Liberation Read Online Free PDF Page B

knife in her hand.  Her dead body lay between Marci and the man who had thought nothing of the men he’d killed, the way he’d touched her in the van, or the trauma he would cause the innocent victim he held to protect his own worthless hide. 
    He thought himself safe because the van blocked his back. 
    Quietly climbing from the cargo hold, Marci bent and picked up the wicked blade.  Wiping her hands on her jeans, she gripped it firmly and moved up behind him without a sound. 
    The men in combat gear yelled at her in Arabic but she ignored them.  They kept their eyes on the man holding the hostage to keep him from turning and seeing her. 
    “I don’t understand you fucking animals!  Speak English!”  The murderer pushed the gun harder into the temple of the woman.  She was crying.  “I’m walking away!  I’m walking away or I’ll kill this cunt!”
    Marci was inches from his back when she simultaneously hooked one arm around his elbow, pulling the gun away from the hostage’s head, and used her other hand to slash her kidnapper across the back of his thigh with the knife. 
    The blade went through his pants easily and she felt when it hit bone.  The effect was immediate.  His screams as the woman broke from his grasp were nothing to her. 
    Twisting the gun out of his hand as he dropped to the ground, Marci watched him thrash as he bled profusely onto the cobblestone street.  Checking the ammunition in the magazine, she shoved it back in place and stared into his eyes. 
    “Who sent you?”
    He started to laugh.  “You stupid little bitch.  You’ll never be safe.” 
    Glancing down his body, she extended her arm and put a bullet in his knee.  “Who hired you?” 
    His fresh screams were accompanied by her being surrounded, guarded by a dozen men standing shoulder to shoulder.  Half of them faced out to watch the street.  Those facing toward her had their guns pointed at the kidnapper’s head and she knew they’d shoot if they believed her to be in danger.
    Past them, she noted emergency personnel arriving to contain the scene.  Medics worked on the injured fifteen feet away. 
    Among them were Near and Far.  They were covered in blood, their wounds likely delivered from the same knife she held in her hand. 
    Straddling the redhead’s torso, trapping his shoulders with her knees, she slid the gun away and switched the knife to her other hand.  “I may never be safe but I will always be safe from you .  You have one more chance to tell me who hired you.” 
    “Fuck you, rich girl.”
    In her life, she’d had no real friends other than the staff who took care of her.  To know that this man had hurt people she cared about and could have killed her first friends for money made her mind cloud with rage. 
    Looking down at a man who was delirious with pain but still able to spit hatred at her, she said clearly, “No.  Fuck you .” 
    Then she sank the blade into his chest with both hands.  She watched as he gurgled his last breath and then the world rushed back, like an explosion in her brain, and she lost consciousness. 
    Her rescuers returned her to the heavily fortified mansion of her father’s friend, Salid bin Qasim.  He’d guarded her personally until Pritchard and Victoria arrived.  Marci was beaten but it was the terror in her own mind that made her feel as if she was bleeding out. 
    Her first memory upon waking was Victoria shrieking, “It’s the fucking Middle East, what do you expect , Pritchard?” 
    “The leader was American, the driver and the passenger were Russian, and the woman may have been French,” she managed to whisper.  “None of them were Middle Eastern.”
    Her mother turned on her.  “How would you know?  You don’t know anything!  You traipse around as if you don’t have a care in the fucking world – given far too much freedom by your father.  If you’d been taken, do you know what it would have cost , what we would have had to pay