Captive Heart by Mina Carter, J.William Mitchell Page B

And then there was Day.
    She quickly stifled her thoughts when she heard several footsteps approaching from the other side of the door. She swiped her tears away as the rusty lock twisted open. The door swung open and slammed against the wall.
    “Right, bitch. Time to get to work.” Dark figures converged on her, and she was un-cuffed and hauled from the chair. She had sat twisted in the chair for so long that her legs had gone numb. She stumbled as they shoved her from the room, only the hard grip on her arm keeping her upright as she was bundled up the stairs and into the brightly lit corridor beyond. She winced, her eyes frantically trying to adjust after the darkness of the basement.
    “Christ, you ain’t much to look at like this, are you?” One of the pseudo-agents sneered. “Gotta hope that you’ve got more than air in that head, otherwise Mr. Blackwell ain’t got no use for you. And if you ain’t useful…”
    Rollie glared up at the man who shot Day. “Well, with that broken nose, you’re not really prince charming yourself,” she croaked. “And that slowly emerging bald spot won’t make your day any better, either.”
    “Bitch,” he snarled, raising a hand, but then seemed to think better of it and shoved her along the corridor ahead of him. He opened a door. She saw the familiar confines of a lab beyond, and he viciously pushed her through it. “Plans are on the table. Get working. Oh, and take your time, sweetheart, because the longer you take, the longer I get you afterwards.”
    Pushed through the door with more force than courtesy, Rollie caught herself on the edge of one of the worktables with a muttered curse.
    “There’s more where that came from. Now get on with it.” The fake FBI agent gestured at one corner of the lab. The workbench there contained tools and equipment she recognized. The rest of the lab was identical to pretty much every other lab she’d worked in, bar the armed guy standing outside the door and the welded metal plate on the windows.
    “What, no tea and flowers? I’m insulted,” quipped Rollie as she glowered at him. “You can tell your boss that I’m not making squat. And if he thinks sending someone to kidnap me and threaten me with torture and death is going to make me shiver, then he doesn’t know me that well. On the other hand, I’d just love to be alone in a room with you right now. With me carving you a new smile on your scrawny throat while you choke on your last gasp of bloody air.”
    The agent lifted a hand, his expression gleeful. “Oh, I don’t think so, sweetheart. I think you’re going to do exactly what the boss wants you to. If you don’t, you know that brand spanking new lab and all your nice little employees? The ones with families and loved ones depending on them?”
    Despite herself, she nodded. She had a bad feeling about this. The agent moved closer until she could smell the stink of his sweat under the sickly sweet cologne. He curled his fingers into a ball under her nose and suddenly splayed them open.
    “Boom.”
    “You sonofabitch.” She leveled a look of pure hatred at him. Blackwell and this sleazebag were willing to commit mass murder just to get what they wanted. She realized that if they were this determined, she could pretty much expect herself to be dead when all of this is over.
    Or worse. Baldy’s plaything.
    It was up to her now. Everything had always been. Just like before.
    “Tell your boss I’ll build the reactor. But if anyone else gets hurt, I will destroy him.”
    He smirked. “Yeah, right. What you gonna do? Bat your eyelashes? Pull the other one, darling, it’s got bells on. Jingle Bells .” He laughed and slammed the door shut behind him.
    Rollie waited for him to leave before approaching the tools and materials on the table. She smiled slightly as she surveyed everything.
    “Oh, it’ll definitely be an early Christmas for me, buddy boy.” she picked up a red container with danger labels all over it