Forbidden Captor

Crinkling her nose at the whiff of stale tobacco and sweat, Tasiya clutched her bag tight against her stomach and hurried past him. She fixed an image of her father’s loving face firmly in her mind as she followed Marcus Smith down a spiral staircase of worn, warped stone to the doorless closet off the kitchen that would serve as her home for the next few weeks.

Chapter Two

“Please, Minister,” Tasiya whispered into the phone, glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one was eavesdropping on her call. She trimmed the wick on the kerosene lantern on her two-drawer dresser, dimming the light so as not to draw attention to her presence in the room.

By the end of the night, she vowed to at least find a blanket to hang across the arched opening so she could change her clothes without the curious eyes of Marcus Smith or anyone else ogling her. “I want to talk to my father. If he’s not safe, I have no reason to do this for you.”

“Anastasiya. Darling.” Mostek’s cultured voice tried to seduce her even across the ocean that separated them. “I like it so much better when you call me Dimitri.”

Tasiya swallowed her gag reflex and her pride. “Please… Dimitri. Let me speak to my father.”

“Very well.” Tasiya drifted toward the corner of the twin-size bed that took up half the room. She sank onto the hard mattress, hugging her arm around her waist while he spoke to someone on his end of the line. But Dimitri still had a few more words for her. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it, Anastasiya? I’m pleased you made it to your destination and are getting acquainted with the men you are working for.”

She had no desire to get acquainted with anyone she’d met thus far, but didn’t think it wise to share that information with Mostek. “No one complained about the dinner I prepared. In fact, I believe Mr. Fowler has ordered his men not to address me unless it is about my work.”

“Good. Your father’s well-being depends upon you doing your job there and then returning to be my mistress. I don’t want you sullied by American hands.”

“How can you—” Tasiya bit her tongue to keep the question to herself. It wasn’t her place to understand how men like Mostek and Fowler could do business when they didn’t like each other and trusted each other even less.

“How can I want you?” She let Dimitri run with the topic so she wouldn’t have to explain her impetuous question. “Because you’re a beautiful woman and I’m bored with my wife. I told you I could set you up in style in an apartment here in the city if you’ll let me.”

“What about my father?” She glanced at the clock beside the lantern, knowing she needed to cut the phone call short and get to her rounds delivering the prisoners’ rations before anyone questioned her absence from the kitchen. “What will happen to him when I return?”

“I’ll give you enough money that you can support him as well. But I don’t want him living with you.” She could visualize Mostek’s vulgar sneer. “I’ll require privacy for my visits.”

Not exactly the motivation she needed to successfully pull off this charade.

“Here’s Anton. Keep it short.”

Tasiya shot to her feet and trained every aural cell in her ear to the precious sound of her father’s voice.

“Tasiya?” He sounded tired.

“Papa?” This was what she needed to hear. “Are you all right? How is the cut on your head? Are you eating? Have they hurt you anymore?”

“I’m fine, daughter. They cleaned the wound and put a bandage on it. But I’m worried about you. So far away. So—”

“I’m fine, Papa.” He was being held by terrorists who wanted to use him as an example of how they dealt with anyone who dared oppose them. She wouldn’t be a burden to him on top of that. “The work here is no different from at home. I cook and clean.”

“But these men…” She could hear the fear in his tone. “Are you safe?”

She hurried to the open doorway and looked around the empty kitchen. For now, she could give him an honest answer. “I’m safe.” But Marcus Smith had warned her to start her rounds by eight o’clock or he’d show up to escort her himself. It was nearly eight now. She had to go, even though she wanted nothing more than to cling to the sound of her father’s voice. “I love you, Papa. We’ll be together again soon, I promise.”

“I love you.”

Those three words would have to sustain her courage. Dimitri Mostek snatched the phone from her father’s hand, ordered his men to take Anton back to his room and lock him in, and added a final threat.

“Your loyalty to your father is touching. I hope you will prove as loyal to me.”

Tasiya felt as if Mostek had ripped her father from her arms again. But she squelched her fear with a deep breath and kept her voice calm. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me thus far. I won’t disappoint you.”

“It’s imperative for your father’s health that you don’t. I’ll expect a call from you tomorrow. I want to know everything the militia is doing, the status of their prisoners, anything you can tell me. I also want you to find an American television—”

“A television?” In this drafty old place whose only modern amenities seemed to be its security systems? She’d had to hand-pump the stove to make it work, while a small generator produced electricity for the refrigerator and freezer. He wanted too much. “Where will I—”

“Do not interrupt me again.” Tasiya bit her tongue, lest he take his displeasure with her out on her father. “A radio or newspaper will do as well. I want to know what propaganda they are saying about Lukinburg, and what news they have of Prince Nikolai and Princess Veronika.”

“I’m to spy on them, too?”

The two royal heirs had remained in the United States after speaking out against their father’s inhumane policies in their homeland. Though branded a traitor by King Aleksandr and the Lukinburg press, Nikolai had apparently become the heroic darling of American women and politicians alike.

Providing news of the prince and princess to the king would no doubt bring some favorable reward to Dimitri. “I will try my best.”

“You will do these things,” he corrected. “Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“Such a good girl. Such a good, beautiful girl.” The false charm bled back into his voice. “I’ll be thinking of you tonight. In my dreams.”

Tasiya cringed at the implication, but checked her response. “Goodbye.”

She risked a rare, perverse pleasure in ending the call before he could answer. Hiding the phone inside her pillowcase, she glanced at the clock. Two minutes past eight. Marcus would come looking for her soon.

Her father’s life depended on her carrying out Mostek’s orders.

Her own life depended on her doing it without getting caught.

Ponderosa, Montana

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN they shot another one? Where the hell are my men?” The tall, black-haired man wheezed, trying to rouse himself from his bed.

“Easy, Colonel.” Trevor Blackhaw braced his hand against the shoulder that wasn’t bandaged and eased his boss at Big Sky Bounty Hunters back against the propped-up pillows. “You’ve been home from the hospital all of two hours. If Mia finds out we’re in here talking business, she’ll have my hide.”

Mention of Cameron Murphy’s wife, who had just stepped out of the bedroom to put Olivia, their four-year-old daughter to bed, seemed to ease his agitation. “I guess this means you had to cut your engagement celebration short?”

Trevor sank into the chair beside the bed. “Sierra understands. She might be free of the militia’s influence now, but none of us will rest easy until Boone Fowler and his men are back in prison where they belong.”

Cameron rubbed at the scruff of beard that had sprouted along his jaw in the days since barely surviving a chemical bomb attack by the Montana Militia for a Free America at a nearby mall. Though he’d suffered critical burns and some temporary damage to his lungs, there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with his intellectual capabilities or leadership skills. “Tell me what we know.”

Trevor picked up the grainy black-and-white photographs he’d brought in to show his boss. “An army search-and-rescue team found one deceased soldier down in Swamp Lejeune at the ambush site. Michael Clark,” a fellow bounty hunter whose background in army intelligence made him an expert detective, “dates the second photo about a week after the initial capture. The army ID’d the victim as one of theirs, but it’s too dark to get any kind of fix on the location.”

“What about where the photos were processed?”

Trevor shook his head. “Clark’s still trying to trace the source. It passed through a lot of hands before reaching us.”

“And there’s no way to track them from the ambush site?”

“Lombardi and Cook are in North Carolina now. But Lejeune training base covers thousands of acres over a variety of terrain. They found some heavy-vehicle tracks, but the trail went cold at the New River. Fowler’s men could have choppered out, taken a boat, landed a seaplane. They could be camped out next door or halfway around the world.”