Blind Loyalty by M J Marlow (ebook reader wifi .txt) 📕

free and he tightened his hold on her. “Let me go!” “Agree, my dear,” Leighton said coldly, “or I will make you watch young Murphy being tortured until he is left a cringing, mindless wreck.” “You wouldn’t…” She looked over at Aidan and saw his look of anger as he tried to free himself from the bonds holding him to the chair. “You have your memory back, Joanna,” James broke in, looking at her seriously as he turned her to face him. “How could you believe I am not capable of that?” She bit her lip to keep from sobbing. “If you agree, he will be left with no memory of my arrival here.” He smiled as he stroked her cheek. “Everyone will believe you wandered off and was lost to the storm, my little one.” He looked at her expectantly. “Well?” Joanna knew she could not let him hurt Aidan. She could see him willing her to refuse, but she could not let him be hurt. So she nodded and James dragged her outside where a snow cat was waiting. He shoved her inside as his men remained inside a few moments longer. When they came out, they set fire to the cabin. They got inside and the cat engine roared to life. “No!” she screamed as she saw the building catch fire. “You said you’d let him go,” she sobbed as she tried to get out and help Aidan. James yanked her back and she went at him then with her nails out. “You murdering bastard!” “Language, my dear,” James snapped and backhanded her. Her head hit the other door as she went flying and she blacked out long enough for him to bind her wrists and ankles and gag her. He left her lying on the floor of the cat as the vehicle moved off. “I said I would leave him with no memory of my being there. I never promised I would let him live, Joanna. Whoever finds him will think the furnace blew. My men are experts at staging accidents.” Joanna sobbed as she realized he had just murdered her best friend. How had he known where to find them? James looked down at her smiling like a hunter who had just bagged a trophy. She turned away from him and tried to keep from crying then. She needed to keep her wits clear and wait for a chance to escape this bastard. All the time he’d been raising her, he had been planning to do this to her. Her blood ran cold at the thought. And then she was shivering for real as her inadequate clothing and the cold air inside the cat joined forces. James found a blanket and wrapped her in it. Then he pulled her into his arms and his body heat and the blanket warmed her. She fell asleep then and did not wake until the cat arrived at the airfield. “From this point on, my dear,” James said as he forced her into an SUV and cuffed her wrist to a roll bar in the back seat, “every act of defiance will lose you a relative. They will be tortured slowly and painfully as you are made to watch. Do you understand?” Joanna nodded and he turned to his men. “Go!” Aidan got his wrists free as he heard the cat engine roar to life. He was too angry to think. That bastard had Joanna. He opened the door and launched himself out into the snow. He barely registered the fact that his shirt was on fire along his arms; all he could think about was getting after Leighton and freeing Joanna. His head was pounding as he stumbled back towards the road. He felt ill and he was confused. It was snowing so he assumed he had stopped at the cabin to wait it out. But where had he been that he needed to be in the cabin. He made it out to the road as the flashing lights of a squad car appeared over the rise of the road. “Aidan!” Murphy cried as he saw his son stumbling out onto the road. He stopped the car and ran to his side. The boy was looking lost and his lower arms were badly burned. “Where’s Joanna, son?” “Joanna?” Aidan repeated. “Was she here?” He looked back towards the cabin as the fire rose and it could be seen from the road. He tumbled down into the darkness as his father’s men went to put the fire out. “I found him stumbling out onto I-7 near our old cabin,” Murphy was saying as Aidan woke up several hours later. “He doesn’t remember being with Joanna, Adam. He’s obviously been drugged.” “That means the bastard has her,” Adam cursed. “By the time we find his trail, he’ll have forced her to sign over her inheritance to him or worse.” Aidan jumped as a fist slammed into a solid surface but then he drifted off again. “How did he know where to find them?” Adam and Murphy set a watch on the boy as he slept. He was the only link they had to Joanna right now. Braxton came in a few times to see if Aidan was awake. He talked to the technicians and they had some ideas as to how Leighton might have tracked the pair down. He did not like what he was hearing but he let them fly with it and was ready with a device in hand a few hours later. He headed back to the Infirmary hoping they were wrong, but prepared in case they were not. “Joey?” Aidan called out as he regained consciousness. He sat up groaning as pain hit his head and his father handed him a cup of water. “What happened?” “You could have told us,” Murphy said, “if you hadn’t had your memory wiped by his vile drug.” “Leighton has Joey, doesn’t he?” Aidan looked at Adam. “We were at the movies and she was acting like he was whispering into her ear. She said it was nothing, but I know her. She can’t lie to me.” He bit his lip. “He has to have tagged her or me or both of us.” He got to his feet and the world tilted. He sat back down. “What was in that drug? I can’t get my balance.” “You’re not going anywhere, young man,” Murphy said as he made his son lie down. “You suffered a few burns escaping from the cabin.” He raised Aidan’s arms and showed him the bandages. “You’re going to be in the hospital a few days while they take care of you.” He saw Aidan’s impatient frown. “Tell me what you need, son, and I’ll bring it here.” “In my workshop,” Aidan said, “third shelf up to the left of the work table. There’s a small blue box. Bring that and my tool kit.” He looked at his arms and knew his father wasn’t telling him everything. An IV was in his left hand and he was hooked up to saline and a painkiller. “They meant to kill me,” he sighed as he lay back. The painkiller was being fed into his IV now and he could feel it warming him and making his body go limp. “We have men going through the cabin now,” Adam said as he watched the boy drift off. “It’s probably a waste of time. Leighton is too smart to leave tracks.” His phone rang and he answered. A moment later he was smiling. “Our man has slipped up, Murphy. We checked with the airfield near the cabin. The manager remembers seeing three men forcing a young girl into an SUV and heading towards Denver. He wrote down the license number because he felt something was wrong.” He turned his attention back to the phone. “Let me know what you find,” he told the caller. “Leighton is determined to keep her under his thumb,” Murphy frowned as he thought of Joanna. “Why?” “Because his father gave everything he had to Joanna,” Adam told the Sheriff. Murphy hissed. “Exactly. Leighton has nothing without her. Since we know she is not his daughter, the only way he can have what he feels is his is by forcing her to sign it over to him…” “Or marrying her,” Murphy said stiffly. He could see from Adam’s expression that he had never considered that option. “It makes more sense given what Leighton did to her, Adam. He was raising himself up a perfect wife; obedient and compliant. He always meant for Joanna to replace Hannah.” “No!” Adam exclaimed. “I will kill him before I let him do that to my daughter!” He looked over at Aidan. “He has gone too far this time!” “I agree,” Braxton said as he came into the infirmary. He looked at Murphy. “The technicians think they know what your son wanted. They have something similar here.” He held up a small box and walked towards Aidan. A light flashed as he passed it over Aidan’s head and went wild as he held it near his left ear. “Bingo.” He turned to the man behind him. “The tag is in the left ear.” “How the hell did they…” Murphy cursed as he remembered. “They were giving hearing tests to the athletes Thursday afternoon. Leighton must have had one of his men masquerading as the audiologist.” “Leighton knew if he tagged your son,” Braxton frowned; “he would find Joanna. Those two were never apart after she came back from England.” He looked over at Adam. “If he’s tagged her, too; then he’s made a mistake.” He watched as a technician came over and removed the tag in Aidan’s ear. “We have a similar device, we can use it to track her. We’ll find her…” “Before he rapes her?” Adam hissed. He saw the man’s shock. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to bite your head off.” “Can’t blame you, Jeffries,” Braxton replied. “I’ve been trying to stop this bastard for thirty years. He’s managed to escape us every time.” He sat down on a chair. “If I hadn’t handpicked my men and women, I would think we had a mole somewhere in our organization.” “Who’s to say you don’t?” Murphy asked him. “If he can tag my son, why couldn’t he do the same to one of your elite? Your people don’t live here, Commander.” He looked at Aidan. “From what my son said, I think the tag he put in Joanna was a transmitter. Leighton was speaking to her.” Braxton hissed and left the room and Murphy turned to Adam. “Was it something I said?” “He’s going to run every one of us through the scanners now, Murphy,” Adam told his old friend. “And whoever he finds tagged is in for the third degree plus.” He looked at Aidan. “He’s a good kid. He shouldn’t have had to be hurt.” “Until Leighton is stopped, Adam,” Murphy said tightly; “no one is safe who is connected to Joanna. He is going to hold us all hostage to make her obey him. You know that.” Joanna sat in front of the mirror clothed only in a sleeveless gown like the one she had worn in the slave market in England as a woman combed out her hair. She was wearing a gold collar around her neck with sapphires embedded in it on either side of the gold ring in the center front. Outside the windows of the suite she had been locked in for the past week she could see the Eiffel Tower in the distance but she could not enjoy it. She was a prisoner and she was about to be forced to have sex with a man who had once been her father. He had been raising her as a replacement for her own mother who had died young because she would not give him children. She was numb from the drug