Beyond Ransom (The Ransom Series) Read Free

: a middle-aged , balding man with worn features on his face.  He’s imposing in the
sense that he’s tall and towers over me where I’m sitting, but he otherwise
seems completely harmless.  In the two minutes I’ve been conscious in his
presence , though, I already know his appearance is
deceiving.
    This man is evil.  This man will take
everything from me.  This man will end me.
    The gag is still in my mouth,
preventing me from responding or doing anything to participate in this
one-sided conversation.  The way he looks at me, like some prize to be claimed
or object to be conquered, makes me uneasy and only adds to the panic swirling
inside me.
    The moment I look away from him his
hands are on me, holding my face between them and forcing me to look toward him
once again.  When my eyes connect with his deep brown irises, his hands move to
the back of the gag tied around my head and he unties it.  As the cloth falls
into my lap, he runs his hands up through my freed hair, pulling the strands
between his fingers from root to tip before coming back to cup the sides of my
face.
    “Beautiful,” he whispers, holding my
gaze.
    “What do you want from me?” I ask with an unavoidable tremor in my voice.  I’ll do
anything to get his hands off my face.
    His grasp of my skin tightens
slightly.  He’s tensing as if agitated that I’ve ruined his moment of
admiration for me.  “Everything.  I want everything from you.”
    I try again.  “Why am I here?  Where am
I?”
    The man’s hands finally leave my face
as he stands up to tower over me once again.  “You’re here because I want you
to be here, and here is nowhere.”
    I’m getting frustrated.  I’m becoming
angry.  The only thing I want more than getting the hell out of here is
answers, some kind of understanding for my current situation.
    The man turns to walk away from me.  I
try one more time.  “Who are you?”
    He stops abruptly before looking over
his shoulder at me.  “I’m your worst fucking nightmare, k id.”
    “Fuck you.”
    The reply out of my mouth is swift and
spoken with bite.  When he turns around completely to look at me, I immediately
regret my outburst.  I’m poking a goddamn vicious dog.
    He starts moving closer to me.  “What
did you say?”
    I should be scared.  I should back off
and shut the hell up in my situation, but I don’t.  I’m stubborn, as I always
have been, and I say it again, repeating my words slowly and with emphasis.  “I
said fuck you. ”
    In three quick strides he’s directly in
front of me, kneeling down to eye-level with me as he grasps my shirt and yanks
me and the chair I’m attached to toward him.  My face is within inches of his,
and I can see he’s fuming.
    “You insolent little bitch.”  His
breathing becomes ragged.  Control is quickly working itself away from this
man .  I’ve really pissed him the hell off.  “You’ll learn not
to be so disrespectful.”
    I brace myself for whatever he’s going
to do to me, but it never comes.  He releases his hold of me and stands up to
walk away toward the group of men standing and sitting around on the other side
of the room.
    He grabs something from one of the
tables there .  As he steps over next to the spot light focused on me and holds the object in front of him, I realize
it’s a cell phone.  With a couple swipes across the screen , he holds the device up toward me and a flash goes off.  He’s taken
a picture of me.
    He sets the phone back down on the
table and starts rolling up his sleeves.  He slowly walks back toward me with
just a glance over his shoulder.  “Leo, get over here.”
    From the back corner, someone I hadn’t
seen in my previous scans of the room emerges from between two other men. 
While the assailants I’ve seen up until this point all appear in their thirties
or forties, this man is definitely younger, perhaps in his mid-twenties.
    I get a better look at him as he walks
past the spotlight.  His