Chapter 1

JANIE MORAN WOKE, unsure what yanked her from an exhausted sleep on board the plane. The jet wasn’t moving. They had landed already?

She frowned. Surely not. Janie knew she hadn’t been asleep long enough to have already reached the United States. Her body felt as though she’d just closed her eyes.

She sat up and looked at the man seated next to her. His expression was grim, his gaze fixed on the front of the plane.

Across the aisle, two older women occupying the seats across the aisle were pale, eyes wide and filled with fear.

Janie twisted in her seat to look around the cabin. Everyone’s expressions were grim and filled with fear.

“Turn around,” a man shouted in Spanish from the front of the plane.

She jerked around and discovered two men stood by the cockpit door brandishing multiple weapons each. Both of them glared at her with contempt and arrogance.

“No one may speak or leave their seats.”

The second man spoke. “If you disobey, everyone on the plane will suffer.”

Disbelief settled like a rock in her gut. These two men had hijacked the plane?

Another male voice from the back of the plane chimed in next. “If you cooperate, we will release you unharmed.” Left unsaid was what would happen if they didn’t cooperate.

Janie gripped the arms of her seat. Holy smoke. Her plane had been hijacked. Why? What did these men want?

This plane was loaded with people. Three armed men controlling over 200 people was a recipe for disaster. Eventually, someone would try something heroic, challenging the hijackers for control of the plane.

Her brother and his wife would be horrified that her flight from Talca, Chile to Nashville, Tennessee had been hijacked. Her brother’s wife, Maria, had begged Janie to take a vacation from Natural Bliss, her natural soap shop, and come to Chile for a visit.

Watching the men sporting guns, she wished she’d delayed her departure. Janie had enjoyed meeting David’s wife of three months in person, and now they were making Janie an aunt. Weighing the danger she faced, Janie wished she’d opted for a different flight or just stayed home altogether.

Janie sighed. She’d longed for a little excitement in her life. This definitely wasn’t what she had in mind. An attractive man with an interesting job was more in line with her dreams.

She looked out the window to see if she could figure out where they were. Nothing identified their location. Across the tarmac, other planes moved away from the hijacked plane. Police vehicles waited a distance away. She saw the tower but no name on the building. This place reminded her of Talca’s airport and countryside. The hijackers had probably taken over the plane and forced the pilot to land somewhere in Central America or Mexico.

Two armed men strode up the aisle to the front to confer with the other two hijackers. So, the hijackers totaled four, all heavily armed with guns and knives. Their voices were too low for Janie to hear the words. Something had upset the four men. Their plans didn’t appear to be working out. When did they ever?

She tried to concentrate on the words spoken between the men, but it was impossible with crying women scattered around the cabin.

After several minutes of heated discussion, the kidnappers faced the crowd. “Listen carefully. If you have small kids on this plane, you and your kids go to the back to leave the plane. If you’re over 50, leave. Everyone else stays.”

A surge of movement from people in the designated categories led to a crowded aisle. By the time the exodus ended, the number of passengers remaining had dwindled to about 50. Definitely more manageable for the hijackers.

A quick glance told Janie that she was one of only five women left on the plane. That made her uneasy.

The man with a scar running from the corner of his eye to the corner of his mouth surveyed the people left in the cabin. Dissatisfaction filled his expression. He barked out orders to his compatriots in Spanish too fast for Janie to understand. She grimaced, wishing she’d paid more attention to her Spanish language lessons from Maria.

The other three, however, had no problems understanding the orders. Two of them hustled to the back of the plane.

Scar Face said, “No one move.”

Right. Like she and the rest of the hostages had anywhere to go. If they made a run for it, Scar Face and his buddies would shoot them down in cold blood.

Fifteen minutes later, the other two hijackers returned to the front and had another whispered conversation with Scar Face. He gave a curt nod and turned his attention to the remaining passengers. “Stand up. Empty your pockets and leave everything behind. You will follow orders in silence. If you fight or try to run, you will be shot.” He gave an evil grin. “It’s pointless to try. No one is coming to your rescue. If you want to live, you will obey.”

Janie stood along with the rest of the hostages, looking with longing at her cell phone and purse still in her seat, and moved into the aisle. They shuffled their way to the back of the plane. At the back exit, she noticed movable stairs had been positioned for them to exit the plane.

“Are we being released?” one man dared to ask.

The nearest hijackers clubbed him on the side of the head with the butt of his weapon. “Silence!”

The hostage dropped to the floor, clutching the side of his head.

“Up.” The hijacker kicked the hostage in the side and pointed his gun at the fallen man. “On your feet or I’ll shoot you.”

Two other male hostages reached down and hauled the injured man to his feet and held him steady as they moved toward the exit.

Shaken, Janie edged away from the hijackers as she passed them. Near the exit, she still felt their gazes burning into her back.

She fell in behind the other hostages and descended the stairs. Once on the tarmac, two more armed men herded them toward a delivery van.

Janie stared at the vehicle in disbelief. Fifty people wouldn’t fit inside that van.

One hijacker near the van motioned with his gun for the women to climb into the back. One by one, Janie and the others complied. Soon, ten men joined them, including the man who had been seated beside her. Guess the hostages had figured out controlling 50 people would be a problem long term. Because the van had no windows in the back, Janie and the others sat in darkness and heat.

Definitely a tropical climate. Hot and humid. Despite the uncomfortable temperature, Janie shivered. How would anyone find them? As far as she knew, neither she nor her fellow hostages had anything with them. No cell phones or other devices with the capability of contacting authorities and asking for help. If they escaped, where would they go? How would they reach help?

She wished she had a map stuffed in a pocket. Not that it would do her much good. Janie couldn’t find her way out of a wet paper bag with neon signs lit up, pointing her in the right direction.

“What do these creeps want?” one woman asked in a shaky voice. “I have money. I can pay ransom.”

“If you’re smart, you won’t mention that,” snapped one man. “They might take the money and dump your body in the jungle.”

Several of the women gasped. Janie flinched. The guy was probably right, but saying as much to an already terrified woman wouldn’t help matters.

A woman near Janie sobbed. “I just want to go home to my husband and children, but we don’t have any money. I used up all our savings to be by my mother’s bedside in the hospital.”

Janie reached to her right and wrapped her hand around the other woman’s. “All we can do is wait to find out what they want and remain calm. Don’t antagonize them.”

“They have to let us go,” another woman chimed in. “This isn’t fair.”

A man to Janie’s left said, “Some terrorists make a living by taking hostages and demanding ransom for them. They don’t care about the hostages at all, just the money.”

The hostages fell silent for a while. A woman finally said, “It’s getting hot back here. Why don’t they turn on the air conditioning?”

Another man grunted. “This old van probably doesn’t have it.”

“Be grateful we’re not walking to wherever they’re taking us,” another said.

“Don’t give them any ideas,” a woman said, bitterness in her voice.

More silence as the road on which they traveled grew bumpier, jarring each of them. Several hard turns tossed them around the back of the van like pinballs in a machine.

On and on they traveled. No way to tell where they were going or how far they had traveled. Janie hated traveling blind. Then again, maybe not being able to see was better. What if the kidnappers were taking them somewhere with horrid conditions?

No point in speculating. She’d find out when they reached their destination. Why scare herself even more before she knew the facts?

The woman to Janie’s right whispered, “Do you think they’re going to kill us?”

“If they want money, a dead hostage won’t do them any good.”

That seemed to satisfy her. The information was a poor comfort under the circumstances.

“I hope you’re right.”

Janie squeezed her hand. So did she.

A long time later, the van slowed and came to a stop.

The atmosphere inside the van became tense. “Everybody keep your mouths shut,” one man said, voice low. “We’ll get through this if we cooperate.”

The doors at the back of the van opened. Two men with large guns waited for them. “Out,” snapped a man the size of a linebacker. “Form a line.”

One by one, Janie and the others climbed out of the vehicle. She blinked against the waning sunlight, which seemed as bright as a spotlight after being enclosed in total darkness.

When her eyes adjusted, she glanced around. The jungle crowded in on an encampment of sorts. Scattered buildings littered the clearing. Most of them were small. One, however, was the size of a large, sprawling one-story house.

Scar Face climbed down from a Jeep to survey them. He sneered. After another rapid set of orders, two of the terrorists separated the men from the women and took them into one of the smaller buildings.

Linebacker waved his enormous gun at the women. “Follow me. If you run, we’ll shoot.”

Gritting her teeth, Janie trailed after the other women to the extensive building.

Another man opened the door for them and stood aside as they entered. Linebacker led them to the left along a corridor with rooms on either side of the hall.

Each room had an iron door with bars across a small window. Behind several doors on the left, she could hear women crying or screaming and men laughing or groaning.

Janie swallowed hard. Were these men human traffickers? If so, why take men from the plane and the women?

A hard hand grabbed her arm and jerked Janie to a halt. She gasped and glanced up at her captor, who had a head full of wavy black hair.

He smirked. “This is your cage,” he said in heavily accented English as he pushed the iron door open and shoved her inside. “You stay.”

Like she had a choice.

Wavy Hair grinned as he slammed the door and locked it, leaving Janie in semi darkness.

She went to the bed and sat on the side, her legs suddenly weak. Trembling, she prayed for a miracle.