Falling Hard

by HelenKay Dimon

  She’d had so many names and so many people thrown at her. Separating them out became harder each day. Now she had a new player. “Who is Benton?”

  West lifted his hand to touch her face but it dropped against his lap again without making contact. “Lexi, no.”

  “Benton is a very powerful man. Someone you don’t cross, and unfortunately for West, he is very upset with Alliance.” Pearce put his hand by West’s neck and squeezed. “Right?”

  West’s jaw snapped shut but he didn’t make a sound as the color drained from his face.

  “Benton once had a deal for the sale of some toxin, and Alliance got in the way. West here played a rather large role in ending that venture.” Pearce moved around the table, picking up the unused bandages and looking at the supplies she used to sew up the wound. “Now Benton has a new operation, but West is going to pay for messing up the old one.”

  “That’s their job.” She assumed that was true about Alliance. She’d seen West in action, and Josiah to a lesser degree. They didn’t sit around. If there was a deadly toxin on the loose, they’d hunt it down and destroy everything to get to it.

  “This was a very lucrative deal.” Pearce acted as if he were delivering a lecture.

  Her hand hesitated over the needle she used on West. “But they caught you. Stopped you.”

  “Aren’t you enterprising?” Pearce reached over and grabbed the needle and small scissors. “Or very stupid.”

  “You should be in jail now.” Lexi had more to say but cut herself off when West pressed his leg against hers.

  “Your man here might pretend to be one of the good guys,” Pearce said, “but he had no problem storing me underground in a tiny cell, taking away my rights and my life.” As he talked, a bit of his controlled facade broke. Anger seethed under the surface and seemed to bubble out.

  West faced Pearce head on. “I’d do it again except for the part where I let you live. That was a mistake.”

  A nerve jumped in Pearce’s cheek as he visibly wrestled his anger back down. “Which is why we stopped here first. See, I can’t have you running around, getting in the way.”

  Something about that line had Lexi’s head pounding. “What is this place?”

  “You should be comfortable here, what with all the medical tools.” Pearce walked over to that rusted piece of fence sticking up in the room for no good reason. He reached behind it and pulled out a metal box. Putting it on the floor, he opened the top, showing off piles of ordinary tools. “Now, normally I’d use these to get West to cough up some information.”

  She looked at the wrench and the hammer and her stomach flopped. “You’re sick.”

  “Yet you’re sleeping with West and he uses the same tactics you think are so sick.” When Pearce stood back up, he held the hammer in his hand. In a few deliberate steps he stood in front of West again. “He’s an expert with them . . . aren’t you?”

  “Fuck you.” West spit out blood and hit Pearce’s shoes.

  Fear battled with adrenaline inside her. She wanted to grab the tools and throw them at Pearce one by one. She looked at West and wanted to believe he sat up a little straighter than before, but the fact was, he remained doubled over. Even though the blood flow had stopped, red still covered his torso.

  “The game is simple.” Pearce wound up and hit West right in the biceps with the hammer.

  Lexi heard West’s sharp intake of breath and lunged for the weapon. “Don’t touch him.”

  “I hurt him, you fix him and we start all over again, until we get to the one time when we can’t revive him.” Pearce pulled his arm back again. “This will be fun.”

  Before he got off a second hit or made contact, West reached over with his uninjured arm and grabbed the man’s fist. “You want to go up against me? Do it. With only one arm I will tear you apart.”

  From his intense glare, Lexi believed him. West was no longer bent over double. He sat up straight with his head back. Those eyes glistened with rage.

  The tension ratcheted up. Tom stepped forward, but Pearce kept him back with a shake of his head.

  West had upped the stakes, dared Pearce to knock him out. She could not watch and did the only thing she could think of to swing the attention back to her. “I won’t do it. I won’t stitch him up over and over again.”

  In truth, she’d throw her body over his if she had to. He’d spent the last few days rescuing and protecting her. Now she would do it for him. Somehow. Despite being smaller and not as strong, her will rose up.

  No one would touch West. Not when she was so desperate to explore the sudden and shocking depth of her feelings for him.

  Pearce gestured toward the stack of bloody towels and bandages piled up right near her hand. “Then he’ll bleed out.”

  “Leave her out of this.” West shot her a wide-eyed look that telegraphed his desire for her to stay quiet so he could use his body as a punching bag. Then he turned back to Pearce. “You want me, you have me.”

  Pearce exhaled, all dramatic and serious. His ego and confidence appeared to be firmly back in check. “Your girlfriend has been causing trouble around town, but then I think you know that. Maybe that’s why you like her so much. Who could tell with you.”

  West’s words of warning came rushing back to her. He’d insisted she was brave for reporting the weapons. Now she knew it touched off a series of events that brought them to this horrible place. “I didn’t mean—”

  Pearce’s head whipped around toward her. “Benton wants to see you, too.”

  He delivered the ominous statement then motioned for the bodyguard to step forward. Tom pressed down hard on West’s wounded shoulder and impassively watched his knees give out.

  West fell to the floor, but he didn’t stay there. Finding a store of strength she didn’t know anyone could have, he came up and lunged for the bodyguard’s gun. She heard Pearce shout for Tom and then an arm slipped around her neck. The point of a knife danced in front of her eyes.

  “I will kill her.” Pearce shouted the ugly promise. The noise pinged off the solid walls.

  The words sliced through her and a new shot of panic exploded inside her, threatening to send her to her knees. She grabbed for Pearce’s arm and tried to ease the pressure against her windpipe. If she folded or cried out, West would give up. He’d sacrifice his life for hers. Every step he’d made since he met her made that clear.

  Looking at Pearce, West stopped moving and held up his good hand. Tom wrenched it behind his back and marched him to that damn piece of fence.

  She watched in horror as Tom tied up West with what looked like sharp wire. Blood trickled down West’s arms and his feet dangled above the ground. He was suspended and vulnerable, without a way to defend himself. His face tightened with pain as every movement caused the bindings to rip into his skin.

  The arm around her neck vanished and she lost her footing. She stumbled, grabbing onto the edge of the table. All the sharp tools were gone. Pearce had left her with bandages and little else.

  She glanced up in time to see him douse West with a bucket of what looked like water. Then he reached for a wire at the end of a rod. It buzzed and snapped.

  One look at the water dripping from West’s hair and the current in Pearce’s hands and she started gagging. Pearce would not make this easy.

  “Lexi, close your eyes.” West stared at her as he gave the order.

  “That’s sweet but she’s going to hear your screams and see all the blood.” Pearce laughed. “She will watch every second as I set you on fire from the inside out and your body jumps around in response. She will watch or I will inflict even more pain on you.”

  West was going to die.

  Right there in a cave in Pakistan. Led here by her. Only hours after he held her and kissed her. After he entered her with such aching need that she forgot about every man and every love that came before.

  “Please don’t do this.” Her whispered plea did not affect Pearce.

  He shook his head
as he inched closer to West, prolonging the agony. “She’s too good for you, West.”

  Giving it one last try, she ran up to Pearce and grabbed his arm. Tom was on her a second later, pulling her back. Yanking her arms behind her as he dragged her away from Pearce but still within viewing range of the sickness to come.

  “We’ll leave and not say anything.” She was willing to promise anything.

  “You don’t know West, then. He will hunt me until he kills me.” Pearce turned back to West.

  He got too close. West nailed him in the face with a wad of bloody spit. “Go to hell.”

  Without any fanfare or even saying a word, Pearce pulled a tissue out of his pocket and wiped his face. “He’s been called a machine but he’s really more of an animal. Definitely not human.”

  Before she could respond, Pearce touched the end of the rod to the fence holding West. She heard a zapping sound and West’s body jerked and flinched. He didn’t yell but he threw his head back and tightened his jaw. She felt the jolt run through her in sympathy and had to fight back the tears of helplessness she felt at not being able to stop this madness or get him down.

  “Really, unless you need a killing machine, you could do better. Well, could have.” Pearce went to a small box connected to the rod in his hand and turned the voltage dial. “I’m not sure you’ll get a chance later.”

  “Why would I help you if you just plan to kill me?” She talked fast, trying to keep the attention on her and off West.

  “I’m betting you won’t be able to stand seeing me tear West apart socket by socket.”

  “We barely know each other,” West said.

  A new pain shot through Lexi. He spoke about her in a dismissive tone, with disdain. She suspected this was part of his plan. Make her appear irrelevant and potentially prolong her life. She knew it. She got it. But right there at the end, when all seemed lost, she wanted to hear other words from him.

  “Really? Because from what I could see on that blanket—”

  The chains and bindings rattled as West made a move toward Pearce. “Shut up.”

  “That sort of thing is not received well in this country. A young woman sleeping around,” Pearce said, talking right over West’s outburst. “And West here, with his need to protect and willingness to use his skills to track and kill. Not so tough now.”

  She tried to move into Pearce’s line of vision again, but Tom kept a tight hold on her arms. “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Revenge.”

  “Take the weapons and go.”

  “Spunk. Nice.” Pearce smiled at West. “You chose well.”

  “She means nothing.” This time he sounded even clearer.

  Pearce lifted the rod again. “We’ll see.”

  Ward gathered Harlan, Josiah, and Mike a half mile away from the encampment and the series of caves behind it. The other two team members were miles away, keeping the Pakistani army away from this location.

  Not that there was any debate here. He’d let Pearce go. That decision rested with him, which meant he would be the one to get West out. And he had a feeling they needed to hurry.

  Ward spread the map over the open back gate of the military truck Josiah had borrowed. “I’ll be bait.”

  “No.” Harlan shook his head. “Tasha will kill me.”

  No question she wasn’t going to take any of this well. She was not a woman who handled being cut out of the loop. With the communications blackout, that’s exactly what had happened. Ward half expected to look up and see her, finding out she’d commandeered a military flight and came to find them all, which was why he needed to move fast.

  “You’re needed to run point,” Harlan said. “No one does that better.”

  They’d spent almost a year all but comparing dick sizes as they argued about how to run the men and operations in Alliance. Now Harlan pulled out the you’re-the-leader bullshit. “Interesting time to tell me that.”

  Harlan shrugged. “They aren’t expecting me.”

  “Pearce knows you’re in Pakistan,” Mike said.

  “Enough.” Ward knew that if he let it, this conversation would rage for days. This was what happened when you mixed a group of alpha guys and tried to keep them all from running straight into fire. He looked to Mike. “You and Harlan plan a diversion, and make it fucking good. I want every piece of garbage in those caves to come running.”

  Josiah made a strangled noise. Probably meant he was trying not to yell. “But not until West, Lexi, and the weapons are out.”

  Ward nodded. “Josiah and I go in.”

  “You’re going to just walk into an armed camp full of weapons and gunmen and secrets people want to keep hidden?” Mike said. “If we really don’t think this is government sanctioned, then some of those men are rogue Pakistani military. Not guys you fuck with.” He scoffed as he said it.

  “He’s not going.” Josiah put a hand over the map. “I am.”

  Ward refused to battle this out. In the absence of Tasha, his word ruled. “Josiah—”

  “You have limited use of one hand and Pearce knows that. They are going to kill you.” Harlan held up both hands. “What don’t you get about that?”

  Ward understood every word. Had weighed the risks and decided he could handle them. He didn’t have a fucking death wish. Tasha waited at home and he wanted to be there.

  But he had to get out of here first. “They can try to take me out but it’s not going to happen.”

  Josiah looked from one leader to the other and his expression changed. The tension pulling across his forehead eased. “We need to synchronize this to the second.”

  “We still don’t have our communication up and running. They’re blocking it from here.” Mike glanced around. “Somehow.”

  All good points, but none of it qualified as new information. The same factors had been in place a half hour ago when Ward decided on this course. “We’ll set hard times to move since we can’t have a countdown and ongoing chatter in the comm.”

  Mike’s eyes narrowed. “And if you’re not out before we light this place up?”

  That one was easy. Ward always had that contingency ready. “Run like hell.”

  18

  WEST COULDN’T BREATHE.

  He sat on the floor of a cell deep inside the cavern of caves. The area consisted of little more than an indentation in the rock wall. The space allowed just enough room for him to sit on the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him with Lexi beside him.

  There wasn’t a door. He’d had to squeeze through the opening, and now his captors or the guards or whomever was in charge around here walked around outside. The setup made it tough to plan an escape. So did the pain ripping through him with each exhale.

  Every time he inhaled he heard a whistle and his ears felt clogged, as if he were trapped underwater. He’d taken quite a beating. Good thing he wasn’t a screamer and had undergone days of intense torture training in preparation for this sort of thing. And he’d lived through this before.

  But every drop of blood, every grunt, had registered on Lexi’s face. Pearce made her watch, fix a dislocated shoulder, set bones and bandage him up for the second then the third rounds. The sick fuck.

  He also tortured her by saying they’d stop for a few minutes then start again. By the time they left the room West thought of as the pain dungeon her hands shook as she wiped the blood from his fresh wounds. He vowed Pearce would pay for throwing her equilibrium off like that.

  The entire Alliance wanted Pearce dead, but he had dibs on that job. He’d use a knife. Twist it in and watch the life drain from him. Just thinking about gutting Pearce kept the pain of what West thought might be bruised ribs at bay. The adrenaline kicking through him did the rest to fight off the aftermath of the shock treatments.

  Lexi slipped her hand over his knee. With a gentle touch, she lifted his palm and cradled it in both of hers. “You really know how to show a girl a good time.”

  Her spunk resurfaced and that e
ased some of his pain. “Wait until you see what I have in mind for our third date.”

  She put her head on his shoulder. “I hope it’s a movie. Something slow and kind of boring.”

  “I don’t do boring.” But, man, that sounded good right now.

  “You know I’m on to you.”

  He closed his eyes. Just for a second. “Meaning?”

  “You lied to me.”

  He almost missed the accusation because of the cathartic touching. Then the word registered and his brain jump-started again.

  He could be tagged with many faults. He’d done a lot of terrible things in his life in the name of patriotism and the common good. No regrets, but he remembered them all, and outright lying to Lexi was not on his list.

  “When?” he asked, wondering if one knock too many had put his memory on the fritz.

  “The tattoo on your upper back.”

  The memory of that conversation came rushing back to him. She’d broached the topic, one he didn’t discuss ever. If she’d hit on the truth he would have admitted to it. But she concluded he liked death. Maybe that was fair in light of who he was and what he did.

  People could tag him with many sins. “Someone who loved to kill” wasn’t one of them. For some reason, he had hoped she would be the one person to see that.

  “It’s a tattoo.” He tried to shrug but the move had him gasping. “No big deal.”

  She traced her finger over his thigh. “It’s not a scorecard.”

  Well shit. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But he did. She’d used that word and been wrong. Now it looked like she knew that.

  “You do.” She looked at his shoulder then frowned. She whipped a new bandage out of nowhere and went to work on his shoulder for what seemed like the hundredth time.

  The poking and prodding had the wound ticking again. “Ouch.”

  “You pretend to be this killing machine, but—”

  “Lexi, you need to understand that’s what I am.” How he felt about the serious import of death didn’t change the fact that he was good at taking lives. He didn’t debate. He made a decision or followed orders and moved. “Trained by my father, honed by the military, and used with perfect precision by Alliance. That’s my role.”