Nightfall

by Jessica Meigs

  He’d been dwelling on that night he and Zachariah had shared almost nonstop, and it had been popping into his head at the most inopportune times: in the middle of meetings, in restaurants during dinner, in the shower—which hadn’t been as inconvenient as one would think—and even in the middle of assignments.

  Even when Zachariah wasn’t there, the younger man was doing his best to get Ashton into trouble.

  Ashton shook his brain loose from thoughts of Zachariah and returned to his notes, thumbing through them to try to salvage another sentence for his report. He was in the middle of typing it when he first heard whispers of gossip. Concentration broken, he scowled at his computer screen and tried to ignore the two agents he didn’t know who had stopped at the terminal beside his and continued their conversation as if he wasn’t even sitting there. His scowl deepened, and he started to tune them out so he could concentrate on his report and not on what was probably a discussion of who was sleeping with whom, but something about the woman’s tone—incredulous and slightly derisive—made him pause. He stopped typing and instead started to listen.

  “My handler’s secretary said it’s true,” one of the agents, a female with medium brown hair and build, was saying to the other. “She said the idiot went and got his fool self caught on an undercover assignment. All of the handlers are talking about it. There was even a big meeting with Damon Hartley himself about it.”

  At the mention of Damon’s name, Ashton raised his eyebrows. Damon rarely called mass meetings of any sort with the handlers. He was a taskmaster, and as a field agent, he had garnered a reputation as a man to be feared. He was also the youngest director the Agency had ever had, something of a prodigy among their ranks. It had often been said that Ashton was talented like him and would probably one day step into Damon’s shoes—an idea that he fervently disagreed with. He wasn’t ruthless enough to be Agency director.

  Unable to take passively listening to the gossip without knowing the full story, Ashton spun his chair around to face the chattering agent and the man she was talking to. They both looked at him in surprise as he addressed them. “I couldn’t help but overhear. What happened?”

  The woman’s eyes brightened at the chance to share her gossip with a new audience. “Oh, you haven’t heard?” she started. “There was some level four down in South America somewhere doing an undercover op to gather intel on a drug cartel. He went off the grid three weeks ago. Nobody’s heard a word, and they’re thinking he either went rogue or got busted.”

  Ashton raised an eyebrow, even as his stomach churned, and an ominous feeling settled into his gut. “Did anybody say who it was?” he asked.

  The woman shrugged. “Nobody knows for sure,” she said. “I’ve heard a few names bouncing around, but the one I’ve heard the most is…Zachary? Or something like that.”

  “Shit,” Ashton muttered. He spun around to the computer, saved his work, and shut it down. Then he gathered his papers and jammed them into his bag before heading toward his handler’s office.

  “Hey, do you know the guy or something?” the woman called after him. He put up a hand to wave her off and sped up, staying just short of a run as he raced down the hall to the door marked “Henry Cage.” He flung it open without knocking and strode through the small secretarial foyer to the inner office’s door beyond. The woman sitting at the secretary’s desk—Vanessa, Henry’s long-time assistant—startled and stood up at her desk, as if she were planning to follow him. Ashton ignored her and threw Henry’s door open, not bothering to shut it as he stormed up to the desk and slammed his hands onto it. He leaned over to address Henry face to face. The older blond man looked up from his computer screen, startled, and his blue eyes widened as he saw who it was.

  “Ashton? What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be finishing your paperwork and prepping for some downtime?” he asked.

  “Is it true?” Ashton demanded.

  “Is what true?”

  “The rumor about a missing agent in South America? Is it true?” he asked.

  Henry stared at him for several long seconds. He didn’t ask where Ashton had heard about it. He just nodded. “Yes, it’s true. One of ours disappeared while on an undercover intel op in Bolivia.”

  A surge of alarm ripped through Ashton, but he quelled it. “Is it true that it’s Zachariah Lawrence who’s missing?”

  Henry hesitated—an action that told him everything he needed to know—and a curious light came into his eyes. “Yes, it’s Zachariah who dropped off the map. Why do you ask?”

  “I want in on the team that’s being sent in to extract him,” Ashton demanded.

  Henry looked away from him then and focused on the papers in front of him. “Ashton, there isn’t going to be an extraction,” he said. “It’s been deemed not worth the risk. None of the handlers are willing to send their agents in on a rescue op.”

  “Not worth the risk?” Ashton repeated. “So the Agency is just going to, what, leave him in the jungle to rot?”

  “That’s precisely what they’re going to do,” Henry said. “He’s barely a level four. He obviously screwed the pooch and got caught. The higher-ups are writing him off as a lost asset and moving on.” He paused before asking, “Why are you up in arms about this, anyway?”

  Ashton couldn’t tell Henry the truth. He couldn’t tell him that he found Zachariah attractive, both in looks and in personality; Henry would tell him it didn’t matter and, besides which, it wasn’t allowed. He wouldn’t tell him about how, despite the fact they’d thoroughly kicked each other’s asses when they’d first met, Zachariah was the first person outside of Henry who’d shown him any real kindness while in the line of duty. And he most certainly couldn’t tell Henry about his and Zachariah’s tryst or about how he’d spent the past three months obsessing over it and the man and his offer of friendship.

  Ashton didn’t have any friends. Zachariah’s offer made him want to change that the longer he thought on it, and the more he thought on it, the more he wanted to start off with Zachariah Lawrence.

  “It’s not right to just leave an agent out there,” Ashton said. “I wouldn’t want anybody to leave me behind if I needed the backup. If he’s been taken captive—”

  “Which we have no evidence for,” Henry interrupted. “He could be—and probably is—dead.”

  “Then we should find out for sure, not just leave him to his own devices!”

  “What exactly are you proposing we do, Ashton?” Henry asked. “The no-go order came from Director Hartley. I can’t over-ride that.”

  Ashton ran his hand through his hair and blew out a breath. He was really going to regret this. “Send me in,” he said. “Just me. No one else. I can see if there’s anything I can do, and if he’s still alive, I can try a solo extraction. Best case scenario, the Agency gets its agent back.”

  “And worst, we end up losing you, too!” Henry snapped.

  “I’m level ten, Henry,” Ashton retorted. “I didn’t get this far by being an idiot. I’m not going to go in if it’s too dangerous. I’m just going to check things out, and if I happen to see a safe enough opportunity, I’ll snag him. Otherwise, I won’t go in.”

  Henry stared at him, and Ashton stared back, waiting for his answer. He tried to keep his expression firm, determined, but he was worried that Henry could see the hope and desperation and pleading in his eyes. Finally, Henry sighed and said, “I can’t sanction this. Director Hartley has already ruled on that.” He stacked his papers more neatly and stood, circling the desk and taking Ashton’s elbow, leading him to the door to escort him out. “Neither can I control what you do during your downtime,” he added in a quiet voice. Ashton drew in a slow breath at his words, realizing what he was suggesting. “You’ll have to do it on your own. You can’t use any Agency resources, and you can’t get caught. Not only could it possibly start a war between the United States and Bolivia, but we’ll have to deny knowing you or holding your employment contract. Believe me, you don’t want to
risk that.” He turned back to his desk and opened a drawer, shuffling through its contents before pulling free a thick envelope. He brought it to Ashton and handed it over; when Ashton peered inside, he realized it was full of photocopied information: topographic maps, the drug cartel’s base layout, its movements, numbers, and more. It was everything he could possibly need to handle a one-man incursion.

  “How did you get all this?” Ashton asked.

  “It’s the copies that Director Hartley gave us when we were discussing whether or not to go in after him,” Henry clarified.

  Ashton closed the envelope and gave him a grateful look. “Thanks, Henry. I just can’t handle thinking about leaving one of our guys in a situation like that without at least trying to help.”

  “So you do have a heart,” Henry said, his voice only half joking.

  Ashton raised an eyebrow and tucked the envelope underneath his arm. “I wasn’t aware that that was something under debate,” he commented.

  “It’s just that you never go out anywhere,” Henry said. “And outside of myself and Vanessa, you pretty much ignore the rest of humanity unless it finds itself at the end of one of your guns.” He paused before asking, “Did something happen between the two of you on that assignment a few months ago?”

  Ashton hesitated and shook his head. “No, not…not exactly,” he said, trying to figure out how to hedge around the facts and make it sound fairly innocent.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  He stuck with the most innocent part of the whole situation when he said, “He asked me out for drinks.”

  “And knowing you, you were a stickler for the rules and told him no, right?” Henry asked knowingly. When Ashton nodded, he chuckled. “Do me—and yourself—a favor, Ashton. If you manage to dig Zachariah out of whatever trouble he’s in, assuming he’s still alive, fuck the rules and take him up on the offer. You need to live a little bit before your work kills you.” He patted Ashton lightly on the arm before adding, “Now get out of here. You’ve got some downtime to plan.”

  * * *

  Zachariah had long ago ceased to notice the increasing pain in his arms and shoulders from having them wrenched behind him for so long. His clothes were filthy; his shirt was hanging loosely on his frame, and his pants were sagging on his hips. His shoes were long gone. He hadn’t been fed in days, and water was nearly as scarce. His weapons? Well, he wouldn’t even bother thinking about those.

  But he was still alive. That was all he really needed if he was going to have a shot at getting out of there.

  Zachariah licked his dry, cracked lips and opened his eyes. Looking around was pointless; his captors were keeping him in almost total darkness. It was psychological, he knew. The Agency had made him endure similar trials during his months of training. The darkness was, for him, not that big of a deal. What was starting to get to him was the lack of sound other than his own breathing.

  Zachariah wasn’t positive where he was being held. Judging by the feeling of cold, damp earth under the soles of his bare feet and the cool, equally damp feeling in the air, he figured he was in some sort of dirt cellar somewhere.

  He didn’t like the thought. It made him feel like he was lying in his own grave.

  Zachariah breathed out slowly and stared into the darkness. He’d been on an assignment that was supposed to take him deep undercover into a drug cartel in Bolivia. He was supposed to gather as much information as he could on the leaders of the cartel, the cartel’s membership numbers, its trafficking patterns, the layout of their compound, and anything else that he thought the Agency could use. Things had gone smoothly for the first two weeks he’d been there—he’d slid into the cartel easily, had been accepted just as smoothly, and had begun to ingratiate himself in with the cartel members themselves, working his way up through the ranks toward the leaders of the cartel.

  Somewhere along the way, he’d fucked up and his cover had gotten blown. Unfortunately, he had no idea what it was he’d done to get himself caught by the cartel’s members. One moment, he’d been lying asleep in his bunk, and the next, he had people screaming at him and shoving guns in his face. He’d been hauled to his current location, and that was where he’d been ever since.

  His captors had been in and out several times over the past three weeks, trying to grill him for information, trying to find out where he’d come from, why he was there, and who he worked for. So far, he’d held out and not told them anything past the typical “fuck you” and other similarly colorful responses. But they had increased the beatings over the past couple of days, and while he could handle it for now, if they took it any further, he was going to start having difficulty keeping his mouth shut.

  Contrary to anything the handlers and trainers at the Agency had said, the human body and the human mind could only take so much before they cracked.

  Zachariah squirmed and flexed his muscles, trying to see if he could loosen the coarse ropes binding him to the chair. It was an exercise he’d done frequently, partly in the hopes that he could loosen the ropes but mostly so he could try to keep his muscles as limber as he could considering he was trapped in a chair. It didn’t seem to be working, though; with every day that passed, he could feel his muscles stiffening, limiting his ability to escape or fight back even more so than the ropes. It was going to be hell if he had to try to run if an opening ever presented itself to him.

  He really hoped that the Agency had caught on to the fact that he had run into trouble when he hadn’t reported in like he was supposed to. Once they caught on, they’d send an extraction team to dig him out of the hole he’d landed in. It was the anticipation of them appearing to save him—because he did need saving, and he wasn’t too proud to admit it—that was keeping him going.

  He didn’t know what he was going to do if they didn’t find where the cartel was keeping him.

  The rattle of a key in a lock somewhere above him and to the right broke the silence of the cellar, and he closed his eyes, knowing what was about to come. There was a now-familiar squeak and a creak as the door leading into the cellar swung open; the bright light from upstairs pierced through his closed eyelids in a warm red glow. He remained motionless as three sets of footsteps descended the wooden stairs, counting silently with every step taken—one, two, three—sixteen steps total. He filed the information away for reference; he would need to know it if he had to climb the stairs in the dark. There was a chink as the light cord banged against the bare bulb of the light fixture in the ceiling, and the door leading upstairs slammed shut.

  Zachariah tensed, knowing what was going to come next. Lord knew he had been through it enough over the past three weeks to know.

  The first blow was always the worst, a shock to the system that made him gasp, like jumping into a pool and finding the water to be far colder than expected. The second strike wasn’t much better, and by the third, the pain had slid past his defenses and had begun to settle in. He clenched his fists, arms straining against the ropes, as meaty fists collided with his body, wishing desperately that he could at least put his arms up to protect his face.

  The man didn’t stop beating him until his lips had split and until blood had begun to pour from his nose, when the ringleader of his interrogation ordered a break in the beating. Zachariah slumped in his chair, sagging against the rough cords binding him to the piece of furniture. He struggled to catch his breath and watched as blood dripped from his nose into his lap, adding more stains to the ones already marring his clothes. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, tasting the bitter, metallic tang of blood in his mouth. A fist dug into his hair, grasping the long, dark strands, and his head was yanked up toward his interrogator. Unable to resist, Zachariah opened his eyes and looked into the man’s steel gray ones, and his heart nearly stopped.

  It was Nathan Chambers.

  “Who do you work for?” Chambers demanded in Spanish, clearly not recognizing him. Zachariah’s fogged brain took a moment to translate what he’d said.

  �
�Fuck you,” he bit out, slurring past the mouthful of blood, infuriated at the presence of a man that was supposed to be dead.

  Chambers struck him across the face at his insolence and scowled. “I heard all about the way you’ve been keeping your mouth shut over the past three weeks,” he said, switching from Spanish to English. “You’re still playing difficult today, aren’t you?”

  Zachariah gave him a bloodied, snarky grin and shifted in his chair. “Difficult is my way of life,” he said. “Anybody who knows me could tell you that.”

  Chambers’ eyes narrowed, and he circled around the chair, taking Zachariah in from all angles. Zachariah, unable to do anything else, stayed completely still, watching him as best he could. A suspicious gleam had settled in his gray eyes as he stopped and stared at Zachariah, as if trying to see past the bruises and the busted lips and the blackened eyes. “You look familiar to me,” he commented. “Have we met before?”

  “I don’t know,” Zachariah retorted. “I run into a lot of assholes in my line of work.”

  Chambers sighed and shook his head, almost woefully. “I suppose we’ll have to make this session more…difficult if you’re going to keep that up. Clearly what Carlos is doing isn’t working.” He signaled to the other two men, and as he continued speaking, the men cut him loose from the chair and hauled him to his feet. “Since you insist on continuing to be difficult, I suppose it’s time to treat you accordingly and turn to the more difficult means at our disposal.”

  The two men holding onto Zachariah’s upper arms started dragging him toward the wooden workbench near the center of the room, just below the bare lightbulb that dangled from the ceiling. Zachariah tried to get his feet underneath him, but the speed at which they were moving him coupled with the extended period of time he’d been tied to the chair had weakened his legs enough that it was impossible to gain his footing. The men unceremoniously shoved him against the table and bent him over it; the impact of his chest against the wood was enough to knock the breath out of his lungs.