“W-who are you?” Her heart raced and her mind whirled.
Was he looking for money? Drugs? Both?
“I’ll ask the questions. Now, where is it?”
That voice.
It was almost...familiar.
“W-where’s what?” She trembled with fear.
“Your fucking bag!”
My bag?
“M-my purse is in the back,” she blurted. “There’s some cash and my credit cards. Take it all! Just take it all and go!”
“I don’t want your goddamn money, Doc. I want what’s mine.”
What’s his...
Oh, god.
Was this man some sort of sexual predator? Was he actually going to try to rape her right here, in the middle of a fucking field?
“Please,” she begged him. “You don’t want to—”
The man reached up and pulled the hood off. From their left, the moon shone brightly in the night sky.
Bright enough to show his face.
Sophie got a good, long look at the man hovering over her. Yet, she still couldn’t believe her own eyes.
“Colton?” She gasped. “But I thought...the news said you were dead.”
Jason said they had hisDNA.
He held up his left hand, which was wrapped in a thick, white bandage. Something she hadn’t noticed until now.
Even with the copious amount of gauze, it was clear to see he was missing a finger.
“Small price to pay for a life of freedom and riches, don’t you think?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t worry.” He climbed off of her. “We’ll have plenty of time to chat on the way.”
“On the way to where?”
“To wherever the bag is you had with you in Djibouti. Now, get up.”
He wasn’t making any sense. For a second, Sophie wondered if he was high on some sort of recreational drug. A hallucinogen maybe?
But then a memory struck. She saw Colton rifling through her bag in the hospital the day of the uprising. He hadn’t been looking for ibuprofen. He’d been hiding something in her bag.
And whatever it was, was still there.
“What did you do?”