The Russian's Dangerous Game (15 page)

“You’re mine now, Brianna.” He moved to her other breast, causing the same sensations to ripple through her slender body. “Say it,” he growled.

“I’m yours,” she cried back to him, her arms wrapping around his neck as she arched against him, feeling that intimate connection increase in intensity with this position.
“All yours.”

With that agreement, Rocco swung her around so that she was cradled underneath him. He gave her promises with his body that she accepted, reveled in and he groaned with a strange sensation, an unknown emotion, as Brianna gave those promises right back to him.

One blissful week later, a week spent in his bed, laughing and learning about this complicated man that she’d fallen madly in love with, she couldn’t believe how her life had changed. She’d driven to the mountains of Pennsylvania to reveal Rocco’s darker side and ended up protecting him from the invasive world. Brianna ended the call to Rachel and Nikki, still smiling to herself at how excited her friend was now that everything was finished. It occurred to her that there had been a strange tension in Nikki’s voice that Brianna didn’t completely understand. They were meeting the following day for lunch though. Nikki had some important news to relate and Brianna couldn’t wait to see her friend and tell her the big news. She glanced down at the ring on her finger. A ring that Rocco had given her just last night over dinner.

They’d been together for a week and, as of forty-eight hours
ago, the authorities in ten different countries had confirmed arrests of all the people Rocco and his friend had thwarted in their market manipulation scheme. And as of twenty-four hours ago, Rocco had approved her story. It had been published in the newspaper this morning.

Between the story and Rocco, she didn’t think she could ever be happier. As she
maneuvered her way through the early afternoon traffic, it occurred to her that she was happier about being with Rocco than she’d ever thought possible. He even eclipsed the excitement over the story that truly would send her into the realm of hard core reporting. But with Rocco, she didn’t really care about that any longer. She just liked being with him because he accepted her for who she was.

Her phone rang once again and she glanced at the
text screen. “Wow!” her co-worker had texted her. “Great job!”

She laughed once again, feeling as if a huge weight had lifted from her shoulders. She’d done it, she told herself with pride. She’d broken a story that was an international sensation, she was receiving the accolades of her peers and she was walking on water.

The walking on water part had nothing to do with her story though. Lifting her phone once again, she texted the message, “Tonight?”

Almost immediately Rocco’s
response came back, “You’d better believe it!” and she laughed to herself. The giddy feeling suffused her entire afternoon. Instead of turning right which would take her to her office, she turned left instead, parking among the enormous number of other cars already at the shopping mall. She had some things she wanted to get before she met Rocco tonight. Even walking into the mall, she blushed at what she was going to purchase.

Before she could lose her nerve, she went straight to the only place she knew to purchase the specific item
she wanted. There were so many other options which made her blush but she wanted just one item in particular. She hurried to the cashier, taking out cash quickly as the employee rung up the item.

As she walked out of the shop, she looked around, painfully aware that everyone passing by her probably knew what she’d just purchased. Of course, in that type of store, one could get all kinds of…interesting items. But she felt like
she had her own purchase written across her forehead for everyone to know.

She walked down the hallway a bit and then took her purchase out of the bag, tossing the bag in the nearest trashcan and quickly storing her item in her purse. She felt slightly better now, but just to make sure, she walked into three other stores, buying other items that were much less…interesting. Although she was pretty sure that Rocco would still enjoy each one. At least, she hoped he would.

Smiling with success, she walked back out of the mall, lifting her face up to the late fall sunshine. Today was a huge victory for her. She’d overcome so many obstacles, and she never would have been able to do it without Rocco’s help. She almost laughed out loud when she thought back to what she’d originally thought about him. Turns out, she’d been wrong. Completely, unbelievably wrong!

She was just about to step out onto the street when she heard tires squealing and turned her head. About two hundred feet to her left, a dark SUV was screeching towards her. For the first fraction of a second, Brianna didn’t think anything of it, just assuming someone had misgauged the torque on their car but as the big, black vehicle came closer, something inside of her realized that this was not an accident on a casual shopper’s exodus from the mall parking lot.

She was in danger. Something in her gut told her to run and she spun around on her heel. She dropped her bags and sprinted back towards the mall entrance. With every fiber of her being, she pushed herself as fast as she could, not even bothering to stop and check to make sure she was ahead of whoever it was. She heard a door open, someone yelled towards her but she still didn’t stop. She didn’t care if she looked like a fool, she knew that she had to get away. She banged her toe and her knee on something but didn’t stop, running full out as fast as her legs could carry her.

She’d just reached the cold metal of the mall doorway when she felt the
beefy arm wrap around her waist. But still she didn’t stop, knowing that stopping would mean defeat and possibly never seeing Rocco again. She had to move, had to get away. The black reflection in the store window told her that she hadn’t just been imagining the threat. Two large men were reaching for her. When the arm wrapped around her waist, she used all of her might to scratch and claw, hearing a curse in her ear but she didn’t stop fighting. Anything she could do, she tried it but the man’s arm was too strong. He lifted her up off of her feet and she used that momentum to swing her legs forward then back with all of her might. She heard a grunt and the arm loosened around her. She didn’t stop even when she felt herself falling. Swinging around, she faced the second man, ready to scream her head off to get someone’s attention.

Unfortunately, she’d miscalculated. Thinking the first man was out of commission, if only for a moment, she’d turned her back on him to face the second man. The first one didn’t take any more chances. With one swift move of his h
and, he slammed the butt of his pistol on her head.

The intense, shattering pain that swept through her with the impact was only felt for a fraction of a moment. The next instant, there was nothing but blackness and she fell to the ground. She wasn’t even aware of the arms that reached out and caught her as she felt to the earth. She wasn’t aware of anything as unconsciousness wrapped her in a
deep, black cocoon.

Because of her unconscious state, she
didn’t see the other two men who had raced across the parking lot, guns drawn and shooting at the tires of the SUV as it raced out of the parking lot. Within moments of its departure, the black truck was lost in the flood of other vehicles heading west on Interstate 66, all of whom were heading farther out of the city towards West Virginia.

Thirty seconds after the encounter, Stu
stood outside Rocco’s office and took the call, his face paling as he listened in detail to the problem. Quickly, he gave instructions all the while bursting into the meeting in which Rocco was half listening. Most of his mind was more occupied with thinking about Brianna, anticipating seeing her that night. He wanted to see his ring on her finger. He remembered the tears in her eyes when he’d proposed and her sweet, teary agreement to become his wife. He wanted her in his arms even now. He wanted to see the ring on her finger, to touch the ring and know that she would be his forever. Strange, he thought. Never would he have believed he would be getting married. But never would he have believed a woman like Brianna existed until ten days ago.

When Stu burst through the double doors, cell phone still attached to his ear as he nodded his head to whatever was being told to him
, Rocco’s stomach tightened. He knew this was bad news. Stu would never interrupt a meeting for anything less than life or death. And the only person’s life or death that would matter was Brianna’s.

Rocco immediately stood up, not even bothering to dismiss the meeting participants as he followed Stu out to his own office which was directly attached to the conference room. “Tell me,” was all he said, his teeth grinding as his mind fought for control over the rising panic.

“Ms. Stewart went to the mall earlier today. As she was leaving, she was taken by two men in a dark SUV. We have the license plate number and we’re already tracing it.”

He was handed a piece of paper by a man who burst into the office.

Stu looked at the number and shook his head. “It’s Chenkoff,” he told Rocco quickly.

Rocco controlled his mind
, tamping down his fear mercilessly. “What happened to her?” he demanded. “And I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to you earlier and let you put the team on her for her own protection. I should have listened to you.”

Stu ignored that. “Come with me,” he said and they walked into the security room’s electronic headquarters
.

“What do you have for me,” Rocco
demanded as soon as they were behind the closed doors of the room containing the highest level of security equipment possible.

One of the security technicians stood up and, with a very serious expression, explained exactly what they were doing to find Brianna.
“We’ve traced them through Ms. Stewart’s cell phone. They are currently heading west into Front Royal, Virginia. Once they reach that area, the cell towers are few and far between and the reception is more difficult to triangulate. So we could lose them.”

“
We need to get someone in the air to intercept the tracking signal and the authorities on the ground,” Stu told the person who was already on the phone.

Turning to Rocco, Stu explained,
“The helicopter was placed on emergency alert as soon as we received word. The pilot is standing by, ready to fly as soon as she has direction.”

“Already on it,” another person said as he spoke through his headpiece.

Rocco nodded, feeling reassured that Stu was doing everything possible to find his Brianna. That didn’t lessen the tightness in his chest and he vowed, when Brianna was back by his side, there would be a security team following her every move!

“We have something,” the man with the headphones called out. Everyone in the room froze and looked at the man who was speaking again, nodding his head. A moment later, he jumped from his position and came over to the conference room table which was actually a live, satellite image with a
Plexiglas top. The image showed all the cars in the area, the mountains…even the planes flying overhead became red, blinking dots that moved across the image.

“
We have a probable location,” the man with the headphones explained. He leaned over the table, his eyes skimming the image until he found the coordinates. “Right here,” he said, pointing to a valley not far off the road. “This is an old farmhouse and…” he listened to someone speaking in his headphones, then nodded when the voice stopped talking. “It’s even owned by the Caligary family, but through multiple company fronts.”

Rocco nodded, feeling in his gut that this was the right lead. His eyes looked over the topography, memorizing details. He stood up a moment later and looked at the group.
“I want to be there. Tell the pilot to wait for me,” he said and sprinted out the door. It took him less than twenty seconds to reach the rooftop. He dove into the helicopter, donning the earphones even while the pilot was lifting off. Stu was right behind him, still in contact with the headquarters, issuing orders and giving Rocco a status every few moments.

The flurry of activity didn’t stop when they move
d into the air. The pilot quickly accelerated, which caused the nose of the helicopter to angle downwards. Rocco didn’t notice anything, maintaining absolute focus on listening to the chatter through his headphones. The police and FBI had already been notified; the FBI brought in since it was a kidnapping across state lines and also because they knew it involved the Russian mafia. It was all connected to the story Brianna had just published in the newspaper about how Rocco – only referred to as an anonymous “power” – had been instrumental in bringing down the Russian mafia.

The helicopter flew high over the city, racing against time while Stu gave directions to the pilot, tracking the SUV. “What if Brianna isn’t in the SUV?”
Rocco demanded.

Stu shook his head. “They didn’t know she had her cell phone in her purse. They might be professional criminals, sir, but they aren’t smart e
nough to toss her purse out. At least not at this point. My men are still following the car and the police are trying to get ahead to intercept them. We’ll get her back.”

Rocco wasn’t so sure, but he wasn’t willing to consider any other alternative. “How much longer until we’re in line with the vehicle?” he demanded of the pilot.

“Less than six minutes sir,” she said, not taking her focus off of the window in front of her, flicking switches every few moments. She was an amazing pilot, cool and calm while listening to the chatter in her earphones, answering Rocco’s questions and accepting direction from Stu. As soon as all of this was over, the woman was getting a big bonus, Rocco told himself mentally.

His cell phone buzzed and he considered ignoring it. But the number that appeared on his screen caught his attention. He put a hand on Stu’s shoulder, showing him the phone number. Stu also recognized the number. Before Rocco could answer it, Stu plugged something into the micro USB port. With a nod from Stu, Rocco pressed the “accept” button. “What is it?” he demanded.