Bound by Dreams Read online

  Breathless, she helped Maddy up the last rung and into a small space that looked like an unfinished storage area. Crumbling walls rose to low, exposed roof beams where the renovation had stopped abruptly. Directly ahead of them an unpainted door stood closed against one wall.

  Maddy wheezed as they scrambled forward. Kiera grabbed a torn military parka draped over a nearby chair, tossing the padded nylon around her sister’s shoulders. Shivering, she took a hat and muffler for herself, relieved to have anything that would take the edge off the penetrating cold here at the coast.

  Outside, feet pounded past, followed by shouts and the whine of a car engine starting. She ran to the heavy door. Together, she and Maddy rammed the wooden frame with all their might.

  Nothing moved.

  They tried again, putting all their weight into the movement again and the rustic lock shook. With their next push the edge of the door splintered and gave way.

  Caught off guard, Kiera grabbed at thin air as she lurched out into the fog thirty feet above the ground. Even in her terror she was dimly aware of blurred figures racing through the mist.

  She threw one arm sideways as her foot slipped. She clawed desperately, trying to grab the splintered edge of a derelict balcony half hidden by exterior scaffolding.

  Then she felt Maddy behind her, gripping her waist, pulling her slowly back into the doorway. Strain left her sister’s face white and beaded with sweat despite the cold.

  Kiera tumbled onto the floor. Her whole body felt bruised as she rolled to her side and sat up. Somewhere below them a man barked angry orders in a way that made her think their disappearance had been noted. She pushed to her feet, glad to have Maddy’s hands to steady her. Her sister’s firm, determined grip spoke louder than words, warming her amid the chaos and panic of their escape.

  Together they would find a way out of this nightmare. Calan was somewhere nearby in the fog. All they had to do was find him.

  Warily, Kiera pushed open the half-splinted door and looked out. Below the collapsing balcony more scaffolding zigzagged along the side of the building. Most of the wood had rotted through, leaving big gaps.

  Below them a door slammed. Kiera looked at Maddy, pointing outside.

  She sat down on the splintered wood, her legs hanging over empty space. There was no going back. They would have to jump and pray that the rotting wood held their weight. Kiera wished she had time to free her sister’s mouth but at least Maddy had worked the tape loose enough to breathe clearly already.

  Fog swirled up.

  No way to jump now. Not without a better view of the scaffolding.

  She felt Maddy’s fingers grip her shoulders. She motioned for her sister to sit down next to her, in position for the first moment that the fog gave way.

  But Kiera realized that her sister’s eyes were wide with panic. She was staring down, wheezing, her body rigid with fear.

  A huge dark shape climbed slowly up the scaffolding. All fur and muscle, it growled fiercely. Through the fog Kiera saw white teeth open. The animal shoved her on her back, its teeth only inches from her neck.

  Memory swirled.

  The night at Draycott Abbey there had been a huge dog near the stone fence. Was this—

  There was no time to think.

  The dark eyes glittered with an arresting mix of intelligence and cunning as one huge paw struck Kiera’s chest, pinning her against the splintered wood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  KIERA HAD AN IMPRESSION of brute strength held in check by keen intelligence. She felt the quiver of powerful muscles as the dark body locked over hers.

  Slowly the great animal sniffed her borrowed hat and scarf.

  When Kiera tried to move, white teeth bared inches above her throat.

  She went completely still. Dark fur brushed her face as the wolf leaned down, sniffing her neck, her hair, her cheek, then rose to its full height. Powerful jaws closed down on her hand. Kiera closed her eyes, braced for the searing agony of her wrist being torn in two.

  Nothing happened.

  She opened her eyes, disoriented as the big jaws moved, exerting only enough pressure to urge her to her feet. There was no mistaking the intelligence of those gray eyes. Part of her mind, stunned and disoriented, tried to process what was happening. He was smelling her, reading her expression somehow.

  Almost as if he was trying to communicate….

  “Maddy?” she whispered.

  “Right here, Kee.”

  Kiera looked back and saw that her sister had managed to remove the strapping tape from her mouth. “Good job. Now follow me.”

  “Are you sure? I mean—is this safe?”

  “Not much choice,” Kiera whispered. “He wants us to go back inside, and I never argue with teeth locked around my hand.” She rose awkwardly. Immediately she was tugged over the floor. At the far corner of the room, fog swirled beyond a broken window.

  The animal pulled Kiera to the wall, then released her and rose to its hind feet, resting its paws on the splintered sill. After a quick glance back, it leaped up to the window and vanished.

  Kiera’s breath caught. Then she heard the thud of the animal dropping down onto some kind of wooden scaffolding out of sight.

  She squared her shoulders. “I’m going up, Maddy. Help me push that box over here. Once I’m out, I’ll help you up.”

  Together the two women turned a dusty packing crate on end, and Kiera scrambled up. She looked down at a gray world of sullen fog. The roof stretched away from the window. The wolf had vanished from the scaffolding. Ten feet away a towering oak tree bordered the far edge of the church’s facade.

  The tree would give them a way down.

  There was no time to wonder how or why the animal had found this place or where he had gone. It was nearly impossible to see down. Kiera’s hands bled as she crossed the splintered windowsill. A shout echoed from the corridor below as Maddy jumped up, wheezing. Footsteps hammered closer. Through restless tendrils of cloud Kiera saw a straight path across the roof. She moved out onto the sagging roof and prayed it was more stable than it looked. Neither Kiera nor her sister looked down. There was no time to think, no time even to be afraid. They stepped out onto the roof.

  As the fog broke in a sudden gust of wind, Kiera looked back, stunned to see a dark shape stalk over the scaffolding below the broken window. It was almost as if the creature was staying behind for a reason.

  Protecting them.

  The dark eyes rose, staring at her with a look of such intense intelligence that the hair prickled along Kiera’s neck. She couldn’t move, caught by some bond of awareness between them. That contact brought her a sense of safety in the nightmare around her.

  “Kee, we have to go.”

  Maddy tugged at her arm. Even then Kiera couldn’t move, caught by some strange, trancelike contact with the dark figure in the mist.

  A muffled shout broke the stillness. A man emerged in the window.

  Kiera shoved Maddy forward.

  As the fog closed around them, Kiera heard a growl. A man cried out in shock and fury.

  And then silence.

  “THERE IT IS.”

  Nicholas Draycott pointed north to the dilapidated church rising from the fog-swept marsh.

  “Bingo.” Izzy pulled on a Kevlar vest, buckled it in place and nodded to the viscount. “Stay here. It’s you they’re looking for, but they can’t have you.”

  Nicholas began an angry protest. The last place he wanted to be was crouched in a car like a frightened rabbit. But Izzy was right. If he was caught, he would become a precious bargaining chip. So he would stay in the car, waiting just as Calan had told him to wait. “Call my satellite mobile as soon as it’s clear to leave. If you need backup, I can have a chopper here from Hastings in ten minutes.”

  “Good to know. Watch your six.” Izzy opened his door silently, gave a little two-finger wave and vanished into the fog.

  PANIC DROVE Kiera and Maddy forward, gripping the high tree branc
h. Now the fog became their friend. Every swirling tendril hid their escape. As the cold began to set in, her teeth chattered uncontrollably. Hand over hand they crossed the rough bough, moving forward by feel alone. And then the branch ended. They had reached the tree’s dead center.

  The only way was straight down.

  “I’ll go f-first,” Kiera chattered. “Give me ten s-seconds. Then you follow.”

  Maddy squeezed her sister’s hand. “Thank you for coming, Kee. If you hadn’t…”

  But there was no time for thanks or anything else. Maddy’s hand fell from Kiera’s shoulder. “Be careful, Kee.”

  “Count on it.” Carefully, Kiera wrapped her legs around the main branch and started shimmying downward.

  The descent was slow and agonizing. Every ridge and shoot dug at her thighs. Halfway down, her palms began to burn, a layer of skin torn away by the rough bark.

  Leaves rained down on her, and she realized that Maddy had begun her own descent.

  Kiera listened intently. The shouting had stopped, and now she was caught in a white blanket of silence, trapped between banks of swirling fog. But the silence was deceptive. Kiera knew her captors could appear at any moment. Every second was precious.

  Her hands slipped, sticky with her own blood and she locked her arms around the trunk to break her fall. Small branches tore at her face and leaves slapped at her eyes. Dizzy with pain, she scanned the ground, little pools of water shining somewhere below her. So far there was no sign that they had been followed.

  She leaned forward, gauging the distance to the ground. Ten feet?

  Fifteen?

  There was no time to worry about how she would break her fall.

  She murmured a prayer and simply let go.

  The jolt of impact hit her shoulder like a truck and she almost blacked out with the pain. Then she rolled sideways, struggled to her knees and cradled her throbbing shoulder. She’d landed at the very edge of a ditch. A few inches more and she would have been fighting her way out of the mud.

  A man with bleached-blond hair and a broken nose suddenly lunged for her arm. Kiera pulled back just in time, but slipped in the mud, falling backward. The man lunged again, cursing in vicious bursts that didn’t require a linguist’s skill to understand. She crawled backward, struggling to stay out of reach.

  Then her sister appeared on the bank behind him—angry, silent and determined. Maddy was holding a thick piece of wood that appeared to have fallen from the old scaffolding. As the man lunged for Kiera, Maddy’s angry blow hit him in the shoulder, knocking him sideways. Her second blow hit him in the neck. But the blow only slowed him down. He spun toward Maddy.

  Her next blow hit him squarely between the eyes.

  He staggered, clutched at his head and then collapsed with a groan.

  “That was for stealing my medicine, groping me in the van, and thinking that you could hurt my sister.”

  Kiera smiled crookedly, shivering with cold. “I’d high-five you, Maddy, but I haven’t got the energy.” She clambered onto the bank, sighing in relief as she felt a heavy jacket pulled around her shoulders.

  “I found this on the other side of the tree. There was a whole box of ammunition stacked underneath it,” Maddy said between wheezes. “These men are planning something very bad, Kee. Someone has to do something.”

  “Right now you and I have to find a way out of here. But I remember where they drove the car.” Kiera zipped up the oversize jacket and started along the edge of the ditch, moving cautiously through the restless banks of gray. A small road curved around the old church. She remembered that a man had driven Calan’s car into the trees there just after she was taken captive.

  She turned, scanning the curve in the road. Her teeth were chattering. Her shoulder was on fire, but joy overwhelmed any sense of discomfort.

  Calan’s car was just down the hill parked on an angle, half-hidden behind a yew hedge. They were going to get out of this place before they were discovered. Kiera ran down the hill and yanked open the car door.

  No keys.

  “Maddy?”

  “Already on it.” Kiera didn’t hesitate, sliding into the driver’s seat. In the family her sister was known for her nimble skills at hot-wiring a car, courtesy of their father, who had always joked that if things got truly bad, they could survive on his and Maddy’s ability as car thieves.

  The car hood rose. A moment later her sister tapped. Kiera smiled crookedly at the wonderful sound of the engine growling to life. As she gunned the motor, Maddy slid into the passenger’s side, and they backed out onto the road.

  There was no sign of movement as they passed the deserted canals and slowly climbed above the marsh. Maddy leaned down, fiddling with the heater, and the two women luxuriated in a blast of hot air.

  “Your wrist is bleeding.” Maddy leaned forward, pulling up Kiera’s cuff.

  “I’ll be fine. We have to get you to a hospital. You need your medication.”

  Maddy wheezed a little as she sat back, resting her head against the seat. Her face was very pale. For once she didn’t argue.

  “Just rest.” Kiera peered out at the fog. “I remember there was a police station about five miles back. We’ll head there first. You’re going to be fine.”

  There was a blur of motion behind Kiera. She swung around sharply. Her captor from the church loomed up from the rear seat, gripping Kiera’s neck.

  “No police,” he said viciously. “You were warned.”

  He raised a pistol, and Kiera swung the wheel, sending the car into a sharp skid while the man cursed and slammed her forward against the steering wheel.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  STARS EXPLODED white-hot in front of Kiera’s eyes.

  Blinded, she tried to control her skid while she struggled to recover. She heard Maddy shout and then the hammer of fists.

  “Maddy—no. Be careful.”

  The man yanked open the passenger-side door. In one powerful movement he forced Maddy sideways out of the moving car. Then his pistol leveled on Kiera.

  She tried to look back, but cold metal dug under her chin.

  “If you slow down or turn around again, I will shoot you. Then I will throw you out, just as I did to her. You understand this?”

  Kiera’s fingers were white, clutched on the steering wheel. “Why do you hate Nicholas Draycott so much?”

  The gun twitched against her neck. “Because he interferes in our country’s future. Because he’s arrogant and cold, and he thinks he can help shape the destiny of my country—he who is no one and nothing to us. But he will certainly fail. We will see to that.”

  Kiera heard the madness and the implacable hatred in that voice. But Maddy was all that mattered at the moment. She leaned over the wheel, squinting into the fog.

  “Where am I supposed to be going?”

  “No more talk. I will tell you exactly where to go when it is time. We will start with your map.”

  His cell phone rang, the sound muffled somewhere in his jacket. Kiera heard his hand fumble with the flap of his pocket.

  She jammed hard on the brakes, throwing the car into a dangerous fishtail turn. They had barely ended the turn when she accelerated again, snapping the man backward. He cursed as she twisted the wheel, skidding in the other direction.

  Kiera wrenched open her door and lunged out, away from the car, landing facedown in the gravel.

  Pain clawed at her face and shoulders.

  Something hissed by her head and burned through her arm. She screamed with shock, her body rolling along the bank above the marsh.

  Another shot. Her chest seemed to tear open in a searing burst of agony.

  Everything blurred.

  She looked up to see an orange fireball shoot through the air. The burning car skidded sideways and turned, headed back toward her, flames shooting from under the engine.

  A black outline soared through the restless orange curtain, silhouetted sharply against the flames. There was painful beauty in t
he strength of that body and the fierce determination of the high, flying leap. Powerful paws struck the back of the car. The violent movement sent the car down at an angle, plunging over the bank away from Kiera.

  She heard the roar of another explosion.

  Dirt and gravel rained down on her face.

  She was too exhausted to move.

  PAIN BROUGHT her back to consciousness. The car’s black metal frame stood outlined like a twisted skeleton against the flames.

  Her eyes burned from acrid smoke as she struggled to stand up. She couldn’t seem to breathe. Her legs shook and then gave way.

  Fighting a terrible weight, she clutched at her chest and then slowly toppled sideways.

  Strong hands touched her face. Dimly, she felt warmth as if a blanket had been wrapped around her.

  More words. Someone leaning over her. The sounds held no meaning.

  As the crushing weight on her chest grew, Kiera stared up at the pale sky and knew that she was dying.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “KIERA, TALK TO ME.” Oblivious to the cold mud, Calan crouched beside Kiera’s motionless body.

  Her pulse was shallow and her eyelids fluttered slightly. Blood oozed from a wound at the center of her chest. Another bullet had grazed the corner of her shoulder.

  He spoke to her again, but she didn’t seem to hear him. Down the hill footsteps splashed through the ditch, and Izzy Teague loomed out of the fog, a canvas backpack over his shoulder. He frowned as he tossed a blanket over Calan’s muddy shoulders and handed him his jacket. “Someday you’ll tell me why your feet are bare and you’re not wearing a scrap of clothing. Are you hit?”

  Calan shook his head. The blood on his hands was all from Kiera. More blood welled up with every heartbeat. “She took at least two bullets. Can you do something for her, Teague?”

  “It will have to be in a hospital. I can’t treat a chest wound out here. I’ve already called Nicholas, and there’s a helicopter on its way from Hastings. But…”

  Calan didn’t release her. There was a look of desperate resolve on his face. His fingers opened gently over the wound above her heart. “But what?”