Apologies for the delay with this chapter, I've been struggling a little bit with the plot... hope this is OK! x

Chapter Three

Nine hours in

"What do you mean my wife is missing?" He said it quietly, but he didn't need volume for the words to carry across the Oval Office. The force behind them was enough for them to carry.

Henry McCord had elected to stay standing for this audience with the President, too on edge to sit and too easily able to recognise this for what it was: a carefully managed effort to break the news to him. An effort to handle him.

"Her plane was due to take off from the airbase around nine hours ago," said Nadine Tolliver, looking up at Henry as she sat on a couch next to Russell Jackson. "Only it never did."

Henry had been surprised to find Nadine present for the meeting, but he was glad of it. She wasn't given to bullshit, so even though the grave expression on her face when he had entered the room hadn't done much to inspire confidence in him, at least he knew she'd give it to him straight. And she would be in Elizabeth's corner, no matter what. "She didn't make it to the plane?"

"There was an ambush." From his position leaning against the Resolute desk, Conrad Dalton spoke up. He pushed away from the desk and walked over to lean his forearms against the back of an armchair next to Henry. "Some of her team made it to the airbase and have taken shelter there."

An ambush. What the hell did that even mean? It sounded like something they should have seen coming but didn't, and it sounded like his wife was in trouble because of it, and Henry was not OK with that fact. Then he registered the second part of what Conrad had told him. "Wait. Some of her team?"

Everyone else in the room suddenly failed to meet Henry's eye. "There were some fatalities," Russell eventually said. "Two DS agents and three State Department staffers that we know about, plus a local guide. Three DS guys and a couple of staffers made it back to the airbase, and three DS agents are still missing."

There were so many questions that Henry could ask in response to that but there was currently only one that he cared about. "And Elizabeth?"

Suddenly no one wanted to look at him again, and the feeling of empty dread in his gut bottomed out. "Where is my wife?" Henry demanded.

The three of them exchanged glances as though silently debating who got to break the news to him, and whether they should try to sugar coat it when they did. Eventually, Nadine rolled her eyes at the others and said to Henry, "One of the staffers reported seeing her taken from her car and put into another vehicle, which drove off."

"You mean she was abducted."

"Yes."

OK. Now he needed to sit down. Vision swaying wildly, worry and panic and anger all swirling inside him and battling for dominance, Henry staggered around an end table to sit down opposite Nadine and Russell. Head in his hands, breaths shallow and juddering. "And now?" he said, when he had managed to quell his nausea enough to be able to lift his head and look Conrad in the eye. Conrad, the President, who was the reason Elizabeth had gone on the trip in the first place and who was ultimately responsible for anything that happened to her while she was there. Conrad, who was their friend and whom Henry had been pleased to vote for twice, but whom he wouldn't hesitate to blame if necessary. "You don't know where she is?"

The three of them exchanged another look that suggested they'd really rather not be having the conversation. Henry knew the feeling. Elizabeth, God. If she didn't make it back -

Conrad lowered himself into the chair next to Henry. "Actually," he said, pursing his lips together in something that might have been regret, "we know exactly where she is."

0 hour

The long road to the airport seemed as though it was never going to end.

Elizabeth McCord sat back in her seat, closing the file she held on her lap, too car-sick now to continue even pretending trying to work on the final leg of the journey back to her plane. Despite the many virtues she had experienced in this part of the world, reliably smooth road surfaces was not one of them. Nor was the humidity, which had been giving her a headache since she landed three days previously.

She closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of her seat, willing either the road or her stomach to stop jumping – preferably both. It wouldn't look good if she were to vomit on the tarmac as soon as the car door opened upon arrival at the airbase. There might be press around and that would not make for a pretty front page.

At least the run back was pretty clear. There hadn't been much traffic at all on this long road that ran through a splice in the rainforest and connected two cities without all that much in between, and the journey, while unfortunately bumpy, had been fairly swift.

Until now.

The car was slowing, and Elizabeth could hear the DS agents in the front seat making noises of consternation at the hold up. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes to see what was going on. "Have we hit traffic?"

"Looks like a fallen tree blocking the road, Ma'am."

Elizabeth craned her neck to see – her agent was right. Thirty or so metres away there was a large tree lying across the road, something she knew was not unheard of in this part of the world. She had met with local charity workers the day before who had told her that soil erosion and heavy rain sometimes caused landslips in the rainforest, which sometimes caused things like this to happen. "Can we get around it?" she asked.

One of the DS agents from the car at the front of the motorcade had climbed out of the vehicle to have a look, and he was joined by one of the junior State Department staffers who had come with her on this trip to tour some of the smaller South American countries and work to build consensus on Conrad Dalton's new climate initiative. The two of them walked towards the tree.

There was the unexpected sound of a vehicle revving noisily close by. Then a jeep sped suddenly out of the trees to the right, hurtling across the small space.

"Oh, my God." Elizabeth's hand flew to her mouth and she jerked reflexively against her seatbelt before she froze in shock.

There was no time to react.

The jeep slammed into the car in front, taking down the DS agent and the junior staffer along the way before crunching sickeningly into the metal of the armoured vehicle. It wouldn't have done irreparable damage to the car, but to her staff…

She had seen the spray of blood, and then she felt sick for a reason much more serious than an uncomfortable car ride on a bumpy road.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

Everything was frozen for several long seconds. Then one of the DS agents in the front seat snapped back to business and launched himself into the back and pulled Elizabeth down, pushing at her back with one hand and unbuckling her seatbelt with the other as he dragged her to the floor of the car. She complied; he hadn't given her time to react or protest, and she found her cheek pressed to the scratchy carpet on the floor of the car, held there by the firm hand of her agent on her back. His other hand was on her head, whether to shield her or keep her down she wasn't sure.

The car engine revved and the gears crunched, preparatory to making a getaway in reverse.

Then the gunshots and the shouting.

Then the shattering glass.

Then the feel of something warm and wet against her arm, and she knew without seeing it that it was blood, and she knew from the dead weight on top of her what had happened to her DS agent and it was familiar, too familiar, too much like Iran, except this time she wasn't in the house of a friend with friendly security forces nearby, she was in the middle of nowhere, miles from a city or even a village, and there was no time at all to react.

Then the weight on top of her was gone and her ears were ringing from the noise and somebody said something but she didn't know the voice, and before she could sit up there was a sharp sting against her bicep followed by a warmth that spread through her veins and pulled her back down, down, and the last thing she remembered was the feel of the scratchy car carpet against her cheek as someone pulled her towards the open rear door and out and away towards the rainforest.