by Julie Miller
Tasiya silently cursed her luck. She could either travel all the way back to the kitchen for a flashlight, or she could swallow her fear of the unknown enemy around the corner and follow the wall with her hand until it opened up onto the cell itself.
Weighing the options of retracing her steps through the dungeonlike chambers past sixteen prisoners versus checking on the welfare of one man made her decision a quick one. If she could face down the guns of Dimitri Mostek’s men, she could certainly handle a shadowy passageway and an unarmed man who was locked safely behind bars.
The stones were smooth with age but sticky with moisture and dust as she trailed her fingers across them. Leaving her cart behind, Tasiya headed toward the shaft of moonlight. When she reached the end of the wall, she peeked around into the cell.
She caught a silent breath.
On the other side of those shiny steel bars stood the hardest-looking man she’d ever seen. He wore only a pair of jeans that hung loosely enough on his hips to reveal a strip of the white briefs that hugged his waist. He stood with his back to her, his arms reaching above his head. He was fiddling with something at the base of the window, doing something with the rusty iron brace at his wrist. He wasn’t any taller than her father’s six feet of height, but he was massive across his shoulders, arms and back. Twice as broad as her father. Muscled and formed in a way that reminded her of tanks and mountains.
He was all male from the short clip of his dark brown hair to the flexing curve of his powerful thighs and buttocks.
And even in the moonlight that mottled his skin, she could see he was horribly disfigured.
Raised, keloid scars formed a meshwork pattern from his waistband up to his left shoulder, where the dimpled terrain of a faded burn mark took over and disappeared over onto his chest, up the side of his neck and down to his elbow.
Tasiya pressed her fingers to her lips to stifle a gasp. Her stomach clenched and her heart turned over in compassion. My God, how this man had suffered.
To her horror, he froze at her nearly inaudible gasp. With precise deliberation, he lowered his arms and slowly turned.
Shrinking back against the cold stone wall opposite his cell, Tasiya stared. The front view was nearly as harsh as the back. She could see, now, that the shadows that dappled his skin weren’t all tricks of the dim light, but from bruising, as well. The old burn injury covered nearly a quarter of his chest and one side of his neck and jaw. His chin was square and pronounced. One carved cheekbone was bloody with the slash of an open wound. And the swelling around his left eye distorted the shape of a face that would have been harsh and forbidding under any circumstances.
Without a word he took a step toward her. But when Tasiya, trapped in a circle of moonlight, flattened her back against the wall, he stopped. His mouth opened as if he wanted to say something, but he shrugged instead. Tasiya’s gaze instantly darted to watch the fascinating ripple and subsequent control of all that muscle.
When she realized he’d stopped and was even retreating to the rear of his cell to alleviate her fear of him, Tasiya’s breath seeped out on a deep, embarrassed sigh. This man knew he was frightening to look at, imposing to get close to. Others had cowered from him before.
What a lonely, terrible existence that must be.
Sensing some of his pain, Tasiya looked up into his face.
The only thing not forbidding about the prisoner was his eyes. Enhanced by the glow of the moon, they were a cool, soothing shade of gray that reminded her of the quiet, wintry skies of her homeland.
And they meant her no harm.
Unlike the lechery she’d seen in Marcus’s and Dimitri’s eyes, the cold condescension she’d seen in Boone Fowler’s expression, or the blank, preoccupied stares she’d seen from the other prisoners, this man was making a point of putting her at ease.
Responding to that unexpected civility, Tasiya summoned her courage and retrieved her cart. She wrapped the last small, crusty loaf, which couldn’t be more than a snack to a man his size, in a napkin and poured some water into the last metal cup. Then she knelt down in front of the steel bars and laid the bread and water just in front of them, the way she’d been instructed.
When she heard the rattle of his chains as he moved to pick up his meal, she shot to her feet and backed well out of arm’s reach. Compassion or not, he still made two of her, he was still a prisoner, and he still frightened her.
But in her haste to put distance between them, she’d kicked the cup over and spilled the water. Tasiya watched the puddle quickly seep into the cracks between the stones on the floor.
She couldn’t leave the man without water.
She glanced up at him. He was staring at her, with ever-watchful eyes, but he wasn’t condemning her. He glanced down at the cup, and she knew what she had to do.
Shaking her head at her own skittishness, Tasiya picked up the pitcher of water from her cart. She had far greater things to fear from men far more handsome than this one. Good looks didn’t make a hero. Scars didn’t make an enemy.
This was her job. This was for her father.
“I am sorry,” she whispered, picking up the cup and pouring him fresh water. “Here.”
With a show of bravery, prompted by human compassion, she reached through the bars herself and held the cup out to him. He stared at it for a moment, as if he didn’t understand the gesture. Long, silent moments passed. But she waited until his agile, nicked-up fingers closed around the cup. She quickly pulled away as he gently took it from her grasp.
“Thanks.”
The deep-pitched voice startled her. The husky tone resonated in that big chest and washed over her like a warm caress.
Tasiya looked into those wintry gray eyes and felt the first human connection she’d known in the four days since Dimitri Mostek had kidnapped her father. She didn’t know if making that connection with this beast of a man should be a comfort or an omen. But she sensed that when he looked at her, he saw her. Not the foreign trash hired to cook and clean and be forgotten. Not a blackmailed mistress-to-be. Not the tool of betrayal.
Her.
“You are welcome.”
He retreated to his cot and sank onto the bare mattress to eat and drink.
Tasiya quickly replaced the pitcher and turned her cart to leave.
“I’m Bryce Martin,” he said between big bites.
She stopped midstride. He wanted to make personal conversation with her? No one else, not even her employers, had. The idea was almost as disconcerting as the darkened hallway and the threats she’d received.
Turning back to his cell, she watched him take a long drink. The ripple of muscles along his throat fascinated her. How could one man be so much…man? The visible proof of all that physical and mental strength was daunting. She didn’t need any female intuition to sense that Bryce Martin was a very dangerous man. And that she should be careful around him.
She quickly returned her gaze to gauge the trustworthiness of those assessing eyes. “I am Anastasiya Belov. Tasiya to most.”
“Your accent’s foreign, i’n’t it?” His wasn’t like any of the others she’d heard here in America yet, either. She detected a lazy articulation in his bass-deep drawl.
“I am from Lukinburg. In Europe.” She wasn’t revealing any secrets with that much information.
He stuffed the last bite of bread into his mouth and stood. She tilted her chin to keep those gray eyes in view, her heart rate doubling as his size and scars moved closer. His wrist chain grated across the bars as he thrust the empty cup between them.
The keys at her wrist jangled as Tasiya snatched the cup and hugged it to her chest, dodging back a step to avoid contact. Bryce Martin scowled, as if her aversion to touching him neither pleased nor surprised him.
“Next time, Tasiya Belov,” he warned, “be more careful ’bout stickin’ your hand inside the monster’s cage.”
Chapter Three
The monster’s cage?
Smooth move, Sarge. Had he re
ally said that out loud to that woman? No wonder she’d high-tailed it out of here last night.
Bryce sat on the edge of his cot and twisted the crick from his neck. Squinting into the dust motes that filled the rays of morning sunshine, he wondered what kind of hell awaited him today.
Especially after he’d gotten an unexpected glimpse of heaven last night.
Tasiya Belov was a damn sight prettier than that scraggly Bristoe fella with the dirty hands and playground taunts who’d brought his bread and water the past seven nights. The insults and tough talk didn’t faze him—Bristoe was a misguided kid trying to prove himself a man. But it sure was nice to finally get a taste of food that was clean and water that was fresh.
It was nicer to get a look at Tasiya.
Bryce rubbed at the skin chafing beneath his wrist manacles and thought himself twelve kinds of fool. He should have come up with something decent to say to her, or kept his big mouth shut the way he usually did. Then, at least, he could have enjoyed the view a little longer. All that curly hair—blacker than the night around them—falling nearly to her waist. Skin that was as pale and pearlescent in the moonlight as her lashes were thick and dark. Lashes that surrounded wide, slightly tilted eyes the shade of rich, robust coffee.
Or maybe that was just the scent he got off her. Homey. Normal. Like his grandma’s good cookin’. Far removed from any of the crap that was going on around here. Something about Tasiya’s fairy-tale beauty and quiet ways had breached the cool reserve he wore like a suit of armor. He didn’t allow himself to be attracted to many women. By age thirty-three, he’d wised up to that futility. But Tasiya Belov, with the exotic eyes and accent, had gotten to him before he could distance himself from a man’s basic, male reaction to a beautiful woman.
So, of course he’d warned her off.
His chains jangled as he crawled onto the floor and squared off to do a set of push-ups. For years he’d used physical activity to dull the aches and longings and regrets of his life. What he couldn’t burn out of his system this way, he tried to ignore.
Bryce knew he wasn’t any great shakes to look at. The burn scars were old news; he’d had them since he was a kid, from the car accident that had killed his folks. The shrapnel scars that marked the end of his military career were more recent, more shocking to the unfamiliar eye. And the condition he was in now made his appearance even less appealing than usual.
It was a fact of his life. He was a big, scary-looking man. It made him a formidable enemy, a boon to his second career as a bounty hunter working for his former military commander, Cameron Murphy. He used his intimidating countenance to his advantage; few of the criminals he’d brought in expected the big guy to be so smart, or so good with his hands. And yeah, if it came down to it, he could out-bust just about anybody in hand-to-hand combat.
He’d had years to learn to accept his fate. It shouldn’t bother him.
But when Tasiya had looked at him with those wide, frightened eyes, he’d felt like a monster.
Yep, she’d had to muster up some real guts to hold out that cup of water. As if treatin’ him like a human being was some kind of apology—like she’d done this to him. Or maybe it was defiance that had made her reach out to him. But what was she taking a stand against? Him? Boone Fowler? Her own fear?
And what the hell was a beautiful woman from Lukinburg, of all places, doing here on this godforsaken island? The Special Forces unit he and his buddies from Big Sky had been ambushed with had been secretly prepping for a covert surgical strike into Lukinburg. The UN wanted to oust their despotic king and restore democratic rule there. Bryce’s former unit was supposed to be the first team in—to gather intel and remove a few key leaders.
So how had Boone Fowler’s militia gotten wind of that attack when the team had been under a communication blackout for days?
He did one last push-up, shoving himself up and bracing his weight over his arms. An image of a willowy woman with frightened eyes blipped into his thoughts. Surely not. A Lukinburg spy on the militia’s payroll? They’d never go for it. The whole point of Boone Fowler’s life—beyond his quest for vengeance against Cameron Murphy and the Big Sky team who’d put him in prison before his escape a few months back—was to cleanse America of any foreigners. And to keep Americans off foreign soil and out of foreign business.
So where did Tasiya fit in?
Dammit. He was thinking about her again. He was curious. Worried. Swift one, Sarge.
Bryce clapped his hands together as he pushed to his feet to do a round of squats. The noise startled some movement in the corner of his cell. He slowly sank to his haunches and smiled.
His little mouse friend was back, scoping out the nooks between the stones, scrounging for crumbs. Bryce’s empty stomach growled right on cue.
“You’re outta luck, buddy,” he teased his furry roommate. They both were.
He was doing his best to stay in peak physical condition in case the opportunity for escape presented itself. But his insides felt as if they were rubbing together. A little extra food would go a long way to maintain his strength and keep his thinking sharp. If there were any crusts of bread around, he’d have gone after them himself.
Bryce stilled as the mouse scurried between the steel bars and disappeared into the darkness of the passageway beyond.
Smart mouse.
Crossing to the locked cell door, Bryce wrapped his fists around the cold, unyielding steel and pressed his forehead to the bars to peer into the shadows.
That’s what he should be doing, searching this place.
But not for bread crumbs.
Let’s replay this escape scenario again. He needed to get outside to get the lay of the place. Scoping out the location of the other prisoners and ascertaining a sense of schedules, the number of militiamen at the compound and security protocols could secure a way off the island. Bryce had no doubt they were somewhere off the eastern coastline of the U.S. They hadn’t been transported by air, and after he regained consciousness on the boat they’d been tied up in, they’d traveled only a couple of hours. Not long enough to get them out of the country.
And it had to be the ocean. He recognized the smell of the salt in the air. In the still of the night he’d identified the pummeling of waves hitting land with a force too powerful to be a lake or river’s edge.
But knowing he was on an island in the Atlantic was hardly enough information to mount an escape attempt. And if he couldn’t get out of this hole to investigate for himself, then he needed to make a connection with someone who did have the freedom to move about the place.
Tasiya Belov.
A tight fist gripped his stomach and squeezed. He hated the idea of using her. But it made better sense than digging the mortar from around the bars at the window and climbing out into who knew what kind of situation.
He’d spotted the armload of keys around her wrist and suspected they could get him into nearly every place he needed to go. They could get him out of these chains, at any rate, and that would give him the ability to move about the compound with less chance of being detected.
That had been his first thought, grab the keys. But, short of using brute force against the woman—which wasn’t his style—that wasn’t gonna happen.
That left convincing her to befriend him, to run a few errands for him. Of course, he had no idea whether or not he could trust that she’d bring back the truth. Skittish as she seemed, she might run straight to Boone Fowler and tell him what the monster had asked of her.
Yeah, that’d go over real big in the escape-and-bring-these-murdering-bastards-to-justice department.
That left charming the woman.
A nearly impossible feat.
Long days out in the hills of the Missouri Ozarks where he’d grown up—hunting, fishing, camping—and quiet evenings spent on the porch with the grandparents who’d raised him didn’t go a long way toward developing a man’s sweet-talkin’ ways.
Maybe one of the other bounty hunters, Aid
an Campbell, Jacob Powell or Riley Watson—strike that, Craig O’Riley was the alias he’d been using when they were captured—were thinking along the same lines. They had the sweet words and the deceptive smiles and handsome faces he lacked. Hell, the way Powell ran his mouth sometimes, he could wear down a body’s resistance, make a woman happy to concede to his will. And O’Riley was the master of undercover work. He could don a persona and make anyone—man or woman—believe every word he said.
So how was a former army sergeant who knew more about weapons and explosives than he knew about conversation and seduction supposed to get close enough to Tasiya Belov to gain her trust and enlist her help?
He wasn’t.
He’d have to find another means of escape.
And he’d have to find it soon.
Bryce had been staring down the hallway long enough for the shadows to lighten and take shape. His cell was at the dead end of a passage that doubled back on itself. He knew that route led to a series of locked iron doors, one of which was the interrogation room—four stone walls that housed all the twisted toys of the Inquisition. From this vantage point, all he could see was an electrical wire and broken lightbulb tacked up between the stones.
But he could hear the enemy coming. Since they had the guns and he wore the chains, there was no need for stealth. Bryce backed up to the center of his cell and shook loose the muscles in his arms and legs, mentally bracing himself and prepping his body for the hours to come.
Marcus Smith and a pair of bully sidekicks lined up outside his door to pay him a visit.
“Ready to talk today, Sergeant?” Marcus spat his chaw through the bars on the floor next to Bryce’s bare foot.
Bryce didn’t shift his gaze from those icy blue eyes. Satisfying Smith’s power-hungry need to control him wasn’t on his to-do list. Smith was buttin’ heads with a man who’d already endured the worst the world had to offer. His boys and toys couldn’t break him.