“Excuse me?” She tugged away from him but his vise grip wouldn’t allow her to move. His fingers dug into her flesh beneath the layers of fabric she wore, and pain shot down her arm.
Charles said nothing as he marched her up his drive and back into the house.
“Release me,” she insisted once they were inside and he’d closed the door behind him.
He twisted the lock and chained the dead bolt, all the while holding her to the point of bruising her skin.
“Mr. Blayney, I don’t take kindly to violence. Release me at once.” Between the cold and wet of outside and the growing concern of what the man holding her was going to do, Gwen began to tremble.
Instead of acting on her demand, Charles shoved her ahead of him down the hall and to a door in the back of the kitchen. Through the pantry was another passage, one she’d hardly noticed before. Behind that was a set of stairs descending to a basement.
Gwen dug her heels into the floor and braced her hands on a doorframe.
“What are you doing?”
“What I was told to do should you attempt to escape.”
“What?” Told to do? What was he talking about?
Charles peeled her fingers off the doorframe. “Keeping you against your will for the sake of our great country.”
“That’s preposterous. I’m not a threat to your country.” Although she might consider bodily harm to the man holding her.
“I don’t know about that. Snooping around my home, finding classified information…”
What information? She’d only found pictures.
“And since you’re practically a US citizen I’m within my rights to hold you against your will.”
Her thoughts turned to Neil. Did he know Major Blayney would hold her like this? The expression on her face must have shown her question.
Charles released a sadistic laugh. “You don’t think he married you because he wanted to, do you?”
Her heart dropped. “Of course he did.”
“You go on believing that.”
Without further words, he shoved her down the stairs and into the lower quarters of the house. Like any basement, it was dark, damp, and smelled of mold. The walls were finished but the dark pegboard was less than comforting. An old sofa sat center room and boxes were stacked along the back wall. There were only a couple of lights above her head and not one window to be seen.
“You can’t leave me down here.”
“You’ve proven you can’t be left to your own recognizance.”
Charles shoved her down and twisted her arms behind her. Dirt from the couch drifted to her nose and made her cough.
“Stop.” She struggled under his grasp but didn’t manage any leverage. She felt the steel on her wrist before she realized what Charles was doing. “This isn’t necessary. Clearly you can overpower me.”
“Neil will not approve of what you’re doing.” She pleaded, using everything she could. “Your wife might come home and find me here.”
“My wife is in Florida searching for retirement houses she’ll never live in. Once she realized no one was dying I needed to give her a reason to stay. You don’t think her leaving was an accident, do you?”
The metal around her wrists clicked into place, but Charles kept his knee in her back, rendering her immobile.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I have my reasons.”
Reasons that had nothing to do with keeping her safe. She kept her head and lay still. She needed to think and plan her escape.
He left her facedown and handcuffed on the smelly sofa.
As she remembered the other precaution she’d done for her own safety, Charles delivered all the evidence she needed to understand his ultimate intent. “Don’t worry, Lady Harrison. As soon as I have word that Neil has been taken care of, I’ll take care of you quickly. Only need to keep you around if your husband outsmarts my man. Leverage. A man always needs leverage.”
She gasped, and Charles shoved something between her teeth to keep her from screaming.
“He worked under the command of Major Charles Blayney. The major still lives on base at Fort Carson with his wife. Word is he keeps putting off his retirement.”
Blake listened to Carter on a phone at twenty-three thousand feet. They were flying over Utah, trying to avoid a storm that was covering the Rockies and delaying air traffic due to lightning strikes. Twice his pilot told him they might have to divert south to Santa Fe or north to Cheyenne.
“You think Neil is there?”
“Could be. I’m trying to get you clearance so you can talk to the man. Looks like he was the one who called the discharge of Neil’s troop.”
“So he’ll know who our killer is?”
“Killer?”
“Dean called before I left. Homicide ruled on the neighbors after he called in a military expert.”
“Know something, Blake? All this is starting to sound like a damn conspiracy. Military-grade bugs, wired Jacuzzis that fry those inside…dead birds left as a diversion. I keep coming back to why? Max can’t find a damn thing about an Operation Raven. Brings me to the question of who knew about Raven? Who wants the soldiers that were involved with Raven dead?”
“You think someone is going after all of them?”
“The suicide reported about Neil’s friend had a tidbit in the police report about a dead raven under the body. I have a call in to the local sheriff in Tennessee, suggesting he reopen the case.”