But one failed mission and endless months of captivity had changed all that.
Now he stared failure in the face every single day. Watched as Matías’s grin grew colder, meaner, triumphant.
Will was fading and they both knew it.
Death, like a predator in the night, lurked just out of sight.
God, he’d been arrogant. Had simply assumed that whatever life threw at him, he’d find the strength to deal with the mess, pull himself together, and start the climb again.
It was what men like him did.
Overcome.
Survive.
Conquer.
But that wasn’t his life anymore, and he was ready to meet his end. So fuck it all to hell.
He shifted his weight, kept his hands up, and spat blood and saliva at Matías’s feet.
To the sound of cheers, Matías struck, moving through the trampled grass and mud as if it were friend rather than foe. Probably was—seemed like the whole damn country, from insects to weather to the gripping, cloying earth, hated Will.
He blocked a punch. Dodged another. Torqued his body and put all the force, all the frustration, all the helpless rage into a right hook that clipped Matías’s chin and snapped his head back on a wicked clack of teeth.
The bastard hit the dirt as Will staggered, trying to pull out of the momentum of his swing.
He slid to his knees, panting and breathless, the taste of victory a sweet, fleeting burst against his tongue as Diego grabbed his hair, drove a knee to his face, and spat curses at his feet.
The pain of a broken nose and the brutal clutch of gravity pulled Will to the soaked ground.
Flat on his back, each breath a misery, Will stared up at a foreign sky obscured by the heavy roil of an angry storm.
He set his nose, tasted blood, and wondered why he bothered.
“Levántate.”
As mud slipped and squished through his hair, his clothes, his fingers, Will searched for the strength to stand, to fight, to goad Matías or Diego or any of the other bastards into going too far. After so many months at the mercy of men he considered beneath him, that tasted like a goddamned win to Will.
Even if it killed him, he was going to find a way to get the last laugh.
He chuckled. Even if it killed him.
He rolled to his hands and knees, his muscles burning, his arms shaking, his skin unnaturally hot against the cold fall of rain.
Stand. Fight. Force them to make a mistake.
Or quit. Give in to fear and apathy and a darkness that had burrowed deep and taken root.
“Levántate.” A heavy boot to the ribs accompanied another demand to rise.
Rock bottom wasn’t a foundation on which to build. It was soaked earth, cold mountain air, and the greedy swallow of a far-flung hellhole determined to consume him, until nothing, no matter how frail or pathetic or weak, remained of him to find.
Little by little, piece by piece, he’d lost himself. His body to bullet ants. To a machete. To fever and rot and a starvation that ate at him until his cheeks went hollow and his body consumed muscle, leaving behind long limbs, aching joints, and an overgrown beard.
He clenched his fists, let the mud slide through his fingers.
But he’d lost much more and much worse.
He’d run out of “fuck yous” and “go to hells.” Forgotten the man who’d once worn scars like flesh-struck trophies.
There was no freedom or release or heady rush of victory for him.
Just death, and his inability to embrace it.
“Rogar por la muerte.”
Will let out a ragged laugh. What a bunch of pricks.
They wanted him to beg for the privilege of dying. Thought they could pry that from him with fists and boots.
Not in this life or the next.
They’d given it their best shot—pushed him to his limits until he’d snapped, done things he couldn’t take back and didn’t know how to live with—but still, they’d come up empty.
Delta and a ballbuster of a sister had seen to that.
He may be beaten, but he wasn’t broken. Not here. Not today.
Looked like he had a few “fuck yous” left in him after all.
“Levántate!”
One last mission. One last fight.
Then he could finally rest.
He pushed to his feet. Turned to stare at the man who’d wreaked so much torment upon his body and lifted his chin on a snarl.
With deliberate strokes and casual cruelty, they’d carved away everything that made Will the man he was.
Time to take something from them.
“Bueno.” Matías smiled as lightning cleaved the horizon, the roll of thunder a deep, trembling herald of what came next.
Will let his arms and legs go loose, dragged in a breath, released it, then did it again as the circle of men grew interested, drew closer.
He couldn’t take them all—not in his condition—but he could make them regret every indignity they’d visited upon him.
And when they killed him, because that’s what it would take to bring him down, he’d have his revenge.
They never should have touched him. Never should have pushed him. And they never should have forgotten just who they were dealing with.
Now, they’d pay.
The rain eased off, the wind died down, and the air grew thick as if the world itself waited with baited breath for what came next.
Matías gripped the handle of the knife he’d taken from Will upon his capture, turned his body, and lunged forward on a yell—only to stop when mere feet away, Diego’s head burst like a melon at a Gallagher show.
Lightning struck, and another man fell on a crack of sound, sharp and short, caught somewhere between the tip of a whip and the boom of a jet.
Sniper.
On instinct, Will dropped as the whip cracked again, once, twice, the explosion on the heels of the zing of a large caliber bullet traveling three thousand feet per second past his head.
Two more men fell, dead before they hit the dirt.
Three down. Four to go.
Ethan?
Will glanced toward where Diego lay sprawled in the grass like a Rorschach test. No. Couldn’t be. Nothing short of a high-powered sniper rifle was going to create that kind of damage. An accomplished shot his best friend might be, but Ethan was no sniper. From the tree line, on a clear day, with no wind, the man was deadly. Under pressure, but with a weapon he knew? Will wouldn’t bet against him. But in foreign terrain, working against a thick, turbulent atmosphere, and firing a rifle about as subtle as his sister’s flirting?
Ethan’s ego could suck it, the man couldn’t make that shot.
So who then?
Ortiz? He was in a committed relationship with his MK-13.
The sky splintered with the sonic boom of a fifth shot that missed the mark and sucker punched an old SUV but was closely followed by a sixth that sure as fuck did not.
Whoever it was had a pair of cannon balls between their legs—or didn’t give a shit about collateral damage.
A seventh shot rent the night and a sixth man died at a run.
Silence settled, the quiet thicker, darker, as if hell itself had come to collect.
Will looked up. Found Matías staring back at him from mere yards away, blood spatter covering the side of his face. He was fucked, and his expression said he knew it.
Will waited for the shot. For freedom. For Matías’s head to split and this nightmare to finally, finally end.
Nothing.
Just the distant rumble of thunder, the pale flash of lightning, and the screaming silence left by people who’d died violent deaths.
Will clenched his fists, inhaled wet, metallic air that smelled like blood but tasted like righteousness. Like vindication. Like justice meted out for his approval if not at his hand . . .
Oh.
His breath left him in a rush, adrenaline sliding in to take its place.
Oh, fuck yes.
> He didn’t know who was just over the horizon. Didn’t care.
They’d seen enough. They understood.
And they were giving him the opportunity to take back what was his.
He wouldn’t waste it.
“You gave me a choice once. Do you remember?” he asked, letting Matías rise from the mud and the muck, a courtesy he’d never granted Will. “Slow. Lento,” he translated. “Painful. Doloroso.” He widened his stance. “Or quick. Rápido.” Will smiled, his dry lips cracking and bleeding beneath the strain. “Either way, you die. Tú mueres.”
Matías glanced over his shoulder, gauging the distance from the roughed-out clearing to the fall of a hill that led straight into the dense Colombian foliage.
“You’ll never make it,” Will said in clean, clear Spanish rather than the halting word or two he’d pretended to pick up over the last year. He’d concealed his ability to speak their language, clutched tight to one of the few advantages he’d had. But no more. “Yeah, I speak Spanish, asshole. Always have.” He brought his hands up, kept his muscles loose. “Let’s finish this.”
Matías took a step back, then another, his pace quickening as his gaze landed on the bodies sprawled around the camp.
Coward.
He’d been the first to pull Will from the pit. The one to order his ear cleaved from his head. The one who’d denied food and water and basic human decency.
And the one who’d ordered Will to kill an innocent or watch him be tortured to death.
It shouldn’t have surprised him that the moment the winds shifted, the second karma arrived, that Matías’s first thought went to retreat, but it did.
His pace quickened, and the zing-crack-boom of a shot followed Matias’s steps. He stopped as the bullet dug dirt at his feet. That message didn’t need an interpreter.
Stand. Fight. Pay for what you’ve done.
Matías raised the knife he’d stolen. The one he’d used to pull screams from Will’s throat, to carve scars on Will’s skin. But it wasn’t his. Didn’t belong in his hand.
And Will wanted it back.
On a scream of desperate rage, Matías attacked, and this time, this time, Will welcomed it.
Had he been healthy, hydrated, free of the weight of a fever that pulled sweat from his pores like blood from a stone, Will would have taken the thrust of knife on the outside, and had Matías on his back in seconds. Instead, he had to work against illness and injury, starvation and weakness, and a fever that burned hot even as his hate burned cold. It slowed his reaction by a mere second, not even two, and forced Will to confront the thrust of knife on the inside. It caught him, a vicious slice of red-hot agony, along his ribs.
But not good enough. Not by half.
This was a maneuver Will could perform in his sleep.
A skill he’d developed under similar, unforgiving circumstances.
Not for the first time, he was grateful for the uncompromising demands of his instructors in Q Course. For the sheer perfection his teammates had demanded of him through every deployment and each special assignment.
Injured, but unstoppable, Will caught Matías by the inside of the elbow; spread his fingers and drove his hand into the bastard’s face, catching the lips, gouging the eyes, and taking him to the ground.
Control the head and you control the body.
Like the flash of memories before the last gasp of life, his training came back to him in a rush, and he realized it had always been there. Waiting, like a snake hibernating beneath a rock, dormant but deadly.
In seconds, the world changed. Will was back on top, trapping Matías’s wrist and his knife with a knee. Even in his emaciated state, Will still had enough strength to keep the man pinned.
He wrapped his hands around the bastard’s throat, tightened his grip, felt his own fingertips brush behind his skull.
Satisfaction strengthened him, and hate hardened him against the last, panicked gasp of an animal fighting to live.
“You had me at your mercy once.” He squeezed. Watched as Matías’s eyes bulged. “Never again, asshole.”
Not ever. Not for anyone or anything. He was through being at the mercy of others.
Matías choked, his face turning red, saliva pooling at the corner of his mouth.
It was a better death than he deserved. Cleaner. Faster. But Will wanted it over more than he wanted to go ounce for ounce in suffering.
“Lento?” Will asked. “O rápido?”
Matías gurgled, his left hand coming to Will’s face, his fingers scrabbling for Will’s eyes, his hair—anything he could use to draw Will off—but this wasn’t a fight he could win. His stocky, five-foot-seven frame no match for Will’s emaciated six-foot-two. Matías grasped Will’s wrist. Tugged at the arm Will kept wedged with his knee.
His eyes bulged.
Blood vessels burst.
Matías scrabbled for the last thread of a cold, malicious life.
And Will pressed him to the dirt, relaxing his grip just enough to draw it out, just enough to make it hurt, just enough to let the sadistic prick wonder if he might relent. If he might let him go.
Just enough to let Matías wonder if Will were the better man. If he held forgiveness, as well as contempt, in his heart.
He didn’t.
Matías had carved it away as surely as he’d cleaved Will’s ear from his head.
Matías deserved to die, and Will deserved to be the one to kill him—he knew no simpler truth than that.
A minute passed in an eternity and a life bled away.
Will let go.
He struggled to rise, his hands shaking, his shoulders burning, his skin on fire.
He stumbled, nearly tripped over Diego, kept going, then ended up back on his hands and knees, puking into the grass as the wind kicked up and the rain came down.
The rain would fall, and the jungle would grow, and all of this would be lost to time and the hungry teeth of a living mountain.
But it had left its mark, a deeply struck scar that he couldn’t see but knew would never fade.
He’d killed a man with his bare hands—an eventuality he’d trained for, but still a first. He’d taken lives, but not like this. Not up close and personal.
And not with hate-fueled satisfaction in his heart.
He didn’t regret it. Couldn’t.
Worse, he’d enjoyed it. And that scared the shit out of him.
He crawled away, collapsed to the cold, muddy earth, then forced himself to turn, to stare up at a sky that seemed determined to drown his fever and cleanse his conscience.
Maybe this goddamned country didn’t hate him after all.
The rain turned wind-driven and thin, stinging like a swarm of angry insects against his skin.
He shivered. Maybe not.
He had to find the energy to get up. To work his way down the mountain. Try to make his way home and back to the man he’d thought he was.
He didn’t recognize himself anymore. And as he closed his eyes, let rain and heat and agony wash over him, he wondered if, after everything, anyone else would recognize him, welcome him, or forgive him, either.
Chapter Three
“You can sleep when you’re dead, Bennett.”
The voice, feminine and tinged with a deep southern drawl, slipped through Will’s blood like honeyed bourbon, warm and rich, and with just a hint of a playful bite.
It promised a wickedly memorable night and a brutal morning of well-earned regrets.
And though it had been over a year, Will would know that voice anywhere.
Cooper.
Though he’d once spent endless hours wondering just what she looked like, he didn’t have to open his eyes to know she’d be beautiful. Of course, she was—she sounded like home.
Still, the temptation tugged at him. How many years had he wondered about the face that belonged to the voice he’d grown so fond of? The one that had called him an arrogant asshole, then saved his life in the same damn conversation. The one th
at stubbornly refused to laugh at his jokes. The one that went thick and soft and slow as a summer afternoon when he’d told her just what he wanted to do to her. Where he wanted to put his hands, his mouth, his tongue.
So no, he didn’t need to look to know Cooper Reed would be beautiful. He’d known that for years.
But because he’d wondered what form that beauty would take for just as long, he swallowed hard, opened his eyes, and drank his fill.
Cooper stared down at him, her expression curious, her frame rangy but her body hidden behind gear and rain-soaked clothes. Her hair was a forgettable brown that, plastered to her neck and side of her face by sweat and weather, probably looked darker than it was. Will couldn’t quite make out the curve of her cheek or the cut of her jaw beneath the grime she’d smeared across her face, but her eyes shone the same clear, deep blue of the steady waters of Lake Champlain.
He let go of a breath, loosened something taut and angry and helpless that had coiled tighter and tighter within him, and took his first real breath of freedom.
And because he’d stared too long and been struck dumb in a way he was not at all familiar with, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“Little short for a storm trooper, aren’t you?” He wheezed at her startled expression.
“I see captivity hasn’t improved your sense of humor.” Cooper huffed, sounding for all the world as if she’d trekked up half a mountain in search of enlightenment, but found the number for 1-900-Psychics instead. “But still, Star Wars? Either you’re feverish or worse, a nerd.”
“You got the reference,” he offered from the flat of his back.
She cocked her head to the side, a full smile gracing a mouth that had whispered everything from instructions to assurances, and later, when he was no longer in the field or under fire, that same mouth had gone quiet and stumbled right up to the edge of a moan as he’d made all sorts of illicit promises.
“Nice shots,” he grunted through the pain that seared his side as he sat up.
Amusement tugged at the side of her face, as if she’d decided to indulge in a joke she knew well, spoke often, and always enjoyed. “You can say it now—my balls are bigger than yours.”
Fearless (Somerton Security Book 3) Page 3