Bron was about to answer, when one of the men grabbed him and put a wide swath of duct tape over his mouth. Bron shouted, but all that came out was a wordless grunt.
Sommer moaned and whimpered, "Olivia?" She gasped, as if she was beginning to come to.
Bron heard the electric hum of a taser, and Sommer shrieked once, and then fell silent.
Sweat broke on Bron's brow and dampened his armpits. His captors had him, and there was nothing he could do. Bron thought frantically, but could see no way to escape.
Stealthily, he pulled at his bonds, but the tape around his wrists was too tight, too sticky. His heart kept pounding, and air in the room seemed thin.
The woman, their leader, barked a sharp command in that same harsh language. She left the room, followed by one of her soldiers, while the third man squatted on the floor.
He took his rifle and merely pointed the barrel at Bron's chest. The red light of his laser illuminated motes of dust in the air before the red dot settled on his heart.
Their leader brought the lantern into the room, and left it sitting on a dresser.
The guard raised up his cell phone and took a short video of Bron. He narrated in accented English, "This is video of Bron Jones, dream assassin, captured at home of Sommer Bastian."
Bron wondered at that. How did they know that he was a dream assassin? They couldn't have gotten that information from his mother. He hadn't told her. Nor could they have gotten it from Olivia, unless they'd captured her.
They must have messed around inside my head when I got knocked out, he worried. Who knows what they took, or what they've added?
When the guard was done, he punched some numbers on the phone and sent Bron's picture into cyberspace.
Far across the Atlantic, Adel Todesfall studied the video. It was just after breakfast when he raced into the study of Lucius Chenzhenko.
The Shadow Lord was studying the markets, peering at a dozen screens at once as they relayed information on commodities, recent news, fluctuating prices.
"My lord," Adel said, his voice shaking with excitement. "Some hunters in America have found your lost son, the child of Sommer Bastian."
Lucius did not take his eyes from the screens. "You see," he said laboriously, "I told you that the chick would come home to the roost."
He said nothing more. Lucius did not care that his son had been captured. Rather, he was far more interested in being right.
"There is an interesting development," Adel said, savoring the moment. "It seems that this one is a dream assassin."
There was no flicker in Lucius's brooding eyes. No ecstatic shout, not so much as a lift of an eyebrow.
Yet Adel could almost hear his master's heart begin to pound faster, and after a long moment, he betrayed his mirth. "Tell the pilot to ready the Learjet. I want to see this one."
Back in the cabin, Bron worried who might see the video of him. The woman assassin studied the cell phone, flipped it closed, and pocketed it. "Jemny," she said. She whirled and left the room.
A sick fear came over Bron. He didn't know who these people reported to.
Outside, there was no change in the night sounds. The frogs croaked like madness—grunting and squeaking and making deep bull sounds. Whatever happened in the room would go unremarked by nature.
The shadowy room was undisturbed. An old mattress lay on the floor nearby, and all of Sommer's things were stowed in a couple of drawers on an ancient dresser. It was a poor and barren place.
Bron could hear Sommer breathing unevenly, fighting for air, even though she was unconscious.
In the far room, a cell phone bleeped as numbers were punched in, then the leader of the assault team spoke softly and rapidly in her strange tongue. After a brief conversation, she gave some kind of order to Bron's guard, who simply huddled down as if for the long haul.
The wait began. The guard simply peered at Bron, gun at the ready, and passed the time patiently. He hardly seemed to breathe. He had taken off his night goggles, so that Bron could see his eyes—a deep blue, his face framed by dark curly hair. As with the woman, this man was handsome, flawless. He reminded Bron of a young Johnny Depp.
In the sweltering heat, even the guard began to sweat. A mosquito hawk buzzed around the lantern, dipping and stopping for a moment, only to leap away from the heat.
The night was deadly still.
The door to the other room was closed, and Bron could not see into it. He imagined that his mother was bound like him, taped and tased. The old man that she lived with would be dead on the floor, unless they had bothered to drag him out front and feed his carcass to the alligators.
This room had no windows, not even a grimy one to let in a little air or moonlight. There were no other exits.
Bron didn't dare try any harder to break free. He imagined that he could have toppled the chair, tried to twist his arms until he pulled loose from the tape, but he knew that it would be in vain. Duct tape holds people far more securely than rope does.
Even if he could break free, there was only one exit, and it had an armed guard, a man whose laser sight bored into Bron's chest.
That left him only one hope—that Olivia might escape, might have made it past the gators and the quicksand and into the night—and might come back to help.
But that was too much to hope.
Olivia was a singer and a music teacher, not some ninja assassin. If she was alive at all, her best bet would be to keep on running.
That left him no hope at all.
Fear took Bron then, a cold and sickly terror that twisted at his guts and made his breath come shallow. Sticky sweat trickled down his forehead, onto his shirt.
The guard studied him with a cocky smile. Bron could not speak, couldn't beg for a drink, or make small talk. It didn't matter. Nothing that he said would have earned him more than a slap to the face.
They're waiting for something, Bron thought. Perhaps they're waiting for one of their hunters to bring Olivia back. Maybe they're waiting for someone else.
Whoever funded these people had a lot of money, Bron figured. The military gear, the training involved. They didn't need to come in a boat. They'd take him out by chopper.
Another thought hit him. These things, these Draghouls, have been firing automatic weapons. Someone might have heard, and they might report it.
We're in the middle of nowhere, he told himself. Even if someone does report it, will the police come? If they do, so what? They'll find themselves outgunned, and far out-classed.
Olivia crouched in the woods. Here beneath the trees, there was no starlight, no moonlight, only the deepest of shadows. In the distance, she heard a wild boar squeal.
She felt the ground around her, searching for something—perhaps a sharp stick or a rock—that she might use as a weapon. All she found were creepers, and something stung her hand. In the darkness, she could not tell if it was a scorpion, or a spider, or centipede.
She reached up and sucked at the venom, and found that her hand tasted of swamp mud, putrid and dark.
Not far away, she heard a limb crack.
She peered hard, saw a darker shadow moving through the night.
She crouched low to the ground. The enemy had night goggles and laser sights, she knew. She wouldn't be able to see them in the darkness, but they would see her.
Her only hope was to avoid detection—to cling to the ground and hope that the plants and creepers here might provide enough cover. She bit her lip, and prayed.
