Read Undercover Memories for Free Online Page A

tugging her along behind him, yanking on her arm when she didn’t move fast enough for him. Then he shoved her ahead of him until they cleared the car.
    “Walk fast. One word and you die,” he said.
    It was on the tip of her tongue to say, “Yeah, yeah, you said that already,” and then she wondered again if she’d lost her senses.
    As soon as they cleared the trees, she looked back, positive there would be an obvious path to the gold car, but it was as though the forest had closed in around the recent wound. She scanned the parking lot instead. Surely there would be someone around to witness this bizarre kidnapping, someone to either call for help or whip out a big old six-shooter.
    No one. Not a soul. Just a half dozen cars and a squat one-story building rising from the melting snow with no discernible windows. The faint melody of a country-western song was the only sound besides the crunching of their feet on the quickly thawing ground.
    He paused long enough to take the knife out again and thrust it toward her to show he meant business. How crazy was this—that a man could march a woman through a parking lot in broad daylight with a belt around her neck and a knife at her back and no one saw it?
    Using the bulk of his body and the threat of the knifepoint, Korenev finally pushed Paige against the side of an old car parked deep in the shadows amid a couple of other clunkers. He reached around her and shattered the passenger window with his closed fist. “Open it,” he said.
    Avoiding the glass, she pulled up the lock and opened the door. The bench front seat was much torn and patched with duct tape, though here and there a spring managed to poke through. The steering wheel was wrapped in tape, as well, and the dashboard fairly gleamed silver with the stuff.
    “Empty it,” he ordered, using the knife to point to the glove box, which was missing its cover. Most of the contents had already spilled to the floor mat below. She pulled out a partial roll of the same tape that seemed to hold the interior of the car together and a few odds and ends, revealing at last a small yellow button.
    “That’s it,” he said, his satisfied breath hot against the back of her neck. “Push it.”
    A twanging sound announced the trunk had popped open. “My lucky day,” he added as he picked up the duct tape.
    With a sinking feeling for what was coming next, she thought of and discarded scenarios as fast as she could. Kicking him, clawing him, screaming at the top of her lungs, grabbing at his injured hand—
    But each idea came overlaid with the image of Jack Pollock’s brutal death, to say nothing of the knowledge that Korenev would happily use his muscles to either tighten the belt around her neck or plunge the knife into her chest.
    He ordered her to go around to the back of the car. “Tape you ankles,” he demanded.
    “But—”
    With a sudden yank of the belt, he leaned in close to her face. “Understand,” he said softly. “You are little value to me. I keep you alive just to use as bait to trap Cinca. Now tape ankles together on skin and do it tight or I will cut my losses—and your throat.”
    As he had Carolyn Pollock’s…
    Leaning over, she wound the tape around her legs. When she straightened up, he grabbed the tape from her hand and bit off a piece. As he pushed it toward her mouth, she turned her head. Closing his fist, he fought her resistance with a punch on the cheekbone that all but knocked her out. She sagged, but he caught her, and ripping off a new piece, slapped it over her mouth. “Be grateful I not cover your nose, too,” he growled as he bound her wrists in back of her, using just the one hand and yet working so fast and with such ease that it was as though he’d done it that way his whole life.
    The next thing she knew, he’d lifted her off her feet and dumped her into the trunk. She landed on something hard and cold, a rod or a pipe. The lid made a deafening sound as it slammed shut over her