Authors: Lindsay Cross
“Just got a call from Delta Force, they'll be here in the next hour. Their team leader, Ghost, has some new intel he wants to show us.” Ethan pulled the Humvee to a stop at the end of Mississippi Street. They’d named the routes and streets around Shorawak, a medium sized town near the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, according to states. Mississippi was one of the safer streets to patrol, and one that they hadn’t covered yet in their door to door search for Caroline and Celine.
“OK,” Aaron said and got out of the Humvee, heading to the first door on the street. He banged hard, waited a sec and knocked again. A man answered, his gaunt face haggard with deprivation and dirt. Aaron held up the headshots of the girls. “You see them?”
“No.” The man slammed the door in his face and Aaron forced himself to back up a step and move down the street.
No had been the standard response from those who had any English vocabulary. Most of the time, they just got angry retorts in the local language, Farsi, and a door slam.
Ethan followed along, guarding Aaron’s back as he stopped at every single door on the street. When they finally reached the end, Aaron had reached the end of his patience. “I hate not knowing.”
“Me, too, brother. Maybe Delta Force will have some new intel we can use,” Ethan scanned the now deserted street behind them, keeping his rifle at the ready.
“I’m letting you take the next one.” Aaron knocked on the beaten up green metal door. A man in a white tunic and pants answered the door, his gaze raking over Aaron with hate.
Aaron gritted his teeth and held up the worn photos of the girls. “Have you seen them?”
The man spat at his feet and made to shut the door. Hot rage turned his vision red. Aaron slammed a hand to the door and yanked the man out, pinning him to the wall. “You hear me? I asked you a question. Where are the girls?!”
The man threw his hands up, waving in front of his face and shouted back in Farsi, “Man nemefahmam. Man nemefahmam.”
Ethan grabbed Aaron’s shoulder, pulling him off the local. “Hey, he doesn’t know. What the hell are you doing?”
The man ran inside and locked the door. Ethan threw Aaron against the wall where the villager had been. “What the hell is really going on? I know you, this isn’t like you. And don’t give me another line of shit about how you feel guilty for screwing up the mission, because we all screwed that one. Plus, we’ve all failed missions before and moved on. What’s eating you alive over this one?”
What was so different?
Maybe it was the fact he’d cornered Celine in her bedroom and tried to devour her whole. Or maybe that she’d returned the favor full force in an explosion of passion neither of them had been prepared for. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the fact Colonel Grey had walked in on them going at it like two teenagers in the back of his father’s car when Aaron should have been on patrol.
Instead of being a man and facing his commander, Aaron had tucked tail and turned away from Celine, pointedly ignoring her for the rest of the week despite the wounded expression she shot him whenever they were in each other’s vicinity. “I should have paid better attention. It was my job to protect them.”
“And mine. And Team Omega's. And the Secret Service.”
“But-”
“No buts.” Ethan kept him pinned. “You've been on edge since we got here and I've tried to stay out of it, but I'm not gonna sit back and watch you lose it. You've been taking chances lately, chances you never used to take.”
Celine was at the mercy of a murderer and in a din of monsters who thought women were worth less than dogs. They wouldn’t hesitate to hurt her. Bile clawed its way up his throat at the thought of another man's hands on Celine's body.
“Just let it out, brother. Get whatever it is eating you alive off your chest so we can get to work.” Ethan crossed his arms.
If he'd have pushed harder, tried to pick him apart, Aaron might have clamped down, but the obvious concern in Ethan's voice broke through Aaron's wall of anger.
“Shit.” Aaron shoved a hand through his thick sweaty hair. “I'm trying, you know. I can't get her out of my mind long enough to concentrate. Every time I think about someone hurting her.” He wanted to punch something. To break something. To kill someone.
“I get it. You know I get it. But you got to find a way back to zero, brother, this edge you've got puts us all at risk.”
“I know you understand but that doesn't stop the fact that Mr. J has them. We know that. He's already tried to have our team murdered twice. If he can find a way to use the girls to hurt us, you know he will.”
Ethan put a hand on Aaron's shoulder. “That's right, he will. I know it. You know it. Just like we both know that if you don't get your center back, Mr. J will win. Again. Your greatest weapon is your training. Take that rage filling up your insides right now and compress it into cold hard hate. You figure out a way to get it under control and we will find Mr. J and Celine. But you keep letting the anger rule your decisions instead of logic and you'll get us all killed.”
Aaron blew out a long sigh, knowing Ethan was right, but at a complete loss as to how to get the raging beast inside him under control. “I know you're right, I know I should, I just don't know if I can.”
“Oh you can, brother, trust me. Just think about how good it's going to feel to put a bullet in Mr. J's skull. If it hadn't been for Mr. J, Shane might not be dead, and ISA sure as shit wouldn't have had the resources to attack us on our own soil.” The terrorist group made the Taliban look like amateurs. They had ambushed Task Force Scorpion's headquarters, nearly killing the entire team and their families. They'd turned Shane Carter, TF-S's first sniper, against his own team, resulting in Merc having to put a bullet in his teammate.
All that, and now Senator Cotter's daughter. “This is going to sound corny, but my instincts are telling me he's up to something else – but dammit I don't know if that's really my instincts or because I'm scared to death he's going to hurt Celine.”
“I've got the same feeling. This was not a random kidnapping – Caroline Cotter's father is head of Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC. The general she was supposed to marry was in charge of the Special Forces. If Mr. J can get control of them he'll be able to manipulate United States SF to his desires and they'd think they were just following orders.”
Aaron froze, the truth of Ethan's words way too possible. “If Senator Cotter puts in orders to deploy an attack and the general signs off, it will look totally legit.”
Ethan nodded, “He could order the takeover of a small country and make it look like it happened with the blessing of the United States.”
The words sunk deep and heavy in Aaron's gut, pulling the plug on his fury as a heavy dread settled over him. “If Cotter really worships his daughter above all else, he'll do whatever Mr. J demands as long as he has Caroline.”
“And Celine Latimer will become a nuisance he needs to dispose of.”
CHAPTER TWO
Celine Latimer hugged her bare knees to her chest, shivering despite the desert heat. She'd lost count of how many days she'd been shackled in this prison of hard adobe walls and cold packed dirt floors, succumbing inch by inch to slow starvation.
A soft sob rent the air and Celine reached out in the darkness, found Caroline on her right and put an arm around her friend's shoulders. “Hold on a little bit longer. Your dad will send someone to rescue us, we just gotta stay strong.”
“Don’t know…” Caroline’s words chattered with her teeth, clacking throughout their small cell, “how much longer I can.”
Celine felt her own tremor work down her battered body in response to the hopelessness in her friend’s voice. They’d been in here who knew how long? With no sunlight or windows or clock to track the time she had no real clue. Days? Weeks? Her stomach twisted with a now familiar pain, like she’d swallowed a string of razor blades, and let out a loud growl. Celine instinctively wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging them to her chest, but no position could help her hunger. The light pangs from early on in their captivity had seemed so brutal at first, but now she knew they’d simply been the opening act to the full blow play of agony that came from slow starvation.
“I promise you, we will survive this. You’re worth too much money and your father is too powerful, they won’t hurt you.”
But that doesn’t mean they won’t hurt me.
A small time stylist from a small southern town with a retired mechanic for a father and a sister living below poverty. Her eyelids slid shut under the weight of hopelessness.
Caroline gripped her forearm, her ragged and torn nails digging into Celine’s flesh. “You either. I won’t let him hurt you. I bet my father sent Aaron and his whole team after us.”
Celine’s heart throbbed once. “Aaron? Why would he come?”
“Um…let’s see. Because he’s the hottest operative I’ve ever laid eyes on and he looks at you like he could eat you for his last meal.”
A harsh laugh ripped from her. “Yeah, maybe at first. But not anymore.” Not after he’d basically dumped her at Caroline’s wedding.
“What do you mean? He couldn’t keep his eyes off you,” Caroline said.
“Until we kissed.” The most soul scorching, life changing kiss of her entire life. The curtains had been drawn in the hidden butler’s pantry, his arms around her, holding her tight. His lips…
Caroline gasped, “When did he kiss you? At my wedding party? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Another pang. “Because he dumped me right after that. Told me he needed some space.”
“Why would he do that?! Did something happen?”
“Are we playing twenty-one questions?” Celine asked.
“Got some important party your late for?” Caroline countered.
Celine held silent, holding the hurt and memory close to her chest. She didn’t want to share the pain or the memory. She didn’t want anyone, even Caroline, to know the truth.
She’d given her all to Aaron and he’d turned away.
His rejection after that earth shattering kiss had left a hard eggshell of disappointment and broken dreams around her heart.
Celine felt Caroline’s cold bony hand on hers. “Just talk to me. Please. I think I might go crazy if you go all silent again.”
“Fine. We kissed. His commander saw us and Aaron told me he didn’t want me anymore.” Colonel Grey had walked in on them making out like two teenagers during the rehearsal dinner.
Celine closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall, her mind taunting her with images of Aaron Speirs and the smell of his grandmother Noni's homemade fudge. Her mouth tingled, and if she hadn't been so dehydrated she would've drooled.
She'd spent two weeks getting ready for the wedding with Aaron. He'd been focused on training her on self-defense and she'd been focused on trying to steal a kiss.
Celine lifted her fingers to her lips, remembering the one time she'd taken matters into her own hands.
“Did he get in trouble, you know, for not staying on post?” Caroline’s soft voice barely penetrated the hot embarrassment flooding her cheeks.
“I don’t know. I don’t care. All I know is he got one taste and didn’t like what he found.” He’d left Celine with the feeling of a rusty nail fermenting in her chest and a longing so intense she shook from the unquenched need.
Caroline scoffed, “I doubt that. You know how soldiers are, they’re so orderly, so strict. I’d be willing to bet you money his commander reamed his ass and threatened to have him evicted from the mission if he got off task again.”
Hope, that pesky little bitch, reared her beautiful head. Something about Aaron Speirs completely flipped her world upside down. The first time he’d walked into her little salon back in Mercy, Mississippi looking for a buzz cut she’d nearly sliced off the tip of her finger whilst giving him a trim, her hands had shaken so bad. He’d never taken his eyes off her, given her his full and direct gaze in the mirror’s reflection, like he could see how wild her heart hammered in his presence. “Do you really think so?”
“Are you kidding me? The man was practically drooling on your heels. I’ve been around military my whole life, my father is head of Joint Special Operations Command, I know soldiers. I had a huge crush on one of my bodyguards a couple of years ago and tried to kiss him. The guy nearly went into a full blown panic attack over losing his job.”
A trickle of laughter bubbled up inside Celine at the image of the petite Caroline tackling a big burly guard.
“Exactly. I bet he would have been at your doorstep the minute I married the general…” Caroline’s words trailed off.
“Your father should have never tried to marry you off to that old man.”
A sob, broken and painful to hear. “You might be right, but if I hadn’t pulled a runaway bride we might not be here. Kate might not be dead.”
Celine squeezed her friend’s hand with all her might. “She’s not dead.”
“We haven’t seen her once.”
“She probably escaped. Of us three, she was the only trained operative. I can just imagine her fighting her way out.” Watching Kate train with Ethan, Aaron’s teammate, the week leading up to Caroline’s wedding had been an absolute treat. Kate Richards, former CIA operative, had taken the SF soldier to his knees.
“What if…” Caroline’s words trailed off in the darkness.
“What if she did escape and she’s with the rescue team right now, ready to bust down that door and rescue us?”
Footsteps shuffled outside the door, pacing faster than normal. It was their captor, whom the girls had simply called ‘him’. He never spoke English, but he got his point across clearly - make any movement and get punished.
Her ribs were still sore from the last time when she’d dared stand up to him. But that wasn’t what worried her. It was the way he’d started leering at them when he shuffled into the room, hands free of water or food. He just stared at them with a calculating gleam in his gaze.
“You think that’s them?” Caroline asked.
Celine slowly shook her head. The door knob rattled, clicked and then creaked open. A thin slice of light cut into the darkness beside them and Celine, closest to the door, cowered away.
His shadow smothered out the light. Breathing harsh, he pushed the door wider and stepped into the room, staring down at them, his eyes filled with hate and lust.
Fear took a stranglehold on her throat, squeezing tighter with every passing second as she sat frozen to the ground at his feet.
He glanced at a small piece of paper clutched in his right hand and then the girls, and Celine realized with a start it was a photograph. Then he licked his lips, hidden by a disgusting beard littered with a week’s worth of food scraps, leaving her skin crawling with revulsion. His stench, even worse than her own, overpowered the room.
He spoke, his accent unintelligible, and gestured to the photo. Neither girl moved, they just sat there in the shadows, clutching each other. He yelled then, spit flying, their lack of response infuriating him. Before Celine could tense, he grabbed a fistful of her hair and began dragging her from the room. She screamed, kicking out her feet and clawing at his hand. Caroline held on to her waist, trying to pull her back, but he was too strong. He just pulled them both from their prison cell into the light. He released her hair, throwing her to the ground, only to squat in front of them and hold up the picture once more.
He compared it first to Celine and then Caroline. Then his dark gaze landed on her and Celine’s breath caught. He tossed the photo to the side and grabbed her arm, yanking her to her feet. Smashing her against his chest, he slammed his slimy lips to hers. Bile clawed up her throat and she gagged. He shoved her back. She lost her balance, arms flailing and he grabbed her shirt, easily ripping it in half.
His eyes landed on her chest, lust exploding on his face. He launched forward and tackled her to the ground. Pain shot up her shoulder, taking the brunt of the fall. He got to his knees and grabbed her now bare breasts, twisting them until she screamed in agony. Pushed past fear, into a full blown panic, Celine clawed his arms, his chest anything she could reach.
He lifted his right arm and then backhanded her. Pain burst across her face, leaving her stunned and immobile. This was really happening. He was going to rape her. She felt him shoving at her pants, felt his bony fingers digging into her thighs. As if from a distance she watched him fumble for the string holding up his pants.
She had to fight. Had to find herself, get control of her body, but she couldn’t move. She could only watch. He shoved his pants down and grabbed her hips.
She heard a scream. Caroline launched herself at him, throwing him sideways off of Celine. The burst of movement snapped her back to the present and Celine scrambled backwards on her hands and feet, yanking her pants up with shaking hands.
Caroline straddled him and swung, her fist connecting with his nose. Blood spurted and he screamed and grabbed his face. Caroline went on the attack, hitting him again, only this time their captor swung back, his fist connecting with Caroline’s face. She flew through the air to land in a heap next to Celine, unmoving.
Her friend had tried to save her from the savage now stumbling to his feet and clutching at his bloody face. Rage erupted, overtaking her fear, and Celine launched at her attacker, driving her shoulder into is stomach. He stumbled backwards and she went with him. A loud thud rent the air, his body jerked and then he lay on the ground beneath her, unconscious. She glanced up in surprise to see a small wooden table overturned next to his head.
She’d knocked him out. Euphoria, sweet and heady, swept through her. She’d won. But Caroline…Celine scrambled across the room, diving to her friend.
“Caroline?” She shook her gently. When Caroline didn’t respond, Celine shook her again. This time she groaned.
Relief left her weak. She reached out and touched Caroline’s now swelling cheek with a trembling hand.
“Are you okay?”
“My face hurts,” Caroline said, her eyes closed.
“It doesn’t look so bad.” It looked terrible, but she wasn’t about to tell her friend that. They needed to figure a way out of here and escape. Dirty adobe walls surrounded them, too bright sunlight spilled through cracks in shuttered windows. A larger open room lay to their left, faded couches and rugs littered about in a mess. But that wasn’t what held her attention, it was the thick wooden door separating them from the outside world in the center of the wall.
Her heart tripped over itself. “Can you move?”
“I think so. Where is he?”
“He’s knocked out. Hit a table. We have to get out of here before he wakes up.” Because he would kill her, Celine knew that without a doubt. Her captor had been comparing a photo to the girls to see which one was expendable.
Celine was expendable.
Caroline groaned and pushed up on her hands. “But where will we go?”
“I don’t know, anywhere but here.”
“Celine, your shirt…” Caroline’s voice trailed off. “You need clothes. We will both need clothes to blend in.”
Celine glanced down at the dark purple bruises already forming on her chest. Blood caked at the corner of her mouth. She ached all over.
Not now, she didn’t have time for this now. “We can search the house. Come on.” Celine helped Caroline to her feet, swaying a bit under a rush of dizziness.
The man moaned and moved his hand. Her knees went weak. “We have to get out of here, now.” She grabbed the ends of her torn shirt and tied them together in a knot below her breasts. There was no time for clothes. If he woke and found them, he’d make her wish she were dead. Together they limped over to the door. “Just keep your head down and stay close to the wall.”
“Okay.”
They plunged through the door, out into the glaring heat and bright sun. Temporarily blinded, Celine let go of Caroline and stumbled. She hit something warm and solid and a pair of arms wrapped around her.
She screamed.
Panic took over and Celine struggled like a wild animal, but her already depleted strength disappeared rapidly, leaving her panting and hopeless, still locked in the man’s grip.