Page 15 of Her Unflinching Warrior (Omega Sky)
How many hours ago had it been since the two women and one man had snatched her from the crappy little motel room? She really thought she’d been safe, staying in a dive close to the river and cheese factory, far away from Oceanside, but not so much.
Seriously, how could she have been so naïve?
I wasn’t thinking! Dad would be so pissed if he could see me now.
Jada squeezed her eyes shut, thinking about the flimsy locks and the fact that she hadn’t packed a gun. He’d be so pissed.
The master sergeant would have my ass if he were still alive.
The unholy screams from the other side of the wall had stopped a while back. That was when she started coming up with different ways to define fear. She should really come up with ways to define being an idiot!
Stupid.
Stupid.
Stupid.
Jada bit her bottom lip. She wanted to hit something, but she couldn’t. When she’d woken up she’d found herself locked up in this smelly, dark, damp room with her arms jacked up behind her back with a zip tie wound around her elbows and wrists. She was taking care not to roll around too much because dislocating a shoulder was not going to help her escape.
I should have called Gideon from the get-go.
She pictured him in her mind’s eye. All six foot three inches of Navy-defined muscle. God, the military kept their men in tip-top condition. But it had been his eyes that had snagged her, to begin with. They were molten brown, swirled with a bit of gold. Nothing like her dad’s green eyes. But Gideon did have the warm dark skin that was definitely reminiscent of her father, and the fact that he carried himself with that military bearing? She’d been a goner.
They’d fought and wrangled on how to handle things that went down when Gianna had been kidnapped, but he’d listened to her, despite the fact that he was crazy smart and had done legendary things in Silicon Valley that people were still whispering about, and probably secret stuff for the Navy that if she found out about it, she’d be killed.
Killed.
Killed.
Killed.
“Hey, you. Can you hear me?”
Jada had been thrown close to the wall where the screaming was coming from. The wall where the awful interrogation had been taking place.
She wriggled around, ignoring the searing pain in her arms so that she could get up on her ass, and when she did she pounded her boot-covered feet against the wall.
“Can you hear me?”
She heard the slightest bit of noise from the other side. It wasn’t a groan or a sigh, it was more like a body shifting or rolling.
“Are you okay over there?”
Something scraped against the other side of the wall.
“I hear you. I hear you. Don’t worry. We’re going to get out of here. I promise. You’re going to be all right. Just hang on a little longer okay?”
Another scrape.
Jada lost her balance and fell over. Her bound elbows crashed onto the concrete.
“Owwww.”
Wet hit her eyes, and she had to force back tears. She gritted her teeth against the pain, then grinned. She knew what her dad would say.
Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
Damn right she would. Her partner in crime over there on the other side of the wall was alive. She could overcome this situation.
