Hostage to Love (Entangled Suspense)
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Authors: Maya Blake
Tags: #romance, #Hostage, #romance series, #Love, #Maya Blake
Hostage to Love
Maya Blake
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Maya Blake. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
2614 South Timberline Road
Suite 109
Fort Collins, CO 80525
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Edited by Tracy Montoya
Cover design by Fiona Jayde
Ebook ISBN 978-1-62266-133-6
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition July 2013
The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
People
Magazine, Kevlar, G550 Gulfstream, Blu-ray,
Fight Club, Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: The Next Generation
, Glock, Prada, “i carry your heart” by e.e. cummings, Twitter, Tweet.
To my readers. This one is for you.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
N
AWAKA,
A
FRICA
“Move!”
The harsh command reverberated through Belle Winkworth-Jones, causing her already pounding heart to skitter with renewed fear. She tightened her hand around the arm of the old man beside her, anxious to communicate reassurance.
“Not long now, Father,” she urged the priest, silently willing him to walk faster while keeping herself between him and the soldier behind them.
Anxiously, she glanced over her shoulder and past their grim-eyed guard at the other two captives—Edda and Hendrik Morgensen—and breathed a little easier to see them keeping up.
The guerrillas marched them relentlessly through the night, not stopping until dawn tinged the inky blackness of the dense African jungle. As if aware of the danger that lurked nearby, the critters and creatures of the night fell into silence at their approach. Only the distant hoot of an owl echoed eerily above the canopied treetops.
By the time they stopped to make camp, Belle could barely place one foot in front of the other.
After five days of the same, she now knew the routine by heart. Their captors handed out small pieces of the stale, near-molded bread made from coarse corn flour. After they ate, she and the three other hostages would be tied up around the trunk of a large baobab tree or a large rock, where they would stay shaded from the harsh September sun until close to dusk. Then the punishing journey would recommence.
She’d stopped asking what their captors intended to do with them; her demands had so far fallen on deaf ears. For the most part, the guerrillas were silent, preferring to let the deadly threat of their weapons do the talking for them. Nothing urged a person to walk faster or shut up better than having the business end of a machine gun aimed at them, she’d discovered.
But she had a fair idea where they were headed. Even though she’d only heard whispers of where his camp was located, the rebel leader who controlled this part of Nawaka was well known. Some spoke of him with fear, others with reverence.
Right at that moment, the emotion that burned in Belle’s stomach stemmed from neither. The rebels’ treatment of them, especially old Father Tom, only caused anger to swell in her chest.
Recognizing the futility of her fury, she squashed it down, finished her bread, and slumped against a large boulder in the small clearing they’d been brought to. The throbbing pain in her bleeding feet and wrists echoed through her body, but she ignored it. She also ignored the cramping in her abdomen. She would worry about
that
particular problem later.
She glanced at Father Tom. The aging missionary had hurled himself so bravely in front of her when the rebels had invaded their mission camp and had taken her and the Dutch couple—her fellow volunteers at the mission-run relief camp—hostage. Guilt and worry replaced her anger. Because of her, he’d also been thrown into the back of the armored truck along with them.
She went to him and held out the water bottle the rebels had surprisingly let her keep. “Drink,” she said softly, knowing they only had a short amount of time before they would be tied up. Dehydration was a reality they’d learned to live with since their capture. Temperatures soared well into the hundreds during the day, the humid atmosphere made all the more unbearable by the density of the forest. Water was also a scarce commodity, so the constant fear that they’d succumb to the life-threatening condition was ever-present.
He took a drink and handed it back. She took a small gulp, careful to ration the water she’d replenished at a shallow waterhole they’d passed the night before. Wiping the back of her near-calloused hand across her mouth, she put the bottle away, her eyes on the old man.
“Are you all right?” She indicated the side of his head, which still bled, albeit lightly, from when he’d fallen earlier.
“Och, I’m fine, lass. ’Tis just a scratch. Anyway, I’ll soon be back at the mission.” His Scottish brogue hadn’t diminished, even after thirty-five years in Africa.
She suppressed the hysterical laughter that bubbled up in her throat. Father Tom Campbell had repeated this assurance for the past five days. Just how he hoped to evade the fifteen rebel soldiers who guarded them remained a mystery to her.
So far he hadn’t tried anything stupid. She’d prayed his belief they would soon be back at their missionary outpost was spiritual rather than wishful thinking. But today she caught a disturbing glint in his eyes, one that made her uneasy.
She looked over her shoulder and counted seven of the soldiers disappearing back into the jungle. Scanning the immediate vicinity to make sure the remaining rebels wouldn’t overhear them, she crouched down and leaned toward the old man.
“Father, I hope you’re not planning anything crazy, because you know these men won’t tolerate it. Besides, I need you to look after me, so please promise me you’ll do as they say,” she pleaded with him, unashamed to play the helpless damsel just this once if it meant keeping him safe.
He waved her concerns away. “Ah, lass. No harm will come to you, not while I’m around. I’m not going anywhere without you. But soon we’ll be going home.”
“I’m sorry, Father, but I think you’re wrong. We’ve been heading east since yesterday,” she whispered. “I…I think we’re near the border, approaching the leader’s camp. There are bound to be more of his men around, so please, don’t do anything rash.”
Father Tom shook his head. “I know it in my heart, and I can feel it in these old bones, we’re going home within the week. Rest easy. You’ll be back with those you love soon. I’m sure there’s someone special waiting for a bonny girl like you.”
She shook her head to dispel the image of gray eyes and chiseled features that rose in her mind. “No, Father. There’s no one special.”
Not since one man had cut her hopes away. Not since the future she’d foolishly dreamed of and mapped out for herself had turned out to be a mirage.
She felt compassion for the children of Nawaka whose lives had been torn apart by war and famine. She certainly felt fear, for herself and the other three captives whose plight was very grave indeed. She pitied the soldiers, who thought the only way to resolve their conflict was by wielding guns and tormenting innocents.
But feelings of excitement, longing, and, above all, love? No, those had been trampled beneath feet encased in Italian hand-made shoes with all the carelessness of someone stubbing out a cigarette.
Forcing the unwanted thoughts from her mind, she focused on the old man. “So, can I count on you to behave?” she asked.
He held up three gnarled fingers. “Old scout’s honor.”
Somewhat reassured, if not all together convinced, by the old man’s words, she straightened and swatted the ever-present flies from her face.
By the time the second group of rebels returned, they’d finished their meager meal. Ignoring the pain in her feet, Belle helped the old man up and fell into her designated place in line, the second of the hostages walking between two groups of gun-toting captors.
Their journey ended abruptly an hour later.
The scorching sun still rode in the cloudless sky when they passed a large circle of moabi trees and entered a clearing dotted with thatched huts.
The largest of the huts, slap in the middle of the semi-circular group of similar dwellings, was the most carefully constructed. Although made to look like its dilapidated neighbors with its thatched roof, oven-strengthened mud exterior, and wooden-slatted windows, the structure held a few differences to the practiced eye. The walls were slightly thicker, the door made of mahogany rather than the weaker plywood of the other huts.
Belle gaped at the unexpected sight this far inside the jungle, the pleasing hint of civilization momentarily overriding the reason for her presence here. To one side of the clearing, a large well rose from the ground, complete with a powerful-looking hand pump and a simple water hose had been connected from the well to a showerhead hooked to a tree branch.
The simple, but oh-so-very-missed, comfort gripped her attention.
She was so focused on thoughts of taking a shower that it took a few precious seconds to sense his presence.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” the voice said. It was deep and lyrical, a mixture of accents that curiously intrigued her. Just as it had the first time she’d heard it three weeks ago.
Turning sharply to her left, she came face to face with the man on whose orders they had been taken—her ultimate, ruthless captor.
Charles Mwana.
Belle reluctantly admitted, just as she had the first time she’d seen him, that the propaganda pictures strewn around the Nawakan capital and on signposts in every village did not do him justice.
He towered over his men, a commanding figure whose camouflage uniform was the only thing he had in common with his subordinates.
Shoulder-length brown hair bleached light by the harsh African sun, blue-eyed and swarthy, the rebel leader wouldn’t have been out of place on the cover of
People
Magazine, except for the ugly, jagged scar that disfigured the right side of his face.
But even with the scar, she had to admit there was a riveting presence about him, a charismatic pull that could lull one into believing he was marginally less dangerous than he truly was. Especially when he chose that moment to bare white, even teeth in a seemingly harmless smile.
She tensed as he came closer, the sheer breadth of his shoulders blocking out the sun as he paused two feet from her.
“I trust my men treated you well?” he asked.
She barely stopped a snort from escaping. Father Tom started to answer, but she stopped him with a slight shake of her head.
“Yes, but I…we would like to know why we’ve been cap—taken.”
“All in good time. First things first. Let’s get you out of this interminable heat.” His English was perfect, a fact which, since Nawaka was mostly a French-speaking country, made her wonder about his origins. He signaled to one of his men, who came forward and snapped to attention in front of him.