Her name was the last thing he said as a bullet went through his right eye, killing him on the spot. His body was still falling when the gunman dragged Shaun forward, forcing her to step over her dead colleague and out into the hallway. She twisted around to look behind her, catching the wide, terrified eyes of the boy, now sitting up in his bed and staring after them.
“You killed him!” Shaun yelled, yanking on the arm he was holding tightly.
He swung her into a wall, which shook ominously when her weight hit it. The whole structure was nearly as thin as carboard, meant to come down and go up quickly and easily. She would be a lot more than winded if he’d just thrown her into a real wall. He was much bigger than her and he was using his strength to force her compliance.
“Shaun – ”
Shaun looked over, her head moving against the wall. Janet was rushing down the hall toward them, heedless of the gun coming up toward her. Shaun threw herself against his arm, knocking his aim to the side. A bullet slammed through the opposite wall; the bullet meant for Janet. He shoved Shaun away from him and brought his arm back up, but Janet had flung herself into one of the exam rooms. Instead of going after her, he took Shaun’s arm again and hauled her against his side, running with her down the hall.
He was after her specifically it would seem. He could have grabbed someone from the reception area if he wanted any medical professional. Instead he’d gone to the trouble of searching her out in the hospital, putting himself and everyone else at risk. They rounded a corner where a patient was standing in the hallway.
“Get back!” Shaun screamed, not wanting him to get shot.
The man took one look and ducked out of the way.
They hurtled through the hospital at such a dizzying pace that Shaun lost track of where she was until they were standing outside, the sky a bright blur above them. She tried to look around, figure out what was happening, but her captor wrapped an arm around her middle, picked her up off the ground and flung her toward a white paneled van. Someone else grabbed her and dragged her inside.
She managed to let out one more scream before the gunman jumped in the back of the van, slammed the door shut and brought his hand down on the driver’s shoulder. The driver nodded his acknowledgment and the van started moving. The gunman turned back to look at her. She curled her legs protectively underneath herself and pressed her spine against the metal panel. The look on his face was a weird mix of satisfaction and despair.
Chapter Three
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 managed to claw 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 cold 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 started to wonder 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.