Page 74 of Blood Money

A chair scraped on the floor. Alex went still.

Footsteps drew near, until they stopped beside her.

She forced her body to go slack. Keeping her breathing even was difficult.

An accented female voice from the other side of the room said something in what Alex recognized as Farsi. She was hardly fluent in it, but she’d picked up a basic understanding from Nicky’s father, enough to know the woman was asking her partner if Alex was awake.

For a moment, whoever was standing over her said nothing. Alex feared he would detect she’d come to. And if he forced her onto her back, from his vantage point above her he would easily see the locator.

Several more seconds passed.

“No.” The man’s footsteps receded.

Alex held back an audible sigh of relief and got back to work. Holding her breath, she strained against the tape until it cut into her wrists. Biting back the pain, she managed to push the button into the hole.

She exhaled a silent whoosh.

Footsteps, lighter this time. The woman, Alex assumed.

A hand grabbed her shoulder, flipping her onto her back.

“Wake up!”

The woman slapped Alex on the cheek. Her cheek stung, and she couldn’t hold back a cry of surprise. Tears came to her eyes, but she blinked them back, refusing to show this evil creature any sign of weakness.

“That’s what I thought,” the woman said in English as her male companion strode over. “Abdullah, bring her to the table.” With quick, military precision, the woman spun and headed for a metal table in the center of the room.

The voice on the phone. Alex would recognize it anywhere.

The bitch who threatened my son.

Alex clenched her hands into fists then squeezed her eyes shut, stemming the urge to tell the bitch to fuck off.

She opened her eyes and stared. No surprise that the woman appeared to be Middle Eastern.

Olive skin tone and dark eyes set in a wide forehead. A long black braid swung at her back. Wearing black slacks and a green turtleneck sweater, she would have fit in anywhere. No one would ever suspect beneath that plain garb was a deadly assassin.

Alex recognized Abdullah as the man waiting for her at the meet location. The one she’d handed the envelope to.

“What do you want from me?” Alex blinked away the wetness in her eyes. The woman ignored her. “Why are you doing this? I gave you what you asked for. Kidnapping me wasn’t part of the deal.”

Abdullah grabbed Alex by her sore shoulder and hauled her to her feet. She gasped then swayed, the latent effects of the drug still influencing her system. White stars clouded her vision, threatening to send her back into unconsciousness. Only Abdullah holding her upright as he pushed her toward the metal table prevented her from falling on her face.

Blinking away the fuzziness, Alex glanced around the room. She was in a barn. Fluorescent light fixtures hanging from the ceiling buzzed and flickered. The wood plank walls were lined from floor to ceiling with old vegetable crates, cardboard boxes, a few bales of hay, and several red metal cans. In the center of the room on the floor was a wooden door with a large metal ring. A root cellar. She recognized it from one of her books on New York City’s historical architecture.

Abdullah shoved her into a chair. The envelope containing the NYPD documents rested on the table in front of her, along with several large blueprints. At the other side of the table perched a laptop.

“Check her again,” the woman ordered. “And the next time you forget to change the batteries in that thing, I’ll turn you in to the police myself.”

They already wanded me, but the batteries were dead.

Alex nearly sagged off her chair, so great was her stroke of luck.

“Yes, Fatima.” Abdullah pulled what looked like a cell phone from his pocket, all the while muttering something under his breath that sounded to Alex like kussi, the Farsi word for whore.

Interesting. Dissension among the ranks.

Clearly, Abdullah didn’t relish taking orders from Fatima. No surprise there. It would no doubt be decades, if not centuries before Arab women were on equal footing with their male counterparts.