“I don’t understand.” Wren slips her small hand in mine. “How did a good memory help you get out of that place?”
“You never told me that story either, Ry.” Cupping his mug of coffee, West sits back in his chair. “We can’t do anything until sundown. Now’s as good a time as any.”
“Not here. After Wren eats.” Glancing at the door hiding Semyon, I jerk my head towards the living room. In truth, I don’t give a shit if he hears me. But Wren looks like she’s about to collapse, and I need a hell of a lot more of her touching me than just her fingers if I’m going to recount one of the worst experiences of my life.
But staring into the faces of my team, knowing there are only four people in the world I trust and three of them are in this room, I have to tell them. Because I think Wren’s right.
This is my family. And families don’t keep secrets.
With Wren tucked against my side, I stare at the ceiling. Easier than trying to make eye contact. Despite how much I told her about Hell last night, there are some memories too awful to willingly dredge up. Except…I have to.
“Down there…we didn’t have any sense of direction. They’d designed Hell to be a maze. When I got out, I realized they’d painted dots and lines on the walls for identification. But every time they moved us, we were blindfolded. They’d take me from one cell, bring me to an interrogation room, beat the crap out of me, and then throw me in another cell. Or one of the holes.” The stench of fear and sweat and onions fills my nose, and I bury my face in Wren’s hair for a moment, try to remind myself I’m not back there.
“No pattern?” West asks.
“Whatever cell was the dirtiest at the time. The bloodiest. Or the emptiest.” Screams. Fear. Darkness. Wren rubs my leg, and I meet her gaze in silent thanks. “Even without any sort of routine, there are tricks you can use to help you remember long lists of things. I’m very good at them.”
“Like a mnemonic for memorizing the names of the planets?” Wren asks.
I stifle a chuckle. “Not exactly. Think about your neighborhood. Everything you see on your way to work. There’s a way to train your mind so that you associate a different number or fact with each lamp post. Each car parked on your street. It’s hard to explain, but I can teach you…if you want.”
God, I want her to say yes. Because maybe…that means she’ll stay with me. But West leans forward expectantly, and I force out a deep breath. “I knew every guard by sound and smell. I could tell if it was morning or night based on their scent. And when they brought us down into the caves the first time, I memorized every turn. Every step. How the ground felt under my feet. How sounds echoed off the walls. I had a mental map of the way out the minute they threw me in that hole. Every time they moved me. A couple of times, I was unconscious. As soon as I’d wake up, though, I could figure out where I was by the smells, the sounds, and the feel of the rocks or walls around me.”
I swallow hard and stifle my shudder as I turn to Wren. “How long have you known Dax?”
Her brow furrows a little. “Almost four years.”
“Ever wonder why he’s so damn good at getting around?”
She huffs. “All the time. He’s scary. I swear he doesn’t need that cane.”
“We spent maybe half our time in Hell unable to see. There were times they’d leave us tied up and blindfolded for days. If we could see, we’d be in near darkness or with bright lights shining directly in our faces.”
“You never saw a damn thing outside of the cells?” West asks, shock infusing his tone.
I shake my head. “Not until the day I escaped.”
With a long, low whistle, West leans back, lacing his fingers behind his neck. “Fuck, Ry. The guys in my unit…we had recon and logistics exercises every week. And we were never anywhere near that good. Those damn caves were like an Escher drawing. When you led us back there…I kept expecting you to pull a map out of your kit.”
“Sorry. I probably owe you a hundred bucks.”
“Try two.” Running a hand through his hair, West snorts. “Why didn’t you ever tell anyone?”
“Didn’t think anyone would believe me.” I shrug. “And after Dax…I didn’t ever want to think about those fifteen months again.” Silence fills the room, West and Inara looking a bit dazed.
“So my password…” Wren’s gaze holds a mix of awe and humor as she intertwines our fingers.
“Piece of cake, sweetheart. Had it memorized before we left Boston.”
34
Wren
A thud from the basement sends West and Inara to check on Semyon. Ryker’s so tense, I’m worried he’s going to implode. He hasn’t let go of my hand, and my fingers throb from his tight grip, but last night’s words ring in my ears.
“You find something real. Something to hold on to.”
Ryker is real. Real and flawed and perfect. And he loves me. Meeting his gaze, I cup his cheek with my free hand. “Are you okay?”
West’s footsteps interrupt any reply as he stalks into the kitchen muttering, “Fucker expects to eat. Should I tell him the Geneva convention doesn’t apply here?”
“We need him.” Inara brushes her hands off on her black pants as she returns to the living room to study one of the laptops on West’s table. “He’s the only one who knows the hotel layout. And we can use him. I hope. The old plan probably would have worked.”
I touch Ryker’s arm. “Was…there actually a plan?”
His eye roll speaks volumes. Yes, there was a plan. No, he didn’t like it. But he couldn’t figure out a better option.
“We took everything into account.” Ryker snorts softly. “Except you, baby.”
As his words sink in, I start to tremble. “You couldn’t rescue Elena because I escaped. What if Kolya kills her before we—you—can get her out?”
“Stop.” Ryker’s growl reassures and frightens at the same time. “You will not blame yourself, Wren. There was no way in hell I was going to lose you. The second I saw you, we dumped the plan.”
Elena’s desperate blue eyes are all I can see. “Can you just…use the same plan?”
With a shake of his head, Ryker sighs. “Between Semyon’s information and the blueprints Cam found online, West had the whole thing mapped out for us. We were going to breach the hotel through the roof. West approached from the north, and I came from the south. Inara was five hundred yards away on the old clock tower.”
Ryker pauses for a sip of coffee, and his eyes darken. “That roof hatch leads to an attic crawl space. It’s hard to tell on the blueprints, but I think it opens up to that bathroom you were in. You were my first priority. If you hadn’t jumped off the balcony, I would have been there less than ten minutes later.”
“Oh.” I stifle my shudder. “You would have been too late.” I can’t force my voice above a whisper, and Inara leans forward as Ryker cups my chin and urges my head up to meet his gaze. “Kolya was done waiting. He was going to rape me—without drugging me—so I’d be so desperate to…forget…I’d do anything he wanted…just so he’d take the pain away.”
“Drugging you?” Inara stiffens as West silently returns to the room. “Wren? What did he do to you?”
Ryker saves me from the admission. “Heroin.”
I don’t know how to say the words. How to confess how much I still want to forget.
“Shit.” Setting his coffee mug down with enough force to slosh the dark liquid over the rim, West braces his hands on the table. “And Elena? Did you see her at all?”
I nod. “Twice. I think. He made her clean me up. So much of what happened is fuzzy. Like…I was watching a movie out of focus. A movie I didn’t care about at all.” My head starts to throb, and I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I begged her to help me, but she said she couldn’t.” The lump in my throat threatens to choke off my next words. “And then he shoved her into his bedroom and told her to strip. After that…there was another needle and I don’t…I can’t…”
“Shhh. It’s okay, baby,�
� Ryker says as he threads his fingers through my hair. The warmth of his touch calms me, and I sink into his embrace. “He won’t kill her. But now they know Inara’s hidey-hole. My approach vector. And if they were observant…they noticed my rappelling gear.”
“So…what do we do now?” I look from Inara to Ryker, shame at getting myself captured flooding through me. Despite the bruising at my elbow, I hook my arm around Ry’s, needing to feel him, to feel pain, just to keep myself grounded.
“We wait for West to figure something else out,” Inara says with a wry smile. “He’s the brains of this whole operation. I’m the bullets.” She angles her head at Ryker. “He’s the brawn. Well, and the bank.”
“Semyon couldn’t tell us anything about the top floor.” West gestures to the blueprints spread out on the table. “Our thermal cameras have been recording the whole time, and Kolya’s holed up in this back room—here.”
Ryker helps me up and keeps his arm around my waist. A part of me rails against his overprotectiveness, but I’m starting to feel woozy, so I let him hold me as I stifle a yawn. We slept less than five hours after last night’s confessions. I’m exhausted, everything hurts, and my mind wants to wander. To dark places where nothing can hurt me. Except, Ryker won’t be there. And maybe that’s enough to keep me here. In this painful, overwhelming, frightening reality.
Ryker presses a gentle kiss to the top of my head. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”
“I am. But I want to help.” I look up at him, and he seems to understand my need to be useful. “I’ll lie down in a few minutes.”
Studying the plans, I point to the main suite. “This is Kolya’s bedroom. And the bathroom where he chained me up.” A hard swallow and Ryker’s warmth at my back helps center me. “The room across the hall is his office. Oh!” I can’t believe I forgot. “Ry…I think…I had a USB drive in my bag. Did I still…have my bag when I jumped?”
My brows furrow, and the motion makes my head ache even more, as does trying to fight my way through my fuzzy memories. “I had to hide. Two of his goons came up the stairs. And…his computer was unlocked.”
“You okay for a minute, sweetheart?” Ryker asks. “I’ll get it for you.”
“I can manage to stand up on my own.” I offer him a small smile, and as he strides into our little bedroom oasis, Inara scoots closer, a not-too-subtle indication of how bad I must look. “This is another suite. Like his. I…I think it’s Elena’s. Or at least…where she stays sometimes. I didn’t see her, but the door was open when they took me from the office into Kolya’s suite. It was…purple and pink. Like the video.”
“So he’s locked in with Elena.” West shakes his head as Ryker returns to my side. “There goes any hope of getting her out without confronting him—and half his army.”
“Maybe…if we have something he wants,” I say, “he’ll give her up willingly.”
Ryker snorts, and I arch a brow. “Don’t look at me like that, soldier. You don’t know what’s on this thumb drive.”
In truth, I don’t know if I have anything. Not really. But even in my drug-addled state last night, I had the presence of mind to leave myself a backdoor. “Slide my laptop over here,” I say. The adrenaline fuels me, helps ease some of my aches and pains. Or maybe the coffee is finally kicking in.
“Wren…” With a gentle hand to my lower back, Ryker tries to draw me away from the table. “You need to rest.”
West clears his throat. “Ry. We’re on borrowed time here. Inara swapped out the cars, but how long do you think it’ll be before Kolya figures out where we are? We either need to draw him out or call for backup. Do you have a dozen men—” with a quick glance at Inara, he continues, “—and women you can mobilize by tonight?”
“If I had, do you think I’d have called you?”
The two men stand chest-to-chest. Sort of. Ryker towers over West, at least five more inches of bulk and brawn, his muscles stiff and hands balled into fists at his sides.
“And that’s why this is never going to work long term, man. Not unless you start trusting us.” With a shake of his head, West stalks away. He pauses at the door to the kitchen. “We’re your fucking family, Ry. Have been ever since we pulled your ass out of that hole five clicks from Hell. It’s about damn time you realized it.”
The back door slams, and I flinch.
“Well, now you’ve done it,” Inara says. “You better go after him.”
Pain swims in Ryker’s eyes, and I slide my hand up his arm, over thick ropes of scar tissue and solid muscle. He’s so angry he’s practically vibrating. “I’m not leaving Wren.”
“Oh for duck’s sake. Give us a minute?” I ask Inara. She quietly slips from the room, and I wind my arms around Ryker’s waist. “Why is it so hard for you to admit you care about them?”
For too long, Ryker stares over my head towards the kitchen. When he finally does speak, his voice is rough and raw. “What we do, Wren…every single time we go out, we might not come back.”
In some of my lucid moments in that bathroom, I wondered. If I loved him. Now, I know. I can’t say the words yet, but I can give him this. Give him the family he’s denied himself for years.
“It’s easier not to care. Or…not to let on that you care. Because if you care…you might lose them? Is that it?” His body stills, and I’m not sure he’s even breathing. “I saw how you looked at Dax. The pain. The guilt. He’s family too, isn’t he?”
A single nod, and he’s a statue again.
“And me?” Now I’m the one holding my breath.
“Baby, you’re my everything.” Ryker’s voice breaks on the final word, and he wraps his arms around me, shudders wracking his bulk as he struggles to draw in ragged breaths. “I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t. But you won’t lose them either. Not if you let them in.”
Jerking back, he scrubs his hands over his face. “I let Dax in. Hab. Ripper. Gose. Naz. And look at what happened to them.”
I reach out and press my palm to his heart. “They’re all still with you, Ry. Here. Can’t you feel them? You carry them with you every day. Just like I carry Zion. I know it’s a cliché. And not a very good one. But…even with all the pain and tears Zion caused me when he was using…I still loved him. And now? Everything I…I just went through? Am still going through? The few years I had with Zion are worth all that.” I sniffle and brush away a hint of dampness under my swollen left eye. “Now go find West and make this right. I’ll be here when you come back.”
Ryker leans down and touches his forehead to mine. “Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
35
Ryker
The sun slashes across the stoop where West sits with his arms crossed over his bent knees. “I never should have come back,” he says bitterly. “All my years in the SEALs and I was never as close to death as I was in Colombia. And now…my fucking wedding is—was—supposed to be tomorrow.”
“I was wrong.” Forcing my feet to move, I plod down the stairs until I’m standing in front of him, my hands shoved into my pockets. “And I’m an asshole.”
West narrows his eyes. “Say that again? I think my hearing’s going.”
“You heard me.”
“And you think this makes us solid again?” He jerks up and turns to head back inside, but I grab his arm.
“Wait. Hear me out and then…after we get out of this fucking country, you never have to see me again.” I don’t know how to make him stop and listen, to make him understand when I can’t figure this shit out for myself. “Please.”
“You’re never going to change, are you, Ry?” Shaking off my grip, West puts several feet between us as he stalks into the small backyard. “Who the hell said I never wanted to see you again?”
“You did. ‘And that’s why this is never going to work long term, man. Not unless you start…’ Shit.” My ass hits the stairs, and I drop my head into my hands.
“Finally figured it out?” With
controlled, precise movements, West scoops up a handful of stones from the neglected landscaping and aims at a dead tree in the corner of the yard. Plunk. “I know you lost your team, Ry.” Plunk. The second rock lands a mere inch from the first. “But so did a lot of us. I had to watch my men die too.” Plunk.
“You didn’t leave a man behind.” My words don’t rise much above a whisper, and as a fourth stone lands—all in a tight, circular grouping—West blows out a long, slow breath.
“Neither did you.” When he turns to me, frustration gathers between his dark brows. “If you hadn’t escaped when you did, you and Dax would have both died.”
“You don’t know that,” I snap, jumping to my feet and advancing on West. “I cost Dax his fucking eyes. And worse. I left him there. Alone.” I shove the former SEAL, but he anticipates my rage and spins away.
“You want a fight? Or you want to fix things?” His fist plows into my jaw, and before I can recover, he sweeps my legs out from under me. “Stay down.”
Sucking in a sharp breath, I fight the instinct to get to my feet and tackle him. I’ve only seen hints of this side of West. The savage, tightly restrained anger we’re taught to use to our advantage—if the situation’s desperate enough.
“I called Dax before I got on the transpo in Seattle. If you think he blames you for his sight, you’re a fucking idiot.”
“But—”
“Oh, he’s pissed at you. No question. But not for any of the reasons you think.” Crouching down next to me, West jabs his finger against my chest. “You could have fixed things with him a hundred times in the past six years. Just by picking up the phone. The two of you went through something no one else in the world can understand. You didn’t take his vision, Ry. You took his closest friend. And isolated yourself in the process. If you don’t stop that shit, pretty soon you won’t have anyone left.”
Standing, West holds out his hand, and I let him pull me to my feet.
On His Six Page 20