Home > Immortal Nights (Argeneau #24)(5)

Immortal Nights (Argeneau #24)(5)
Author: Lynsay Sands

A moment passed, and then another, and still Abigail didn’t move. It wasn’t until the idling plane engine revved up a bit and the plane began to taxi forward that she gave up her position and lifted her head to peer around. This time she was glad to see nothing but darkness. It meant the flashlight, and the man carrying it, were gone, even if his words were still spinning in her head.

Kidnapping? Her mind shrieked the word in alarm. And what had that been about killing the pilot or just giving him to some doctor to experiment on?

Jeez, she had to warn Jet. He had no idea who he had sitting in the cockpit with him right now. Shrugging her backpack off, Abigail pulled it in front of her on the floor and began blindly searching it for her phone. She’d send Jet a text. Tell him to use some excuse to shut down the plane and get out of the cockpit. He needed to call the police. They had a situation here.

Cursing when she couldn’t find her phone by feeling around in the dark like that, Abigail left her pack on the floor and got quickly to her feet. The flashlights were in front of her, just past the crate. At least that’s where Jet had been standing when he’d turned the one on. The client had taken the flashlight Jet had got for him, but Jet had said there were two others there.

Recalling that her backpack was on the floor in front of her, Abigail stayed where she was and quickly ran her hands over the expanse of wall she could reach. When that didn’t turn up anything useful, she muttered under her breath and pushed her backpack forward with one foot. Stepping forward into the small space the action made, she tried again. This time her hand hit something on the wall.

Abigail ran her fingers cautiously over the item, feeling that it was a long metal tube held in place on the wall by a metal clamp. Grasping the bottom of the tube, she pulled, relieved when it slid easily out of its holder. It took another moment of fumbling about before she found the button to turn it on, but then light exploded in the darkness. It was blinding after so long in pitch-black and forced Abigail to close her eyes. She gave them a heartbeat to recover from the shock, and then slowly opened them again, allowing her pupils time to adjust.

Relieved when she could see this time, Abigail started to turn the beam of light down toward her bag, but paused when it landed on the corner of the crate beside her. The tarp was a dark brown color, nothing interesting there. But she couldn’t resist grabbing a bit of the heavy cloth and tugging it up. The bottom corner of what was definitely a cage was immediately revealed, but it was the foot lying in the corner of the cage that made her catch her breath.

Definitely not an ape, she thought, but then she had known that when the client had talked about squawking about being kidnapped. Apes did not talk.

Unable to stop herself now, Abigail tossed the tarp up and away so that it fell back on the top of the cage, leaving the side nearest her exposed. Her flashlight beam then slid quickly from the foot she’d first seen, to an attached leg, before bouncing over a bare bottom to the back and arm of a completely naked man lying on his side in the cage.

He was a big one, some part of her brain acknowledged as Abigail let the flashlight beam slide back and forth over what she could see of him from this angle. Wide shoulders tapered down to narrow hips, and both the upper arm she could see, and his revealed outer thigh were huge and muscular. She couldn’t see any of his face, though; his head was turned away, long dark hair falling over it and hiding it from her view. But she’d seen enough. He was a sleeping giant, lying drugged and helpless in a cage like an animal.

Cursing under her breath, Abigail dropped to her knees and dragged her backpack closer to search it again, this time with the flashlight to aid her. Even with the light, though, she couldn’t find her phone. What the hell had she done with it? she wondered frantically, then gasped and tumbled forward as the plane suddenly put on speed and surged forward.

Shit! They were taking off, she thought with alarm. Grabbing at the bars beside her, she tried to brace herself to keep from sliding along the floor of the plane as they picked up speed, but her mind was now screeching in panic. Once they were in the air, they were on their own with the two men who had kidnapped the fellow in the cage beside her . . . and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it. This so wasn’t good.

Abigail stayed where she was, holding on to the cage bars until long after the plane had left the ground. She waited until they’d reached the point when the plane leveled out and steadied before daring to move, and then she merely released the bar she’d been clutching with her left hand and eased carefully into a sitting position. She still grasped the flashlight in her right hand and rested it on her legs, her eyes absently following the beam of light to the naked man next to her.

His skin was a nice olive tone, the fine hairs on his behind a dark brown or black, she noted absently. Then, realizing how rude she was being letting the light remain there, she quickly shifted it away.

Sighing, Abigail dragged her backpack closer and opened it again for one more search. If she could get a text to Jet, there was still a chance he could turn the plane around, land it, and get help to them before it was too late. He could claim engine trouble or something, couldn’t he?

When this third search didn’t turn up her phone, Abigail decided she must have lost it somewhere between the bar and here, and pushed her backpack away with frustration. She then sat back to try to think what to do. She had no idea if the clients were carrying weapons, but suspected they probably were. The check-in to board the cargo plane hadn’t seemed very strenuous to her. She hadn’t been subjected to a search of any kind. Perhaps that was just because she was with the pilot, but there hadn’t been metal detectors or anything that she’d seen.

That reminded her, when they’d got to the hangar before the clients, Jet had commented that they were probably held up by customs checking their cargo, so how the hell had these men got a caged, unconscious man through customs? The only answer seemed to her to be that they must have paid someone off, and she supposed if they’d paid someone to let them bring a caged unconscious man through, guns would hardly be a concern. Both men could be carrying machine guns for all she knew.

Her gaze shifted to the cage again, and Abigail moved the flashlight beam over its inhabitant once more. The client had said something about his waking up and causing a ruckus on “the doc’s plane.” It seemed that was why this was an “emergency run.” Their plane hadn’t broken down. This man had apparently woken up and wreaked havoc in it before they’d managed to subdue him. She wasn’t quite sure what that could mean. What kind of damage did you have to do to ground a plane?

Whatever it was, she didn’t want him to do it now while they were in the air. If he was as strong as he looked, though, he would definitely come in handy when they landed.

Shifting to her feet before she could think about this too long and hard, Abigail walked around to the front of the cage and dragged the tarp off. She then shone the light on the cage door. She was a bit surprised to see that it didn’t have a lock on it, just a standard sliding bolt that he could have unlocked himself were he awake. But then he wasn’t awake, and wouldn’t be so long as the IV the client had mentioned was in his arm. At least, she assumed it was in his arm. Abigail shifted the flashlight beam to the man inside.

His front was now on display to her, but there still wasn’t much to see. An IV bag hung from the upper bars of the cage, a tube running down and disappearing under the man’s arm which lay across his chest, blocking most of it from her view. That was a shame, she decided. It looked like he probably had an amazing chest and she would have liked to see it. She would have liked to see his face too, but his hair covered it completely. Likewise, his one leg was bent and lay forward, completely covering his genital area and hiding that from view as well.

“Thank goodness for that,” Abigail muttered, but even she could hear the lack of sincerity in the words. It had been a long time since she’d even said the word date, let alone been on one, and she apparently wasn’t above gawking at a helpless man’s junk.

Clucking her tongue with disgust at herself, Abigail slid back the bolt and opened the cage door, then crouched to enter and approach the man. If he’d caused a ruckus the last time he’d woken up, he could do it again when they were safely on the ground. She just had to take the IV out . . . and hope he woke up before they landed. He obviously hadn’t managed to gain his freedom the last time in “the doc’s” plane, but he’d been alone then, she thought. This time he had her and Jet to help.

   
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