Mountain Captive by Cassie Mint
Three
Natalia
Iwake as a strong arm slides beneath my back. For a crazy, sleep-muddled moment, I’m a little girl again and my father is carrying me upstairs to bed, cradled against his chest. I hum and burrow closer, pressing my face against the hot skin of his throat, and the sleeping bag whispers as it twists around me.
The sleeping bag.
Oh god.
I suck in a sharp breath, wrenching my body away. I kick and thrash and fight, but I’m trapped by my own freaking sleeping bag, and the man inside my tent is strong and calm. He moves with firm deliberation, knotting a strip of fabric between my teeth, muffling my cries, and lashing my arms to my sides through the slippery fabric.
He speaks as he works in a low, soothing tone, like I’m a wild animal trapped in a snare. I gnaw at the fabric gag, tossing my head to the side and catching him on the jaw. He curses and rocks back on his heels, a dark shape in the cramped tent, and hot tears slide down my cheeks into my hair. Wrenching sobs shake my chest as he lunges forward again, picking me up easily and bundling out into the night air.
No. No. No.
I shake my head, wriggling and writhing in his grip, and he speaks low and urgent in my ear.
“Be still. Still, princess. I’m not going to hurt you.”
As if I’d believe a word this man said. I scream harder against the gag, tearing my throat, and I can taste the coppery tang of fear on the back of my tongue. I throw all my weight to one side, taking him off guard, and I wrench out of his arms onto the dirt.
Hitting the ground steals my breath, but I’m already wriggling away, kicking at the sleeping bag tangled around my legs. The man curses loudly, gathering me back into his arms like I weigh less than a twig. Like all my fight, all my strength, is a nuisance and nothing more.
I’m caught.
I slump against his hard body, my chest aching from crying, panic weighing my limbs down like lead weights. My pulse thrums beneath my jaw, tapping against the skin.
“That’s better.” His fingers sift through my hair. “I won’t hurt you, princess. I promise. We’ll send a quick message to your father and then it will all be over.”
… Over?
My father?
Cold dread slides down my spine.
This man knows who I am. Who my father is.
And he means to kill me.
* * *My captor lives in the cabin I walked past this morning. He carries me there through the forest with absurd gentleness, cradled against his chest like a bride, and when he pushes the door open and carries me over the threshold, I squeeze my eyes shut tight.
Light flares in the cabin. It tints my eyelids pink, and I don’t fight anymore as he pauses in the center of the floor, then carries me to one corner.
He lays me down, slow and careful, a mattress creaking beneath my weight. My eyes snap open, the fight flooding back to my limbs, but he’s already digging my hands out of the sleeping bag and lashing them to the bed rail with the rope he used earlier. It’s one of the tent’s guy-lines, I realize dimly. He didn’t even need equipment to abduct me. He just took me. Like a penny off the sidewalk.
“It’s alright, princess.”
I glare at him through narrowed eyes as he steps back from the bed, rubbing a hand over his jaw. His eyes rake over the length of my body, naked hunger in their dark depths, but even though my core pulses hot with anticipation, he doesn’t move to touch me again.
He just watches, his face in shadow.
His breath drags in and out of his lungs.
Then he turns on his heel and strides away, rummaging through the desk propped against the opposite wall. I take the chance to stare around my surroundings, looking for anything—a weapon. A clue to my captor’s identity. A kernel of hope.
Anything.
The cabin is larger than it seemed from outside. I’m stretched out and tied to a double bed with a charcoal gray bedspread, and a simple woven rug covers the floorboards. There’s a simple kitchen range in one corner of the single room; a wood-burner and lumpy sofa in the other. The man bends over a desk piled high with books and papers and gadgets, and I realize belatedly that the red lights of electronics blink at me from around the cabin.
At the back of the desk, two large monitors are dark. A computer whirs quietly beneath the table, and pinned to a cork board on the wall are photos. Dozens, no, hundreds of photos, taken from behind bushes and around corners.
Surveillance photos.
Of my family.
Photos of me.
The man straightens, something gripped in one hand, and I shrink back against the mattress as he comes closer. But he stops several paces away, scowling down at the camera in his hand. The lamplight washes across half his face, and I can see him a little better now.
He’s…
God.
He’s not what I expected.
His skin is warm golden brown—flushed with the deep, healthy tan of an outdoorsman. His shoulders are broad and sculpted, his chest toned beneath his blue flannel shirt, and pale scars fleck his corded forearms. His face is etched with bitterness, but there’s something else in his brown eyes when he looks at me.
Sorrow, maybe. Regret.
“A few photos, princess,” he rasps. “To send to your father.”
I shake my head, tugging frantically against the rope around my wrists, but he doesn’t hurt me like I expect. Doesn’t touch me at all. He snaps three quick photos, taking different angles, a frown creasing his forehead. Then he nods and turns away, striding back to the desk and booting his computer to life. The monitors flick on but he kills them quickly, before I can see anything on the screens. And he keeps talking to me in that low rumbling, like he can’t help but tell me things. Can’t help but confess his sins.
“They’ll be untraceable. He won’t know where to look for you.”
For my body? I wrench harder against the ropes.
“This is… unpleasant for both of us.” I roll my eyes, still wet with tears. Poor sad kidnapper. And he must see me, because he grates out a laugh. “It will be over soon, princess. We’ll torment your father for a few days, leverage this carefully, and then you’ll go free. You have my word.”
We?
He’s talking like we’re in this together somehow. Like we’re both victims in this scenario. But I am the girl with a gag between her teeth, and he is the man striding freely around his cabin, lighting a fire in the wood burner and putting on water to boil. He flicks glances at me as he works, and every time is like a physical touch.
I can’t help myself. I don’t even realize I’m doing it. I arch under his gaze, twisting to show him the length of me, my skin heating under his perusal. His eyes darken, but he looks away.
A strange disappointment sinks through my gut.
“I told you, princess. I won’t hurt you. I gave you my word.”
He crosses back to the desk, tapping on the keyboard, and photos of me fill the monitors. I look wrecked—red faced and snotty, hair wild and cheeks wet. The gag cuts harshly across my face, and my arms are wrenched awkwardly over my head.
Heat pulses again between my thighs, and I tear my eyes away to glare at the ceiling.
I won’t help this man. I won’t trust him. My traitorous body can respond to him all it likes—it changes nothing.
And the second I get free, I will kill him.
