On the Line (Special Ops) by Capri Montgomery Page B

went just a little farther in a north eastwardly direction.
     
    “This is so not good,” she mumbled. “I don’t even have my passport.”
     
    “Seriously?” He looked at her. Was she seriously worried about the fact that she had left the country—unwillingly actually—without her passport?
     
    She stopped what she was doing to look in his eyes. “How am I supposed to get back into the country without my passport?”
     
    He growled low. “When we get out of here you can believe me when I tell you that we’re going to be getting back in the U.S. with or without passports. We’ll fly back in under the radar if we have to.”
     
    “You’re taking me with you?”
     
    “Did you doubt that I would, Ariana?”
     
    She looked at him briefly before turning her attention back to the massage she was giving him. “No,” she admitted. “I didn’t think you would leave me here.”
     
    “Good. Just because you left me doesn’t mean I would abandon you.” He hadn’t meant for those words to come out, but they had. He was tired, angry and maybe the control he thought he had and would have when he saw her was just gone.
     
    “Are you kidding me?!” She looked at him with sheer anger in her eyes.
     
    Oh great, now he had pissed her off and Ariana pissed off wasn’t fun on a good day, let alone one that was this bad. Well she had left him. He saw no need to skirt the issue now that the words had left his mouth. “You sent me papers, Ariana.”
     
    “You told me that your career, that the Air Force, was the most important thing in your life.”
     
    “And?”
     
    She chuckled and shook her head, moving away from him, sitting back and settling down faster than he thought she would. “Our marriage should have been the most important thing, Preston. I never asked you to give anything up. I never asked you to not care about your military career. I never asked you to abandon what you clearly saw as your sole responsibility, but I wanted you to care as much, maybe even more, about our marriage—about us. Our marriage should have been the most important thing. It was for me, and I wanted it to be for you as well. Clearly it wasn’t for you so I moved on.”
     
    “Ariana—”
     
    “Forget it, Preston. Now is not the time to discuss any of this.”
     
    Before he could open his mouth to defend himself the doors were opening once again. The bald one came in this time. He looked to Ariana. “Come,” he said flatly. She slowly pulled herself from the floor and looked back to Preston. He tried to pull on the chains holding him back. The look on her face was one of fear, yet still she found a way to calm his futile rage. He could not do anything to help her and if they didn’t know that she was his ex-wife he didn’t want to give it away. She mouthed the word “no” to settle him, and he settled. He felt helpless as he watched her being taken from the room and the door closing behind her. If she didn’t return, if they hurt her, then escape wouldn’t be his only mission. He was going to kill them all, starting with the woman who set him up in the first place and ending with the bastard who orchestrated this charade.
     

     
    “Hello, Ceridwen”
     
    “Ariana,” she said defiantly as she looked to Panhsj. He was the man who had come in to see her while she prepared for the show. He worked for somebody, but right now she couldn’t remember the man’s name, just that he had been fascinated with her dancing. “What is this about?”
     
    He grinned bigger than the Cheshire cat and that grin sent a shiver of fear racing up her spine. She was, however, defiant to the core and she wouldn’t show her fear, not to this man, not to any of them. There had only been one man in her life that she allowed to see the full range of her emotions and that man had thrown her away for a plane in the military.
     
    “I told you when we met, Ceridwen—”
     
    “Ariana,” she stipulated. Ceridwen was her dance