Come Midnight by Kat Martin
CHAPTER THREE
ASTHEYCROSSEDthe tarmac, Derek reached for Bree’s hand and pulled her up beside him. The hijacker walked behind them, his rifle pointed at Derek’s back. Three other men appeared at the edge of the runway to join them, grim-faced, dark-skinned men with greasy hair and unkempt beards. They were using wireless radios to communicate, clearly in touch with each other and the a-holes on the plane.
Up ahead, a row of metal buildings clustered together on one side of the runway, which was dotted with potholes and patches of bare earth where the asphalt had been worn away. Weeds in search of sunlight grew up through cracks in the pavement. The field was clearly abandoned, dense jungle growing along both sides of the runway, spilling onto the tarmac. High-peaked, jungle-covered mountains rose in the distance, clouds drifting over the crests.
From the looks of the Quonset hut–style buildings, Derek figured the airstrip might have been used by the military at one time. It was abandoned now, and he was fairly certain civilization was a long way away.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Bree said to him softly as they neared one of the metal structures, apparently their destination. “You barely know me.”
He shrugged. “We’re getting married. What choice did I have?”
That made her smile. Derek thought maybe that alone was worth it. He still hadn’t figured out exactly why he’d done it. It was stupid—no doubt about that. But then he thought of the soft look in Bree’s eyes as she was holding Carmen’s baby. Given the same choice, he would do it again.
Derek surveyed the dense, endless green landscape. He had no idea where they were, but he’d been involved in a number of business deals in Latin America. He’d read the crime rate in Honduras had fallen in the last few years, but violence and death were still everyday occurrences.
From the looks of the hard men and women involved in the hijacking, they wouldn’t hesitate to carry out their threats.
He glanced at Bree, who still held onto his hand. He didn’t know why they had singled her out, but he had a feeling she wasn’t completely surprised. That should have made him wary, but somehow it only made him feel more protective.
The hijacker marched them off the tarmac, across a slab of concrete surrounded by a cluster of dilapidated corrugated buildings. A rusty door opened, and a man stepped out to greet them.
“Buenos tardes, señor y señorita.” He was tall and whiplash lean, with long-fingered, graceful hands. “Welcome to Honduras.”
Bree said nothing, just clung to Derek’s hand.
“Who are you?” Derek asked. “What do you want?”
“We are Los Defensores de los Naturaleza. Defenders of nature. We are fighting to save our beloved country from people like you.” His black gaze ran over Derek’s expensive suit and shiny black Ferragamo shoes. “It is big corporations and wealthy land owners who are trying to destroy it.”
He knew about the environmental movement in Honduras. One of its most prominent leaders, a woman named Berta Flores, had been assassinated a few years back for her activism against a hydroelectric plant. The hijackers, however, with their leathery skin and knotted hands, looked more like rebels or mercenaries than activists.
But maybe he was wrong.
“I am General Alonso de Leon Batista. From now on, you will be dealing with me.” Batista looked different from the others—well dressed in tailored black slacks and a spotless white short-sleeved shirt. When his mouth curved beneath his thin black mustache, he looked almost elegant.
“Put them in the women’s quarters,” Batista said.
One of the hijackers shoved Derek from behind, and he stumbled forward. He straightened and kept walking, Breanna close beside him. Their footsteps echoed as the gunman marched them down an empty, cement-floored corridor into a room with a row of six narrow beds. A wooden nightstand sat between two bunks, which were covered by thin gray wool blankets. A couple of wooden benches and a battered plank table rested along the wall, a basin and pitcher on top.
Maybe the room had been occupied by female personnel, but it had clearly been out of use for years. Derek figured the lone female hijacker was staying with the men.
“El baño está allí.” The bathroom is there, the gunman said, gesturing toward a door at the end of the chamber next to a boarded-up window. He was heavyset and unshaven, wearing a red bandanna around his thick neck. “El agua esta en la jarra.” Water is in the pitcher.
Derek spoke Spanish. It was a necessity during negotiations in foreign countries. It was one of the reasons he’d been hired. He could tell Breanna also understood, but neither of them replied. Better to keep them guessing.
“Comprende?” the gunman asked.
Still no reply. The gunman stepped into Derek’s space. “I think you understand me very well, eh, gringo? Do not play games with Cisco, or you will be sorry.”
Derek clamped down on his temper. Calm control worked better in a situation like this. “I understand what you said,” he finally conceded, replying in Spanish.
“Bueno. You will stay here until El Defensor sends for you.” It meant the Defender. Derek doubted defending the environment was the leader’s only motive. With so much manpower, money and planning expended, it was likely more self-serving.
Cisco strolled into the corridor, closed and locked the door. Footfalls sounded as the guard walked away. When Derek turned toward Breanna, she stepped into his arms.
“It’s okay,” he said, drawing her closer. “Everything’s going to be all right.” He shouldn’t have noticed how good she felt pressed against him, how well they fit together, but he did. “We just need to stay calm till help arrives.”
She took a step back and looked up at him. “You shouldn’t have done it. You should have stayed on the plane.”
“Too late to worry about that now.” Derek started moving, making a cursory check of their surroundings, examining the walls, checking under the beds, looking into the bathroom. He climbed up onto the wooden table and pushed up one of the acoustic ceiling tiles to look at the space between the tiles and the roof. He jumped down from the table and brushed the dust off his slacks.
“I’ll take a closer look, see what we might be able to use. But I don’t think the place is bugged.”
“Why did you do it?” Bree asked. “You don’t know anything about me. You don’t even know my real name.”
A trickle of unease slipped through him. He’d known something was off about her. “So you’re not Breanna Winters?”
“No.”
“Well, then, considering the circumstances, I think you better tell me who you are.”
She pressed her lips together. Even with her lipstick gone, they were a pretty shade of pink, and Derek felt an unexpected surge of arousal. Though one look at their surroundings was enough to tamp it down.
“My real name is Breanna Wingate. But I don’t use my family name. I haven’t for more than five years.”
“Wingate,” he repeated. “The only Wingate of any consequence I can think of is Jonathan Wingate, the multibillionaire software engineer.”
“He’s my dad.”
And with those words, it all fell together. “So you’re the target of the hijacking?”
“I’m not sure. That’s the funny part—I don’t really think they were after me. I was supposed to be on a flight next week from Dallas, but I changed my mind at the last minute and decided to leave earlier, fly directly out of Houston. I think maybe they just saw my passport and put two and two together.”
“So there’s a chance you were just a bonus. They collected everyone’s passport, or at least those of us flying business or first-class. They checked the names to see who might be useful, and your name popped.”
“I think that’s a possibility.”
“Even if you’re right and it was just wrong place, wrong time, it doesn’t alter the circumstances.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to scare you, but in a situation like this, even if they ransom you and your dad agrees to pay, they might not let you go.”
Bree’s chin angled up. “Us,” she corrected. “They might not let us go. Because whatever happens, you risked your life for me, and I’m not leaving here without you.”
BREELOOKEDINTODerek’s golden eyes and thought she caught a hint of approval. But he was a difficult man to read, so she couldn’t be sure. Oddly, now that the worst had happened, she felt stronger, less afraid. Resigned to the situation, she was ready to face whatever lay ahead.
And Derek was with her. That was an unexpected bonus.
“Do you think there’s a guard outside our door?” she asked.
Derek walked over and tried the knob, found the door securely bolted. “The lock is solid, but I think the guard’s gone. I’m a guy in a business suit and you’re a billionaire’s daughter. I don’t think they see us as much of a threat. Which actually works in our favor.”
“How do you mean?”
“They’re underestimating us. They think we’ll just sit back and do whatever they say.”
Exactly what Breanna planned to do. “My father will pay whatever they ask. He and my mother love me. You don’t have to worry about that. We’re still very close. I just didn’t want to live my life in a fishbowl and back then, that was the way it was.”
“I can understand that. Your dad’s a world-renowned figure, which put you in the spotlight. I’ve always been on my own. It’s easy to imagine how trapped you felt.”
“Once I got out of college, I realized the life my parents wanted for me wasn’t what I wanted. I craved independence. I wanted to explore the world, find my own place in it.”
“Good for you,” Derek said.
She walked over to the boarded-up window, saw nothing but jungle beyond. “I traveled for a while. I had a trust fund, which gave me tremendous freedom, but I’ve never been the kind of person to sit around and do nothing. So I started a nonprofit, and it felt really good to do something for other people. From there the organization expanded into a number of charities under one umbrella.”
“Including the orphanage in the village outside San Salvador?”
“That’s right.”
Derek came over and stood beside her, peered through the cracks in the boards to see what she had seen—an endless sea of green that was more daunting than a thousand miles of ocean.
He turned to survey their barren quarters, and his mouth curved faintly. “At least we’ve got indoor plumbing.”
Bree almost smiled. “Always a plus.”
“There’s not much we can do except wait and see how this plays out. Once we know the game plan, we can make some decisions.”
She frowned. “Decisions? What sort of decisions? There’s a small army out there, Derek. They have automatic weapons, and I would guess they’re willing to kill to get what they want. We just have to wait till my dad pays the money and they let us go.”
Derek fell silent. He didn’t have to speak for her to read his thoughts. Bree shivered as she recalled his words. Even if he pays, they might not let us go.
“You think they might kill us even if they get the money, just to keep us quiet.”
“Doesn’t matter if you were the original target. You’re here now, and that changes the dynamics. What happens next depends on who’s behind this and what they really want. Once we know that, we can decide what to do.”
Her glance went from Derek to the window and back. “You aren’t thinking we should try to escape? Look outside. The jungle would kill us for sure.”
“Not necessarily. But it isn’t time to worry about that yet.”
Not necessarily.She studied his wide-shouldered build and muscular forearms, the strong sinews in the column of his neck. “So what were you before? A soldier of some kind? A SEAL or something?”
“I was navy, but I wasn’t a SEAL. I was a fighter jet pilot. Flew off carriers for a while. Mostly I was stationed in Pensacola, Florida. But a pilot has a lot of survival training in case he gets shot down. I had engine trouble once over Colombia and had to punch out. It was an isolated area, and I’d lost my comms. Took me six days to reach a village where I could get help. I was damned glad I knew what to do.”
Bree wasn’t sure if Derek’s training was a plus or minus. No way was she braving the perils of a jungle. She’d rather stay here and fight.
“Like I said, it’s too soon to do more than wait,” he repeated, “but it never hurts to be prepared.” With that he returned to his examination of the room, which was large but mostly empty. He examined the lock on the door, went back into the bathroom and returned.
“No window in there, just a row of rusty showers, sinks and johns. Might be able to use the porcelain lid off one of the commodes as a weapon. I could break the mirror. Piece of shattered glass makes a good knife.”
Her heart rate picked up. She wasn’t liking the sound of this.
“I still don’t think the room is bugged, which supports your theory they weren’t expecting you. I can take a bed apart, make a defensive weapon out of one of the wooden slats.”
“You’re making me nervous, Derek.”
“Take it easy, okay? There’s a chance this will all go down smoothly. They ask for money. Your dad pays and they release you—us,” he amended when she opened her mouth to correct him. “And they let the hostages go. But it’s always smart to have a contingency plan.”
He was right. She had no idea what was going on out there, or what the hijackers planned to do. They needed to be prepared.
“What do you think is happening to the people on the plane?”
His features tightened. “I don’t know, but to tell you the truth, I’d rather be here. At least we have some options.”
Did they? Because so far she didn’t see any. They had no guns and no way to escape, and even if they could get out of the compound, there was no place to go but miles of deadly jungle.
Her nerves returned. She watched Derek slide back under the bed and heard a wrenching sound as he tore off one of the wooden slats holding up the thin mattress. Easing back out, he began to fashion some kind of weapon. Bree ignored the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach and sat down on the bunk to wait.
