Chapter 2
Sierra held her breath as she waited for Grover to answer.
She’d heard him moving around and wondered what he was doing.
It had been a few months since she’d had anyone else to talk to.
And while one part of her hated that her captors had taken someone else…
selfishly, she was damn relieved to have company.
Sierra had made the decision a long time ago to not let her captors break her spirit. And so far, they hadn’t. But throughout the long nights, in the darkness of the cave, loneliness ate at her. She was occasionally still scared…but thankfully, anger had overridden most of her fear months ago.
She knew Grover being there would make her life a living hell for a while. They’d use her to try to get information out of him. And if he ignored her warning, her pain would last much longer than it needed to.
The last contractor, a man named Guy, had begged them to stop beating her, which only made them continue gleefully.
They liked seeing Guy suffer. To be completely honest, Sierra knew her captors weren’t even hitting her as hard as they could.
When she’d first been taken, they’d really worked her over.
But now, she put on the best show she could, and it worked most of the time.
Their blows eased off and they only half-heartedly smacked her around.
They got off more on making the men they captured suffer.
“I’m fine,” Grover said. His voice was low and rumbly, and Sierra conjured the image of what he’d looked like the last time she’d seen him.
Dirty-blond hair—more on the darker side than actual blond—and warm brown eyes.
He was at least a foot taller than her…and when she’d glanced up at him, she’d had the odd feeling that he could slay all her demons.
Sierra still remembered how she’d felt as she’d written him the one and only letter she’d been able to send. Giddy, excited about getting to know him better. Which of course hadn’t happened.
And now he was here. Had actually gone and gotten himself captured on purpose in order to find her. Who did that?
Apparently badass special forces operatives, that’s who.
Sierra knew he was Delta. She hadn’t really understood what that meant until she’d done a bit of research after he’d left Afghanistan.
They were one of the most secretive branches of special forces.
There was a lot of speculation on what missions they’d participated in, but very little was concrete.
It struck her as funny at the time, because she never would’ve pegged Grover and his friends as being part of some kind of super-secret, elite military group—members of which she’d kind of assumed might be arrogant, macho jerks.
But they weren’t. The teammates she’d met were funny, friendly, obviously protective, but very down-to-earth.
“Talk to me, Sierra,” Grover said after the silence between them had stretched too long.
“About what?” she asked.
She thought she heard him huff out a breath. “Everything. Are you hurt? When my team shows up, can you run? It’s okay if you can’t, I can carry you. If I remember correctly, you’re no bigger than a bug.”
“A bug? Jeez, Grover. Kill a woman’s self-esteem, why don’t you?”
“Sorry. All I’m saying is that I remember you being slight.”
Slight. Sierra kind of liked that. She’d been called short, stubby, little…even midget. Slight sounded so much better than any of those. “I can run,” she told him confidently.
Grover didn’t respond for a moment. Then she heard him sigh.
“I can,” she insisted. “I don’t have any shoes though.”
“No worries on that. My guys’ll have a pair of boots for you.”
“They will? How do they even know I’m here?”
“Trust me, they know,” he told her.
“For that matter, I still can’t get over how you knew I’d be here,” she said.
“I didn’t really. But I had a feeling,” Grover said.
“A feeling? You know how crazy that sounds, right?” she asked wearily.
“Yeah, I do. But regardless, I couldn’t shake the feeling that you were still alive. And I was right.”
The last four words were said somewhat smugly, and Sierra could only shake her head. “Yeah, you were.”
“Right, so my team will find us, and they’ll have a change of clothes for you, and boots. Don’t sugarcoat it, though—can you really walk? And run?”
“Yes,” Sierra told him confidently.
“Damn…I wish I could see you.”
Sierra’s confidence took a nosedive. She ran a hand over her head self-consciously.
She knew she looked rough, even without access to a mirror.
She’d lost a lot of weight over the long months and hadn’t had a proper shower since she’d been taken from her tent on the base.
Being hosed down didn’t count, even though the water always felt so damn good.
“It’s probably better you can’t,” she replied.
“Sierra?” Grover asked.
“Yeah?” she whispered.
“The fact that you’re not dead is a miracle.
A fucking miracle. I don’t expect you to look like you walked out of a damn salon.
You’ve been through hell, yet you’ve come out the other side.
I couldn’t give one single fuck what you look like.
You’re here, alive, and from what I’m hearing, it sounds as if you’ve done a damn fine job of staying sane.
I’m gonna get you out of here. So help me God, I am. ”
Sierra felt a tickle in the back of her throat.
She wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come.
She could only cry on demand when trying to manipulate her captors.
They’d already taken all her real tears from her.
Possibly forever. “Maybe I’ll be the one to get you out of here,” she quipped after a moment.
“Deal,” he said without hesitation. “I’ll let you rescue me then.”
“I’m sure your badass Delta team would love that. They’d never let you live it down.”
“Actually, they would love that,” Grover told her. “They’re probably all super pissed at me right about now, for letting myself get taken.”
“I still don’t understand that,” Sierra said. “How did you manage it, anyway?”
“It was surprisingly easy,” Grover answered.
Sitting in the dark, listening to his deep, quiet voice, was literally the best thing that had happened to her in the last year.
Sierra had talked with the other prisoners who’d been brought in, of course, but it was often one-sided.
They were desperate to ask her questions.
Where were they? What did their captors want?
What were they going to do to them? No one had been as seemingly relaxed as Grover, that was for sure.
And no one had sounded as confident, either.
Granted, he was a special forces soldier, and the other men had been civilians, but still.
“When I got to the base, I spread word pretty quickly that I thought the stories about people being kidnapped was all bullshit. I pretended to get drunk the first two nights, said a lot of ridiculous shit about how dumb the locals were, how they’d never be able to just take someone from base without others knowing.
I generally acted like an asshole, making sure to offend pretty much everyone on the base, from the lowest-ranking privates to the general himself.
Then I went outside the gates the next two nights, doing the same thing.
Finding men who spoke English and insulting everyone and everything—from the country to the US military to the terrorists, every-fucking-body.
“On the third night in town, I pretended to be drunk off my ass and I accepted a ride from a local. He was supposed to take me back to base, but just as I’d hoped, that wasn’t his destination.”
Sierra listened with equal parts awe and horror. “Won’t all of that hurt your reputation? Will you get in trouble with the Army?”
“I don’t fucking care,” Grover said heatedly. “No one else was doing shit to look into the disappearances. As if they didn’t care, or weren’t concerned about a bunch of contractors.”
Sierra swallowed hard. “I was sleeping,” she told him. “I didn’t hear the men come into my tent, and they had a hand over my mouth before I even woke up. They forced a backpack onto my back and told me it was a bomb. Said they’d blow up the entire base if I didn’t come with them quietly. So I did.”
“Fuckers.”
The word was quiet, but Sierra still heard it.
“They brought me to a house in town and told me I was taken because Shahzada’s men needed to practice their torture techniques.
The first couple of months were…bad,” Sierra said, drastically downplaying the pain she’d experienced those first few months.
“They packed all my stuff from the base to make it look like I was a deserter. They knew what they were doing. Apparently, you were right. No one cared too much about a few civilians disappearing. If it had been soldiers, I’m sure the US would’ve made a huge deal out of it. ”
“I cared,” Grover said softly.
Sierra swallowed hard. “I lost track of the days, and eventually…I think it just got old messing with me, and they kept me around. It wasn’t that anyone had a problem killing a female, but more like they thought the opportunity might arise when they could use me for leverage or something.
And they have, more than once. Still…I’ve been lucky. ”
Instead of snorting in disbelief, as she might’ve expected him to, Grover agreed. “Yes, you have.”
Sierra knew a lot of people would think she was insane for believing she was lucky after everything she’d been through. But she was alive, and the other contractors who’d been taken weren’t. As long as she had breath in her body, she would fight to live.
She had to change the subject or risk getting depressed. “How will your team know where to look for you?”
“They’re the best at what they do. They’ll find us.”