Almost ten minutes later, she heard another car engine. The vehicle pulled slightly past the church, then backed into the narrow lane so it was trunk to trunk with the other car.
Two men got out of the second car. The doors on the first car opened, and those two men got out as well.
Milla trained her scope on the newcomers as they approached, facing her. The driver was a tall, thin mestizo, his black hair worn long and slicked back in a ponytail. The passenger was somewhat shorter, stockier. The moment she focused on him, her blood ran cold.
For ten years she’d tracked the bastard. The day Justin had been stolen was mostly a blurred horror in her mind; the days afterward, as she fought for her life in the tiny rural clinic, were lost forever. But in the strange way time had of sometimes standing still, she had a few perfect, freeze-frame memories of the attack, and especially the face of the man who had wrenched Justin from her arms.
She wouldn’t recognize her little boy now, but the man who had taken him . . . she’d recognize him anywhere. She clearly remembered the sensation of his eyeball popping under her digging, clawing fingernails, remembered the bloody furrows she had raked down his left cheek. She had maimed him, marked him, and she was viciously glad. No matter how the bastard aged, she would always know him by the damage she had done to his face.
After ten years, he was walking straight toward her. His left eye socket was empty, the lid scarred and twisted. Two deep lines were clawed straight down his face.
It was him.
She could barely breathe. Her lungs ached; her throat ached; her vision blurred with rage.
Don’t move if there are more than two of them, she’d told Brian. He was smart; no way would he figure just the two of them could handle four men, all of whom were possibly, probably, armed.
But the bastard was here, right in front of her. She’d known this could happen, and still the force of her reaction was so violent it almost blinded her. Red mist swam in her vision, and there was a roaring in her ears.
Her muscles were shaking with intensity. She wanted to tear him apart with her bare hands. A small part of her brain knew it was insanity, but almost as if her hand didn’t belong to her, she felt it reaching for the pistol in her pocket, and she began to rise.
She never even made it to her knees. Something hard and heavy hit her in the middle of the back and smashed her to the ground, smothering all movement. Several things happened simultaneously, so fast she had no time to react. Legs hooked around her legs and held them tight, a hand clamped over her mouth and jerked her head back, and an iron-hard arm locked around her throat. In what felt like a fraction of a second, she was immobilized.
“Move or make a sound, and I’ll snap your neck.”
The voice was cold and menacing, the words spoken so low she could barely hear them, but she understood them perfectly. The arm cutting off her oxygen was plain enough on its own. She was pinned to the ground, unable even to bring her hands up to defend herself.
Dizzily she tried to think. Was this a scout, maybe, sent ahead to make certain the meeting place was unobserved? But if it was, he would have seen Brian, too, and common sense would have dictated he take out Brian first. Maybe he had. Maybe Brian was lying dead on the other side of the cemetery, his throat cut or his neck broken. But if this was a scout, why had he told her not to make any noise?
He couldn’t be with the four men. Whatever his interest was in the meeting, he was there for his own reasons. So maybe Brian was still alive, and maybe, if she was very still, she’d make it through with her spinal cord still intact.
She couldn’t breathe. Her vision blurred and she managed a small gasp. The arm around her throat loosened the tiniest fraction, but it was enough for her to drag in some air.
Her head was arched back at such an angle she could see the four men only out of the corners of her eyes, and without the night-vision scope she couldn’t make out details. They had opened the trunks on both cars, and two of them now were dragging something out of the trunk of the second car and transferring it to the other trunk.
The rock in her pocket was digging into the sensitive area where her leg joined her hip. Her breasts were flattened painfully into the dirt, and her back ached from her neck being so forcefully arched. There was no softness in the man’s weight bearing down on her, no give; he felt like iron. In this position the side of his face was pressed to her head, but though she could feel his chest moving in slow, even breaths—the bastard wasn’t the least bit winded or nervous—there was no movement of air on her skin as he exhaled. It was creepy, as if he weren’t quite human.
He wasn’t paying any attention to her. Now that he had her subdued, he was completely focused on the four men behind the church.
With whatever transaction they had made completed, they were getting back into their respective cars. The man who had stolen Justin was leaving. After ten years she’d finally found him, and now he was getting away. She strained upward against the man holding her, her entire body tightening in protest, and he pressed harder on her throat with his arm. When her vision blurred again, she went limp in despair, a sob convulsing in her chest. In this position she was as helpless as a turtle on its back.
The second car slowly pulled away, turned the corner, and disappeared. The first car began reversing down the narrow lane. The man holding her suddenly lifted his weight and flipped her over on her back. “Take a nap,” he growled, and his fingers pressed hard on the base of her neck.
She tried to struggle, but she was already oxygen-deprived and teetering on the edge of unconsciousness. He leaned over her, a black, featureless weight oozing menace, and the world went blank.