But God, he was tired. The adrenaline was already trying to leave him, and a bone-deep weariness had begun to sink into him, threatening to drop him to his knees at any moment. He fought against it as hard as he’d ever fought against any other enemy he’d faced. He couldn’t let it take him down. He couldn’t.
The wolf snuffed at him, as if it could smell his exhaustion and his fear. He tensed as it continued to prowl in front of him, his heart racing with fear. The wolf stopped pacing, and he could see the muscles in its shoulders bunch. Then it lunged.
As the beast sailed through the air toward him, Zachariah took two steps forward to meet it, dropping to his knees and sliding below the animal as it flew through the air. At the same time, he thrust upward with his makeshift stake. The animal let out a high-pitched, keening yelp of pain. Blood splattered onto Zachariah’s face and torso.
The wolf ripped itself free from the stake as it completed its lunge, crashing into the dirt wall behind him.
Zachariah staggered to his feet as quickly as he could, whirling around, clutching the slippery, bloody stake in his hand as he prepared to fight against the wolf’s next strike. But the attack wasn’t forthcoming. Instead, the wolf lay on its side against the wall, whistling its pain out through its nose. But the attack wasn’t forthcoming. Instead, the wolf lay on its side against the wall, whistling its pain out through its nose. Zachariah slowly approached the animal, the stake trembling in his hand, but the beast still didn’t move. He had stabbed into its chest, upward underneath its ribs, and it was clearly dying.
Zachariah wanted to feel bad for what he’d done, but he just couldn’t bring himself to feel any guilt for wounding the animal. He did feel pity for it, though, enough so that he limped up to the animal, lined the stake up against its chest, and rammed it home. The animal shuddered, and then it was still.
Zachariah let go of the stake, leaving it embedded in the animal’s chest. He staggered backward until he collided with the workbench. His breathing was coming in short gasps, like someone was squeezing his throat just tight enough that he couldn’t catch his breath, stirring up the pain in his ribs again. He grasped the edge of the table with both hands, trying to stay on his feet.
There was a rattle and a crack at the door at the top of the stairs, followed by several heavy thuds.
“Oh God,” Zachariah choked out, and he forced himself back to the dead wolf and yanked the stake free. He tried to find the energy in him to fight against whatever new danger awaited him.
The door at the top of the stairs burst open, slamming against the wall beside it. A dark figure, clothed all in black, started to ease down the stairs, and in the sickly yellow glow from the lightbulb over the workbench, Zachariah could see the pistol in the figure’s hands, the familiar shape of a silencer at the end of the barrel. The figure moved, one step at a time, down the stairs, scanning every visible nook and cranny. Then its eyes lit onto him.
So this is how I die, Zachariah thought. Shot to death in a shithole in Bolivia.
Then the figure ripped the black mask off its face, and just like that, Zachariah’s knees went weak. “Ash?” he managed, his voice almost inaudible. He dropped the stake and slowly slumped to the floor in sheer relief.
* * *
When Ashton first laid eyes on the agent standing defiantly in the basement, a bloodied chair leg grasped in both hands, he’d felt a mixture of relief at finding him still alive and horror at the condition he was in. And as Zachariah sank to the dirt floor, Ashton abandoned all pretense of sweeping the room and raced to him, catching him and easing him down onto the ground as carefully as he could manage.
“Jesus, Zach, are you okay?” Ashton asked, though he knew it was a stupid question. He brushed a lock of the man’s matted black hair away from his face, trying to check him over for life-threatening injuries.
“You came,” Zachariah croaked out. He sounded horrible, like he’d been smoking two packs a day for the past twenty years. “You guys came.” His eyes fluttered toward the stairs, as if he was looking for someone. “Where’s the rest?”
Ashton hesitated before telling him, “It’s just me. There are no others.” Zachariah looked up at him with ill-concealed confusion, but he didn’t give him a chance to respond. “Look, I need to know, can you walk?”
Ashton could see Zachariah steeling himself against oncoming pain. “If I need to,” he said. He sat up with a grunt. Ashton started to hook his arm around the man’s waist to help him, but he froze as he saw the dirt-caked wounds scored across his back, covering the majority of his skin with bloodied, painful-looking lashes and slices. Jesus, somebody went at him with a whip and a knife, he thought, his horror renewing at the realization. This was so much worse than anything he’d expected to find—outside of the man dead, of course.
Zachariah’s hand closed into Ashton’s shirt, tugging at it, as if he were trying to get his attention. “Nathan Chambers,” he said, the words seeming to choke themselves out of his vocal cords.
“What?” Ashton asked. “What about him?”
“He’s behind this,” Zachariah said. His entire body was tense and shaking under the strain of trying to get up.
“Nathan Chambers is dead,” Ashton told him.
Zachariah shook his head and managed to gain his feet. “No, he’s not,” he said. “He’s very much alive, and I think every fucking wound on my body can tell you that.” A look of weary determination crossed his swollen and bruised face, even as Ashton felt a flush of anger roil through him—anger that he struggled to push back down, because he had a mission to focus on. “So are we ready?” he asked tiredly. “I don’t know how long I can manage to stay on my feet.”
Ashton snapped to attention at Zachariah’s words. Standing from the kneeling position he’d slid into when he’d made his lunge toward the other man, he slipped out in front of Zachariah, pistol raised in a two-handed grip. “Stick close,” he instructed, moving toward the stairs. “In case we get separated, there’s an alley across the road. At the end of it is an old clunker. If I get held up, you make for that car.” He paused and knelt to remove a smaller pistol from the holster around his ankle. It was a .22-caliber weapon, something with a little less kick on Zachariah since he was hurt. “Are you okay to shoot this?”
Zachariah took it from him and nodded. “If I need to, but I can’t guarantee it won’t knock me on my ass.”
“Gotcha.” Ashton started up the stairs, dropping his voice as Zachariah followed him. “I killed everyone already in the house, but I think one of them got a call in for some backup before I got to him.”
“We’ll just kill them, too,” Zachariah said. “Bastards deserve it for torturing me and locking me down here with a fucking wolf.”
Ashton’s eyes widened. “A wolf?” he repeated.
“Yeah, it’s over there.” Zachariah pointed down the stairs and across the room then froze and added, “What the fuck?”
Ashton followed his finger and stared at the dead body on the floor by the wall. “Zach, that’s not a wolf,” he said slowly. “That’s a person. Are you okay?”
“I swear it was a wolf, Ash,” Zachariah insisted. “It was. It was gray and black and a mean motherfucker and…” He paused, ducking his head as he looked down, searching for a wolf that Ashton doubted was even there.
“How did you kill it?” Ashton asked. “You stab it with something big?”
“Yeah, a chair leg. How did you…?”
Ashton pointed at the man’s body, which was lying on its side in a pool of muddied blood. Two large holes decorated his chest, obviously big enough that they could have come from the improvised weapon Zachariah had wielded.
“But…I…” Zachariah stammered. “He was…” He clung to the rickety wooden railing, wavering on his feet like he was about to pass out, and Ashton took his elbow in case he fell.
“Don’t worry about it right now,” Ashton ordered. “We’ll talk about it later. Let’s go before you fall out on me.”
Ashton gave up trying to treat Zachariah like glass, letting him travel under his own willpower. Instead, he hooked his arm around Zachariah’s waist and guided him more rapidly toward the car parked at the end. Zachariah grunted as his arm made impact with his wounded back, but he didn’t say anything. He merely sped up his limping pace as best he could until Ashton had gotten him to the vehicle and practically stuffed him inside.
“Stay here,” Ashton ordered in a hoarse whisper.
“No buts,” he interrupted. “Stay. Here.” He made a firm downward motion with his hand, emphasizing his order, then quietly closed the door and eased back up the alley the way they’d come. He paused at the end of it and looked back at the car. Zachariah had slumped over, as if he no longer had the strength to continue holding himself up. It was just as well; Ashton didn’t want the other man to get the bright idea to try to follow him. Then he turned his attention back onto the activity before him.
The vehicle Ashton had heard was the black SUV from earlier returning to the hovel. Through its tinted windows, he could see the silhouette of what he assumed was the well-dressed man sitting in the backseat; the two bodyguards were, presumably, inside. Remember what Zachariah had told him about it being Nathan Chambers—even though he was still not sure he believed it—he itched to lift his pistol and put a few bullets in the man’s skull. He knew he’d told Henry he’d keep the bloodshed to a minimum, but all desire to keep that promise had fled the moment he’d seen what they had done to his fellow agent.
Ashton lifted the pistol, taking aim, but he paused when the two bodyguards emerged from the house. One of them called to the man still in the vehicle, “No está aquí!” Ashton didn’t know Spanish, but he knew enough to realize they’d discovered that Zachariah was gone. And no matter how badly he wanted to kill the motherfuckers in a blaze of fury, retribution, and revenge, getting Zachariah out of there and to a safe location was far more important than his self-indulgent bloody fantasies.
Ashton lowered the pistol and backed away, returning to the car. He slid inside and started the engine; it turned over with a cough, and in moments, he had the car on the road and on its way toward the airstrip where the Cessna he’d chartered would be waiting.
Thirteen
When Zachariah surfaced from unconsciousness yet again, his first thought was that he really needed to stop passing out already. His second thought went hand in hand with the realization that he was laying on his side in the dark on what felt like an overindulgently soft, clean bed.
What the—?
It came back to him in a rush: Nathan Chambers, everything that he’d endured at the cartel’s hands, his rescue, and Ashton leaving him behind in the car. He couldn’t remember anything past that, nor where he was or how he’d gotten there. He pushed himself into a sitting position, and pain ripped through his entire body. A load groan escaped his throat before he could stop it, and he slowly sank back onto the bed.
One of the bedside lamps clicked on, and Ashton’s face swam into view. The other man was leaning over him with an expression that was two parts concerned mixed with one part relieved. “Oh, thank God, you’re awake,” he breathed. His cool fingers brushed against his forehead, and Zachariah leaned into the touch reflexively, seeking solace and comfort in something away from the pain wracking through his body, something that wasn’t fists slamming against him. “How do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been run over by a garbage truck that then went into reverse to hit me again to try to finish the job,” Zachariah muttered. “Where are we?”
“In a crappy motel in a tiny town in Arizona,” Ashton answered. “I didn’t know where else to take you.” He hesitated before sinking down onto the edge of the bed beside him. “I got you out of Bolivia as fast as I could. I’d chartered a plane—a Cessna—and got us flown out of there within a couple of hours after extraction. You were unconscious the whole way.”
“So I gather, since I can’t remember any of this.” Zachariah wiped a hand over his face and flinched as he brushed against the bruises marring his skin. “Fuck, I must look like hell.”
“You do,” Ashton agreed. “I haven’t cleaned you up yet. You need it badly, though. Your back is pretty messed up, and overall, you look terrible. You need to be cleaned up, but I can’t do it on my own.”
Zachariah hesitated, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment as he tried to not think about the beatings he’d taken, the sting of the whip biting into his flesh—and everything that had come after that. But it was impossible. He forced a deep breath into his lungs and pushed it out then asked, “How bad is it?”
“What, your back?” Ashton asked. Zachariah nodded, and he blew out a breath of his own. “It’s pretty bad,” he admitted. “You’ve got dirt in the wounds, probably from the floor or the walls in that cellar those assholes were keeping you in. We need to clean them out before they get infected. And I’m pretty sure you’ve probably got some other wounds on your body that need cleaning and tending to also.”
“I think you should just stick me in a tub of ice for a few days so I can quit hurting all over,” Zachariah joked, though the chuckle he let out was halfhearted. He shifted, biting back another groan of pain, and asked, “So how are we going to do this? Do you want me to roll over, or…?”
“I was thinking the shower,” Ashton said, and Zachariah swallowed hard, wincing. “Maybe getting you standing up in the shower and letting the water wash off as much dirt as we can before I even start trying to clean out what’s left.”
“That doesn’t sound like it’s going to be much of a picnic,” Zachariah said.
“None of it ever is,” Ashton replied. “But it’s the best way to do this, I think.” He offered him a hand, but Zachariah didn’t take it right away. Instead, he frowned up at Ashton and cleared his throat.
“Ash, why were you the only one on the extraction team?” he asked. “Aren’t the teams usually five people? And field agents aren’t typically on them.”
Ashton hesitated, and Zachariah watched him carefully in the dim light from the lamp beside the bed. He could see the older man’s wariness, could almost see the cogs spinning in his head. Then he said, so quietly that he almost couldn’t hear him, “There was no extraction team.”
Zachariah raised an eyebrow and tried to sit up again. “No extraction team?” he repeated. Even he could hear the surprise and confusion in his own voice. He managed to sit up, though he rested his weight mostly on his hip, and dug his fingers into the bedspread to anchor himself. “Why was there no extraction team?”
“Because…because the outcome wasn’t worth the risks,” Ashton answered. “They deemed it—deemed you—as expendable.”
“Fuck,” he breathed, drawing the word out in a slow sigh. “I’ve heard of the Agency doing that, but—wow. I never thought…” he trailed off and swallowed as a pang of something—he wasn’t sure what—ripped through his chest.
“You never thought that you would be one of those agents that was considered not worth it,” Ashton finished for him.
“Yeah. That,” Zachariah agreed. “So if I was considered expendable, then why exactly are you here?”
At that question, Ashton actually looked embarrassed. He cut his eyes away from him and stared across the room, like he was struggling to think of the correct answer. Then he cleared his throat and said, “I was on downtime, didn’t have anything else to do. So I figured you could use a hand. Besides, there were rumors flying all over headquarters, so it wasn’
t hard to figure out what had happened.”
Zachariah stared at him as he finished talking. This man was leaving so much out that he could probably fill up an entire room with his bullshit. “Uh huh,” he drawled. “You want to try that again, Ash?”
Ashton shrugged. “You owe me drinks in a non-work setting,” he said. “I intend to collect. And I can’t do that if you’re dead.”
Despite the pain he was in, Zachariah felt a small smile stretch across his cracked lips. “Not out of the clear quite yet, Ash,” he said. “I could still die of infection if we don’t get this taken care of.” Though if the Agency found out that he’d spilled his guts, even under duress, he would be toast. The Agency didn’t tolerate betrayals of any sort.
Ashton stood and offered him a hand. “Well, come on, then. Let’s get you in the bathroom and get you cleaned up before you go septic and I miss out on a chance to get drunk again.”
* * *
It took Ashton nearly ten minutes to get Zachariah into the bathroom, ten minutes that were filled with grunts of pain and Zachariah’s colorful swearing. Ashton hadn’t known that so many different swear words existed, and there were quite a few he’d never heard before. By the time they’d reached the bathroom door, Ashton was sure Zachariah had invented a few new ones—he was still pondering over just what the hell a “douche-canoe” was and exactly what one had to do to be considered a “fuckface”—when he reached into the bathroom and turned the light on. He helped Zachariah into the room, and with one last utterance of, “Fuckwaffle,” the younger man slumped against the wall beside the door.
“You okay?” Ashton asked once he was sure the R-rated tirade was over.
Zachariah groaned, soft and low in his throat, and closed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think that little stroll just about took everything out of me.”
Nightfall Page 13