"No, please."
He chuckled wolfishly. "I like a woman who will beg. A woman who knows her place."
"Please, don't," Jenna said as he stepped ever closer. The stink of him nearly made her retch, but she kept her eyes fixed on him. When he got within arm's length of her, she thrust out her left hand, palm forward, as though to physically hold him off.
She knew he would grab her.
She counted on it, and could barely contain the answering jolt of triumph that surged through her veins as he snatched her by the wrist and hauled her up off the floor of the van.
She put her weight into the movement, using his own brute force to launch herself at him. With the heel of her free hand, she smashed him hard under the nose, driving soft cartilage up into his septum with a bone-crunching pop.
"Aaghh!" Nassi howled in agony. " Putane! Bitch, you will pay for that!"
Blood gushed from his face and onto her as he thrust his hands out and roared toward her. Jenna feinted left, dodging his grasp. Up in front of the van, she heard the other man scrambling around, moving out of the driver's seat to fumble with the console between the seats.
She didn't have time to worry about him right now. Nassi was furious, and in order to get out of the van, she'd have to get through him first.
Jenna locked her hands together and brought her elbows down on her attacker's spine. He shouted in pain, coughing as he made another sloppy grab for her. She eluded him again, dancing out of his reach as though he were standing still.
" Puthje topa tuaj lamtumire, ju copille skemtuar! " she whispered to him tightly, a threat she made good on when she then brought her knee up between his legs and nailed him with a sharp blow to the groin.
Nassi went down like a ton of bricks.
Jenna spun on a scream of her own, ready to do battle with his friend Gresa now.
She didn't see the gun in the other man's hand until the flare of the shot burned as bright as lightning. The sudden crack of the bullet as it exploded toward her was deafening. She blinked, dazed and oddly detached, as the searing fire of its impact slammed into her.
"Have we got anything?"
Lucan strode into the tech lab where Brock, Kade, Alex, Renata, and Nikolai were all gathered around Gideon's workstation.
Brock had his hands braced on the desk, staring over Gideon's shoulder at the monitor. He gave Lucan a grim shake of his head. "Nothing solid yet. Still searching DMV records for possible matches."
Jenna had been gone more than an hour. Their best lead on where she might have fled was a couple seconds of surveillance footage captured by a mounted security camera on the south perimeter of the estate.
At roughly the same time that Renata saw Jenna leap the fence and disappear off the grounds, an unmarked white delivery van drove by on the street adjacent to the property. Gideon had only been able to get a partial reading on the van's Massachusetts commercial plates before it rounded a corner and disappeared out of range. In the time since, he'd hacked into the Boston DMV and had been running plate number combinations, trying to narrow down whom the van was registered to and where it might be found.
Brock was sure that if they located that van, Jenna couldn't be far behind.
"Whether we've got solid leads or not, as soon as the sun sets in the next hour and a half, we're gonna need patrols scouring the city," Lucan said. "We cannot afford to lose this woman before we understand what she might mean to our operations."
"And I can't afford to let anything happen to my dearest friend," Alex said, pointing out the emotional wrinkle in the whole situation with Jenna.
"She's upset and hurting. What if something bad happens to her out there?
She's a good person. She doesn't deserve any of this."
"We'll find her," Brock said firmly. "I promise you, we will."
Kade met his gaze and gave a solemn nod. After the stunning circumstances of Jenna's escape from the compound, finding the human woman with the bit of alien material inside her body was a mission none of the warriors would shirk. Jenna Darrow had to be retrieved, no matter what it took.
"Hang on, hang on," Gideon murmured. "This could prove interesting.
I just got a couple of new hits on the latest sequence. One of them is registered to an auto garage in Quincy."
"The other one?" Brock asked, leaning in to get a closer look.
"Meat-packing plant in Southie," Gideon said. "Outfit called Butcher's Best. Says they specialize in personal cuts and catering."