Zain (Chosen Few #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

Z ain should’ve been startled by the crack of bullets. But that sound hadn’t rattled him in a long, long time.

Nothing did anymore.

Not bombs shaking the ground. Not missiles decimating buildings. Not even the screams—holy fuck, the screams. He liked those the least. But they didn’t scare him.

The April night air froze his exposed skin, but he didn’t cover his face with the wool shawl draped over his shoulders. He welcomed the cold. The crisp air allowed more oxygen into his lungs and gave him clarity he didn’t have with all the noise and Pashto in his ear all day. He spoke the language fluently because he rarely got the opportunity to speak English anymore.

The desert nights were the only thing he enjoyed—though enjoyed might be too strong a word. The chilly temperature matched his stone-cold insides .

He’d become desensitized. Didn’t know anything but blood, gunshots, and shady motherfuckers he couldn’t trust. At one point, he’d just wanted to survive. Now, every throb of his pulse demanded revenge.

He wanted to kill the ones causing the suffering. And he would if he didn’t die first. Death wouldn’t be such a bad thing, though. What the hell did he live for anyway? Nothing important. Nothing he could remember. And if he stayed in this fucked-up camp with its cave of prisoners and cruelty, he’d turn into one of them.

A howl sounded from the depths of the cave at his back. Zain closed his eyes as the keening turned to guttural cries.

Crack!

The gunshot echoed off the stone walls, so damn loud Zain tipped his head to his shoulder. The hysterical shouts stopped.

Emotion evaded him. Compassion and empathy were gone. In truth, he’d already started to morph into one of them.

Like a vampire’s bitten victim, Zain was on the cusp. The poison had already entered his veins. Now he waited with bated breath to become what he despised most. Every day he grew more indifferent. Every minute he lost more of his ability to give a fuck. And every second he forgot more and more about the man he once was.

All he was . . . was this .

Hollow.

Zain ran his hand over his beard. Even the desire to trim the scraggly strands was gone. As fucked up as it was, he accepted this reality. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t been killed yet. Tilting back his head, he gazed up at the stars.

Christ, the sky was brilliant out here. No light pollution in the mountains of Afghanistan. Looking up at the stars almost convinced him there was more to the world than terrorism.

No, probably not.

Just another illusion.

Picking up his gun, he went back into the moist-smelling cave. He couldn’t let himself remember the good.

Not when darkness had become his only ally.

***

“You don’t have to do this,” Dana said softly into the phone. She glanced at the clock on her nightstand. If she wanted to catch her flight to Pakistan, she needed to leave now and not give her travel companion any way out.

Not that she wanted to leave Brick without options, but truth be told, she couldn’t make this trip alone. From the moment she’d heard about Rami’s missing brother, she’d been riveted.

A Green Beret soldier missing in action wasn’t exactly something you forgot about. He’d been gone almost three years, supposedly kidnapped while on a mission in Afghanistan. Dana had been given a photo of Zain taken six months after his supposed capture, and, well, she hadn’t been able to stop looking.

That was four months ago. She’d spent countless hours scouring every piece of surveillance data she could get her hands on. Thankfully, she still had contacts from her previous job as an FBI intelligence analyst.

So now, here she was, doomed to traipse into dangerous territory for a man she’d never met—a man who was probably dead or at the very least had been tortured for nearly three years. And she thought she could find him.

If that wasn’t a toxic trait, she didn’t know what was. It had the whole I can fix him vibe. Lord help her.

Brick Slater scoffed through the speaker. “Is that why you called? Look, you and I both know I do have to do this. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to. Believe it or not, I miss living on the edge. I need an adrenaline rush.”

“Rami will be pissed,” she said.

Rami would go to the ends of the earth to find his brother, but she couldn’t pass on the tip she’d been given. One, she didn’t have enough proof Zain was alive. Two, Rami had a whole life now with Ivy Hastings, and not only was he ridiculously in love, but he also had a company to run with his business partner. Jetting off to Afghanistan on a whim could chew up weeks or months, and it could all be for nothing if she didn’t get more intel.

Besides the single profile picture that matched Zain’s in a facial-recognition search, there was only one other clue she’d found that had prompted her to book a flight to Peshawar, Pakistan, and rope Brick into the shenanigans too.

“I think he’ll get over being shorthanded if we come back with his missing brother,” Brick said dryly. “Not to mention I was just on a job in Canada for the last five weeks. I’m on vacation for the next two.”

Dana grabbed her favorite hoodie and pulled it over her head. Once they got closer to their destination, she’d purchase proper attire for Afghanistan.

“Uber’s here,” Brick said. “I’ll be there in fifteen. You sure you want to go through with this? You know as well as I do Afghanistan is the least safe place for a woman.”

For a flicker of an instant, Brick’s words threatened to steal the confidence that had rooted itself in her gut the moment she’d made up her mind to find Zain. Yes, this mission was perilous. She was at a great disadvantage as a woman, but with Brick as her companion, she wouldn’t draw as much unwanted attention.

Not until she got close to Jaysh, the terrorist group they believed held Zain.

“I’m sure.” Her voice wavered, though. “Maybe I’m as twisted as you. This desk job is killing me.”

Brick barked out a laugh. “Suit yourself, Mrs. Slater.”

She chuckled. Having an alias was one thing, but pretending to be married to Brick was another. In Afghanistan, traveling without a man was largely frowned upon. They needed to have the same last name on their passports to prove their fake marriage, and Brick had borrowed a slim wedding band from his mother and one from his father as well.

“I’ll meet you downstairs.” She disconnected and stared at her small carry-on bag. She was traipsing across the globe to the most dangerous country in the world with only the necessities. There was no point checking a larger bag as they’d need to get to Zain and get out as quickly as possible.

She dropped back her head and stared at the ceiling. If Brick hadn’t seen the same evidence she had, she’d have thought she was losing her mind. But it was unlikely they’d both gone insane.

She barely knew Brick. He’d been away on a lot of jobs since she started at Backcountry Protection Services. But if her brother and the other guys trusted him, that was good enough for her. Rami and Toth had chosen only the strongest ex-military guys they knew to work for their bodyguard security company .

After snagging her bag, she walked through her apartment and made sure the appliances were unplugged and everything was as it should be.

In case she didn’t return.

Her stomach churned at the thought of her mom, her dad, and her brother, Taschen, having to go through her belongings and deal with her death. Taschen had been fighting overseas when she was with the FBI. Her parents had aged drastically during those years, and now that both their children were safe and no longer putting their lives at risk, they were happy.

But she couldn’t stifle the need to help people. If Zain was alive, she’d find him. And if he was dead, she’d do her damn best to find that out. Because no one deserved to go their whole lives not knowing if their child or sibling was suffering.

She locked her apartment door and moved quickly to the elevator. A familiar sense of urgency washed over her. She’d been a field agent for only three of the six years she’d been with the bureau. The other three, she’d been an analyst and loved it. She was good at tracking data. Good at finding inconsistencies and consistencies and seeing outside of the box.

But part of her had missed carrying a gun. Missed the adrenaline and the rush.

Well, she was back at it.

And her mom was gonna kill her.