Chapter Twenty-Three
“Wake up, you little bitch.”
Paige fought through the blackness toward the soft, almost friendly voice uttering the vile insult in her ear.
Her head felt heavy and ready to explode.
The pain almost had her giving in to the darkness once more, just to escape the agony.
Her skin was tingling with a sense of danger that she didn’t understand.
When she tried to shift her position, her limbs wouldn’t cooperate.
A sharp pain set her shoulder on fire, and she gasped at the sudden throbbing.
Where am I? What happened?
Her mind refused to focus. Her eyes felt too heavy to open, so she took a mental inventory of her situation. Her wrists and ankles were bound, but she was sitting. The surface underneath her was hard and unforgiving. A floor, possibly? A chair?
Her mouth was dry, and her tongue felt fuzzy as if she’d spent the night drinking and woke with the worst hangover she’d ever felt in her life.
But she didn’t think that’s what happened.
And who was the guy? The gaps in her memory were wide, and she couldn’t concentrate enough to figure out how to bridge them.
“Wake up!” The voice was harsher and was followed by a slap across her cheek.
Paige’s gasp caught in her throat, and she coughed violently, moaning at the excruciating pain that wrecked her body.
“Open your eyes, or I’ll glue them open. Permanently.”
She shuddered, believing he meant what he said.
You can do this. The inner pep talk fell flat, but she somehow managed to pull her heavy lids open.
The man in front of her didn’t look familiar and wasn’t who she expected.
Instead of Darius Boyd, she saw an average-looking man in a custom-made suit with ice in his dark eyes.
“Finally. How are we feeling? Hmmm? No need to answer. I believe I can guess.” The man started pacing in front of her, moving in a methodical circle, his shiny black shoes tapping against the dingy hardwood floor.
“Your mouth feels dry like it’s stuffed with cotton.
Your neck feels too weak to support your head, but you need it to, since your head feels like it’s being squeezed in a vise.
You feel like you could fall asleep and never wake up, but you can’t let that happen, can you? ”
He stopped. Then his steps took him directly in front of her. To see his face would require lifting her head, which was an impossible feat in her state, so she stared at a button on his suit jacket.
“You’re trying to remember where you are and why you are here, but your brain won’t cooperate. In fact, you can barely remember your own name. Your wrists and your ankles feel sore and raw. Your eye feels swollen, your cheek smarts, and you feel ready to lose the last meal you ate. How did I do?”
His assessment was spot on, but she couldn’t force herself to admit it.
“Well, now that we’ve settled how you feel, let me enlighten you as to why.
You see, we have a mutual friend who has a keen interest in your welfare.
That is, he wants to see you suffer as much as possible.
He wants you to beg for your life and then beg for your death.
He’s been trying to find you for a very long time, but you have outsmarted him.
And me as well. You should feel proud. There aren’t many alive who can outsmart me. ”
The man paused, stared at her for a long moment, and then resumed his pacing.
“No, I don’t suppose you can feel much of anything at the moment except pain, confusion, and fear.
All justifiable emotions. Right now, you’re feeling the effects of the potent drug I gave you.
That was to subdue you for the car ride to our location and to keep you compliant while we wait for our… friend.”
“Do I…know you?” Paige’s voice sounded strange, like it belonged to someone else.
“Yes, we’ve met before, although some time has passed. The first time was at your home. The second time you were with those imbeciles who were trying to protect you.”
“You killed them. You tried to kill me.” Her words were slurred and garbled, but she was certain he understood her.
“Yes. You’re a more formidable opponent than I gave you credit for. I have to say, I’m sorry to see the chase end. To think, you were holed up in some backwater town all this time. For a stupid little girl, you covered your tracks well. Kudos to you.”
Snippets of memory flashed in her mind’s eye, but they weren’t enough for her to piece together and understand. Trying only made her head hurt more.
“You shouldn’t fight the effects of the drug. It will wear off soon enough, and then the fun can begin.”
“Who are you?”
His laugh was pure evil, ringing in her ears until she winced.
“My name is not important. Few people know it, and you won’t have time to use it.”
“I don’t…understand.” The room was spinning, and spots appeared in front of her eyes.
“You will. When our friend arrives.”
“So…tired.”
“Yes, I’m sure you are. You should probably get some sleep. That sounds good, don’t you think, Paige?”
She was already slipping into the bliss of unconsciousness.
She figured the man wouldn’t expect an answer anyway.
He seemed to already know what she was thinking and feeling without her saying a word.
Her head fell forward, and her eyes closed.
She drifted into slumber away from the pain and the torment of her situation.
The slap struck her with enough force to whip her head back and jerk her out of sleep. She moaned as her head fell forward, her neck no longer able to hold it up.
“You think I’m going to let you sleep, you little bitch?”
Paige jerked when the man shouted, and a moan slipped from her lips because of the ensuing pain. “Why…why…”
He gripped her chin and wrenched her head up at an unnatural angle. Beady eyes stared down at her in disgust.
“Why am I doing this to you? That’s a good question. And you’ll have an answer very soon.”
She whimpered when he released her. She needed to do something, but she couldn’t get her body or her mind to function through the fog she was in.
Tears welled in her eyes and spilled onto her cheeks.
Since her hands were bound, she couldn’t wipe the tears away, so she closed her eyes tightly to stave off the flow.
“I see you need some help staying awake. I happen to have something right here that can help with that.”
Something sharp pierced the skin of her bicep through her shirt and drew downward, leaving searing pain in its wake.
Paige cried out, using the last of her will to turn her head.
The cut was deep, the blood escaping in thick spurts.
The man thrust one more time before withdrawing the blade.
A gleam lit his eyes, and a smile curled his lips.
He was pleased, almost happy, with the injury he inflicted.
Paige felt her resolve strengthen even as her body grew weaker.
The man delighted in her pain and was just beginning his long torture of her.
She’d unwittingly given him what he wanted, and as impossible as it felt in her diminished state, she couldn’t show him how she suffered.
She couldn’t let him see the depth of her pain.
Of course, that was easier said than done, she thought before she fainted.
∞∞∞
“Talk to me, brother.”
Ben stayed silent. His brain had shut down to everything but the investigation.
It’s what he had to do. To open himself up to more meant he would lose his mind.
His Paige was in the hands of a murderer who promised to subject her to horrendous things because she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Despite their best efforts, Ben hadn’t protected her the way he promised.
If he allowed himself to contemplate the enormity of how much he let her down, he couldn’t function.
“Nothing to say,” Ben muttered, hoping Jackson would let the matter drop.
“I need to know where your head is at.”
Ben pierced his brother with a hard stare. “You know where my head is at. You’ve been here before.”
With the reminder of the time when Reagan and her mother, Traci, were kidnapped by someone obsessed with Traci, Jackson nodded. “It’s not the same situation.”
“Did you feel panic? Did you feel helpless? Did you wonder what the point of all those years of training and helping people was when you couldn’t help the one person who needs you the most?”
“Yes,” Jackson responded honestly.
Ben stood with his arms crossed over his chest, staring at the crime scene as if the missing piece that would lead them to Paige would jump out at him.
But nothing about the abandoned car or the gas station or the patrons that came and went revealed anything to him.
They had been without contact with Paige for going on an hour.
The transmitter in her earrings had gone offline soon after she was abducted, leaving them with no idea of how to continue.
“How did you deal?” Ben’s voice caught, and he pressed his lips tightly closed while he tried to get his emotions under control.
“Tell me about her.”
Ben glared. “Are you shitting me right now? Now’s not the time for a gossip session.”
“Fine. Then I’ll tell you. She’s a coward. It’s her own fault that she’s in this mess. She’s lucky she’s made it this long because she’s too stupid to know how to avoid trouble. She’s weak—”
Ben’s fist flew out at lightning speed, connecting with a satisfying crunch to Jackson’s jaw.
His brother’s head jerked to the side, and he backed up a couple of steps from the force of the blow.
Ben lunged at him, but Jackson caught his brother in a bear hug, trapping Ben’s arms at his side.
Then Jackson shoved Ben away, squaring off.
“That’s how I dealt. I focused on all the ways Reagan had it in her to survive.
That’s what you have to do too. Paige is strong, smart, and a complete wild card.
She hid from these people for over a year, not an easy task, but she did it.
She’ll hang on until we find her, and we’ll find her because that’s what we do.
So get your shit together, brother, or you’re benched. ”
“Like hell!” Ben thundered.
“There are three of us and one of you. If I decide to bench you, you’ll be benched.”
Jackson’s phone rang. He turned his back on a seething Ben to take the call.
“Gish.”
“Put it on speaker,” Ben ordered, struggling to get a hold on his anger.
English’s voice came through the phone’s speaker.
“I called a buddy of mine. Asked some questions about Boyd. His son is squeaky clean, but Darius is scum. He’s on the radar of every alphabet agency our government has, but his hands are clean.
My buddy says Darius has a partner who does his dirty work.
No one knows who he is or what he looks like. All they have is an alias. Mars.”
“Mars? Like the planet?” Jackson rolled his eyes.
“Like the Roman God of War from mythology,” Ben muttered.
“Word is the guy is deadly, but he doesn’t act without orders. Mars won’t make a move on Paige without Darius’ directive. Count on it.”
“Got it. Thanks, Gish.” Jackson started to end the call when English spoke again.
“Ben, you there?”
“Yeah, Gish.”
“Hang in there. We’ll get her back. They’ll pay for this.”
“Thanks, Gish.”
Easton came running out of the gas station where he was questioning the clerk and checking out the sorry excuse for security footage the station had. Ben stiffened, knowing from his brother’s sprint that he had news.
“Hey, Alex texted. Darius is on the move. Remi and Ridge are still tracking him, and he’s heading in this direction.”
Ben’s heart raced. “She’s still around here somewhere. She’s close by.”
Easton nodded. “That’s my guess. And I have a description.
The guy who took her showed up about fifteen minutes before Paige did.
He paid the clerk to shut off the security cameras.
The guy thought there was about to be a drug deal, so he took the money and shut down the cameras.
Then, to cover his own ass, he noted the guy’s description and the plate number on the car the guy was in.
The clerk didn’t see the abduction or which direction the guy went when he left because he didn’t want to be a witness to whatever was going down.
Cost me a hundred bucks, but the clerk gave me the intel he wrote down. ”
“So what now? We get Luke to hack into traffic cams and see if we can track the car?” Ben asked.
Jackson shrugged. “Where we are, I doubt we’ll find a lot of traffic cams to help us out.”
Easton grinned. “Nope, we have something better. We have Atlas with eyes in the sky. When Alex realized the Mississippi address was bogus, he knew they wouldn’t be able to reroute the plane quick enough to be useful to us.
So he had PJ and another operative rent a chopper and head this way.
Luke is coordinating with them to track the vehicle. ”
“So we wait,” Ben said, trying to tap down his frustration.
Waiting made him feel useless. He wanted to do something to find Paige. She was counting on him to follow through, and all he could do was twiddle his thumbs.
“No,” Jackson said. “We drive. We came north to this location. There’s nothing south of us except for commercial property.
He’s going to take Paige somewhere hidden, quiet, where they can’t be disturbed.
I checked out an aerial map. There are possibilities east and west of us, but if it were me, and I had torture in mind, I would head west. It’s more rural and isolated.
We start in that direction and close in when we narrow down the location. ”
“Let’s move,” Easton agreed and jogged over to their vehicle, where Luke was already waiting.
Jackson set out to follow, and Ben nudged him. “Hey, thanks.”
Jackson touched his jaw. “Don’t thank me yet. You got a pass until we find your girl. Then your ass is mine.”
Ben barked out a brief laugh. “You wish.”
Jackson cracked a smile. “Let’s go get your girl.”
“I love her, Jackson. She’s it for me, man.”
Jackson slapped a hand to Ben’s back. “I know. And she’s going to need you. She’s going to need all of us.”
“I just hope I get the chance to give her what she needs.”
“Don’t think like that. Think about all the things we’re going to do to Boyd and this Mars guy for messing with one of the Legends.”
Ben took a deep breath and released it. “Damn straight.”