Untouchable (The Blankenships Book 8) (4 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

At some point, Zoey slept. When she woke up, her hands were painfully numb, her nose was running, and her lungs felt thick. She started to cough and couldn’t stop. The fabric meant that the air in her hood was thin, and she couldn’t pull in enough air to calm her panicking body.

She heard words in a tonal language, combined with the sort of impatience that usually implied cursing, and then the hood was yanked free. Cool, fresh air on her face felt wonderful, but she coughed even harder as her body tried to regulate and settle.

“Just breathe,” she heard, and the voice was familiar, calm, and it helped her listen, take a long, slow breath, and find something that would pass as quiet. The coughing faded, though the ache in her lungs didn’t. She wondered how much longer she would have been safe under that dark hood. Would these captors have cared?

Alex pressed something against her lips, and it took her a moment to realize it was a straw. She looked at him, and he gave a small, slight nod. She took a long sip of water. It was stale, but cool, and the burning in her throat eased a little bit. She closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the small, safe sensation—no one would be giving her water if the next step in their plan was to shoot her in the head, and Alex also wouldn’t be able to move around—and then opened her eyes and tried to take in everything possible about where she was.

It was a plane, no question. It was much louder than the private jets she’d flown in with Alex and Leo. It wasn’t quite as barren as the innards of a cargo or military plane, but it wasn’t all that far off either. There was a guard standing at the front of the cabin area—a woman, actually, holding a large rifle. The barrel pointed at the floor, and her eyes were staring off into middle distance—focused on nothing, but seeing everything.

It was too much to see. Zoey squeezed her eyes shut one more time and then focused on Alex. “Will they let you undo my hands? They’re numb.”

“Lean forward,” he said, and she did. The pain burning through her arms was awful, and her shoulders creaked with the effort. He looked back toward the guard and said a few words in a language she didn’t understand. The guard narrowed her eyes, took a few steps forward, and pushed Alex roughly out of the way. Pain exploded through Zoey’s shoulders as the woman pushed her forward, bending her at the waist, and she kept her eyes focused on Alex, telling herself on a high speed loop that he was watching and that he wouldn’t let this woman hurt her, gun or no. And then whatever was holding her hands together snapped, and her arms flopped forward, loose. The pain was unbearable as blood rushed back into her arms and hands, pins and needles snapping all down her skin. Her cheeks were wet with tears, and Alex was right in front of her as the guard backed away, massaging her hands. He was talking to her, quiet, soft words, but she couldn’t hear over the pain.

It seemed like ages before she could feel anything other than the throbbing of sensation returning to her limbs, and then the muscles in her back and chest that had tensed in that awkward position were screaming. She pushed past the hurt and forced herself to speak to Alex. It was better than crying. “What’s going on?” she asked.

He glanced at the guard; if she was interested in their talking, she wasn’t showing it. “I’m not entirely sure,” he said. “I have some good guesses. Do you want to hear guesses, or do you want me to keep my mouth shut until I know?”

She chewed it over for a moment. “Will it help for me to know?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Is Leo going to be okay?”

As soon as she asked, she wished she hadn’t. His eyes darkened, and he looked away for a long time, blinking far too fast. “Yeah,” he said, eventually, the cheer in his voice obviously and entirely false. “Yeah, it’ll be fine.”

“It’s not going to be fine.” She wanted to let him have the lie, but somehow, choking out the words was impossible. She shook her head and studied him carefully. “It’s not going to be fine. What happened between Leo and his father?”

He didn’t answer right away. His hands kept moving over hers, leaving behind sparkles and trails of pain, but when he did speak, it gave her something to focus on other than how much it hurt. “He had a lover. Leo did. From another family. A real Romeo and Juliet story. Only, it was more Romeo and Tybalt, I guess? But his father had the boy killed. And not just because the boy and Leo were together. I think Leo almost could have forgiven him for that. But the head of the other family paid Leo’s father to do it as a sign of disrespect.”

Something hurt worse than her hands now. “What kind of monster—”

Alex was still talking, not quite looking at her. “Don’t tell him I told you, please. It’s very private to him. He used to leave New York to see this guy, and when he lost that—well, he stopped leaving New York. His father told him never to come back to Russia.”

“How do you think he found out?”

Alex shrugged. “There’s no way to know, really. I don’t know if it matters.”

Of course it matters. It always matters.
But the most likely answer was of course that one of Leo’s contacts had betrayed them all, and unless Alex knew Leo’s network very well, much better than he’d indicated that he did, the exact person who turned them over to whoever the hell these people were wouldn’t make a difference. “You think it’s to do with AEGIS, though?”

He looked like he didn’t want to talk about it, but she waited him out. Journalistic skills at work, yet again. “It must be,” he said. “That has to be the source of all of it.

“So let’s talk motive. No one goes through this much unless they have something to lose. We’re looking at half a dozen murders. Who’s left standing?”

“No one,” Alex said, but the words seemed almost like a reflex. He shook his head. “Later, please. I can’t—I can’t right now.”

Zoey took a breath and then nodded. The pain was fading out of her arms, and she forced herself to think sympathetically. It didn’t help to think about how there might not be a later for them. The fact that whoever had snatched them hadn’t killed them out of hand was promising. If someone wanted them dead, that could have happened on the tarmac. If someone wanted them tortured, it probably could have happened without another plane ride. Transportation meant that someone wanted to talk to them, and that meant that they still had value. As long as they had value, they were unlikely to be killed.

But what value could they really have after all this time? Everything they knew someone else had given them.

Except for one thing
. She’d never quite understood the expression “her blood ran cold” before, but in that moment, as fine hairs stood up on her arms and the back of her neck, as her skin prickled with fear and her body suddenly seemed too tight and small to contain her broad expanse of her fear, she knew very well what it meant.

The only thing that they’d come to on their own—that she’d found in the first place—was the thing that had brought them together. The suspicion that she’d uncovered, back when she was supposed to be writing a puff piece on his playboy ways, that AEGIS was double-dealing weapons to both sides of the Philippines conflict. Was it actually possible that all of this was back to that? That everything else they’d found out, that they’d seen, was just a distraction?

It made her stomach cartwheel to think of it that way, but it kind of made sense. After all, things didn’t begin to spiral out of control until she’d begun connecting dots. Until she’d urged Alex to look into what was happening.

Arturo and Thalia. According to Cindy, the two of them had been prepared to give her their shares for the company. Cindy was going to ally with Alex to drive the board toward stepping back from weapons production and moving towards exercising the medical patents that Alex’s grandfather had owned. That was the source of everything. Someone’s money and reputation—because it always came down to money and reputation—was tied up in making sure that didn’t happen.

Her instincts told her that it was the Blankenship fortune that was at stake, and it had almost certainly been Olivia who made the first move to consolidate there. Arturo had been at the AEGIS building the afternoon he was killed. He might have threatened her, or revealed the plan to try to grab his share of the company, and then pass it along to Cindy.

And from there? Once Cindy was dead, why wasn’t that enough?

Because Alex had kept pushing. And they’d gone to London, and Crane had asked for assurance that—what, that the factories would be maintained? Alex had stonewalled him, just like he had everyone else who’d dropped Philip’s name like it was a password that led to the family vault, but Crane had taken it as a threat. And he’d gotten involved, somehow, and they’d come for Alex, but Claire had gotten in the way. Maybe they’d come for Zoey, intending to drive home to Alex the consequences of staying in the way. Yes, that made more sense. And it explained why the shooter had left once he’d killed the girl.

And that was when things had gone truly insane. Olivia—if Olivia were the mastermind of the whole thing—might have tried to call it off when her daughter was killed, but the person who had been working with her had too much invested to call it off. The twins were killed because their guardians knew what Cindy had told them. Olivia was killed because she knew what was happening, and she was trying to stop it. Crane was killed in London, because he’d been involved in the end game. He’d tried to protect his people.

Alex was watching her closely. God, she was so tired and so overwhelmed, every single emotion she was feeling had to be washing right across her face. She forced a smile and hoped it didn’t look too much like a grimace. “What are you thinking about?” He asked.

She waved a hand like it was all so much nonsense. Like they weren’t on a plane to God knew where, where God knew what awaited them. “Nothing you haven’t already heard.” It was a lie, but it was enough for now. He deserved a chance to rest. There wasn’t anything they could do from here, miles above the ground with no WiFi. She wasn’t sure there’d even be anything they could do about it once they landed. To analyze that, she’d have to know what was coming up next, and she had no idea.

Deep breaths, Zoey. Stick to the deep breaths, and you’ll get through this.

At least she’d talked to her mother. At least she’d said she loved her. She should have waited and gotten Daddy on the phone, too, but telling her mother was better than nothing. And if—if, Helen would know to lie, and say that Zoey had told her to tell them how much she loved them. Because she did.

Alex’s fingers wove into hers again. He wasn’t looking at her, and he didn’t say anything, but he seemed to be seeking out some kind of comfort. She squeezed his hand tight and focused on the sensation of his fingers in hers. The pain was fading out, and she was starting to feel the fear more now. But it was going to be okay. She had no idea why she believed it, all of a sudden, but she did. Through and through.

At least for now.

CHAPTER NINE

She didn’t realize that she had fallen asleep until she jerked awake, her ears throbbing with pain from the pressure. Someone was touching her hands, holding them roughly together as something tight wound around her wrists again, and when she tried to pull away, a rough blow against the side of her head made her call out. It felt like a warning, though, not intended to hurt precisely, and there wasn’t much point in fighting right now. Where would she go, even if she managed to overpower the woman standing over her? They were on a fucking plane. Even if she could find a parachute James Bond style, she had no idea how to jump out of a plane in one and not end up a smear on the ground.

Zoey wanted very much to survive whatever the hell was happening to her. That meant going through this start to finish and finding out as much as she could along the way.

“Sorry,” she said to the woman leaning over her. The woman glanced at her, and she couldn’t decide whether or not she’d been understood. She lifted her hands out of her lap and let the woman fasten the zip ties without fighting.

Alex was strapped into another seat on the other side of the plane now. His eyes were fixed on her, his jaw set in a firm line.

She wanted to be closer to him. She told herself that it was so they could plot and discuss what to do when they got off the plane, but really, she just wanted the reassurance of him.

She worked her jaw to release the pressure in her ears and focused on just getting through the next few minutes.

When the plane landed, two more people in the kind of bland dark clothing that couldn’t quite be called a uniform but certainly was not civilian clothes came out of the rear section of the plane. She was unbuckled, and a hand on her arm lifted her to her feet. The grip wasn’t tight enough to hurt, but it was firm. She wasn’t going to be able to run for freedom.

It was the woman who’d watched them the entire flight who had Zoey’s arm, and she led her off the plane with a kind of nerve wracking detachment. The other two people, both men, took Alex’s arms. Zoey craned her neck backwards, keeping an eye on him as she was led down the gangway stairs until the woman jostled her, snapping at her in that same language. Zoey had no idea what she’d said, but she focused front anyway. She wouldn’t help Alex by tripping down the stairs and breaking her neck.

As they hit the tarmac, she noticed two black cars parked near the plane. She was led towards the one on the left, while the men holding Alex veered to the right. Panic that she’d thought she’d moved past swelled through her. and she screamed, flailing and trying desperately to tear away from the woman holding her. She kicked out, trying to catch the woman in the shin or knee, and the woman dodged skillfully. Somewhere, Zoey knew that she looked like every foolish stereotype in all the bad action films ever, but the back of her throat tasted like vomit, and the fear was tearing her up, too big, too intense, for her to even manage to breathe.

The woman moved with her easily, dodging her kicks and keeping her grip firm and tight. And then, without any real warning, the woman kicked out herself, slapping the side of her foot into the back of Zoey’s knee. She lost her balance, dropping to her knees with a shock of pain that splashed up her quads. Her scream turned into a whimper, and she tried to breathe through the pain. At least they’d bound her hands in front of her; she managed to keep herself from eating pavement. It was something.

Alex was there in front of her, all of a sudden, both of his guards standing close. “Zoey,” he said, his voice snappish and sharp, but it cut through the terror. She focused on her breathing and let his eyes drill into her.

After a moment, he glanced up at one of the two men standing over him. “Tell her what you told me,” he said. It was almost funny; he was the one bound, but the man spoke to her just as quickly as if Alex was the man’s own employer.

“You are safe,” he said. His English was heavily accented, but his speech was smooth, not that of someone who was grasping for the words in his head. “We are instructed to take you both to our next location separately. We are not instructed to hurt you. You are safe with us.”

She looked back at Alex, trying to convince herself that he believed this. That she would be safe with these people. That she wouldn’t be dead as soon as she was out of his sight.

“They want something from me,” Alex said. She could hear fear in his voice, but he had it coiled and controlled, waiting to be useful. “They won’t get anything from me if you’re not safe. I will make them check in. I will make them let me talk to you. Don’t trust them, Zoey, I’m not asking that of you, but—trust me. It’s going to be all right. Somehow. We will make it all right.”

It twisted her stomach to do it, but she nodded. She made herself nod. Because he needed to believe it. No matter how crazed it might be, he needed to believe it.

The men led him away, and the woman helped her, not unkindly, to her feet. She was pushed into the back of one of the black town cars, and then she did her best just to breathe.