Page 132 of Wyatt
She didn’t react, but…what?
“I’ve been waiting weeks for this. It’s perfect. Wyatt Marshall, the golden boy of hockey. I followed him from the hotel but I still hadn’t worked out what to do when I pulled up to the entrance. And then I saw you standing there at the ATM, in his Blue Ox jersey, like some high school crush.”
“It’s a souvenir. I don’t even know him.”
He shook her then, hard, rattling her spine, and she bit back a cry. “I told you not to lie, little girl.”
He pushed her out into the clearing and over to the picnic table. Shoved her down on the seat, then braced his hands either side of her shoulders on the tabletop, and leaned down.
She turned her head away, which left him free to speak into her ear.
“You might live through this, but only if you do exactly what I tell you to.”
She gritted her jaw.
He stood up then. Considered her. “It’s going to be okay, you know.” He sat down beside her, his shoulder against hers. “We’re doing this for the good of everyone. And sometimes, you have to do somethin’ bad in order to do somethin’ good.”
She didn’t want to ask, but, “What kind of bad thing?”
He said nothing for a long time, then leaned forward, pulling out his phone. He scrolled over to a picture. “This here is my brother, Graham.”
Good looking man, blond hair, a tattoo up his neck that looked like flames.
“He died a couple months ago, trying to save our country.”
“Was he a soldier?”
He turned off the phone. “Yeah. Marines. Got captured in Afghanistan and was written off by our military. He was sent to a camp for POWs in Chechnya that intended on turning him against the red, white, and blue. And they might have succeeded if Senator Reba Jackson hadn’t shown up. She didn’t know he was there, but he saw her, helping the terrorists who wanted to destroy America. And he decided right then that he wouldn’t let them win.”
“Who?”
He looked at her, frowning. “What, are you blind and deaf? Jackson—she’s runnin’ for vice president.”
Something began to ping, deep inside her head, but she just couldn’t wrap her brain around it quite yet. “I’ve been…out of the country.”
He made a noise. “Then maybe you don’t know the efforts to which my brother and I have gone to save this country we love.”
He dragged her up, tugging her across the campsite to the trailer. When he shoved her down into the sleeping compartment in the middle, her heart turned to a rock in her throat. But he only bound her feet with the duct tape, round and round, nearly halfway up her legs.
She wasn’t going anywhere, obviously.
“What efforts?” she said. “And what does Jackson have to do with your brother?”
He got up and walked around to the open hatch in the back of the trailer. “She’s in league with the Russians.”
Huh?
“She was visiting one of the Chechen leaders in the camp. Graham wasn’t privy to the conversation, but let’s just say she didn’t leave with any gunfire. Wined and dined and if that doesn’t tell you that she’s in bed with the Russians—”
“Sowait.Senator Jackson had dinner with a Chechen warlord and she’s suddenly what, a terrorist?”
He came back to her, holding a black tactical vest made of Kevlar and cluttered with utility pouches. “No, honey. You are.”
She froze.
He’d filled the utility patches with something white, and her brain connected the dots.
Explosive material. He stepped toward her and placed the vest over her shoulders.