Free F-Stop by Desiree Holt Page B

the housekeeper has heard from someone by now. If the Wrights really postponed this, they’d make the call and change their arrival time.”
    Mike looked at his watch. “Pelley should have reached his office by now. I’d rather talk to him face-to-face. People can hide a lot over the phone. After that we’ll track down the brother.” His gaze traveled to Mark. “Then I think we need to take a trip to San Diego.”
    “What do you think happened?” Kat asked, realizing how stupid the question was even as she asked it.
    “I don’t know yet, kitten. But whatever it is, we’ll take care of it.” And despite the others in the kitchen watching them, he tipped up her face and kissed her, hard and deep.

Chapter Five
    When they had all been hustled onto the plane, Eli heard the men speaking angrily in Spanish and wished he’d spent more time learning it. The voices rose and fell, then someone stomped through the plane. Eli felt the prick of a needle as he was injected with something. At once he felt dizzy and thick-tongued.
    “What did you give me?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”
    “A minor delay,” his captor said. “Our travel arrangements have been changed slightly. We want to make sure you all get a good night’s sleep while we’re waiting.”
    “Where are my pilots? Did you kill them too?”
    He chuckled, a sound Eli heard as pure evil. “No, Señor Wright. They are sleeping soundly in a motel room and by the time they wake up in twenty-four hours, they will be fully rested.”
    Although the engines didn’t fire up, the plane began to move and Eli assumed they were being towed but before the rolling motion stopped, he passed out, the drug taking its effect.
    Eli was the first to awake, having no idea what time of day or night it was. Shortly they were all roused, blindfolded and led off the plane one by one to use the lavatory.
    As dark as the hangar was he still had no time orientation and he didn’t think their captors were into answering questions. Immediately after they were marched back to the plane, the stairs were rolled up, the door locked and the hangar door rolled up. As the plane was towed out sunlight flooded through the small windows. So. They’d been drugged sufficiently to sleep through the night.
    The engines ground to life, the plane roared down the runway and lifted off into the morning sky. The ride was fairly short, about an hour, Eli calculated since he couldn’t see his watch. Immediately after takeoff the curtains were pulled down over the windows so he couldn’t get any kind of geographic fix. Thankfully the women had fallen asleep again, although he hoped whoever administered the drug hadn’t gotten carried away with the dosage. He guessed his tolerance level was a lot higher than Sydney’s or Mari’s. Maybe muscle mass had something to do with it.
    He was pretty sure they were leaving the United States. It would be too much to hope for that they weren’t being taken to a foreign country, where police accessibility and protection would be pretty much nonexistent. He knew the governments operated on the payoff system. And Mexico had to be the worst.
    He still had no idea who had kidnapped them, or even who would have ordered it.
    The snatch was so well-planned he had a hard time believing it had been random. Like everyone else who watched the news and did business outside the United States, he was well aware of the rapid increase of kidnappings, where the victims were taken across the border. But in each case the person had been identified ahead of time, to be sure the money was available for a big payoff.
    So who had wanted him taken? Of all the people he knew, who was going to benefit from this?
    He was also deathly afraid that since they’d seen the faces of the kidnappers, they wouldn’t be allowed to live to identify them. Unless they were so untouchable they didn’t care.
    While he was still turning possibilities over in his mind, the plane reduced its speed