To the Brink Read Online Free PDF Page B

felt loyalty to Darcy.
     
    Thank God that he'd stepped in and stopped them from what would have been a gang rape.
     
    Thank her God. She even thanked their God, who wasn't even a distant relative of a benevolent Allah. Their God was the God of murderers and assassins.
     
    Abu Sayyaf. She'd heard the men murmur the two words like a mantra.
     
    Abu Sayyaf. It meant Sword of the Father to those who believed.
     
    It meant death to those the sword struck down — unless there was value to the cause. She represented value.
     
    On a shuddering breath, Darcy shifted her weight off her bruised hip. She lay on her side where she'd been shoved on the jungle floor beneath a makeshift shelter comprised of a single sheet of torn and filthy canvas. She'd never been a Girl Scout. Didn't like bugs. Even the thought of a snake made her rigid with fear. But worse, even worse than snakes, was the dark. So she was grateful that they'd removed the blindfold early yesterday. Grateful but not foolish enough to believe the action had been prompted by kindness.
     
    She'd slowed them down as they'd shouted, "Bilis! Bills!" {Be quick! Be quick!), shoving and dragging her through what she'd known from the scents and the sounds was dense jungle even before they'd untied the length of black muslin from her eyes so she could see where she was going.
     
    And she understood full well that there were only two things keeping her alive—her value as ransom bait and her captors' desperate need for money.
     
    Desperate. Now there was a word she could relate to. For the past two days as they'd marched her up and down hollows and across streams pressing at a torturous pace through a tropical rain forest teeming with wildlife, including brilliantly colored birds and a riot of gorgeous orchids, she'd felt the desperation on all fronts.
     
    How could anything this beautiful and lush be so treacherous?
     
    And how could a body be so tired?
     
    Her hands were tied in front of her now. Her head still throbbed from banging the wall of the van and from what she suspected was chloroform, which they'd used to knock her out. She was covered with bruises and cuts. She needed food. She needed water.
     
    She needed rest. But as another night deepened to the incessant sting of insects, the growl of her empty belly, and the change of the guard watching over her, she didn't dare sleep.
     
    Was too afraid to.
     
    Through weary eyes, she studied her new guard. He was just a boy. Her heart broke for him even though he'd been in line to take his turn at her. Beneath the hatred etched on his horribly young face, he was a beautiful child, no more than fourteen years old. He should be carrying schoolbooks or a skateboard. Instead, he carried an assault rifle and a rage bred by poverty and despair.
     
    But terrorists—twenty or so by her count in this particular band of guerrillas—recruited killers of all ages.
     
    Abu Sayyaf may have been founded as a freedom fighters' organization by a Philippine veteran of the Afghan-Soviet war, but it had devolved into nothing more than a clutch of armed bandits who specialized in kidnapping. Just another offshoot Al Qaeda cell with links to both the Jordanians and the Palestinians. Above all, they were thugs for hire to anyone who could pay the price.
     
    Which explained why they'd taken her. Someone had paid their price. Since two accidental deaths of embassy employees would arouse suspicions, she'd had to be dealt with in another way.
     
    She'd understood that from the beginning. Someone wanted her shut up. Someone wanted her gone—and what better way to have her disappear than to bury her deep in the jungle on some remote island where she would never be found? And the bonus: Abu Sayyaf took all the heat.
     
    She watched the few remaining men who were still awake and passing around a cigarette. Their dark faces were shadowed and weary in the fire glow. Their determination, however, was absolute.
     
    Something slithered