Private Monaco

Chapter 8

Justine had never known such fear. She lay trembling, her mind racing, aware of the masked men lying either side of her. A scent of stale cheap aftershave wafted from one, while the other smelled like a musty, overused towel. The sound of their breathing was so close, so intimate, and so unwelcome.

She could hardly stand to think about what had happened. Jack had tried his best to stop these evil men, but they’d taken her, forced her into the van and then pushed her into a secret compartment beneath the flatbed. Almost the width of the vehicle, as deep as a coffin and long enough for a tall man to lie down, this smuggler’s box held her and two of her captors while the van made its escape through Monte Carlo. And escape was the right word because she’d been tossed around early on, thrown against first one man and then the other, as the driver raced through the streets. She’d heard roaring engines, gunfire, sirens, and knew Jack hadn’t given up on her. And even now that the engine had settled, the gunfire had stopped and the sirens had faded to nothing, Justine knew Jack would never give up on her.

There wasn’t so much as a crack of light in the confined space. She drifted on a sea of darkness. The van slowed down and she heard a man she assumed was a police officer quiz the driver in French. Justine was about to scream when a gloved hand forced itself over her mouth and pressed down so hard she could barely breathe. She wanted to fight these two men, to rebel and make them suffer, but there wasn’t the space, and her captors were bigger and stronger than her. She was one of the world’s leading forensic profilers and an expert in human psychology, but it was always easier to understand and analyze the emotions of another than to master one’s own. She wanted to vent her anger, to sate her thirst for justice, but she couldn’t and so she tried to find a calmer center, reminding herself of her training, which reinforced action from a position of strength.

She was in a position of weakness now, confined and outnumbered. There would be better opportunities to escape, and the very fact she was being held told her these people did not want her dead. They wanted something else, but that unknown quantity concerned Justine. It was sufficiently valuable to them that they would be prepared to use any leverage at their disposal to win it, and that might include hurting or eventually killing her. She pushed such dark thoughts from her mind. She had to stay positive.

Justine heard the van’s side panel open, and footsteps above her as someone jumped in and checked the rear compartment. She felt the second man pin her arms and wrap a leg over hers to prevent her from flailing out to draw attention to herself. She felt violated by such intimate contact, but there was nothing she could do, and so she lay in impotent silence as the person above her completed their search, jumped out of the vehicle, and slid the side door shut.

Moments later, the heavy hand and restraining limbs were removed as the van accelerated away. Justine was relieved to be able to breathe freely again.

She lost track of time in the darkness, but it could not have been more than an hour later when she felt a shift in gravity toward her feet as the van began to climb a steep incline. Then there were a series of sharp turns that made her feel queasy in the confined space. The winding climb seemed to go on and on, which meant they were on a hill or mountain, probably somewhere in the southern ranges of France, north of Monaco.

With each passing moment Justine was drawing further and further away from Jack. She struggled to control mounting fear as she tried not to anticipate what lay ahead.