LITMIR.BIZ

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      Slowly, inexorably, darkness fell.

      * * *

      OWEN STILES WOKE to darkness and movement. He tried to lift his hands to the hard ache at the back of his head, but his arms wouldn’t move. He was bound, he realized, animal panic rising in his throat. He forced it down, trying to remember what he’d learned at Campbell Cove Academy.

      First, ascertain where you are and what the danger is.

      The where was easy enough. He was in the white van that had been parked outside the church when he went looking for Tara.

      He hadn’t liked the way she’d sounded on the phone. And if he was brutally honest with himself, there was a part of him that had been nearly giddy with hope that she was going to call off the wedding.

      He wasn’t proud of feeling that way. His love for Tara was unconditional. Her happiness meant everything to him.

      But he couldn’t deny that he wanted her to be happy with him, not some blow-dried, Armani-wearing Harvard Law graduate with a chiseled jaw and a cushy job with a top Louisville law firm.

      Ignoring her command to stay put, he’d turned the corner of the hallway that led to the bride’s room just in time to see a wedge of tulle and lace disappear through the exit door about twenty yards away.

      Hurrying out after her, he’d been just in time to see a large man throw a pillowcase over Tara’s head and haul her into a white panel van parked in front of the door. He’d called her name, shock overcoming good sense, and earned a punch that had knocked him into the side of the van. At least, that was the last thing he could remember.

      Okay, so he’d ascertained where he was. And the fact that he was trussed up inside the moving van made the danger fairly clear, although he couldn’t see anyone lurking around, ready to knock him out again, so he supposed that was a plus.

      The back of the van seemed to be closed off from the driver’s cab area by a metal panel. That fact posed a problem—he couldn’t see how many people were in the front of the van, so he couldn’t be sure exactly what he was up against. However, he had seen only two men wrestling with Tara, and they’d both been big guys. He wasn’t sure there was room in the van’s cab to accommodate more people.

      So there were probably two bad guys to deal with. And thanks to the closed-off cab, he could move around unobserved, which would give him a better chance of working out a way to escape.

      He felt warmth behind him. Tara?

      With a grimace of pain, he rolled over and peered through the gloom. A bundle of silk, lace and tulle lay on the floor of the van beside him. The pillowcase over her head was still there, and he caught a whiff of a faintly sweet, medicinal odor coming from where she lay.

      He wriggled closer, ignoring the pounding ache in his head, until his face lay close to the pillowcase. The odor was much stronger suddenly, giving off fumes that made him feel light-headed.

      Ether, he thought. The pillowcase was soaked with ether.

      Those idiots! Ether could be deadly if used without care, and they weren’t even monitoring her condition.

      He jerked at the bindings that held his arms behind his back to no avail. They’d apparently duct-taped his hands together. They weren’t going to come apart easily. But he had to get the pillowcase off Tara’s head.

      Wriggling closer, he gripped the top of the pillowcase with his teeth. The smell of ether nearly overwhelmed him, but he held his breath and tugged upward. Inch by harrowing inch, he dragged the ether-soaked pillowcase from Tara’s head until he finally pulled it free.

      He spat the taste of ether out of his mouth. Then, his heart in his throat, he leaned over to make sure Tara was still breathing. A few terrifying seconds passed before he felt her breath on his cheek. Shaking with relief, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “That’s my girl. Stay with me, sweetheart.”

      As he waited for her to come around, Owen started working on the tape that bound his wrists together. His eyes had finally adjusted to the darkness inside the van, giving him a better look at their immediate surroundings.

      The interior of the cargo van was empty except for Owen and Tara. Also, what he’d mistaken for a closed panel between them and the front cab wasn’t technically closed. There was a large mesh window in the panel that should have given him a look at the occupants of the cab. But their captors had covered the mesh opening with what looked like cardboard, not only blocking out any light coming through the front windows but also keeping them from hearing whatever conversation might be going on between their captors.

      The upside to that, Owen thought, was that their captors probably couldn’t hear much of what was going on in the back of the van, either.

      He looked around for any sharp edges he could use to tear the tape around his wrists. The covering over the wheel well was bolted to the floor of the van, but the bolts were old and worn, not providing much of a cutting edge. Still, he scooted over to the nearest bolt and gave it a try.

      The van must have left Mercerville Highway, he realized a few minutes later when the swaying of the vehicle increased, forcing him to plant his feet on the cargo hold’s ridged floor to keep from toppling over with each turn. But he couldn’t stop Tara from rolling across the floor. A moment later, her head knocked into his hip with a soft thud.

      “Ow,” she muttered, her voice thick and slurred.

      “Oh, sweetheart, there you are,” he said softly, twisting so that his bound hands could reach the side of her face. He brushed away the grit on her cheek with his fingers. “Tara, can you hear me?”

      Her head lifted, her hair and the torn remains of her tulle veil obscuring part of her face. “Owen?”

      “Yeah, it’s me. Careful,” he added when she tried to sit up and nearly fell over.

      She managed to steady herself in a sitting position and shoved her hair and the veil away from her face with clumsy hands. They, too, were secured by duct tape, he saw, though her captors had bound her hands in front of her rather than behind her. She seemed to belatedly notice the bindings and stared at her wrists. “What’s happening?”

      “We’ve been abducted,” he said, though he wasn’t sure abduction was the right term. Neither of them was exactly rolling in dough, so he didn’t imagine they’d been taken for ransom purposes. Tara’s fiancé was successful but not what anyone would term wealthy. Not yet, anyway.

      So why had the men grabbed her?

      “That’s insane,” she muttered, still pawing at her veil, which sat askew on her head. “Why am I so woozy?”

      “They put a pillowcase over your head.” He waved his hand at the offending piece of material lying against the front of the cargo hold. “I think it was soaked with ether.”

      “Ether?” Tara finally pulled her veil free and threw it on the floor beside her. The van took another turn, forcing Owen to brace himself against the side of the cargo hold. Tara was unprepared, however, and went sprawling against his side, her nose bumping into his shoulder.

      “Ow.” She righted herself, rubbing her nose. She finally noticed Owen’s bound hands, her eyes widening. “You’re tied up, too.”

      “Think you can get the tape off me? Then I’ll return the favor.” He twisted around until his back was facing her.

      “My fingers aren’t working so well,” she warned him as she started fumbling with the tape. She wasn’t lying; it took a full minute before she was able to find the end of the tape on his bindings and start to slowly unwrap his wrists. But she finally ripped away the last of the tape, making the flesh on his wrists sting.

      He stretched his aching arms, grimacing at the pain.

      “What time is it?” Tara asked.

      He pressed the button on his watch that lit up the dial. “Just a little after four.”

      “Oh.”

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