Hostage Read Free Page A

been this cold, he’d been diving in the Norwegian fjords. Training. He’d been ten years younger. Maybe not so mentally resilient, but a little fitter, a little faster, with a metabolism a lot more capable of dealing with a temperature nosedive like this.
    Tonight he felt his age. It was almost screaming at him, in fact, that turning forty wasn’t so far away, so why the hell wasn’t he working somewhere safe behind a desk, like so many other men his age.
    Instead he felt brittle and fragile, like the gentlest tap from an ice sculptor’s hammer could send fissures zigzagging through him, and explode him into a thousand shards.
    Memories of home flashed through his mind. The beach and the heat and the woman waiting for him there. He thought of London, too, and the woman he had met there the last time he’d visited the English capital.
    She’d contacted him and had brought him in as a security consultant, after the attempted kidnapping of one of her more famous clients. Her name was Alice De Luca and she was over six feet tall and had long red hair and fierce green eyes. From the first moment he’d seen her, she’d made Danny think of the warrior queen of the Ancient Britons, Boadicea.
    But there was a softness to her, too. The touch of her skin beneath his fingertips. The way she stretched in the morning. The sound of her sigh. And a smile which soothed even his most frightening memories. And which made him forget, if only for a while. He pictured her face through candlelight now. He pictured her face as the freezing wind blew.
    Then he remembered where he was. He forced the images from his mind. For self-protection. Because distraction here meant death. Danny lived in two worlds. That one and this. He could never allow the two to mix. Or both would be destroyed.
    He forced himself to count. He made each colour a number … First red, then blue, then orange, then green …
    He bit down on his cheek until he tasted blood. He forced himself to focus on the here and now.
    Still no movement nearby.
    Nothing.
    But as he listened to the roar of the wind, another image surfaced in his mind. This time it was of Mary, the kidnappers’ victim. Danny pictured her in the toilet cubicle. With her jaw swollen. Yellow and black. New bruises on old. Eyes screwed up. Not wanting to see.
    The numbers Danny was counting seemed to stutter. A controlled anger began to rise in his mind. Whoever had taken that photo deserved to pay.
    He kept on chewing, still counting the seconds off at the back of his mind.
    Twenty minutes. The clouds had sealed into a solid, seething mass above him. Visibility was down to thirty yards. Danny felt sick with cold. And sick for Mary.
    â€˜Don’t give up,’ he muttered.
    The words were meant for her. He knew he never would.
    It was time to show the kidnappers more of what they wanted. Let them watch their rich city lawyer cracking up. Tempt them in. He sank to his knees and covered his face, as if he couldn’t take any more and was trying to hide his shame.
    That was when he heard them. High-pitched engines. Powerful and fast. Cutting through the wind. Rising in volume. Racing out of the darkness towards him from behind.

Chapter Three
    Casper, Wyoming, USA
    30th November, 5.14 p.m., North American Mountain Time
    Danny quickly got back on his feet. He twisted his fingers into fists above his head. He waited.
    Four minutes slowly slipped by and still he saw no movement in the gloom. Every few seconds he’d catch another snatch of an engine’s growl, as whatever vehicles these were cut back and forth across the hills behind the cemetery.
    Always they stayed out of sight, remaining cloaked deep in the dark. They were still a hundred yards or more away, Danny guessed. But were they really getting any closer?
    From the high pitch of their engines, he was guessing that they were motorbikes or quad bikes. He couldn’t tell which yet. He tracked the snarl