Bodyguard Lockdown - By Donna Young Page 0,3

meaty hands grimy and blood-spattered.

Sandra’s delicate features, flawless skin—both, Booker imagined, now bloody and bruised.

Gritting his teeth, he buried the rage, the fear, the guilt, all where his other ghosts lurked. Down in the darkest corner of his soul.

“Hey,” he whispered. The men swung around, surprised. He stepped into the hall, palmed his knife and threw it, all in one practiced motion.

With a sharp thwap, the blade imbedded in the limping man’s throat. The man grasped at the handle while he choked on his own blood.

The sleeping man started awake. Booker kneed him in the face, transforming the man’s warning cry into a pained grunt. With a twist on his head, he snapped the man’s neck and turned.

“Come on.” The shorter man kicked his machine gun aside, his features twisted in derision. He motioned Booker closer with a wave of his fingers. “Let’s play.”

Booker snagged his knife from the dead man and lunged.

At the last second, he dropped, then rolled. Booker’s foot rammed the other man’s crotch. “Tag, you’re it.”

The man’s knees buckled and he screamed.

“No?” Booker slammed him into the opposite wall. “Twenty questions, then. Is that the doc’s blood on your hands?”

The mercenary struggled, his feet lost traction. Booker’s hand tightened at his throat, cutting off his oxygen.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Booker taunted against his enemy’s ear. The scent of fear, of blood, of death permeated the air between them. Heavy. Sour.

“Game over.” He shoved the knife up into the man’s ribs and twisted. “You lose.”

* * *

DOCTOR SANDRA HADDAD clawed through the shifting blackness, caught up in a whirlpool of nothingness and pain until the pain bit back, dragging its teeth across muscle and bone.

Sandra set her jaw, waited until the worst passed.

Then she opened her eyes.

The darkness remained. Pitch-black and smothering. She felt it then, the heavy canvas against her nose and cheeks.

A hood.

She inhaled deeply through her nose until the scent of mildew and sour sweat choked off her breath.

Hysteria stirred at the back of her throat, making it difficult to breathe.

Her hands hung high above her head. Her arms twisted, locked in place by her weight. Trapped.

She bit her lip, kept the fear, the whimper of fear, deep in her chest. If her enemies were near, she didn’t want to alert them.

Instead she concentrated on the silence beyond the cover, until her heartbeat slowed and the blood no longer pounded in her eardrums.

No sound meant no immediate danger. They weren’t interested in her right now.

They.

Who were they?

The kidnapping happened so fast that it caught her off guard. The sound of the door slamming shut, the scrape of metal, the vile scent of unwashed bodies.

Three men? No four, she corrected. Including the driver. Their van tinted dark, their faces covered with ski masks. She remembered the squeal of tires, the short burst of bullets that strafed the asphalt, probably to terrorize anyone who thought of helping. They snatched her from the airport tarmac, less than twenty feet from boarding the plane.

She bolted under the plane’s belly, but didn’t get more than a few yards. When they grabbed her, she broke someone’s nose with her elbow. Caught another in the instep of his foot, heard him cry out in pain when those bones gave.

Sandra clawed and jabbed and screamed and punched. But there were too many in the end. Blurred, shadowy features.

They injected her with a drug. She felt the pinch of the needle then remembered nothing else.

“So you are awake?”

The cover was jerked off her head. She blinked, her eyes adjusting to the sting of the bright light.

A man stood in front of her, a machine gun strapped to his back, the barrel tip jutting past his shoulder.

Dressed in a mixture of army fatigues and desert gear, the buttons of his shirt strained over a sagging belly, the tails loose and ripped at his waist. Both pants and shirt were stiff with dirt and sweat, and reeked of body odor.

“Good evening, Doctor Haddad.” The man’s gaze flipped up to her hands then down again. “Are you comfortable?”

Handcuffs, looped through a chain and anchored in the ceiling, cut into her wrists. Plastic ties dug into her ankles. Each secured to the sides of a steel folding chair. Small drops of blood slid over her ankle, tickled her skin.

“Extremely,” Sandra mocked, but fear kept her chest tight, her voice high.

Perspiration coated his bald, flat features. His jawline sagged into a nasty grin, thinning out his big lips over gapped yellowed teeth.

But the dried blood that