Chapter 28
Saoirse
They had me.
The thought slammed through my head in time with every brutal jerk of my body, as two of them dragged me through the camp, my boots barely catching purchase on the uneven ground.
My wrists were ziptied behind my back, plastic digging hard enough into my skin that it would leave marks—if I got out of this.
When .
When I got out of this.
The camp blurred past, shapes of muted tents and dark vehicles, flashes of motion at the edge of the gloom.
There weren’t many people awake. A handful of men at the perimeter, another few tending the dying embers of a fire.
Most were asleep, oblivious to the fact that their precious compound had been infiltrated tonight.
And I’d been caught because I’d been so focused on the tent where Finn had disappeared that I hadn’t been looking for someone to step away to take a piss.
The knot in my chest pulled tighter, hard and mean, until I couldn’t breathe past it.
I stumbled over a half-buried root, and one of the guards cursed, yanking me up by the arm hard enough to make my shoulder shriek.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek so sharply I tasted blood, desperate not to make a sound.
Because if I gave them that—if I gave them anything—it would be like admitting this was real.
Fear wasn’t a thing in the distance anymore. It was inside me, in my blood, thick and choking. It pressed against my ribs with every step, every shove. Not only fear for myself. For Finn and Ajax, still out there somewhere, and Isla locked away God knew where.
I couldn’t lose them.
I kept my head down. One foot in front of the other. Pretend you’re nothing. Pretend you’re already dead. Keep up the charade, survive long enough. Long enough for Finn to find me.
They hauled me across a narrow clearing, flashlights bobbing erratically as they moved.
The air smelled of wood smoke and something sharper.
Gun oil, maybe. We stopped outside a larger tent with a small lamp glowing low inside.
One of the guards shoved the flap aside and pushed me through without ceremony.
Inside, a man hunched over a battered folding table, the surface littered with topographical maps, a few radios, a dented thermos.
He didn’t look up right away. Instead, he dragged a finger along a contour line, muttering under his breath like none of this was more than a mild inconvenience.
When he finally turned toward us, his face was unremarkable. Weathered, flat, utterly forgettable. Exactly the kind of man you’d never notice standing behind a trigger. His gaze skimmed over me like I was barely worth cataloging. A flick. A dismissal. Not a threat. Not even a problem yet.
“Put her with the other one. We’ll sort them both out tomorrow.”
The words hit harder than the shove that followed.
The other one.
A jolt of breathless, awful hope snapped through my chest. They wouldn’t say it like that unless Isla was still alive.
For a few moments, sweet relief cut through the fear.
If she was alive, there was still hope. A slim one, given this rescue mission for one had turned into two.
But so long as Finn was still out there, we stood a chance.
I staggered as they yanked me back into the night, heart hammering so hard it hurt as they marched me toward whatever cage they’d built.
They dragged me across uneven ground, my boots slipping in the mud, flashlight beams slicing wildly through the misty dark.
I stumbled twice, earning sharp jerks on my arms that set my shoulders screaming.
Ahead, a smaller tent was tucked away from the others. Nothing here was cheap or poor quality, but this one seemed a little dingier than the others. As if they’d had to dig it out of storage or something.
One of the guards yanked it open with a rough hand. “In,” he snapped.
I didn’t get a choice. A hard shove sent me sprawling forward, knees slamming into packed earth. The smell inside hit me first—damp canvas, stale sweat, fear ground into the dirt.
I caught myself before my face hit the ground, gasping through gritted teeth.
A soft click, and one of them shoved a narrow-beamed flashlight between his teeth, casting a wobbly cone of light through the gloom.
Rough hands grabbed me under the arms, hauling me up.
I struggled on instinct, but it didn’t matter.
I was no match for them, even if my hands hadn’t been bound.
They shoved me backward until my spine hit something solid and unyielding—a thick central pole that supported the tent.
The man with the light barked something low I couldn’t make out. Another guard circled behind me, dragging coarse rope around my torso, binding me to the post without even bothering to remove the zipties cutting into my wrists. The rope was rough, scratchy, biting into my jacket and skin.
I could shift, lean a little, maybe slide my weight, but that was it. No real movement. No escape.
Hearing a noise, I twisted my head as far as I could, straining to see behind me.
Past the wobble of the flashlight, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a figure lashed to the opposite side of the same pole.
Slumped. Small. Bound at wrists and ankles, head drooped forward like a broken doll.
Isla.
It was her.
A fierce, shuddering relief and a sick, helpless fear crashed into each other inside me. She was alive, but barely, from the look of it.
I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood, forcing myself not to call out.
Not to say her name. Not to give them anything.
I kept my head down, breathing shallow, pretending to be cowed and beaten.
Across the pole, Isla shifted minutely. I couldn’t see her face.
Couldn’t tell if she even knew someone else was here.
The guards muttered between themselves, a few words I couldn’t catch. Then, without ceremony, they left, zippering the flap behind them, the flashlight beam bobbing away into the dark. Leaving us alone, tethered together. Waiting.
The silence in the tent was thick enough to suffocate. I sat rigid against the rough pole at my back, wrists aching where the zipties bit deep, rope digging into my ribs with every shallow breath.
Then, barely audible, a rasp, raw with fear and exhaustion. “Who… Who’s there?”
The sound cracked straight through me. My heart slammed against my ribs hard enough to hurt, and for a second, I couldn’t find my voice at all. I forced air into my lungs, swallowing the knot that had risen into my throat.
“It’s me.” The words scraped out rough and low. “It’s Saoirse.”
For a heartbeat, nothing. Then I heard it—a tiny, broken gasp, half sob, half disbelief—and my chest caved in like someone had plowed a fist through it.
There was a shift of movement behind me as she struggled to turn toward me. I twisted too, feeling the rough burn of rope against my skin, desperate to simply see her.
In the faint spill of light still leaking through the slightly unzipped tent flap, I caught the barest glimpse of the huddled shape lashed to the opposite side of the pole, hair dark and tangled, chin tucked tight against her chest.
Alive. Hurt. Bound. But alive.
I wanted to laugh and cry all at once, but I locked it down. Clamped my teeth against the well of emotion rising too fast, too fierce to manage right now. Instead, I leaned my head back against the pole—because I couldn’t reach her—and forced my voice to steady.
“Well,” I said, pitching it light, almost teasing, the way I used to when she’d stress about exams or broken gear, “this is a hell of a reunion spot. Five stars for ambience.”
Across the shadows, I heard a breathless, broken sound on the trembling edge of a laugh.
“You’re real,” she whispered.
“Real enough to bitch about the accommodations,” I murmured back, throat aching from the effort of keeping it light.
Suddenly, I better understood why Finn was always the one cracking jokes. This faint moment of levity kept me from being crushed beneath the weight of the situation.
There was a rustle. The sound of Isla shifting against her restraints. “How?” she rasped. “How the hell are you even here?”
I swallowed against the knot in my throat. “Long story,” I whispered back. “Short version: We figured out something was wrong. I came looking.”
A beat of silence. Then, sharper, “We?”
I huffed out a breath that was almost a laugh because I knew how she was going to react to this. “Me. And Finn.”
There was a pause long enough that I could almost hear Isla’s brain grinding through the implications. The rough sound was closer to a laugh this time. “So I was right. You don’t hate him.”
I let my head fall back against the rough pole behind me, squeezing my eyes shut. “Shut up,” I muttered, but there was no heat in it. Only a brittle, aching relief. “He was the most qualified to help me find you.”
Another breath, rasping through the dark. Then a low tease, “Uh huh. And did this two-person rescue crew involve an only-one-tent situation?”
My silence was answer enough.
Another low, ragged laugh sounded behind me.
I shifted against the rope digging into my arms. “He’s good. He’s why I made it this far.” There was no exaggeration, no defensiveness, only utter truth in my voice.
Silence stretched between us again, thicker this time, weighted with everything neither of us could say aloud.
The dirt was cold beneath me, the chill seeping through the thin layer of fabric. The rope bit into my arms every time I shifted. My fingers were already going numb from the angle they’d bound me at.
But none of it mattered.
Because he was out there.
I closed my eyes and whispered it like a prayer into the dark. “Finn’s coming. He’ll find us.”
Behind me, Isla let out a shaky breath. Part trust, part terror. I could feel it like a live wire between us.
And I clung to that one small, blinding truth:
Finn would move heaven and earth to get us out.