Sin of Silence (Sinner's Empire Book 1) Read online

  “What do you want?” she asked, her voice shaky.

  He jerked his head to the door. Her eyes followed, and he nodded, waving the gun, indicating she should walk out ahead of him. Comprehension hit and she shook her head. “No,” she said, stepping back. She wouldn’t leave with him. She wasn’t that stupid.

  He stiffened, then shifted his arm, his shoulder flexing beneath the supple leather of his coat. He trained the gun on the bed, on the boy. Shaun moved to stand between the child and the gun. He’d have to shoot her to get to the boy. He lowered the gun a few inches and waved it at the door again.

  What was he trying to say, and why didn’t he just tell her what he wanted?

  He took a threatening step toward her and impatiently reached up to drag the sunglasses off his face. She stared, her heart pounding in terror. Without them, he should look more human, but he didn’t. His eyes were a startling deep blue, so dark they looked almost black, like the bottom of a frozen lake. He shoved his sunglasses in his jacket pocket and took hold of her arm in a painful grip. He gave her a shake and waved the gun, first at the boy, then back toward the door.

  “You want me to go with you?” she asked breathlessly.

  His eyes seemed to darken and he nodded, jerking his head again. She really didn’t want to leave the room with him, but she couldn’t allow him to shoot the child either. Maybe if she went with him, she could reason with him once they were away from other people.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s go.”

  “I couldn’t find the prednisone, but we have…” Danilo walked into the room holding a bottle in his hand. When he caught sight of the man and the gun he stopped, his back against the door as it swung shut behind him. “Doctor Patterson?”

  Her name was the last thing he said as a bullet went through his right eye, killing him on the spot. His body was still falling when the gunman dragged Shaun forward, forcing her to step over her dead colleague and out into the hallway. She twisted around to look behind her, catching the wide, terrified eyes of the boy, now sitting up in his bed and staring after them.

  “You killed him!” Shaun yelled, yanking on the arm he was holding tightly.

  He swung her into a wall, which shook ominously when her weight hit it. The whole structure was nearly as thin as carboard, meant to come down and go up quickly and easily. She would be a lot more than winded if he’d just thrown her into a real wall. He was much bigger than her and he was using his strength to force her compliance.

  “Shaun – ”

  Shaun looked over, her head moving against the wall. Janet was rushing down the hall toward them, heedless of the gun coming up toward her. Shaun threw herself against his arm, knocking his aim to the side. A bullet slammed through the opposite wall; the bullet meant for Janet. He shoved Shaun away from him and brought his arm back up, but Janet had flung herself into one of the exam rooms. Instead of going after her, he took Shaun’s arm again and hauled her against his side, running with her down the hall.

  He was after her specifically it would seem. He could have grabbed someone from the reception area if he wanted any medical professional. Instead he’d gone to the trouble of searching her out in the hospital, putting himself and everyone else at risk. They rounded a corner where a patient was standing in the hallway.

  “Get back!” Shaun screamed, not wanting him to get shot.

  The man took one look and ducked out of the way.

  They hurtled through the hospital at such a dizzying pace that Shaun lost track of where she was until they were standing outside, the sky a bright blur above them. She tried to look around, figure out what was happening, but her captor wrapped an arm around her middle, picked her up off the ground and flung her toward a white paneled van. Someone else grabbed her and dragged her inside.

  She managed to let out one more scream before the gunman jumped in the back of the van, slammed the door shut and brought his hand down on the driver’s shoulder. The driver nodded his acknowledgment and the van started moving. The gunman turned back to look at her. She curled her legs protectively underneath herself and pressed her spine against the metal panel. The look on his face was a weird mix of satisfaction and despair.

  Chapter Three

  Oh god, they weren’t blindfolding her or anything, which meant they didn’t care if she saw where they were driving. They didn’t care if she saw their faces. Which probably meant that they weren’t planning on letting her live.

  Despair, fear and anger rushed through her. She didn’t want to die. She was only thirty-four; she’d finally managed to claw her way out from under a mountain of student loan debt. She was widely considered one of the world’s most up and coming neurosurgeons, at the head of her field in successfully using cutting-edge technology during surgery. She wasn’t ready to lose all that.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked, trying and failing to keep the fear from her voice.

  Her captor glanced at her, his cold gaze sweeping her briefly before turning away. He was sitting on a bench across from her, his elbows on his knees, his body tilted toward the men in the seats at the front. He looked completely composed, as though murdering a nurse and kidnapping a doctor from a hospital was an everyday event for him.

  “Please,” she tried again. “Talk to me. Tell me why you did this? Are you looking for ransom? Is someone hurt? Do you need a doctor?”

  Nothing in his face indicated he was listening.

  She tried appealing to the men up front, inching her way toward them, glancing over their shoulders to get a better look at her kidnappers. She hadn’t been able to see much during the hectic moments when she was dragged into the van. Her heart sank as she peeked at them. They looked almost as scary as the man who had taken her… the man who shot Danilo in the face.

  A wave of nausea hit her and she pressed her hand against her stomach to keep it from climbing up her throat and spewing out of her mouth. She felt grief for Danilo, a young man killed in the prime of his life, and a nearly overwhelming fear for herself. The man who'd grabbed her was not afraid to kill, and he seemed to be in charge. Whatever they were kidnapping her for, once her usefulness ended, she would die.

  “Please help me,” she begged, her eyes on the man who’d grabbed her, but her appeal aimed at the men in the front seat.

  The passenger twisted around and shot her a glare. “Shut up and sit back.”

  He spoke English with a thick accent she couldn’t place, but she didn’t think it was local. She’d been surrounded by Ukrainians for months; this man was different. From some other Eastern European country.

  “Please, I don’t know why I was taken,” Shaun pleaded. “I think you have the wrong person.”

  “You a doctor?” he demanded, his cool brown eyes on her. This man was also tattooed, all over his neck, hands and face.

  “Yes.” There was no point in keeping it from them. She was wearing scrubs and a name tag that gave away her identity as Dr. Shaun Patterson, attending physician. She had been in the hospital in the middle of a procedure. All she needed was a stethoscope around her neck to finish the picture.

  “Then we got the right person,” he grunted, turning back around, dismissing her.

  So, they were definitely after a doctor. She didn’t know if this information made her position better or worse. She could maybe use their need for a doctor as leverage, but she’d have to figure out what the situation was first. Maybe they had another captive they needed her to care for, or maybe one of their own was shot. That seemed pretty likely, given the brief glimpse she already had into their lives.

  Shaun fell silent as the men drove. There wasn’t much she could say. She knew enough to recognize that these men were likely organized crime. They didn’t look like regular thugs. At least, not the guy who grabbed her from the hospital. He had a regal air about him. He held his head up and his shoulders back. The way he walked and the hardness in his face spoke of pride and arrogance. He was dressed meticulously, and he was quick, in his ac
tions and thoughts. He wasn’t stupid.

  The van took so many twists and turns that she couldn’t keep track of where they were going. It sped along at a fast clip despite the debris that littered the city streets from a series of rockets that had been launched into the city months ago, making it close to uninhabitable. When the bumpy road grew smoother, she started to wonder if they were leaving the city.

  She tried to crawl up onto her knees to look through the windshield. The man sitting across from her moved so swiftly, she didn’t have a chance to do more than flinch when he reached for her. He gripped her shoulder, his long, gloved fingers digging into her delicate bones. Pain radiated through her and she gasped, trying to lurch away from him.

  He continued to hold her, staring down at her with those eerie lake-blue eyes. It was like he was speaking to her without speaking to her, telling her to sit down and shut up. To not move. When he lifted his arm and pointed at the back of the van, she followed his wordless order without question. She crawled away from him, badly wanting to escape his presence.

  She sat on the floor near a piece of rug and some boxes, dragged her knees up and rested her arms on top of them. She refused to look at him again, though she could see him settle back down out of her periphery. She wanted to scream and demand to know where she was going but she was too scared. These men were responsible for one death and a kidnapping that she knew of, and she didn’t want to provoke them.

  They drove for about twenty more minutes before coming to a bumpy stop. Shaun tensed and watched the men as they opened doors and slid from the van. The boss thug gestured at her to come forward. She shook her head and slid as far back as she could. Oh god, were they going to kill her here? Were they making some kind of political statement by snatching a foreign doctor and killing her?

  “No, please,” she begged, cringing against the door.

  He growled something incomprehensible and lunged toward her, catching her wrist and dragging her toward the door. He didn’t give Shaun a chance to find her footing, so she stumbled and landed hard on her knees in the van. He yanked her viciously out the door and let go of her wrist, allowing her to fall to the ground. She stared up at her tormentor, but he reached down, grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet, then yanked her toward an old house.

  She frantically looked around, searching for help, trying to figure out where she was. There were only a couple of buildings visible in her field of vision, otherwise just a bunch of hills and empty fields. She opened her mouth to scream out, to call for help, but quickly found herself facing the barrel of a gun. She slammed her lips together and tried to breathe through the terror as her vision narrowed to that one point.

  She tried to reassure herself as she was pulled into the dank, windowless stone house. He didn’t need to bring her all this way just to kill her. He could’ve killed her at the hospital, like he’d killed Danilo. They obviously needed a doctor. She just needed to play along until she found a chance to get away from them.

  She was rushed through a corridor, then down a flight of old wooden stairs to the basement. The air became noticeably cooler, and she shivered and blinked after stepping into a large, empty room, attempting to see in the gloom. She turned to her captor, her heart pounding. Was this place going to become her prison? Her grave? Why would they bring her here?

  He snapped his fingers and pointed impatiently past her shoulder. She glanced back, and realized they weren’t alone. There was a human-shaped bundle of rags on the ground. She stared at it for a few seconds, then took a tentative step forward, the doctor in her both curious and worried. If there was an injured person there, she would have no choice but to try to help them.

  The stench of urine became strong as she approached warily. She dropped to her knees next to the bundle, realizing right away that she was correct, there was a person underneath the dirt, blood and torn clothes. She glared up at her captor before turning her attention to the man on the floor. She did her best to assess his injuries both visually and with her hands. He was still breathing, though his breaths were shallow. His pulse was weak but erratic and there was a blue tinge to his lips.

  “You want me to attend this man?” she asked without looking up, her fingers flying over his injuries, while her brain assessed what she would need to heal him. She checked his circulation, airway and breathing. “It looks like he might be suffering from cardiac arrest, but I can’t know for sure without the proper equipment. He’s going to need the hospital. We need to transport him right away.”

  Her captor grabbed hold of her head and wrenched it around until she was forced to look at him, his fingers biting painfully into her chin. She tried to scramble backwards, but his grip was so painfully tight that she had no choice but to sit still. He pointed at her, pointing two fingers to indicate her eyes, then he pointed at himself.

  He let her chin go and stepped back.

  “Y-you want me to watch you?” Was it possible that he was non-verbal? She’d been so terrified that she hadn’t questioned why he hadn’t said a single word during the kidnapping.

  He lifted his hands and began making rapid signs. Her heart sank. Sign language. That was why she’d been chosen, of all the hospital personnel. She understood sign language, both Quebec sign language and French sign language, the latter being the version he was using. Shaun could sign back if needed, though she was rusty. She’d learned as a child, so she could communicate easily with her cousin, Monique, who was hearing impaired.

  You fix him, he signed to her.

  “Of course,” she readily agreed, then she hesitated. “But what will you do with me after? W-will you let me go?”

  He stared down at her, and her heart sank even further. Of course he wouldn’t let her go. At least he wasn’t outright lying to her. He seemed to understand her though, so either he could read lips or he wasn’t hearing impaired.

  “Are you going to kill me?” she asked bluntly.

  He pointed at her, then toward the man on the ground, then signed, fix him.

  “He needs a hospital!” she snapped.

  No hospital.

  “Then I can’t fix him, I don’t have what I need. I think he’s had a heart attack and there’s no way to treat that kind of illness without the proper medical equipment.” She sat back on her haunches and lifted her hands helplessly. The man was going to die in that dirty basement, and she was likely going to die alongside him.

  Her captor pulled his gun from the holster underneath his leather jacket and pointed it at her head. She flinched back but held his gaze. If she had to die, then she preferred to see it coming. Preferred to look her executioner in the eyes. He held his hand steady and stared down at her, speaking with his stony expression. Either she fixed the man, or she died.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll do what I can.”

  He reholstered his gun and signed to her, what supplies do you need?

  She stared helplessly down at the guy. She’d been truthful when she told her captor that she didn’t have what she needed to fix the man. If he was indeed suffering from a heart attack, his pulmonary artery was blocked. Likely from the stress of the beating. She would have to do the best she could.

  “Okay, get me some aspirin and a spoon.” She would try to crush the aspirin and administer it orally. It would work faster intravenously, but again, she didn’t have the equipment. Hopefully she could thin his blood enough to partially unblock the artery and buy him some time. Glancing over his other injuries, she added, “I’ll also need some bandages, antibiotic ointment, clean water, and a splint, I think, for his arm.” She would have to make do with a quick field fix and then hope that her captors would eventually allow her to get the man to a hospital.

  “He won’t survive long without a hospital though… if your intention is that he should live.” She eyed the man towering over her skeptically. “If I’m correct, then he’s had a massive cardiac event and will likely need open heart surgery, which can’t be done in a dirty basement with no equipmen
t.”

  He didn’t answer, instead turning to stride away, going back up the stairs to the floor above, she assumed to find the supplies she’d requested. Shaun climbed to her feet and took a quick inventory of the basement. Dirt floor, stone walls, two windows, both tiny with bars covering them, no other doors besides the one at the top of the stairs. She reached over her head to try the bars on the window anyway. If she could pull the grate off, she might be able to crawl through the window. It was small, but Shaun was thin. Small breasts, no hips, nothing to get in the way. For once, Shaun was happy with her less than curvy figure.

  The grate proved impossible to move though, and all she managed to do was knock a pile of dust from the sill into her face. She coughed and stepped away from the wall, waving at the dust in the air. She ran to the other window and tried again. She pulled as hard as she could, hard enough that her fingers ached with the effort, but nothing moved. She stepped back, shaking her head in despair. She had to get out; her life depended on it.

  A groan drew her attention and she turned around to see her patient stirring. He moaned pitiably and moved his unbroken arm. Shaun went to his side and sank down on the floor next to him.

  “I’m a doctor,” she said clearly, trying to keep the tremor of fear from her voice. “I’m going to help you.”

  He made another sound but didn’t turn his head at her voice. She couldn’t tell how alert he was. “Can you tell me where it hurts the most?” she asked, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

  She wasn’t sure if or how he would answer, but after a moment he raised his good arm off the floor and slid it into the front of his torn suit jacket, placing it over his chest. She slid her hand on top of his and felt around his ribcage. Broken ribs. Those would hurt like a bitch and make each breath he took feel like he was swallowing fire.