Authors Note: Hostage of my Heart is a four-part series. While it's possible to read the sections out of order and not get lost, there's an actual story to back up all the naughty bits, and it's more fun if you start at the beginning!
Thanks for reading-- Stefanie
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The whole thing was insane, Opal thought. This was New Hampshire, not New York, an advertising agency, not a diamond merchant, and it was real life, not Hollywood. Who would ever expect to be taken hostage in a New Hampshire ad agency? For that matter, who'd expect to find an ad agency in New Hampshire? Opal herself had nearly skipped right over the job listing on Craiglist, figuring it was some kind of scam, but at the last moment she'd decided- what the hell?- she was a freelance graphic artist looking for a home, and she hated cities. One click couldn't hurt.
That was eighteen months ago, before she had any personal experience with escaped assassins and hostage situations, when she would have said working in an ad agency was one of the safest careers a person could chose. Opal was no daredevil; her childhood had provided excitement enough to last a lifetime.
She wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin atop one knee, making herself as small and unobtrusive as possible on her piece of dense grey industrial carpeting.
The five men who'd taken over the building half an hour earlier were heavily armed. All wore boxy black pistols on their belts and guns strapped across their chests, which Opal believed were automatic weapons. Honestly, though, she had no idea. She'd hunted as a teenager, and she had an ex-boyfriend who was a handgun nut, but the only things she knew about automatic weapons came from movies. She was plenty familiar with bloodthirsty men, though, and these guys were deep-down violent, especially the one in charge.
She chanced a quick scan of the group around her, convincing herself that no one looked like they were planning anything stupid. If they started to look that way, she herself planned to be as far from the action as possible.
Mr. Branch caught her eye, his dark gaze steady and reassuring. She lowered her eyes without responding, but reflected that she
was
reassured. In other circumstances, she'd have smiled and maybe glanced back at him from under lowered lashes once or twice, enough to let him know she was interested. He was much older than Opal, but he was also tall, with broad shoulders and an air of quiet self-confidence that she found extremely sexy.
Not today, though; today she was thinking that reassuring her was the least Mr. Branch could do, since he was inadvertently the reason they were in this mess. Everyone else in the company-- everyone else in the whole industrial park, for that matter-- had left early for the weekend, but Opal's team had stayed late, despite blizzard warnings on the news and quickly accumulating drifts outside.
Mr. Branch was an important account for a relatively new agency like theirs. An offshoot of his solar energy company, recently transplanted to Boston's high-tech corridor, was headed for an IPO later this year, and apparently he'd been some kind of Olympic athlete back in his day. It was a big deal, anyway. He'd come in for a preliminary meeting before the holidays, but their main pitch was this afternoon, and the owner of the agency didn't want to risk pissing him off.
Of course said owner had gone straight home after a hearty meet-and-greet with the client, leaving the people directly involved with the account to run the meeting: the campaign director, copywriter, a photographer, and a graphic artist-- that was Opal. Two interns were enlisted to fetch, carry, and serve coffee. Helena, the curvaceous, incompetent receptionist, stayed as window dressing, and Mrs. Withers, the office manager, stayed because the success of the whole operation rested firmly on her overstuffed shoulders-- according to her, at least.
"Okay, gents and ladies, your attention, please?"
Without moving her head, Opal raised her eyes to the interlopers' dark-skinned leader. Even before he opened his mouth, this guy was scary: a broad, flat, hard-looking body, a white-blond crew cut, and the kind of dead eyes artists like Opal tried not to draw.
"We're going around the room, and each of you will tell me the name and job of the person next to you,
sabe
? I'm Dominic Sainte-- Mr. Sainte to you lot, by the way, and you, Red," he gestured to Helena, "the gent to your left, what does he do here?"
After Helena introduced Richard, Mr. Sainte asked Richard to do the same for Mrs. Withers, and for a moment, Opal wondered about the man's method of getting information. The reason came to her immediately: while a person might prevaricate about his own position-- to cover up being a security guard or whatever-- they'd be unlikely to invent a similar lie for someone else.
When Mr. Branch's turn arrived, he looked across the aisle at her and lifted a shoulder, "It's Opal, isn't it?"
"You don't know her?" Sainte waved his gun at Opal, making her flinch.
Rand glanced again at the petite dark-haired girl, the one who'd caught his eye earlier in the afternoon, and shook his head. "No, I'm sorry, I don't."
The ad agency's campaign manager hadn't introduced the team members or their roles individually. Maybe he'd been planning to, but they hadn't gotten that far when these idiots flooded the building.
"Anyone here know her?"
The other eight hostages shifted nervously, making flitting eye contact, but no one spoke, surprising Rand. Maybe she was a temp or something.... If he hadn't been looking straight at her, he would have missed the brief look of betrayal in the young woman's eyes; it was gone almost as soon as it appeared. So at least one of them knew her, probably more than one from the looks they'd been giving each other.
Bastards,
Rand thought viciously, wishing he could take back his own denial, which was at least truthful.
Sainte looked assessingly at the girl. She was pretty, he saw, not flashy like the redhead, but the kind of doe-eyed piece of tail that engendered a man's protective instinct. Sainte let his eyes scan the hostages. There were a couple of other possibilities for amusement, too, he thought. The two young ones... mentally, he shrugged. Might as well play-- they'd be here for a while.
"Well, come on up here, then." He motioned with his gun, and the nervous shifting distilled into frozen anticipation.
Opal hesitated, then rose gracefully to her feet. She was wearing black ballet slippers, Rand saw as she stood, which were nearly silent on the faux-marble floor.
"Assholes." Opal thought, her stomach turning. Every damn one of them.
Chickenshit assholes.
She stopped exactly where the man had indicated and his eyes flickered. Maybe he'd expected her to be afraid of getting that close to him, but living with her stepfather had taught her that distance didn't equal safety. This man had the same eyes as her step-dad: sly and sadistic. Meek compliance was her only chance to avoid violence now, and it was a slim one. She couldn't stop the panicked thunder in her veins, but the rapid rise and fall of her breasts pleased him, she saw. No surprise there.
He nodded slightly. "Opal, right?"
"Yes," she murmured, with a dip of her chin.
"Good girl, Opal. I'm not going to have any trouble with you, am I?"
She shook her head, saw the glint in his eyes, and knew her mistake immediately, but she didn't have time to undo it.
The slap wasn't unexpected, but she cried out in pain and staggered to her right as though it had been. Bravery was ill-advised with a man like this.
Through the ringing in her ear, she sensed the shock, heard the gasps of her co-workers, and something else, a rough grunt.
Sainte grabbed her upper arm and she curled around the pain, whimpering. The gun extended over her head and past her shoulder. She barely heard his words, but his tone said it was an order.
As the vice-like grip on her arm loosened, Opal heard movement. She glanced back to see where the gun was pointing. Their dark-eyed client was letting his shoulders settle against the wall. A red mark on one cheek matched the angry complexion of the man holding a pistol to Mr. Branch's temple, telling Opal he'd probably tried to come to her rescue.
Branch met her eyes for just a second before Sainte pulled her close.
