by E. M. Moore
My stomach turns over, but mercifully, he lets up and yanks me to my feet, pushing me toward another body. I almost fall but am wrenched to a standing position at the last second, my arms pinned behind my back. It’s too dark to make out the finer features of the men’s faces, but there are five of them—each dressed in the same tan camouflage. Military boots, hats, and guns round out their uniforms.
“Make the call,” the one who found me instructs. “We’ll bring her in.”
“You know you’re working for a sadistic asshole, right?” I question, trying anything to get out of this. They ignore me, so I put my mouth to better use. “Wyatt! Lucas!”
“Jesus. Someone fucking gag her.”
Just as I’m dragging my next breath in to call for Stone, a rank piece of cloth is shoved into my mouth. I gag, eyes watering, but I breathe in through my nose instead. I struggle against the fabric, the area behind my eyes heating.
While they march me away, tears slip down my cheeks. I peek back at the river, but I’m forced around again and hustled forward. The crunch of their boots on the desert mountain floor drown out everything until I think I hear the faint call of my name.
I stop, and the man in control of me runs into my back. He curses, pushing me forward again, and I hiss when I stub my toe on a rock. When he grabs my arm, instincts kick in. Finn showed me a move to get out of this hold, and the possibility of my name being called erupts a flood of hope as ferocious as the one that took me away.
I capture his hand with my other, windmill my arm around to put him in an armlock, then kick out his knee. He falls to the ground, releasing me, and I take off, yanking the disgusting cloth from my mouth. “Lucas! Wyatt! Sto—”
Another body slams into me from behind with the force of a cement wall, and I fall to the ground in a heap. Pain explodes against my skull. “Now, shut the fuck up,” a voice seethes, and I realize it’s my original captor. He seems like their leader.
He hauls me to my feet. I’m dizzy now and, if I’m not mistaken, blood oozes down the back of my head. He must’ve hit me with the butt of his gun, the son of a bitch.
He throws me toward the guy who’s rubbing his elbow. “Do you think you can handle her now?”
He glares at me. “I wasn’t expecting her to fight back. Especially not with a fucking armlock.”
“Well, start expecting it,” I threaten, but I’m fairly certain I don’t get all the words out. If I do, they’re slurred. The world around me spins. Several times, it feels like the desert floor is moving up to slam into my face, but a quick tug on my arm brings me back to reality and saves me from faceplanting. We walk for hours. I try to get my brain working to figure out where I am but it’s impossible. I’m in and out of consciousness, my eyes drooping in sync with the heaviness in my heart, and it’s all I can do to stay on my feet. Attempting escape again is futile.
I’m being marched out of the Superstitions like a POW. Lance must have ordered them to get me. Just me.
By the time we reach the trailhead, the man guarding me is practically dragging my feet along the ground. I lift my head to read the sign and immediately close my eyes again. We’re on the other side of the damn mountain.
A soft glow lightens the horizon, a line of yellow peeking through as the rest of the world comes alive. A metallic Range Rover pulls up next to us, and my brute of an escort opens the back door and shoves me inside. My cheek presses against leather, and it’s all I can do to pick my feet up before he slams the door on me.
The vehicle starts moving right away, the rumble of the engine lulling. My eyes droop even more, sleep calling to me after the hell I’ve been through this morning.
Before I know it, I’m passed out—my soaked clothes clinging to me, my curls flattened to my forehead, and my body aching more than it ever has before. In all this, sleep is a welcome peace until my dreams come and all I hear are Wyatt, Stone, and Lucas calling for me as much as I was calling for them, except I can’t answer, and I don’t know if I ever will again.
24
The calls in my sleep are ghosts as I blink awake. I’m lying on top of a twin-sized mattress that sits on the floor in a small, square room. Blinds shield the windows, but they’re broken in some areas, allowing rays of sunlight to pierce through and splatter the walls in hazy illumination.
I groan as everything that happened hits me like a ten-ton truck along with the pain searing my limbs. The most pressing issue is the pulsing ache in my side. When I glance down, I spot blood on the mattress. I breathe in and out as I gingerly lift Stone’s sweatshirt. I’m caked in dried dirt, turning my pale skin a muddy brown everywhere I look.
Jesus Christ.
Surrounded by grime-stained skin, I spot the coagulated blood spanning a three-inch gash above my left hip. There’s no fresh blood, just hardened crimson the color of the Black Licorice’s cranberry moonshine.
Breathing through my nose as if that will somehow block the pain, I pull myself up as white-hot agony lances my midsection. I slouch against the wall for support and wait for the trauma to die down before I attempt sitting again.
The blocky room is nondescript. The white floor tile is kind of fancy even though the trim on the doorway is simple and muted tan walls stare back at me. There are no furnishings in the room. It’s completely bare. Wherever Lance’s people brought me, it doesn’t appear to be lived in currently. I most definitely don’t think I’m at his building in Phoenix—the room is too cozy to be in a high-rise office building.
My water-logged head pounds. My throat still burns, and my chapped lips take great effort to force apart. I don’t remember anything about the ride here. I must’ve been really out of it but thankfully, it looks as if they literally just tossed me on the mattress and left me here, soaking wet clothes and all.
“Hello?” I call out, only it comes out as a whisper. I clear my throat and try again, managing a choked sort of sound.
The door is thrown open, and a man in the same tan fatigues sticks his head in. He’s gruff with weathered skin. He’s quite possibly the same age as Lance or maybe a little younger but aged in a way Lance never will while he’s sitting on top of his ivory tower. “Oh good, you’re awake.” He slams the door closed, and I groan at the noise.
“Hello?” I cry out again, my voice firmer this time. I bring myself to a sitting position and hiss. “I need medical attention. Hello!” He doesn’t return, and I doubt they care if I need help. They said their only objective was to get me and most likely bring me here. Wherever here is. I doubt Lance is far since this is all his doing.
I search the room again, looking for anything that might help. There’s an old phone hookup in the corner, but no phone—the line just lies on the floor, intersecting the joining of two tiles. There’s another door in the room, and I drag myself to my feet while my body screams at me to stay still. I push past the pain and hobble to the opposite wall. I tug the door open only to find a closet with empty hangers. “Fuck.”
I place one hand on the doorjamb to steady myself, and my opposite hand curls into my side where the worst of the pain is. Actually, that’s not true. The worst of the pain is emanating from my chest because I don’t know what happened to Wyatt, Stone, and Lucas. Stone’s unbreathing form flashes in front of my eyes, and I hold back a sob with shaking fingers.
“I need to get out of here,” I whisper. “I need to find out what happened.”
I limp to the window, the tiny cuts on the underside of my bare feet protesting every step. I have open sores that need to be cleaned out on my legs, too, but I can’t think around the giant mess in my head. Where are they? Facts keep hitting me hard and fast. We were separated. Our gear, the map—I don’t know where any of that is. Ninja and Pete, too. Did those men do something to them before the flood happened? Or did they get swept up in it, too?
I still hold onto the hope that Ninja got a hold of Cole; that Stone, Wyatt, and Lucas were able to make it down the mountain, back to the SUV to go for help.
I
yank on the string that raises the blinds only to have the whole thing crash to the floor. The incoming rays of sun shower me in heat, reminding me that the world is still turning out there. The door bursts open again, bouncing against the opposite wall, and I jump at the sudden intrusion. Turning, I find a figure in the doorway squinting from the incoming fresh light.
The guy drops a bucket of water to the ground, some of it sloshing over the sides. “I thought you could use something to clean yourself with.” He takes a t-shirt and camo bottoms from his shoulder and drops them next to the bucket, right into the puddle of water forming.
“Where’s Lance?” I croak.
“He won’t be by until later. You’ll have to sit tight. Don’t even think about leaving this room. We have the area surrounded. You won’t make it three steps before a bullet rips through your skull.”
I glare at him despite fear overtaking everything. Part of me thinks they won’t kill me because there must be a reason why Lance wanted me here, but the other part of me wonders if they’re only waiting to put that bullet in my skull until Jacobs gets here. “What happened to the people I was with?”
The man smirks. He has blond stubble and striking eyes. “No idea. Not our assignment.”
“You always play someone’s bitch, then?”
His eyes harden. “It’s called working for money, not that you know anything about it.”
I laugh because I haven’t heard anything so funny in my life. “You think I have money? That’s rich.” Laughter keeps pouring out until my side protests, and I seal my lips together, swallowing a moan.
My captor tilts his head, but a voice calls out behind him, and he immediately shuts the door.
I drop to my knees by the bucket and move the shirt and pants away from the puddle. They’re still drier than the clothes I’m wearing so I don’t waste time stripping. A sponge bobs on the water’s surface, and I use it to coat my skin in the freezing liquid. Asshole didn’t even warm it up for me.
I scrub and scrub, rubbing away all the mud and bits of pieces of mountain shrubbery that I brought back with me, carefully washing out my injuries to take better stock of where I’m at. The gash on my side hurts the worst. I don’t dare scrub away the hardened blood because I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing keeping the wound from bleeding. There’s also a laceration on my right calf that I think was caused by a tree branch when I was being swept away in the water. It, too, is held together with dried blood that I don’t touch no matter how much mud is also caked around it. I have nothing to dress it with and better that it doesn’t start bleeding again.
Dipping my hands into the water to cup some in my palms, I throw it against my face, waiting for it to rinse off right back into the bucket. It’s a far cry from Stone’s rainfall showerhead, but it will have to do.
I step into the bottoms and pull them up, leaving the waistband open since it hits right at my injury. Internally, it feels a lot worse than it appears, and I wonder if I’ve bruised my ribs from being thrown up against that hard surface that I believe was a boulder.
I wiggle into my shirt, then sit against the very edge of the mattress where it’s dry. I tug my shirt over my knees and curl into a ball, staring at the light shining in through the window. I’m sure he wasn’t lying about this place being heavily guarded, there’s no doubt about that, but in my condition, I couldn’t run away anyway. I don’t think they’d kill me, but they’d probably drag me right back here in worse condition than I am right now.
“How about some food?” I call out.
“Jesus. She’s worse than the Iraqi mercenaries we had to deal with.”
“Pain reliever?” I shout more forcefully. “I’ll even just take some drinking water.”
“I figured you’d had enough of that,” someone rasps from outside the door.
I grit my teeth. My fingers curl into my skin, giving me something to focus on. Finn helped me a lot, but he didn’t teach me how to defeat a five-man ex-military unit.
Hours drag by. I sleep some, but I’m more awake than dreaming. My stomach is a dull pain of hunger, but I’m used to that. Or I used to be. It’s harder to ignore how hungry I am now that I no longer have to live that way. By the time the door opens again, I’m surprised if it’s not because he can hear my stomach growling.
A different face greets me than the one who brought me the bucket. He has the same tough exterior only with darker hair. He doesn’t smile at all. His lips are a thin line and nothing about him and the gun he has hanging by his side tells me that this is a conversational visit. “Get up,” he demands.
I struggle to my feet, wincing as the pain in my mid-section drives home again. “I could really use some pain reliever,” I choke out.
He ignores me altogether and gestures with his gun. “Go through the door and await my further instruction.”
I do as he says, trying to walk as normally as possible even though the bottom of my feet feel like they’re shredded. There’s a reason why we wear hiking boots in the mountains. Being tossed around in a sudden raging river aside, I was bound to have some scrapes and bruises just from walking over the mountain floor.
“Turn right,” the voice orders.
I turn right and find myself at the end of a corridor. There are doors on either side of a hallway that stretches about ten feet in length before opening up. Further into the interior of what I now realize is a house, I can only see slots of light fanning in from gaps in the blinds in the otherwise unlit space.
The furnishings are nice enough. It’s a step up from the house I lived in with my dad, but it doesn’t even come close to the Jacobs’ houses. I’m beginning to think this might not have anything to do with Lance at all unless he’s really trying to throw me off. I can’t imagine him in a space like this. He’d turn his nose up at it.
“Keep going,” the guy barks.
I increase the pace as much as my body will allow. Every step I take, I wish that Stone, Wyatt, and Lucas were with me. Maybe I’ve become too accustomed to having them in my life. Now that they’re not, I’m freaking out. If Lance hurt them, that will be the last thing he does. I don’t care what I have to do. I’ll die on that mission as long as Lance feels my wrath.
“There’s a chair in the corner of the room, move toward it.”
I emerge into the living area where a plaid couch sits awkwardly angled away from the wall. Turning to my right, I find a dining room chair sitting in the corner and move toward it as I’ve been instructed. I keep studying my surroundings and note we’re most likely in an uninhabited house. Maybe a newly sold house that hasn’t been moved into yet? It’s missing pretty much every comfort of a home, and that has nothing to do with the military professionals sitting at a connected dining room table with guns. The one who tackled me to the ground twice grins at me. He’s missing a tooth just to the right of his front set. “What happened to the people I was with?” I ask again, thinking that they must know something. They must have seen something.
“She doesn’t listen very well, does she?” the one who I assume is the leader deadpans. The missing tooth isn’t the only odd thing about him. Two jagged scars mar his cheek.
A firm hand on my shoulder shoves me into the chair, and I breathe through a flare of pain in my side. “I just want to know that they’re okay. Please.” My voice shakes as I beg. I don’t care that they’re looking at me like I’m a naïve little girl that they could grind under their shoe. I need to know what happened to Wyatt, Stone, and Lucas. And I might as well throw Ninja in there, too, because the big, burly Dragon has endeared himself to me.
“Stay here,” my escort orders. “And you might as well save your breath. You won’t get any information from us.”
The four men in fatigues chuckle, and the two who turned to face me now turn back around. They’re all playing cards and drinking from solid blue mugs. The guard who brought me in here stops outside the entrance to the kitchen and turns, facing the opposite wall and standing completely still.
For a moment, I think they’ve moved me out here as another form of torture. They act as if I don’t exist, carrying on conversations in a hushed tone that I can’t quite pick up, no matter how hard I try. They don’t give anything away, and eventually, I do stop asking questions and try to reserve my energy.
Right before the daylight almost completely filters out of the room, a car pulls to a stop outside, the tires crunching gravel. The engine shuts off, and I open my eyes, peering at the tan-clad guys for clues of what’s about to go down. Sure enough, they’ve expected this. They don’t flinch when footsteps stomp up a set of metallic stairs outside. The door opens, and a rush of fresh air enters along with the waning rays of light. Lance Jacobs moves into view.
My stomach tightens. I hate the sight of this man more than I’ve hated anything in my entire life.
“Dakota Wilder.” He smiles, but it’s more evil than anything I could’ve imagined. He chuckles to himself. “This is the Dakota I remember.” He sneers at my appearance. “A dirty, old street rat.”
“Fuck you.”
His grin widens as he lets the door shut behind him. “An uncharming, unwitty, degenerate. Not even hanging out with my Stone could change you.”
The mention of Stone has me snapping my mouth shut. Above all, I need to find out what happened to him—to all of them.
The camo-wearing soldiers disperse without Lance saying so. He moves into the kitchen to grab a chair, dragging it a few feet until he stops in front of me. He makes a show of sitting down and crossing his legs. “Now that I have your attention....”
25
The Lance Jacobs in front of me isn’t the usual Lance Jacobs.
He’s tried his best to hide the wrinkles in his suit and the shadows under his eyes, but you recognize the face of the person you hate as much as the one you love. He’s withered and beaten, and I bet I know why.