Seal of Honor(11)
Somehow.
On the street below, a man with a cane caught her eye as he climbed out of a dented blue 4Runner parked at the curb. He didn’t look Colombian. For one thing, he towered head and shoulders above everyone he passed. He had dark close-cropped hair and light skin and wore a simple white short-sleeved shirt over olive green cargo pants. His footwear looked an awful lot like combat boots. Even two stories up, she could feel the waves of command radiating from him.
He seemed to be looking for something.
No, not looking. Canvassing. That’s what all those cop dramas Mama used to like called it. Canvassing the neighborhood. Er, casing? She always got those confused, but that was beside the point. He didn’t belong here, and jangled all of her mental warning bells.
Did he know something about Bryson’s abduction? If not, why else would a man like him be here?
With a hard lump of fear rising in her throat, she watched him turn the corner at the end of the street, then she looked at the 4Runner he’d abandoned. From what she could see, it appeared to have local plates and another man sat inside. Okay, maybe she was overreacting. Maybe they were tourists, and the man with the cane was searching for a restroom. Or they were lost and looking for their hotel. Or they—
The man inside the vehicle lifted a set of binoculars and focused them directly at her.
Audrey ducked back into the apartment. A car door slammed shut a heartbeat later.
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
Heart pounding, she scanned the room. The apartment was too open and airy, too minimalist to offer any decent hiding place. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to get in. The security guard at the door hadn’t believed that she was Bryson Van Amee’s sister, and it had taken a lot of wheedling and charm to access his apartment.
Footsteps pounded hard and fast down the hallway and her hope plummeted. The man obviously knew tricks to get by security guards. Big surprise. Did he also know how to get inside a locked apartment?
When the knob rattled and she saw the point of a knife slip between the door and frame, she got her answer.
What had she been thinking coming here alone? Yes, she’d wanted to find her brother, but not like this. Not as a fellow captive.
The door clicked and opened, catching on the chain she’d at least had the foresight to slide home.
“Policía,” the man called, but his Spanish carried an accent she couldn’t place and she didn’t believe him for a second. “¡Abra la puerta!”
Uh-huh. Hell would most definitely freeze over before she acknowledged his command to open the door. Way she saw it, all she had going for her was the element of surprise. He figured someone was inside, but he didn’t know who or where or whether she was armed.
She grabbed the closest thing, a heavy glass lamp on the end table beside the couch—such a girly weapon and not as heavy as she’d hoped, but it’d still make the fake policeman see stars—and moved to the right side of the door.
“¡Policía!”
Ri-ight. And if she had a cup of tea and a biscuit, she’d be the Queen of England.
Holding her breath until her ears buzzed, Audrey waited for him to kick the door, her hands beginning to sweat on the lamp. Any second now. Any…second…
The door flew open, banging into the opposite wall, and she went into pure adrenaline-fueled fight or flight mode, slamming the lamp down as hard as she could on his blond head. Once, twice, a third time for good measure, her heart hammering so hard she thought for sure it was going to pop out of her chest and join in on the beating.
The fake policeman collapsed with an umph and she scrambled over his big body. And, boy, was he big. A solid lump of muscle lying dazed on the floor, blocking her only escape. He looked more like a frat boy than a kidnapper in his Pink Floyd T-shirt, jeans, and Nikes, one of which connected with the back of her left knee, buckling her leg.
She managed to keep from slamming face-first into the floor by catching herself on her hands and knees. Tried to crawl away from her attacker, but he snagged her pant leg. On instinct, she kicked out, crashed the heel of her sandal into his nose, and wished like hell that she were wearing a stiletto instead. As blood spurted, he lost his grip and she scrambled to her feet.
He cursed in a language that was definitely not Spanish and, ignoring his bleeding nose, he was back on his feet as if he hadn’t ever been down.
Who was this guy, the freaking Terminator? If he was this resilient, she didn’t want to stick around and meet his friend with the cane.
“Hey, stop! I just want to talk to you.” His English was perfect, barely accented, and he repeated the command in Spanish.
American, some tiny, rational portion of her brain realized as she darted toward the stairs at the end of the hall. Still, that didn’t mean he was a friend. He wouldn’t have kicked down the door if all he wanted to do was have a simple chat. She hit the stairs at a sprint, half-expecting him to vault over the railing and cut her off at the bottom. He didn’t, but a glance over her shoulder as she crashed through an emergency exit at the back of the building proved he was still right behind her.