Her arms and feet were sore and she worried her body would grow too stiff for her to climb back over the balcony. She shifted her body weight back and forth on her feet, counting slowly in her head to keep herself distracted.

Thirty seconds right food.

Thirty seconds left foot.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

Five minutes passed.

Ten.

Thirty.

Sixty.

After two hours, the men grew impatient and began calling for her. That was when she figured out there were only two of them. She’d been imagining at least a dozen men, all clad in black, swarming the island in militaristic fashion. Though the guy she’d seen on the pool deck looked like a professional she was starting to wonder. Who called out for their victim and expected an answer?

One of the men stepped out onto the pool deck again and shouted, “Come out, Yasmin. We’re all friends here. We just want to take you safely back to your family in Canada. We were told you needed our help.”

How stupid did they think she was? Had this worked on their other victims?

A sharp cramp ripped through her arm and shoulder, stopping at her neck with a lightning bolt of pain. She bit her lip to keep the groan of pain inside. The cramp didn’t let up and she had to wait until the bad guy went inside before she could move enough to rotate her shoulder and ease the pain.

She had at least three more hours of this and that was only if they didn’t find her first. She was seriously regretting her hiding place.

“Please come find me, Volkan,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut to stop the tears.

* * *

“Storm gathering on your flightpath, boss.”

Volkan’s radio crackled as his person at the shipyard updated him.

“I know,” he said grimly, staring out the window at the massive thunderheads in front of him. “How far off track will I be if I go around it?”

He’d been in the air for three hours. Only two and a half to go.

There was a pause, then, “It’s a big one. It’ll push you at least an hour off your current ETA. You don’t have the fuel for that. You’ll have to land somewhere else for a fill-up before heading to the island.

There wasn’t time to go around the storm. Yasmin didn’t have the time it was taking him to get to her. There was no way he could take another hour or two to reach her. His brother had hired professional mercenaries to take Yasmin out. He’d beaten the additional information out of Demir after Zeynep had admitted the truth to him.