Chapter 1
Zane
Two Months Ago. Dark site. France.
A meaty fist slams into my face and pain radiates through my jaw, spreading up into my head and down my neck. It’s a dull pain, not sharp or stinging anymore thanks to the dozens of times I was hit before I lost count.
I spit blood to the side and grin up at the man standing above me. His face is shielded by a mask but I can feel the anger radiating off of him. “Hey now, that one didn’t hurt as bad. Are you going soft on me, Killer?” I ask, doing my best to keep my tone level.
It’s not fear that has me wavering. No, I ran out of fear a long time ago. This is pure exhaustion, dehydration, and the fact that I haven’t eaten anything in at least twenty-four hours.
Then again, if he keeps this up I’ll likely never eat anything solid again.
The man rears his fist back again—
“Wait! I’ll talk!” Sawyer Maddox, a member of my team, calls out from across the room.
Like me and the other captured member of my team, Ryker Granger, his hands and feet are bound to a metal chair.
He’s sitting at the edge of the blacked-out basement, his face bloodied and swollen just like the rest of ours.
Though Killer, here, has definitely taken a liking to messing up my face over theirs.
“Keep your mouth closed,” Ryker growls. He’s the largest of all of us, built like an actual tank, and currently being held to his chair with chains since he managed to snap the ropes they’d bound him with the first time.
If he weren’t on my side? Then I might be slightly intimidated. But scared? Nah. Because I know I have God with me and with Him at my side, what should I fear?
Death can do nothing to me since I put my faith in Jesus Christ.
“No,” Sawyer snaps. “You might be okay with them using Cap’s face as a punching bag, but I’m not, okay?” He feigns tortured emotion and closes his eyes.
I grin because I know what’s coming. I’ve seen Sawyer stare down the barrel of a rifle with a smile on his face. There’s no way he’ll bow down now.
But they don’t know that. And the nature of the game? Delay until the calvary shows up.
“Talk,” the man wearing my blood like gloves orders, his finger pointed directly at Sawyer.
“Okay.” Sawyer takes a deep breath. “It was me,” he says.
“I’m the one who took your sister out last night.
Listen, I know we stayed out late, but it was all honorable.
You have my word. I didn’t even—” Sawyer’s words are cut off when Killer charges across the small room and slams his fist into his face.
“I told you to keep your mouth closed,” Ryker says, chuckling.
Sawyer laughs and spits his blood to the concrete floor. “Yeah but then I would have missed out on that sweet little love tap.” I’m pretty sure he winks, but with one eye completely swollen closed, it’s also possible he was just blinking.
“Look, how about a little quid pro quo?” I ask. “You answer my questions, and I’ll answer yours.”
“Do you think that’s how this works?” Killer snarls and turns back toward me. Reaching down into his boot he straightens and withdraws a blade nearly as long as my forearm.
Okay, maybe things are getting a bit more heated now.
Lord, please be with us here in this room.
If it is Your will, please let us walk out of this.
Amen. As I pray, peace washes over me. Death doesn’t scare me.
It never has. Maybe that’s why I’m as good at this as I am?
Because I know that no matter what happens to me here, I’m going somewhere better.
Both Sawyer and Ryker have gone completely silent, their serious gazes trained intently on the man in front of me.
So far, he’s the only one in this room, though I know there are plenty more above ground.
We saw them firsthand when we infiltrated this place looking for the missing teenage daughter of a French diplomat yesterday.
Unfortunately, the intel we were given was flawed and there were far more guns within the walls than we anticipated. Hence the whole being tied to a chair thing. It’s also what’s kept the calvary so long. Dealing with that many opposing forces takes planning and precision.
The man closes the distance between us and presses the cold blade against my cheek. “How about I start removing things and we see just how brave you are then?” he questions, dragging the blade up toward my ear.
Come on, Demo. Bring the rain.
Even as I think the thought, a roaring explosion rocks the very ground we’re sitting on. Overhead, the ceiling opens and rubble rains down on top of us. Chunks of the ceiling slam into me and pain radiates through my head.
But it can’t steal the joy in my heart because this is about to be nice and wrapped up in a tight little bow.
My attacker leaps backward, and I use his momentary distraction to lean down and slice the ropes at my ankles, utilizing the handy blade I’d managed to keep hidden in the hem of my sleeve.
I’d managed to cut my arms free at least an hour ago, which made taking those hits even more difficult.
But making a move before I knew it was clear upstairs could have led to my taking something a lot more permanent than a punch.
I kick the knife away from him and flip him over, pressing my knee to his back as dust fills my lungs.
I cover my mouth and nose with one arm and cough, hoping to get as much of it out as I can while the air continues to clear.
“You guys miss me?” Garrison Holt calls down with a sly smile on his face, a detonator in his hand.
“Took you long enough,” Sawyer calls back as he stands and stretches.
“Sorry, Cowboy and I had our hands full up here. You guys couldn’t have handled at least a few of them for us?” he jokes as he tosses a ladder down into the pit. “How long did it take you to break through those ropes?” he asks.
“Not long,” Sawyer calls out. “Less time than Tank here—” he turns toward Ryker who is still sitting in his chair, chains around him. “Oh, sorry big guy. Forgot you were in chains.”
“You let Sawyer beat you, Tank?” Garrison asks.
“Hardly. They just caught me first.”
“That’s because you used your brute strength to break out while Cap and I used sleuthing skills.” Sawyer continues to work on Ryker’s bindings so I shift my attention back to the man pinned beneath me.
“Where is the girl, Killer?” I demand, grabbing a handful of his hair with one hand and pressing my own blade against his throat. I won’t actually kill him—not when the active threat is over—but he doesn’t know that.
Besides, there are plenty of ways to make someone talk without threatening their life.
“You’ll never make it out of here alive,” he growls.
“You seriously underestimate our resourcefulness,” Sawyer calls out.
Ryker eats up the ground between where he’d been chained and where I’m kneeling, so I straighten and flip the guy over onto his back. I remove Killer’s mask, revealing a glorified sorority boy in way over his head. Apparently the government is recruiting straight out of college these days.
“If you don’t tell me, I’m going to let Tank here treat you like a chew toy,” I warn him.
In pure Ryker fashion, he growls and sorority boy’s eyes widen almost comically.
“She’s upstairs. Top floor,” he sings like a canary. Beautiful.
“Great. Demo, care to do the honors?”
“Absolutely.”
“Smile,” I say as I hold his face up in front of mine so Garrison can snap a photo. Then, I throw him to the side. “Stay and be a good boy. We have someone coming to collect you. If you run, we’ll find you. We love playing hide and seek. Don’t we, Tank?”
“My favorite,” he replies, then rears back and slams his fist into sorority boy’s face. He falls back, unconscious and Ryker turns toward the ladder. “Just making sure he doesn’t run,” he adds when I shake my head at him.
Ryker is the first up the ladder, then Sawyer, then me. As I reach the top, Garrison pulls up the ladder. Rubble blocked the only door in or out, so without the ladder, he’ll have an interesting time trying to escape.
There are at least half a dozen men on the ground, scattered throughout what used to be a foyer.
Given the bullet holes in the glass and the blood spatter on the floor, I know this was Cowboy’s doing.
With how fast he is, he likely took the last one down before any of them even realized what was going on.
The death makes my stomach churn, but sometimes there is no other way. And in this war? It’s us or them. With a teenage girl added to the death toll should we fail.
Reaching down on the floor, I lift a discarded weapon, then check it for ammunition. Since they relieved us of our weapons when they grabbed us, both Sawyer and Ryker do the same as me, arming themselves with whatever they can find.
“You know there was a door,” Sawyer tells Garrison. “You didn’t have to blow a hole in the place.”
Garrison shrugs. “It would have taken too long to find it. Besides, then I wouldn’t have had the amazing entrance I got.”
“Yeah, well let’s hope they didn’t hear the explosion and kill the girl.
” I start toward the stairs. “Cowboy, do you read?” I ask, through the earpiece our lovely hosts didn’t check for when they searched us.
Lungs still burning from the rubble, I cough.
As is protocol, we’d gone radio silent the moment the three of us were abducted.
“Loud and clear, Cap,” Weston Hayes, my oldest friend, replies.
After the last few hours, his smooth southern drawl is a welcome sound.
I’m far from being the rank of Captain—especially since I technically no longer serve in the Navy—but it’s a nickname that’s been with me for nearly a decade.
“Things are quiet out here. I took out the two guards at the top of the stairs. You should be clear going up, but I can’t get a visual on the girl. All the windows are closed up.”