Savage Escape (Savage Security #1)

Chapter 1

1

CADEN

C aden had been caught and tortured a fair amount of times in her long and colorful career. Which maybe wasn’t saying too much for her reputation, but there it was.

Her job was a dangerous one.

Smarter and faster were basic requirements for a Retrieval Specialist (which was really just a polite way of saying Mercenary or Hitter). Should she prove to be slower and dumber, then there were only two scenarios that started differently but but always ended the same. Gunned down then and there was scenario number one. Number two was captured to be tortured later.

Both scenarios ended with death.

Well, no, torture done right ended in death, whereas sloppy torture ended, at least for Caden, in haughty derision and escape.

But slipshod torture methods and the idiot thugs who implemented them were the only reason Caden Quinn was alive and kicking.

Erratically kicking anyway, seeing as how the side effects of electricity ripping through her body had yet to wear off.

Aside from her current circumstances, Caden Quinn loved her job.

It came with all kinds of perks. Like getting to hit assholes—which, let’s be honest here, was always fun. The manhandling and stealing of incredibly old and priceless artifacts was another big perk. How many other people in the world could say they’d successfully nicked and sold the jeweled Lion of Gilgamesh?

The answer was eight. Only eight in the six hundred and seventy-sixty years after it had been cast off the mold, gifted to the visiting king, and then lost to the sands of time. And Caden was proud of the fact that she counted among that eight. Then there was that thrilling and utterly satisfying sensation that came hand in hand with outwitting a competent opponent. Above all else, Caden rather liked the nanny-nanny-boo-boo moment that sung in her mind when she flattened some meathead or slipped safely through a laser grid.

Unfortunately, there were just as many downfalls, which was perhaps why it was so very thrilling for her. Torture and death were standard in her line of work; being the one on the rack or the one to pull the trigger, it was the job. And Caden had been on both sides of the rack; she was no stranger to torture.

She’d been drowned, or close enough to it a couple dozen times. A copout method and also not as effective as one would think. And really, how many times could a thug dunk and hold a captive underwater before they realize it’s not working? Fourteen times by Caden’s count. Though admittedly she had blacked out for a few minutes, so give or take a couple of dunks. Some people were just thick.

Beat bloody—a waste of time for all involved, really. Seeing as how the big part of her job was being able to take a hit. That, added to the fact that she’d been taking hits since day one, made it all the more redundant. Being cut and having her bones broken fell under that same umbrella.

Foot whipping had been something new and painful as fuck. It had taken weeks to heal and even now the bottoms of her feet were nothing but white lines and slightly raised scars. She’d been burned—annoying was all that was—and starved which, in her opinion, was the worst kind of torture.

And now Caden could add electric shock to the wide variety of torture techniques she’d successfully endured and survived.

And holy-fucking-Christ-on-a-Jesus-fucking-popsicle-stick, electrocution was a whole different kind of hurt.

There were no cuts or bruises or blood. Sure, there were little red welts where the nodes had been, but that was the only external marks. Internally, it was ten shades of fucked up—fucked over—fucked sideways—there wasn’t a proper metaphor to explain the horrible tremors and electric hands still ripping through her muscles. She felt like the Christmas fucking turkey and probably smelled like melting flesh.

It had been thirty minutes since they’d taken her off the rack and tossed her back in her cell (if her heartbeats were any kind of accurate measurement of time; they usually were) and her limbs were still spasming. Her muscles were weak, too weak to even push her body into a sitting position. The lava in her veins and roaring in her ears were making it hard to hear the movements of her cell buddy.

But that became a misplaced concern when she spotted his hulking figure towering over her. Bald head smudged with dirt and blood. The seventeen-day-old beard caked with the results of messy torture and living in a ten by ten cell with no plumbing or mattress. She couldn’t hear the words he was saying, but if she was any judge of eyebrow positioning and ill-intentioned eyes, and Caden liked to think she was, then he was saying something threatening and probably insulting.

He’d been in residence before she’d checked in. He was American; accent and clothes were evidence of that. Big, beefy, and not exactly the sharpest cookie in the barrel. Mouth breather. Favored his right hand. Slept only when he thought she was. Smelled like shit. And that pretty much summed up all she knew about him.

As a general rule, Caden didn’t make conversation or forge bonds with fellow prisoners. Leverage wasn’t something she liked to hand to her enemies. That and most of her fellow prisoners were people just like her. They were people who deserved the methodical torture and less-than-stellar living conditions.

And well, he was making her point for her, seeing as how he was taking out his dick. And since Caden knew he wasn’t getting it out just to get her critiques, which were numerous should he actually inquire, then she was fairly certain he was planning on raping her.

A last meal kinda thing, Caden figured.

Fucker.

Over her dead goddamn body—which probably was gonna be the case, seeing as how she had about as many fearsome ninja skills at the moment as a cadaver.

Voice: shot. Who would come running to help her anyway, Santa Claus?

Hearing: impaired. Not a real problem.

Sight: fuzzy and swimming with little dots. Laser vision would be so handy.

Muscles: still spasming and day-old-kitten weak. Fucking shit.

Weapons: nil. Her sharp wit and deadly good looks would be of no use in this situation.

Baldy was on her like a bag of bricks. Hands and tongue everywhere. Trying to pull off her clothes at the same time he was trying to grope all the good bits—counterproductive, really.

Caden fought the urge to insult him and his mother in all the languages she knew, but only because her voice box was shot from all the torture-induced screaming. So instead, the Hitter willed her arms and the trembling digits connected to them to obey and focused on first locating that loose bit of stone on her right and then gripping it.

Her shirt and bra were ripped to hell by the time she got the rock in her hand. Cold hands were bruising and rough. Controlled rage helped to still her spasming muscles. Now all she had to do was wait for an opening.

One good jab to the neck and he’d bleed out.

And there went the remainder of her shirt and bra.

Bashed in the temple would send him to hell flat out.

He was alternating between rubbing himself and pawing at her naked torso.

His own nose stabbing into his brain would be instant and not near as painful as she’d like.

He was concentrated on her jeans now, trying to find the button and zipper under all the mud and blood. Then he was wrenching them down. Smirking like a bastard, he moved to pull at her breasts again.

Brachial artery it was.

Caden steeled her muscles, shot her arm forward as his arm moved within reach, and slashed with all her strength.

For a second he faltered, blinked in surprise, and then smirked before he went back to bruising her boobs. A thread of fear started pulsing in her mind. She’d missed it. She was going to get raped by this scum-fuck and could do nothing about it but continue to convulse. But then his eyes got wide. That fearful, oh-fuck-I’m-wounded wide and he was scrambling to stop the flow of blood. Caden let her arm fall back and chose to ignore the fact that he was bleeding out on top of her. She had won, and he was dead or getting close to it anyhow.

Losing six liters of blood a minute was not conducive to staying alive. The scumbag would be dead in a matter of seconds.

Caden watched as horror morphed his features. He knew he was dead.

Then the rage—the rage at her being the one to kill him had him lunging for her head. His fist connected with her jaw, but the blood loss coupled with weeks of torture and malnutrition softened the blow.

Panic sank in as he forgot about her and remembered that he was alive and why exactly he liked that state of being.

Four heartbeats later, he slumped.

Two more heartbeats and he was dead weight on top of her.

Dead.

Eyes glazed.

Still pumping out what little was left in his veins.

Fucker.