“Take her inside,” Zhafa said to the man holding her.
He forced her to walk with him behind the other two.
Sadie fought his grip but he was too strong. What if she managed to get free? Would they shoot her?
Inside the warehouse, she saw that it was for the most part empty. There were a few crates packed with things on one side and a table with four chairs nearby. Two windows along the back were boarded. The other six were dirty, like the cracked concrete floor.
The man holding her forced her to the table and then shoved her onto one of the chairs.
“Have a seat,” Zhafa said.
Seeing rope and a pruning shears on the table, Sadie stood and pushed the chair out of her way, backing toward the crates.
“There is nowhere to go,” Zhafa said, and then he said to the two other men, “make her sit.”
All of them wore suits, like every other time she’d seen Zhafa. The man who’d forced her into the warehouse was the tallest and trimmest. He also had blond hair and blue eyes, which set him apart from his shorter, rounder, darker cohorts. The two who approached her now looked Arabic, with long, stringy beards and black eyes. They looked like brothers, with one older than the other.
It was the younger one who gained ground on her first. She ran around the crates and stopped on the other side when the blond man blocked her way.
The young Arabic man gripped her arm and the blond stepped aside, sweeping his arm with a half bow as if he were a gentleman allowing a lady to go first.
“Pig,” she spat.
He grinned and the young man propelled her forward. At the chair, she sat.
“Tie her.”
The blond man took her hands and pulled them behind the chair, though she resisted as much as she could. He might as well have been holding doll arms, it was that easy for him to tie her wrists. Sick fear and helplessness almost made her beg to be free.
When he finished and Sadie was left to writhe her hands against the tight restraint, Zhafa bent down.
“There now. Why don’t you tell me where my money is?”
“I don’t know where it is.”
He smiled. “Tell me where it is, or my friend here will start removing your fingers one at a time. And when you have no fingers left, he will begin to disembowel you.”
Sadie held on to her courage. “Then you’ll never find your money.”
Zhafa straightened. “How did you meet Mr. Friese?”
“I met him at a hotel bar.”
He measured her reply for a moment. “Are you sure you aren’t working with him?”
“Are you kidding? Of course I don’t work with him.”
“He is well connected for a man who is no longer with the Army.”
“Yes, and if you’re smart, you’ll let me go and forget about Calan.” She had no idea where she was getting this brazenness.
“How did he manage to have a plane waiting for him?”
“Beats the hell out of me.”
“And the yacht?”
“How should I know? I’m not his secretary.”
He backhanded her so fast she didn’t have time to brace herself. She grunted with the impact, tendrils of hair falling over her cheek. She shook her head to get it out of the way.
“Tell me where my money is.”
The blond man picked up the pruning shears and twirled it in front of her face.
She looked up at him. “You’re going to have to untie me to use that.”
“You have an insubordinate mouth for a woman who is about to die a slow and painful death.”
Sadie looked toward the door, wishing desperately that Calan would find her. But he wouldn’t. He didn’t know where she went and he didn’t know Zhafa had captured her, much less where she’d been taken.
“All you need to do is tell me where my money is. I will let you go.”
Sure he would. He’d let her go. Right after he killed her. She didn’t say anything. Seconds ticked onward, closer to her impending murder.
“Untie one of her hands and remove the small finger on her left hand,” he said to the blond man, who untied her.
She wrenched her hands, trying futilely to get away. Another man held her left hand while the blond man retied her right. Then he slapped her left hand down on the table.
Sadie screeched and kept her hand in a fist. Her palm was on fire from scraping herself earlier. The blond man pried her pinky finger out and spread it out onto the table.
“No!”
“Where is my money!” Zhafa roared.
“I told you I don’t know, and if you hurt me, do you think Calan will tell you?”
“No, you are going to tell me. Now where is it? I am tired of these games.” He nodded to the blond man.
Sadie screamed just as a bang echoed in the warehouse.
The blond man released her and straightened. Calan charging through the door he’d just kicked open with a flood of men on his heels was a sight she’d never forget. She frantically brought her hand around the back of the chair and began to work on the knot tying her other hand.
Zhafa raised his weapon and so did his men. But when Dervishi entered the warehouse, walking slow and surrounded by ten or more armed men, he lowered it and dropped it to the concrete floor.
“Calan,” she breathed as he came to her.
He knelt and helped her free her hand. She slid off the chair and onto her knees and then threw herself into his arms.
“Calan.”
“Sadie. Don’t ever leave me like that again.” He kissed her.
Did he mean it? She leaned back and took his face between her hands. “Calan.” She said his name instead of something else she’d regret.
She loved him?
She couldn’t possibly this soon. It was just the excitement, the tantamount rush of relief that he was here and no one was going to chop off her finger.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded, pressing a kiss to his lips. He slid his hands down her arms and pulled hers from around him. He held her palms up and saw the bloody scrapes there. If he were a dragon, fire would have poured from his nose. His brow shot down and his eyes beamed fury. He shifted his now deadly gaze to Zhafa.
That’s when Sadie realized everyone was watching them.
Dervishi’s men had Zhafa and his men at gunpoint. Dervishi stood in white slacks and a white jacket over a black shirt, one hand tucked in his pocket, quietly and calmly observing them.
But he soon turned his attention to Zhafa. “It would seem you’ve made someone upset.”
Zhafa said something in Albanian.
“Speak English so my guests can understand you,” Dervishi demanded.
Guests? Sadie looked to Calan, but he was still focused on Zhafa, who had hesitated.
“I can explain,” Zhafa finally said to Dervishi.
“Explain,” Dervishi mocked, walking to stand in front of him. Two of his men accompanied him, the barrels of their automatic rifles aimed at Zhafa, should he try anything. “Yes, I’d like you to explain what you were planning to do with my money.”
A cell phone rang and a man standing behind Dervishi answered.
“It was a harmless business deal,” Zhafa said. “I had a chance to make some extra money, that’s all.”
The man behind Dervishi spoke into his cell phone but was too quiet for Sadie to hear.
“With two-point-five million euros?” Dervishi’s eyebrows rose. “A little extra money?”
“I did not steal from you.”
“Where did you get it, then?”
“It was mine.”
The man who’d taken the call lowered the phone without disconnecting. “Sir.”
Dervishi kept his eyes on Zhafa. “Yes?”
“After a little persuasion, his girlfriend told us he was skimming off one of your hotels. The one he managed for you.”
“Well, now we know where the money came from.”
“I didn’t take any money from you. The bitch is lying. I sold my own product to earn that money.”
“Using the money you skimmed off my hotel?”
Zhafa remained silent. He was cornered and he knew it. “She also heard him talking to his friends about taking you down,” the man who’d taken the call added. “We have people at his bank right now.”
“Good work, Kostandin.” Dervishi again turned to Zhafa.
Sadie would have shrunk away from all that power and control.
“What do you suppose the bankers will say?”
Still, Zhafa didn’t speak.
“And what about anyone who’s worked with you? Helped you deceive me. Do you think they will tell me the truth if I offer to spare their lives?” He looked at the men with Zhafa. The blond man glanced fearfully at Zhafa and back at Dervishi.
“What were you planning to do once you were on your way, making money with your new friends?” Dervishi asked. When Zhafa had no answer, he continued. “Compete with me? Enlist a terrorist to use his body as a bomb? Were you hoping to kill me?”
Zhafa’s mouth tightened and his eyes were intense with anger. Was he angry that he’d been caught?
“You think you have what it takes to run my organization?”
“Mr. Dervishi—”
“Answer me!” Dervishi shouted, his voice echoing in the warehouse.
“I would run it so others could profit, not only you.”
Sadie fleetingly turned her head into Calan’s chest, bracing for what was to come. It was a mistake confessing that to someone like Dervishi.
Calan began to rise, holding her arms and helping her do the same. When they both stood, he slipped his arm around her waist and she stayed close to him, putting one arm around him, too, and curling her hand against his chest so her scrapes didn’t rub against the material. When no gunfire sounded, she dared to watch Dervishi and Zhafa go head to head again.
“You don’t like working for me? Have I been unfair to you? Treated you so poorly? Not paid you handsomely enough?”
“That is not—”
“You turn to greed and now you’ve betrayed me.”
“I did not betray you.”
“No? I do not see it that way.”
Sadie noticed the subtle movement of Calan’s teammates, positioning themselves apart from each other, dispersing themselves evenly among Dervishi’s men.
“Nobody does business behind my back. You work for me. Everything goes through me first.”
“My business has nothing to do with yours.”
“That is not what I have discovered today, Gjerji. What I have discovered is that you have stolen from me and have desires to overthrow me.”
Zhafa put his hands up and looked at each of Dervishi's men. “I did not betray you.” He spoke pleadingly in Albanian.
“Kill him.”
Zhafa spoke again in Albanian, this time more rapidly and pushing his palms forward, a motion to stop Dervishi from what he was about to do.
Calan pulled Sadie against his chest as several shots went off, a cacophony of sound ricocheting off the high metal walls of the warehouse. She turned to look over her shoulder and saw Zhafa lying on the floor, splatters of blood dotting the concrete. She stifled a cry of horror, uncertain if the man had deserved to be exterminated so ruthlessly, despite what he might have done to her. In her mind she knew it was inevitable, but the humanitarian in her couldn’t let go of the hope for good.
“Take the rest of them back to the estate,” Dervishi said.
As four of the men herded the blond man and his friends out of the warehouse, Sadie wondered what fate awaited them. Whatever lay in store for them, it probably wouldn’t be pleasant.
“And now there’s the matter of my money,” Dervishi said.
Three of his men moved to stand closer but kept their guns aimed high. Still, the movement triggered a reaction from M and the rest of the team. They turned their weapons on Dervishi and his men, which were now fewer in number since the others had taken Zhafa’s men away.
Dervishi held his hand up when his men aimed their weapons, too. “We have no problem here. I am indebted to you for exposing Zhafa and his treachery. But he has taken something that belongs to me.”
“I’m afraid we can’t give you the money,” Calan said.
Dervishi lifted his eyebrows, making his eyes incredulous but not any less threatening.
“It would go against the policy of my employer. I mean no disrespect, but that money was intended to fund terrorism.”
“I do not use my money to fund terrorism.”
No, but he used it for drug trafficking and Lord only knew what else. Sadie waited to see what Calan would do next.
“Again, I mean no disrespect.”
“But you won’t return my money.”
“I’m sorry. No.”
Sadie tensed while Dervishi merely contemplated Calan. Several agonizing seconds drifted by.
“Then perhaps we can work out another solution,” Dervishi suggested. “You’ve done me a great service today. I reward those who serve my interests. Keep the money, and do me one favor.”
“There are lines I can’t cross.”
“I understand. But were there ever to be a situation where I might need your assistance in some way…nothing unscrupulous, perhaps information. Perhaps an innocent errand. I cannot predict the need. I wish only to have the opportunity to call upon you. As a friend.”
Calan smiled. “I would welcome it. But I would also caution you that I may have to decline. There are lines, as I’ve said.”
“Yes, yes. I understand about lines. But I cannot let so much money slip away without some kind of investment in return.”
“I will honor any request you have that is in my ability to accommodate.”
Dervishi stepped forward and extended his hand. Calan took it and they shook on the agreement.
“In my business, a man’s word is as good as his signature.”
“In mine, men who cross the wrong lines are my enemy.”
The not-so-subtle insult hardened Dervishi’s eyes. He was a man who crossed lines. He just hadn’t crossed Calan’s yet. Calan’s boldness may have pushed a little too far.
But Dervishi let the comment go. “We do not have to be friends to help each other. You have exposed Gjerji’s treachery to me. Had he been allowed to carry out his plan, he could have done much more damage. He was one of my top men.” He looked down at Zhafa's body. “You never know when your friends are going to turn on you.” He raised his gaze. “I consider this a worthy cost.” Handing Calan one of his business cards, he then extended a pen.
Calan wrote his cell number on it. Then he handed the card back.
Dervishi took it. “Have a safe trip home, Mr. Friese.”