Chapter 3

Oh god, they weren't blindfolding her or anything, which meant they didn't care if she saw where they were driving. They didn't care if she saw their faces. Which probably meant that they weren't planning on letting her live.

Despair, fear and anger rushed through her. She didn't want to die. She was only thirty-four; she'd finally clawed her way out from under a mountain of student loan debt. She was widely considered one of the world's most up-and-coming neurosurgeons, at the head of her field in successfully using cutting-edge technology during surgery. She wasn't ready to lose all that.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked, trying and failing to keep the fear from her voice.

Her captor glanced at her, his icy gaze sweeping her briefly before turning away. He was sitting on a bench across from her, his elbows on his knees, his body tilted toward the men in the seats at the front. He looked completely composed, as though murdering a nurse and kidnapping a doctor from a hospital was an everyday event for him.

"Please," she tried again. "Talk to me. Tell me why you did this? Are you looking for ransom? Is someone hurt? Do you need a doctor?"

Nothing in his face indicated he was listening.

She tried appealing to the men up front, inching her way toward them, glancing over their shoulders to get a better look at her kidnappers. She hadn't been able to see much during the hectic moments when she was dragged into the van. Her heart sank as she peeked at them. They looked almost as scary as the man who had taken her... the man who shot Danilo in the face.

A wave of nausea hit her and she pressed her hand against her stomach to keep it from climbing up her throat and spewing out of her mouth. She felt grief for Danilo, a young man killed in the prime of his life, and a nearly overwhelming fear for herself. The man who'd grabbed her was not afraid to kill, and he seemed to be in charge. Whatever they were kidnapping her for, once her usefulness ended, she would die.

"Please help me," she begged, her eyes on the man who'd grabbed her, but her appeal aimed at the men in the front seat.

The passenger twisted around and shot her a glare. "Shut up and sit back."

He spoke English with a thick accent she couldn't place, but she didn't think it was local. She'd been surrounded by Ukrainians for months; this man was different. From some other Eastern European country.

"Please, I don't know why I was taken," Shaun pleaded. "I think you have the wrong person."

"You a doctor?" he demanded, his cool brown eyes on her. This man was also tattooed, all over his neck, hands and face.

"Yes." There was no point in keeping it from them. She was wearing scrubs and a name tag that gave away her identity as Dr. Shaun Patterson, attending physician. She had been in the hospital in the middle of a procedure. All she needed was a stethoscope around her neck to finish the picture.

"Then we got the right person," he grunted, turning back around, dismissing her.

So, they were definitely after a doctor. She didn't know if this information made her position better or worse. She could maybe use their need for a doctor as leverage, but she'd have to figure out what the situation was first. Maybe they had another captive they needed her to care for, or maybe one of their own was shot. That seemed pretty likely, given the brief glimpse she already had into their lives.

Shaun fell silent as the men drove. There wasn't much she could say. She knew enough to recognize that these men were likely organized crime. They didn't look like regular thugs. At least, not the guy who grabbed her from the hospital. He had a regal air about him. He held his head up and his shoulders back. The way he walked and the hardness in his face spoke of pride and arrogance. He was dressed meticulously, and he was quick in his actions and thoughts. He wasn't stupid.

The van took so many twists and turns that she couldn't keep track of where they were going. It sped along at a fast clip despite the debris that littered the city streets from a series of rockets that had been launched into the city months ago, making it close to uninhabitable. When the bumpy road grew smoother, she wondered if they were leaving the city.

She tried to crawl up onto her knees to look through the windshield. The man sitting across from her moved so swiftly, she didn't have a chance to do more than flinch when he reached for her. He gripped her shoulder, his long, gloved fingers digging into her delicate bones. Pain radiated through her and she gasped, trying to lurch away from him.

He continued to hold her, staring down at her with those eerie lake-blue eyes. It was like he was speaking to her without speaking to her, telling her to sit down and shut up. To not move. When he lifted his arm and pointed at the back of the van, she followed his wordless order without question. She crawled away from him, badly wanting to escape his presence.

She sat on the floor near a piece of rug and some boxes, dragged her knees up and rested her arms on top of them. She refused to look at him again, though she could see him settle back down out of her periphery. She wanted to scream and demand to know where she was going, but she was too scared. These men were responsible for one death and a kidnapping that she knew of, and she didn't want to provoke them.

They drove for about twenty more minutes before coming to a bumpy stop. Shaun tensed and watched the men as they opened doors and slid from the van. The boss thug gestured for her to come forward. She shook her head and slid as far back as she could. Oh god, were they going to kill her here? Were they making some kind of political statement by snatching a foreign doctor and killing her?

"No, please," she begged, cringing against the door.

He growled something incomprehensible and lunged toward her, catching her wrist and dragging her toward the door. He didn't give Shaun a chance to find her footing, so she stumbled and landed hard on her knees in the van. He yanked her viciously out the door and let go of her wrist, allowing her to fall to the ground. She stared up at her tormentor, but he reached down, grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet, then yanked her toward an old house.

She frantically looked around, searching for help, trying to figure out where she was. There were only a couple of buildings visible in her field of vision, otherwise just a bunch of hills and empty fields. She opened her mouth to scream out, to call for help, but quickly found herself facing the barrel of a gun. She slammed her lips together and tried to breathe through the terror as her vision narrowed to that one point.

She tried to reassure herself as she was pulled into the dank, windowless stone house. He didn't need to bring her all this way just to kill her. He could've killed her at the hospital, like he'd killed Danilo. They obviously needed a doctor. She just needed to play along until she found a chance to get away from them.

She was rushed through a corridor, then down a flight of old wooden stairs to the basement. The air became noticeably cooler, and she shivered and blinked after stepping into a large, empty room, attempting to see in the gloom. She turned to her captor, her heart pounding. Was this place going to become her prison? Her grave? Why would they bring her here?

He snapped his fingers and pointed impatiently past her shoulder. She glanced back and realized they weren't alone. There was a human-shaped bundle of rags on the ground. She stared at it for a few seconds, then took a tentative step forward, the doctor in her both curious and worried. If there was an injured person there, she would have no choice but to help them.

The stench of urine became strong as she approached warily. She dropped to her knees next to the bundle, realizing right away that she was correct. There was a person underneath the dirt, blood and torn clothes. She glared up at her captor before turning her attention to the man on the floor. She did her best to assess his injuries both visually and with her hands. He was still breathing, though his breaths were shallow. His pulse was weak but erratic, and there was a blue tinge to his lips.

"You want me to attend this man?" she asked without looking up, her fingers flying over his injuries, while her brain assessed what she would need to heal him. She checked his circulation, airway, and breathing. "It looks like he might be suffering from cardiac arrest, but I can't know for sure without the proper equipment. He's going to need the hospital. We need to transport him right away."

Her captor grabbed hold of her head and wrenched it around until she was forced to look at him, his fingers biting painfully into her chin. She tried to scramble backwards, but his grip was so painfully tight that she had no choice but to sit still. He pointed at her, pointing two fingers to indicate her eyes, then he pointed at himself.

He let her chin go and stepped back.

"Y-you want me to watch you?" Was it possible that he was non-verbal? She'd been so terrified that she hadn't questioned why he hadn't said a single word during the kidnapping.

He lifted his hands and began making rapid signs. Her heart sank. Sign language. That was why she'd been chosen, of all the hospital personnel. She understood sign language, both Quebec sign language and French sign language, the latter being the version he was using. Shaun could sign back if needed, though she was rusty. She'd learned as a child, so she could communicate easily with her cousin, Monique, who was hearing impaired.

You fix him, he signed to her.