrogant, and he’s selfish.

  But he’s smart, and strangely enough, I’ve
come to realize he’s not bad. I think that’s what makes the difference, that and the fact he’s giving up absolute power to save my best friend and my … George, whatever our complicated relationship status might be. I can’t say it makes me like EJ, but it does render him tolerable at times.

  “I’m coming with you,” I say and slide my feet into sandals.

  “Absolutely. If you ran off and got yourself killed, I’d hear about it from two directions,” EJ agrees.

  “And because I have the laptop telling us where they are,” I pointed out.

  “I will fucking bomb the bay if that’s what it takes.”

  We’ve had that discussion twice. I’m not about to provoke him into it again by pointing out how counterproductive it’d be to bomb his own bay.

  He’s furious. I started that way when George disappeared and descended into sadness and then general moodiness over the past two days, but EJ holds a grudge with vengeance. I have a feeling he never forgives anyone who crosses him.

  He grabs my laptop as if fearing I’ll take it and run. I’ll admit: I thought about it more than once the past forty eight hours, especially knowing that Natalie and George are less than two miles away, and I’m stuck with this asshole.

  Josh leads us out of the apartment and down an old back stairwell. Even dressed in secondhand clothing, Elijah appears out of place. His regal command of his surroundings gives him a sense of presence that leaves no question about who he could be. I imagine it’s the reason we’re on the side of town opposite the wealthy enclave where the palace sits. There’s no reason for anyone from the palace to visit the slums, which makes it safer for him.

  The car Malika sent is waiting when we reach the ground floor. It’s a black sedan with windows too dark to see into. EJ and I climb in back while Josh sits in the passenger’s seat.

  I’m nervous - excited that we’re making progress and fearful about what’s coming. “What’s the first thing you’ll do as king?” I ask him, needing to talk to distract my erratic thoughts.