The water ceased as blackness fuzzed at the edges of his thoughts, momentarily dulling everything until it all came rushing back in one vivid crush of Technicolor agony.
I’m okay. I’m okay.
He coughed, ignoring the bitter scrape of an already raw throat, and pretended his eyes didn’t sting. Or at least if they did, only because of the waterboarding.
“Can’t think your way out of this, Parker. Even the best men fail under this technique.” Parker tracked the clip of Brandt’s shoes as he moved around the room, circling, waiting. Secure in the knowledge Parker would fail. “We both know you aren’t the best. Not at this. Not even close.”
Parker flinched as a hand came to rest at his shoulder, patting the wet fabric of his T-shirt. Brandt always had been a condescending bastard. But he was right about one thing at least. Parker couldn’t think his way out of this. He clenched his fists, forced himself to take deep breaths, exhaling for twice as long as he inhaled, getting much-needed oxygen into his system. The breathing technique had the added benefit of slowing his heart rate and fighting off the encroaching panic—or at least beating it back to semibearable levels. He shuddered as his muscles loosened, his body sagging against his bonds.
How many times had he been here? Trapped in an endless cycle of panic he couldn’t escape, couldn’t fight, could only endure?
This wasn’t the same, of course. This had a physical component Parker had never endured before, adding a layer of pain and terror to the experience he’d never thought to fear. But the basics? The fight-or-flight? The all-consuming desire to run away from something inside him? Something he could understand but not address, something he could label but not conquer? Yeah, he’d been here before. And through trial and error, he’d learned fighting the panic always, always made it worse. Yoga helped. Running burned off some of the energy. But always, the bottom line was the same—he had to roll with the energy, acknowledge it, and let it have its say before it would begin to ebb. Before it lost its power.
Hadn’t he helped Georgia through a similar experience? Hadn’t he seen the panic riding her, recognized her urge to run from the building desire to flee, or fight, or hide—anything to escape the sensation of being torn apart from the inside? He had, and he’d helped her through it. Not by distracting her but by having her voice the fear, address the nightmare.
Fighting a sense of powerlessness did so very little to improve the situation. Ethan had taught him that. Told Parker, in a hushed whisper from three thousand miles away, trapped in enemy territory, that one of the worst things you could do when scared was try to talk yourself out of being scared in the first place. That the only real way to conquer fear was to face it, acknowledge it, then decide to move the fuck past it anyway.
“Just give me what I want, Parker, and this all stops.”
He wanted to shake his head. Wanted to tell Brandt to go lick an outlet or play in traffic. To fuck off and die. Violently. Creatively. Painfully. Parker didn’t really care. Instead, he kept his mouth shut. Afraid if he said anything, even something two syllables and four letters long, he’d open the floodgates and give voice to his cowardice. Beg for everything to just stop. Promise anything to make it so.
Brandt sighed, and the water returned. As his head grew fuzzy and his ears rang, the desire to quit, to make it all just stop, stalked him like a hungry hyena—already laughing and ready to pounce at the first sign of weakness.
It took him a long moment to realize the water had disappeared again. For now. But not for long, never for long.
Georgia would come. No matter how angry she was, no matter how badly he’d hurt her, she wouldn’t leave him here.
She needed him, even if she hated him.
He just had to last long enough for her to find him.
Voices filtered through the white noise in his head.
“We’ve been at this for almost five hours. Too much more could kill him.”
“I don’t care,” Brandt said, his voice clipped and irritated, the same tone he used whenever someone brought up budgetary restrictions in one of their operational meetings. “I need the program now. Go again.”
“We should wait, try again tomorrow,” a voice Parker didn’t know argued. “Let the experience sink in. He’s strong now, but throw him cold, wet, and exhausted in a cell, and the fear will find him. Dread soon after. He’s survived it once . . . some guys do. But few last even half as long in the next round.”
“I said do it again,” Brandt hissed. “I’m out of time and out of options. I’ve made promises that I intend to keep.”
Promises? Parker wondered. To who? For what? More of the same privately funded, off-book operations? Or was there more at stake than he realized?
“And if he vomits? He could aspirate it and drown in his own puke. Is that what you want?”
God, please no. Parker shivered, fought the urge to fight the ties at his wrists, to tear his flesh deeper than it already was. The pain, the fear—those he could deal with. But the humiliation of choking on his own vomit? No.
“I want my goddamn program!” Brandt yelled. “Now do it again.”
The suffocating press of water pulled Parker under again, pinning him to the back of the board, helpless, exposed . . . dying.
He couldn’t keep doing this. Wasn’t trained to resist interrogation. Wasn’t cut out for fieldwork. He was tech ops, dammit. A brain. An IQ. An asset at a desk but a hindrance in the field.
From far away, Georgia’s voice whispered against his ear. “Are you really going to sit there and tell me that, when push comes to shove, there’s anything you couldn’t do if you decided you wanted it badly enough?”
Air, crisp and cold and powerful, rushed into his lungs. A choice. Deceptively simple and still unrelentingly difficult. Mind over matter. Reason over strength.
Bright lights seared through his vision as the hood was ripped from his head.
“Give me what I want, Parker. Now.” Brandt stood over him, anger tightening every line of his face. “There’s not going to be a tomorrow, not for you. That choice is out of my hands.”
A choice. Simple. Painful. And in the end, with Georgia at the front of his mind, not that hard at all.
My program, my responsibility.
“You’re the one calling the shots here,” he ground out, his voice tight and rough.
Brandt scoffed, his shadowed form moving closer. “Did you really believe a program with that much potential would go unnoticed? That people wouldn’t think bigger than applying that kind of power to a few dozen black ops in bumfuck nations we forgot to care about decades ago?”
Fuck. When Isaac had looked at him across his desk, smug and certain that Parker hadn’t thought big enough, dark enough, Parker had hoped he was wrong. Believed what the data had told him—Brandt, and only Brandt, was all over the files. No one else was involved; no one else knew enough to even be tempted.
“Come on, Parker,” Brandt continued, his pudgy fingers sinking into the flesh of Parker’s shoulder. “This is Washington. The only thing people covet more than money is power. And your program? It levels the playing field in ways most people could never dream of. Do you have any idea what that’s worth to the right person?”
“Millions, judging by your bank statements,” Parker spat, his mind racing, trying to figure out who, besides Brandt, stood to gain from his program. He shook his head, clenched his fists, and wrestled with the urge to fight the ties at his hands and feet. Too many. Brandt was right. There were hundreds, even thousands, of people in DC alone who stood to gain everything from economic footing to political power. Where would he even start?
“Millions.” Brandt chuckled. “Don’t be ridiculous. Those were tests. Practice runs. Proof the program worked. No. The real money is in brokerage. Tell me, Parker, what do you think a sixty-five percent market share is worth to the right corporation? What do you think the right family would pay to secure their son the presidency? What do you think a cartel would pay to have their
rivals wiped from the face of the Earth?”
“Is that why you sacrificed William Bennett? To get rich? To give an evil organization a leg up?”
“Don’t be so naive. World governments buy and sell the lives of soldiers every day for a lot less. Bennett was an unfortunate casualty of the war on drugs.”
“So he’s dead?” Parker asked, dreading the answer. Would Georgia survive the blow twice? Survive the agonizing hope that her brother was alive, even if that meant he was in hell, even if he wished he were dead, only to discover he died anyway?
“I really don’t know.” Brandt withdrew his hand. “If there’s any mercy, Will Bennett died of infection weeks ago. Unfortunate. Though not as unfortunate as the fact that you involved his sister in this.”
Parker’s heart stopped.
“I suppose I could find a way to spare her,” Brandt said, leaning over to study Parker’s face. “I would hate to destroy an entire family.” He shrugged and stepped back. “But then that’s not my choice to make.”
Parker snorted. “You clearly don’t know Georgia Bennett.”
“I know people,” Brandt corrected. “Everyone has a price.”
Parker shook his head. Not Georgia. She was many things. Stubborn. Unforgiving. Beautiful. Fragile. And completely uncompromising. “You can’t buy everyone.”
“I suppose not. But those who can’t be bought can be killed. Rather easily, as it turns out.”
“Program’s dead,” Parker said, proud his voice didn’t tremble, that his fear and frustration didn’t show. “And I won’t change that.” Not for Brandt. No matter what it cost him.
“No?” Brandt asked, fury darkening his voice. “Gun.” He held his hand out behind him, then repeated, “Gun. Now.”
Someone out of Parker’s line of sight stepped forward. “Brandt . . .”
“Shut up.” Brandt took the gun, cocked it, and pressed it to Parker’s temple. “It’s not up to me. One way or another, you die.”
“Who—” It was all he could think about, all that mattered. Who else was involved?
“It hardly matters,” Brandt said as he loosened the knot of his tie, then shifted the gun from Parker’s head until it rested at the side of his knee, the barrel digging painfully into the bone. “If you can’t be bought, then you’ll be broken. I’ll start with your joints. A bullet in each knee—excruciating, truly, you have no idea—then move up, hit both shoulders, let the bullet bounce around. If that doesn’t work, I’ll put one in your gut.” Brandt stared at him, all expression bleeding from his face until the only thing left was the stark visage of a man desperate enough to do absolutely anything to get his way. “I’m told it’s an incredibly slow, very painful way to die. If you still won’t talk, I’ll have one of these men start removing things.”
Brandt stared steadily down at him. No anger. No reservation. He’d do it and never let the memory of it steal so much as a second of sleep.
“You’ll give me the program, Parker. And when you do, I’ll let you die.”
The absolute certainty Brandt would do it, and that Parker would beg for death before the end, assaulted him—but didn’t change his mind.
Brandt didn’t understand, couldn’t possibly grasp that Parker would rather die than give up his program. Not because it was the right thing to do. Not because hundreds of thousands of innocent lives could be ruined. Not because it was his tech, his work, and his responsibility.
No.
He’d do it for Will, who’d been sacrificed in an operation Parker had designed and Brandt had exploited.
He’d do it for Georgia, who’d lost too many people in her life, who’d survived the thought of losing the only person she truly loved and come out stronger, tougher, and so achingly vulnerable Parker had fallen hopelessly, irrevocably in love.
She’d shared herself with him. Seen him. Believed in him.
Made him strong enough to do this much. For her.
“Go fuck yourself.”
A gunshot clapped violently through the room.
“Don’t move!” Georgia commanded as she followed the path of her shot into the room, ready to pull the trigger again if anyone so much as twitched.
Parker, strapped to a board. Brandt in an unmoving pile next to him. The other two men didn’t move, stunned still as Ortiz, Liam, and Ryan filed in behind her, guns up and ready. The minute they had the other two men contained, Georgia rushed to Parker.
Soaked and shivering, he stared up at her from the flat of his back, a crooked grin twisting his lips. “Aren’t you supposed to warn him first?” he asked, his lips blue and his voice thin.
“What?” Georgia holstered her gun and pulled a knife from her belt.
“You know,” Parker said, a full-body shiver shaking him against the table. “‘Stop or I’ll shoot.’ Or, ‘Don’t move!’”
“I said that.” Georgia slid her knife beneath Parker’s palm, careful to catch only the plastic zip tie and not his damaged skin.
“Yeah.” Parker wheezed as he flexed his fingers. “After you dropped Brandt like a fifty-pound bag of kitty litter.”
“You wanted me to warn him?” Georgia shook her head. “Ask him nicely not to shoot you in the knee?”
“Well, no.” Parker smiled up at her, his eyes glassy and his voice raw. Blood spatter decorated his face like a Rorschach test. “But aren’t you supposed to?”
Georgia released an ankle, then moved around the table. “You watch way too much TV,” she said as she cut the last tie, grateful the sweat slicking her palms hadn’t interfered. Now if she could just get them to stop trembling. “He was prepared to shoot you. Had announced his intention to maim and then kill you. He’d tortured you, Parker,” she said, hitching her shoulders in a helpless shrug to fight off the urge to fall apart. “And you wanted me to give him a heads-up? A chance to change his mind or use you as a hostage?” She put an arm beneath his shoulders and helped him sit. “I’ll pass, thanks,” she said as he braced his hands against the board and took deep, long breaths.
Truth was, killing Brandt hadn’t felt like a choice. Even before Ortiz had opened the door and Georgia had taken up the point position and breached the room, she’d heard enough. One glance had confirmed everything she needed to know. Parker, helpless. Brandt with a gun to his knee. She’d pulled the trigger, blowing a .40-caliber bullet through the back of Brandt’s head without a second thought or a moment’s hesitation. She’d trusted her training. Made a decision and acted. Brandt was dead, and Parker was alive. She sure as shit wouldn’t apologize for it. The man had tried to kill Parker—not to mention Ethan and herself—more than once. Would have made good on his threats to take Parker apart a piece at a time and never lost a second of sleep over the decision.
To say nothing of what he’d done to Will.
Will . . . Where had her thoughts been of her brother? Brandt was the one person on the planet who’d had any contact with Will’s captors.
And she’d killed him. Without hesitation or second thought.
She’d saved Parker, yes, but had doing so condemned her brother?
She shook away the thoughts and fought down the surge of bile.
Oh God. What had she done?
Parker placed his feet on the floor, flinching when cold concrete touched his bare skin. Pushing himself up, he listed dangerously to the left, heading for the floor before she caught him under the armpits. “Easy.”
He let his head drop until his forehead touched her breastbone, his hands coming up to grip her forearms as she pushed him back onto the edge of the board. He trembled, his breathing ragged. His voice was a desperate, strangled thing as he whispered, “You came for me.” He shook, gripping her arms tighter, pulling her in closer. “Thank you.”
Had he thought she wouldn’t? Had he believed, even for a moment, that she’d been angry enough to leave him? To let him die? She brought her arms up, letting her hands run through his tangled mop of wet hair. “It’s my job, Parker.” The words left her lips on
a gentle whisper but with the leaden weight of a lie. The way Parker sagged against her suggested he either didn’t hear the blatant dishonesty of the statement or just didn’t believe it. Intentional or not, she’d hurt him. She just didn’t know how to fix it. How to fix them.
Or even if she wanted to.
“He all right?” Liam asked from across the room. Ortiz and Ryan had secured the remaining men, and now Ortiz was on the phone—probably with Ethan, who they’d had to sedate to keep in bed.
“Yeah, Peanut, you all right?” she asked, fighting emotions she couldn’t name and didn’t understand. She’d always thought death the worst-case scenario. Dreaded another loss, feared what having another person violently ripped from her life would do to her. She’d never imagined arriving in the nick of time could be so much worse. To cross a threshold and wonder if this time she’d be made to watch. If this time she’d be there when her entire world crumbled around her.
It wasn’t a reality she wanted to experience again. Ever. If she’d been a second too slow, hesitated just a little . . . Even the thought of failing Parker, of watching him die, tore at her with titanium teeth, vicious and hungry and desperate to devour her whole. It just wasn’t a possibility she could live with.
But at what cost? Could she have spared Brandt? Had emotion, rather than training, pulled that trigger?
“Oh God, Peanut’s going to stick, isn’t it?” Parker said on a groan. He pulled his head back until he could look at her. “I’m okay.”
No. No, he wasn’t. Using her thumb, Georgia gently brushed away blood and grime as she stared down at him. Wide, dilated eyes stared back at her, drinking her in as if Parker still couldn’t quite believe she was there.
“Hey,” Liam said, appearing next to her as authorities began to file in. Damn, Ethan was fast. “Why don’t I take a look?”
Parker coughed but shook his head. “I’m good. Just tired and cold.” He made to stand up again, but Liam pushed him back down.
Defenseless (Somerton Security #1) Page 26