Radio Raleigh

Harry knew that risking a deal with the Colonel in charge of Radio Raleigh’s care would be dangerous. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if it would work. More than once he and his team had caught a decoy, which was a relatively easy mistake to make, considering that no one knew what the girl behind the show looked like.

It was the only thing keeping him from taking the car off the pre-determined route and escaping when he had the real one. He wasn’t going to die for uncertainty.

So when a girl slipped into the passenger seat beside him, rain-soaked with dark wisps of hair clinging to her face, he was absolutely, 100% confused.

Automatically his hand went to his holster, but he knew that it would have just been used as a scare tactic.

The thing about Harry is that he didn’t kill people. It was for that reason that he hadn’t progressed any further than Lieutenant Colonel; he could easily overpower the commanding general of his unit, maybe even make it up to Major General. Hell, everyone in the unit he himself had charge of were Colonels in their own right. To anyone looking in, it didn’t make sense that someone of lower rank would be commanding a group of such powerful men.

Harry just didn’t kill people. That didn’t mean they didn’t wish he had.

He watched the grin spread across her face, watched her mouth as it moved to form words while she spoke.

“Well, if you’re going to kidnap me, I should at least be able to sit shot-gun.”

Her voice had a much different impact when it wasn’t filtered through layers of static and radio waves. Harry felt as if a truck had hit him, every coherent thought in his head scattered into nothing. He could suddenly understand why people had considered his closest comrades found the ability to defect to the East.

In that single, terrifying split second, Harry knew that she would only have to ask and he would walk to the end of the earth for her.

He was knocked out of the trance by Colonel Horan, who was spewing curses and knocking into the back seat of the truck, rubbing a reddening spot on his forehead and clutching his crotch.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the girl bite back a smile. Did she do that to him? Oh, Horan was never going to hear the end of this.

Immediately, Horan pulled out his gun and snaked it around the headrest of the seat, pressing it against her temple. It was a risky position; one bump in the road and his finger could slip and blow her brains out against the windshield.

She very obviously knew that.

“Lieutenant Colonel, why is the hostage sitting in the front seat?”

“Colonel, how did a teenage girl manage to get away from you?” Harry shot back, his voice firm but there was a slight teasing light in his eyes. At the sound of his voice, the girl paled considerably. She became white as a sheet.

It was unnerving to say the least.

Colonel Niall Horan broke eye contact but continued to press the barrel of his gun to her temple. With one hand, he fidgeted around a pocket for handcuffs—they were old fashioned, made of metal, but the East had degenerated far more in technology than the West. Hell, the East was still using cars.

With one hand, Niall handcuffed her wrists behind the seats and kept the gun to her head. He looked over to Harry for confirmation, and Harry nodded with approval.

Tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, Harry looked up into the rearview mirror to meet Niall’s eyes. “Where are the others?” He asked, knowing that his team made up much of the staff for this transportation.

Niall grunted, adjusting his arm to rest more comfortably while he held the gun. “Should be coming any minute now. Our boy Smith put up a bit of a fight after this one left. Threw a wrench into all of our plans.” The barrel pressed a little bit more into her temple.

Her face betrayed no emotion but that wasn’t what gave away her fear. Harry noticed beads of sweat running down her face, her hands gripping the cuffs behind the seat so tightly her knuckles were bleached white.

Harry felt a strange twinge of pity, but he chalked that up to the magic her voice held.

What the hell? Magic? What’s happening to me?

***

Five minutes later, three men piled into the backseat, one jostling the cuffs that kept my hands binded to the seat. I bit my tongue to keep the pain from leaking out, but it only resulted in an errant tear streaming out of my eye and blending in with rivers of sweat and rain. God damn it.

I didn’t dare look into the rearview mirror to try and see their faces. Too much movement on my part and the Colonel’s finger might accidentally slip and I’d be out like a light.

Briefly, I thought about Lieutenant Colonel’s face when I spoke. He showed little to no reaction, so little reaction I wondered if I had thought of the response instead of saying it out loud.

Usually people stutter, or they make a comment. But this man? Though he wasn’t much older than me, he seemed to have perfected a poker face that could make any grown man doubt himself. Beyond his initial shock, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The three men in the car began speaking all at once, and the only thing I could register beyond the cool metal of the barrel against my head was their accents. All of them had one, obviously UK-based. I was surprised the only one who gone to lengths to disguise it was the man beside me

“How are you sure this is the real one?” One of them asked, his voice pitched a bit higher than I expected.

The soldier beside me began driving, pulling the car onto the main road with all the grace of a five year old. Did he really not have much experience driving? “She walked into the car and gave herself up. Vocal admission and everything.”

“We couldn’t identify her by the fingerprints,” the Irish one added, and I could hear the scowl seeping into his voice. “The clearest we could get off the mic was a partial. And by partial, I mean not even a full arch.”

“Look at her fingers!” Another voice popped in, this one sounding odd, like he might have joined the army with only the purest of intentions and had a hard time believing he was being sent on missions to capture a girl.

Just a girl.

Thin and callused fingers ripped the bandages off my still-healing hands, revealing raw and reddened skin. I could only imagine what they thought of it.

“She burned them off…” the Irish voice whispered, and my heart rate sped up as his grip on the gun seemed to loosen. I felt a hand skim across them and I winced, air hissing through my teeth.

The car went quiet. Wow, they finally seemed to realize I was human? What an advancement to be made for humanity. This moment will go down in history.

“Why the hell would you do that?” The one with the high-pitched voice demanded, a real question directed at me. And one that required more than a yes or no! Someone call my parents!

I didn’t respond.

When they seemed to realize I wasn’t going to talk, the gun was back against my temple. I had thought this situation through; they weren’t going to kill me on purpose. Colonel Smith wouldn’t have planned out such a detailed trade if they were just going to kill me. They wouldn’t have gone after all my decoys if they wanted to kill me.

So no, I wasn’t worried about the gun going off on purpose. It was more like I was worried about the Lieutenant Colonel’s terrible driving ending my life a few years earlier than planned.

“I asked you, why did you burn off your fingerprints?” A hand wrapped around mine in a less than intimate way and squeezed against the burns.

I could handle a lot in the way of pressure. It was part of the job description. I could handle myself well enough in a fight if it came to that, but my pain threshold was low. Especially since my hands were extra sensitive because of the burnings.

So when they squeezed, I screamed.

The car nearly swerved off the road and when the pressure on my hands was lifted, I still felt the pain stinging through every damaged nerve ending. It shattered my calm, and I screamed louder as the gun went off and skimmed my forehead before it clattered to the ground. Blood fell into my eyes and I couldn’t tell if the ringing in my ears was because I’d broken the sound barrier or if I’d gone deaf.

I kept screaming as the men surrounding me in the car yelled harsh orders to each other, I kept screaming when I realized that I was helpless to do anything to help myself because of the handcuffs, I kept screaming until a cloth was shoved into my face, one whiff of chloroform knocking me out cold.