by Joyce Lamb
“She’s not a fucking dog.”
“No. She’s a consummate N3 operative who exceeded all of my expectations.” To Marco, who had Sam cornered, Flinn said, “Any day now, Marco. I’m getting impatient.”
Marco bore down on Sam, and Mac had to admire the way she held her own in the fight, no hint of fear in her stony gaze. If the hired gun hadn’t outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds—not to mention the mean streak—Mac wouldn’t have felt such insane terror for her, certain she could take the guy without breaking a sweat.
She leveled a spinning kick at the big man’s head, but he ducked and came up behind her only to pound her down onto the floor with a violent elbow to the kidneys. She lay there, gasping, trying to push herself up on arms that had no strength.
Marco hauled her up by one arm and gave her a rough shove toward the surgical table. She fell to her knees, grabbing onto the edge for support. Mac winced at the way her head fell back before she shook it, as though she had to fight to remain conscious.
When Marco approached, though, she whipped around with deadly force and slammed the heel of her hand under his chin. His head snapped back. But instead of falling, or even looking dazed, he grabbed her up in a bear hug, pinning her arms at her sides.
To Toby, Ford said, “Tranq her, but show some restraint. I need her conscious for a little while longer.”
Toby chose a syringe from the tray of surgical instruments.
“Sam!” Mac shouted in warning.
She kicked Marco in the knee, causing a wince-worthy crunch just before Toby nailed her in the arm with the needle.
Marco released her with a pained grunt, and Sam wobbled on legs that refused to cooperate. As she went down, she threw Mac a desperate look. Her lips formed his name before she sprawled onto the dirty floor. She lay on her back, unmoving, her head lolled to the side, dark hair obscuring her face.
“Sam!”
Ford walked over and stared down at her. “Such a shame.” He gestured at Marco. “Get her on the table. Strap her down tight.”
“She won’t be out for long,” Toby said.
“Good. Before you get started, I need to find out if she knows where Mikayla’s being hidden.”
“I thought Mikayla went undercover in Afghanistan,” Toby said.
“I suspect that since Sloan was prepared to take Samantha to a safe house, then Andrea must know something is up. She might also know of Mikayla’s involvement.”
“If you think Sam will respond to torture, I’ll remind you that she’s been trained to handle it.”
Ford cast a speculative look at Mac. “I’m not going to torture her for the information. Not physically.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Sam opened her eyes for the second time in an hour, her mind fuzzy and her senses sluggish. The ceiling tiles overhead looked the same. Water-stained, some missing, revealing tangled wires and rusted pipes.
She knew without trying to move that she was restrained. Arms at her sides, wide leather cuffs snapped around her wrists and secured to the table. Ankles similarly secured with her feet in stirrups, knees slightly spread. She still had her clothes, thank God.
A chill passed through her, raising goose bumps all over her body. Flinn really was going to do this to her. Kill her baby in the name of truth, or at least his twisted idea of truth.
“Samantha.”
Flinn’s voice, steady and low near her ear, sent the knife’s edge of dread through her heart, bleeding off some of the tranquilizer Toby had pumped into her.
She called on years of training and experience to calm her heart rate, slow her panicked breathing and fight the fog of the drug.
Where was Mac? She wanted to look for him, to draw strength from his unwavering love. But she didn’t dare give away her desperate need for him. Flinn already knew too much.
“Where’s Mikayla?” Flinn asked. His mouth was inches from her ear, his breath warm and moist against her skin.
She closed her eyes and counted to ten, struggled to clear her head. “I don’t know.”
She felt rather than saw Flinn straighten. “Marco?”
A crack was followed by a pained grunt, and she couldn’t stop herself from turning her head in time to see Marco looming over Mac, who was on his knees and close to pitching forward. Blood dripped in a steady stream from his mouth.
It was enough to break her. Flinn could torture her all he wanted, but it was different when someone else, someone she desperately loved, bore the consequences of her silence.
Flinn shifted to block her view of Mac. “Where’s Mikayla?”
“Don’t tell him.”
She squeezed her eyes shut at the sound of Mac’s voice, strained but firm. He didn’t even know who Mikayla was, only that the woman had gotten dragged into this the same way Sam had. Maybe it was good that she couldn’t see his pain. Maybe that was the only way she would find the strength to resist Flinn’s questions.
As if Flinn knew her thoughts, he moved so that all she had to do was shift her head. But she didn’t. She stared, resolute, at the ceiling. I’m sorry, Mac. I’m so sorry.
“He’s going to kill me anyway,” Mac said. “You know he is.”
Flinn grinned down at her. “But the longer you don’t tell me what I want to know, the longer it’s going to take to kill him. Now, tell me, Samantha: Where’s Mikayla?”
She clenched her teeth. “If you had any psychic sidekicks, you could have them here now, mining my memories instead of resorting to brutality. That must really suck for you, not having any of us on your side.”
“Marco.”
A thud this time, followed by Mac’s massive “Oof.”
Sam stared hard at the stains on the ceiling tiles. One looked like the Michelin Man. Or perhaps the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Plump with rings of fluffy rust-colored fat.
“We can do this for hours, Samantha,” Flinn said, casual and unflustered.
She didn’t react.
“Marco.”
Another harsh thud. Mac grunted but made no other sound. She knew from experience how much control that took, and she knew from her time with him that he did his damnedest to suppress his reaction to spare her. He’d done everything for her. Tears burned her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the ceiling.
“No worries,” Mac wheezed. “You’re worth it.”
A choked sob escaped, and she bit into her lip to stop another from following. If only her head would stop spinning. If only she could focus around the drugs. Maybe there was a way out of this. She was a spy, for God’s sake. Trained in situations just like this.
“We’re wasting time.” Toby this time, impatient—and sounding a bit disgusted. “You should have gotten this done before I got here.”
“You can wait outside if you like,” Flinn said, not at all perturbed.
“Just get it over with,” Toby snapped.
Nothing from Flinn for a long moment, just the scuff of his shoes as he walked to the other side of the bed. “He can’t take much more, Samantha. He’s hanging on to consciousness by a thread.”
“Bullshit,” Mac slurred. “I’ve got a good ten more rounds in me. And if you were any kind of a real villain, you’d come over here and hammer at me yourself instead of making your muscle do all the work.”
“Marco.”
A thud, and a raw, guttural sound burst through Mac’s teeth. Then he swore under his breath. “Fuuuuuuck.” He drew the word out, low and raspy, his breaths choppier now, and sounding wet.
Sam recognized the sounds of a punctured lung. Why didn’t he just shut up? She knew why: He was trying to deflect the violence away from her with his words, the only weapons he felt he had. But, God, she couldn’t listen to him die, punch by punch. She just couldn’t. “Mik is in a safe house.”
“Be specific,” Flinn said.
“Sam, no—”
A loud crack cut off Mac’s denial.
“I don’t know specifics.”
Sam couldn’t help herself. She turned her head to see Mac still on his knees, held up by Marco’s grip on the collar of his shirt. His face was a mess of blood and bruises. One eye had already swelled shut.
For a moment, she couldn’t breathe through her fear for him. She couldn’t lose him. Couldn’t live without him. Couldn’t—
She refocused on the ceiling and narrowed her eyes. “I’ll tell you where Mik is, including who else knows, but you have to let him go.”
“No, Sam. Don’t.” Mac’s breath gurgled in his chest. “Please . . . don’t.”
“I’ll spare his life,” Flinn said.
“He won’t. You . . . know he . . . won’t.”
“She’s in Las Vegas.”
“Sam, no.”
She met Flinn’s flinty gaze with a steady, unflinching glare. His eyes went to annoyed slits. “You can’t lie to me, Samantha.”
“Sloan had his people take her to Vegas. He told me.”
“You’re lying!” Flinn backhanded her so suddenly she didn’t have time to brace herself. Bursts of light streaked her vision like falling stars. The fresh taste of blood flooded her mouth.
“Bastard,” Mac growled. “You fucking bastard!”
Flinn hovered over her. “I want specifics, Samantha. So let’s start again. Marco?”
When the blow fell this time, the goon let Mac go, and he dropped onto his side, curling forward around the pain, hands still trapped behind him while he gasped for air.
“He can’t take much more, Samantha.”
Tears began to roll back into her hair. So unlike her. Crying during a mission gone to hell. Mac’s fault. No . . . her fault, for letting him in, letting him change her . . . or, rather, rediscover herself. “Chicago.”
“Where in Chicago?”
“Safe house affiliated with the police department.”
“And who arranged that?”
She carefully thought through the lie that would prevent Flinn from knowing Andrea Leigh was aware of his project. She had to be more convincing than she’d been when she tried to steer him to Vegas instead of Chicago.
“Sloan,” she said finally. “He has a friend who’s a cop there.”
Flinn regarded her for a long, thoughtful minute.
“I’m telling you the truth,” she said, irritated at the way the words slurred. “Please just let him go. You can use me over and over to create all the stem cells you need for this serum.”
“I would commend you for that excellent idea, Samantha, if I hadn’t already decided that for myself.” He flicked a glance at Toby. “You may begin, Dr. Ames.”
Mac clung to consciousness by sheer will, determined to be there for Sam. The wet streak of tears tracking from her eye into her hair broke his heart. She’d betrayed a comrade for him. Agreed to be this evil bastard’s incubator in a desperate attempt to save him. Even when they both knew he was as good as dead.
Mac watched the man Flinn had called Toby pick up a pair of scissors from the tray of surgical tools and move toward Sam. She fought against the restraints, clamping her knees together and bucking her hips.
“No!” She strained to raise her head, snarling at Ford in her desperation. “Don’t do this! You don’t have to do this!”
Toby stepped back, annoyance written in the tension of every muscle.
“Hold her, Marco,” Ford said.
Marco, standing next to where Mac lay, helpless and enraged, hesitated, shooting a questioning glance at Ford. “Sir?”
“Do it,” Ford said, impatiently gesturing Marco over to the table.
Mac’s heart started hammering harder now, seeming to rap against broken ribs. What the hell were they going to do to her?
At the table, Marco hesitated again, his lips tight with a squeamish disgust. “Where do you want me?”
“Hold her hips,” Toby said.
Marco holstered his gun then leaned over Sam and pinned her to the table with his big, blood-covered hands.
“Don’t do this!” Sam cried. “There are other ways to harvest stem cells. You don’t have to kill the baby. Please!”
Wincing as though her cries hurt his ears, or irritated the hell out of him, Toby started cutting away her jeans.
Mac strained his wrists against the plastic restraints, gritting his teeth against the grind of agony in his chest. The plastic edges of the cuffs cut into his flesh, but he ignored the pain, ignored the slick wetness of what could only be blood.
Toby dropped the remains of Sam’s jeans on the floor. Before he could start on her underwear, Ford snapped, “Cover her. We’re not barbarians.”
Scowling—and not the least bit amused at the irony of that statement—Toby grabbed a neatly folded white sheet off the cart and, with Marco’s help, spread it over her lower half, shielding her from the view of everyone but the doctor.
A moment later, Toby dropped the remains of her underwear on the floor, then reached for what looked to Mac like a metal torture device. Jesus, what was that?
Realization sent horror churning up from his gut. He’d never seen a speculum, but judging from Toby’s actions, that’s what it had to be.
Sam had stopped fighting, exhausted or resigned, he couldn’t tell. But she stared at the ceiling, the muscles in her face contracted into a rigid expression of grief and rage.
Mac wet his lips, tasting blood. “Sam.”
She must not have heard him, or pretended not to.
“Sam.” Louder this time. Commanding.
She looked at him, finally, and Mac tried to offer her a comforting smile, even as his heart jammed hard into his throat. Her eyes were unfocused, drugged. They kept trying to roll back, but she fought to remain conscious. God knew why.
“Hold her knees apart,” Toby said.
Marco complied, putting more of his weight on her, and Sam’s eyes widened with panic and pain, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip.
“Just keep looking at me, Sam,” Mac said, trying to calm his breathing. Every breath stabbed at him. “Just . . . I’m here, okay? I’m right here.”
She gave a small nod, wincing as metal clinked, and then her whole body tensed, and she threw her head back on a serrated sob. “God!”
“Take it easy, Toby,” Ford growled from where he did the expectant-father pace far away from the action on the table. “For Christ’s sake.”
“Shut up and let me work,” Toby snapped. “I’m in. Now all I have to do is remove the embryo.”
“Please,” Sam whimpered, sounding breathless and weak, her pleas slurring. “Please, don’t.”
“Sam.” Mac’s voice broke on her name. “Look at me. I’m right here.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed, her face wet with sweat and tears and blood. And then she rolled her head to the side, and devastated eyes locked on his.
Mac pushed himself to his knees, fighting dizziness and nausea. “I love you. I’ll always love you, Sam.”
Her expression twisted into one of grief and pain and love as tears spilled out of her eyes.
Mac jerked against his bonds one last time, and this time he felt a pop followed by some give. Holy shit, he’d busted the plastic cuffs.
Marco was distracted, his back to Mac and his gun right there on his belt, in plain sight. It wasn’t even snapped into its holster.
Mac took a broken breath, wincing as bones grated together in his chest. And launched himself at Marco’s back with a roar of rage and agony. He had the asshole’s gun in his hand before Ford even completed his turn toward Mac, brows arched in surprise.
Marco jerked upright and whirled, face red with fury.
“Idiot!” Ford hissed at the goon.
“But, sir, I—”
“Shut it,” Mac snapped. “Both of you.” He flicked the gun from one to the other, ignoring the spasms in his chest that accompanied each ragged breath. He could taste blood at the back of his throat, but that meant nothing compared with what had happened to Sam.
“Mac, be careful.” Her voice was
strong despite a slight waver.
“Step away from her,” Mac said to Toby. “Now.”
Ford sighed, managing to sound bored. “You’re out of your league, Mr. Hunter.”
Mac gave him a smile that he knew had to look crazed, considering how crazed he felt. “Shut the fuck up. No matter who makes the first move, you’re getting the first bullet, so tell your minions to stand the fuck down.”
“Please do as Mr. Hunter asks.”
“Hands up,” Mac ordered. “All of you.”
Ford, Marco and Toby all obeyed.
Mac gestured at Toby with the gun. “You. Remove that—”
All hell broke loose then, soldiers bursting in from all sides, shouting orders: “Everybody down on the floor! Face-down! Now!”
Mac dropped Marco’s gun and did as he was told, groaning at the screaming pain in his chest. He couldn’t see what was happening, but he kept his eyes on Sam, watched her yank and twist against her restraints, the cords in her neck standing out with her desperate efforts. While her situation was horrific, at least the way the gurney was positioned kept her from being displayed to the whole room. But, Jesus, still.
“Hang on, Sam,” he called to her. “Just hang on!”
A shadow fell across him, followed by a voice: “Christ, Mac, are you okay?”
Mac looked up into the concerned face of Noah Lassiter.
“Thank God,” Mac said. He pushed to his feet with Noah’s help, gritting his teeth against the pain but concerned about only one thing: “Sam.”
Noah followed close on Mac’s heels as he dodged gun-wielding soldiers to make it to the surgical table. Mac was peripherally aware of a soldier cuffing Marco and hauling him to his feet, but he ignored the bastard. He had only one objective.
“Aw, fuck,” Noah muttered when they got to Sam’s side.
Mac knew the other man didn’t have to see anything other than the sheet covering her knees and the stirrups to know that Ford and Toby had had gruesome plans for her.
Mac put his hand on top of her head and looked down into her frantic eyes, the pupils so dilated only a thin band of blue iris encircled them. Panic bled off her like waves of Florida heat at the height of summer. He wanted to touch her, wanted to use the warmth of skin-on-skin contact to help bring her down from the terror high, to focus her around the drugs. But he feared sending her into his head and forcing her to psychically endure what Marco had done to him.