Breathless Encounter: Breathless EncounterThe Dark Side of Night

by Cindy Dees

  A one-story, galvanized metal building with rust stains streaming down its sides stretched before her. Two men armed with rifles of some kind lounged at one end of it. The structure had no windows that she could see. She eased off to her left, circling the back of the building. The end opposite the guards had a small window up high, above a banged-up-looking air-conditioner unit. Some sort of vent opened up beside it at ground level, covered with a screen. It looked like a fan from inside the building blew through the lower opening. The far side of the building yielded no more windows.

  She crouched on her heels and tried to figure out what else Hathaway and his SEALs would need to know to attack this place. She moved closer to the front and the guards. Two vans stood out front. Probably the same vehicles she’d seen pulling away from the site of Mitch’s kidnapping. Which meant around eight more men must be inside the building. She noted electric lines running overhead into the structure, a glow of light coming from the closed front door. It looked as if the place had a concrete foundation that probably formed a floor. A few of the galvanized panels on this side of the building looked loose along the bottom.

  And it was deathly quiet. All the jungle creatures, even the insects, were silent. A heavy, expectant hush blanketed the whole place.

  And then a hoarse scream pierced the night. It tore through her like no sound she’d ever heard before. There was a loud crackle of noise, like lightning frying a bug, and the strip of light under the door flickered. Another hoarse shout of agony.

  Oh. My. God.

  Mitch.

  Chapter 12

  Mitch sagged against the wet ropes binding him to the metal chair. These boys hadn’t missed a trick. The only reason he wasn’t dead right now was because of the building’s inferior wiring. An air conditioner labored behind him, stealing most of the electricity, and the current left over was barely sufficient to light a few bulbs overhead. While it was excruciatingly painful, it wasn’t anywhere close to lethal. Thank God his torturers wanted to be comfortable and run the A/C while he suffered.

  He studied his captors from beneath swollen lids. The bastards were military. He was sure of it. He thought he’d glimpsed a couple uniforms in the scrum when they jumped him back at Camarillo’s estate. The men standing in front of him now, arguing over how much more to torture him before they went to get something to eat, were lean. Fit. Short-haired. All below the age of forty. Nope. Not Camarillo’s men. The Cuban assassin was in his sixties and tended to hang out with his childhood friends, whom he trusted.

  Who, then?

  And then, he glimpsed a familiar insignia on the chest of the guy giving the orders. The Presidential Guard.

  These were Zaragosa’s men. The Cuban official had double-crossed him. Double-crossed the U.S. government. The Americans thought the guy was their loyal ally, but who knew what sort of misinformation he was feeding U.S. intelligence agencies? He had to get out of here and let someone know Zaragosa was unreliable!

  If he was going to share what he knew, he was going to have to live long enough to get out of here. And at the moment, that prospect wasn’t looking great.

  He’d never dreamed Camarillo and Zaragosa might actually be in league. Hell, no one had. But now that he thought about it, he had to ask himself how Camarillo’s men had known about the scheduled meeting with Zaragosa back in the Virgin Islands in time to show up early at the rendezvous point, lay an ambush and nearly kill him. Damn. It had been right there in front of him the whole time.

  And he’d been so besotted with lust for Kinsey he hadn’t stopped long enough to think about it. To see the connection. She’d tried to tell him. She’d asked how

  Camarillo had found him, and he’d ignored her because she was an amateur. God, he’d nearly gotten her killed because he hadn’t been paying attention to her brains instead of her body. Stupid. Very, very stupid of him. And now he was paying the price for it.

  He should’ve left her a note. At least told her what he was doing, if not where he was going tonight. But no. He’d been so focused on being noble, on walking away, on sacrificing his heart for her safety, that he’d neglected Spycraft 101—tell somebody where you’re going, particularly when it involves engaging the bad guys.

  Hell, he probably deserved this excruciating pain shooting through him like a thousand knives. He’d already gone through the mental exercise of separating himself from the agony, of compartmentalizing it in a walled-off corner of his mind. It took a certain amount of concentration to maintain the disconnect between himself and intense suffering, but he’d practiced the technique for years. It was manageable. And because his captors didn’t know the technique, they projected themselves into his shoes and mistakenly assumed they were inflicting unbearable amounts of pain upon him. Throw in a few screams now and then to convince them they were right, and the situation was under control.

  For the moment. Once they started trying to extract information from him, that would change. Then they’d steadily up the pain factor until they broke down both him and his walls and forced him to talk. Although, so far they’d shown no inclination to interrogate him. Which lent even further credibility to the evidence that these were Zaragosa’s men. They weren’t here to find out who he was. They already knew.

  One of the men stepped over to the crude rheostat sitting on the table against the far wall. Playtime with electricity again. Damn that Benjamin Franklin. Mitch closed his eyes. Retreated down the long corridor of his mind, far, far away from the room in which he’d closeted all sensation from his twitching, jerking, spasming body.

  * * *

  Nearly crying aloud in pain, Kinsey backed away into the jungle far enough so the guards couldn’t possibly hear her and keyed her microphone. “Are you there?” she whispered.

  “Go ahead,” Hathaway replied immediately.

  “He’s in a building. And I think they’re torturing him.” Her voice caught on the word.

  “Why do you think that?”

  She took a steadying breath. She couldn’t very well tell this man she was having sympathy pains. He’d think she was nuts. Instead, she replied, “I heard him yelling. It’s terrible.” She added in a rush, “You have to do something. Get him out of there!”

  “We’re on our way, Kinsey.”

  “When? When will you get here?”

  “Soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “Four, maybe five hours.”

  “He won’t make it that long!”

  A sigh. “Here’s the thing. Mitch is a trained operative. That means a couple things. First, he can take a hell of a lot of pain without cracking. Second, he may be shouting in hopes of someone hearing him. He could be using the excuse of getting roughed up a little to make a lot of noise.”

  Kinsey frowned. That wasn’t what the sharp tingling in her limbs was telling her. “I dunno...he sounded pretty awful. Like the noise was being ripped out of him.”

  “Trust me. He’ll be okay. Now, I need you to tell me everything you saw.”

  Hathaway spent the next ten minutes picking details out of her she hadn’t even registered seeing—insignia on uniforms, exterior building lighting, terrain features. She was actually impressed at everything she had seen.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Now you sit tight. I’m not kidding. Don’t mess with this situation. You’ve done what you could. When the SEALs get there, they’ll handle the situation.”

  He was right. But the wrenching cramps clenching her body in a vise of pain said otherwise. How long could Mitch suffer like this and live? Heck, how long could she take it?

  Hathaway was talking again. “Hang out in the fringe of the jungle and keep an eye on things. If anything changes—more men come or some men leave, or you hear any gunshots, that sort of thing—back into the underbrush and give us a call. Okay?”

 
“Okay.”

  “You’re doing great. Just stay calm and try not to worry too much. This will all work out.”

  Easy for him to say. He didn’t have to listen to Mitch’s suffering. To feel it.

  She did as Hathaway said and quietly made her way back to the edge of the little glade. She found a good spot to lie down and peer under some sort of fern-ish plant at the guards still lounging out front.

  A jolt of agony shot through her, and another scream rent the night. Oh, God. Mitch. Tears streamed down her face unchecked. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t lie here and listen to him dying by inches. And yet...she had to. He might not know it, but he wasn’t alone. She was with him, if not physically, in spirit. She reached out with her mind and heart, begging him to feel her presence, to know she cared for him and was here for him.

  How long the torture went on, she didn’t know. She was afraid to look at her watch and find out how long Mitch had endured whatever they were doing to him in there. It felt like days. Weeks. Forever. She might not actually be suffering the same intensity of pain he was, but her ghost pains and her mental suffering, knowing what he was going through, were almost more than she could bear. With each renewed wave of agony that washed over her, a little more of her control slipped away, a little more of her soul was stripped bare.

  The social niceties of her upbringing ceased to matter. Her family’s wealth and position and power couldn’t help her or Mitch now. Her need to prove herself didn’t matter anymore. Mitch’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge what they had between them revealed itself for the sham it was. The two of them had played all kinds of games with each other, danced all around their

  attraction—and ultimately, their feelings—for one another. Mitch had even obeyed his stupid rule about always walking away.

  But when all of that was burned away by the fiery pain of their mutual torture, only two things remained that mattered.

  She and Mitch both had to live.

  And she loved him.

  The only remaining question was whether or not she’d ever get a chance to tell him that.

  Eventually, there came a lull. Maybe Mitch passed out, or maybe his captors took a break. But either way the pain stopped. She was almost more startled by its absence than its presence. Somewhere in the past few hours, she’d forgotten what not-pain felt like. It was a shock to her now.

  And somehow she knew to dread the return of pain even more after having been granted this brief reprieve.

  She was right.

  A jolt of fury shot through her without warning, arching her entire body into a bow of agony so intense she couldn’t even breathe. It went on and on and on until she thought she might pass out. And then it subsided, only to return a few seconds later. Panic washed over her. It was too much. They were breaking him. Breaking her.

  Mitch! She mentally screamed out for him.

  Silence was her only reply.

  She couldn’t stand it anymore. She had to do something. They were ripping Mitch’s guts out, and they were tearing hers out at the same time. Like it or not, she and Mitch shared some sort of invisible but very real connection. His pain was hers, his panic hers. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that Mitch needed to get out of there, and soon. His urgency flowed through every pore of her being.

  No way was Hathaway’s SEAL team going to get here soon enough. Mitch’s captors were all about causing him pain. This wasn’t an interrogation he could draw out indefinitely while he eked out bits and pieces of information between rounds of torture. These men wanted to cause him suffering. And at some point they would tire of the game and put a gun to his head. How she knew all that, she couldn’t say. But she knew it as certainly as she was lying here in the middle of the jungle.

  She wriggled backward until she could safely stand up and backed away from the building. She keyed the microphone. “It’s me again.”

  “Go ahead,” Hathaway replied immediately.

  “If I were going to go in there and rescue Mitch, how would you suggest I do it?”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Hathaway growled. “You’ve got no training, no skills, no chance. If you go barging in there, you’ll get Mitch killed. Do you understand me? Don’t do anything.”

  She replied pleasantly, “If I hadn’t grown up with a congressman who’s used to getting his way for a father, that tone of voice might intimidate me, Commander.”

  Hathaway swore freely in her ear. He saw where this was going.

  She continued, “But here’s the deal. I’m standing here, a hundred feet from Mitch, and you’re not. Neither he nor I can take any more of this. I am going in there to get him out, and you’re not stopping me. Now, are you going to help me figure out a way to do it that will succeed, or am I on my own?”

  “Stand by. Give us a minute to toss around some ideas.”

  “All right.”

  “Promise?” he demanded.

  “I will if you will,” she retorted.

  “We’re going to come up with a plan for you to execute. I swear. Just sit tight for a couple minutes, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Probably five minutes passed. Mitch wasn’t shouting right now. Either the bad guys were taking a break, or he’d passed out. She wasn’t getting any gut feelings at the moment that indicated which one was the case. But at least she wasn’t experiencing any crippling pains spreading outward from her backbone to her fingertips and toes. For that, she was abjectly grateful.

  Then Hathaway’s voice startled her. Without preamble, he said, “Question. Are you willing to kill people or not?”

  “Which one will give Mitch a better chance of walking out of there alive?”

  He grunted. “The lethal option is by far the more effective way to go in this scenario.”

  She took a deep breath. She couldn’t believe she was saying this, but faced with the alternative, it suddenly wasn’t that awful a choice. “Then, I’m willing to kill. I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again if I have to if that’s what it takes to save Mitch.”

  “All right.” In the background, she heard him say to someone, “She’ll pull the trigger if it comes to it. Give me one more walk-through on Plan A.” To her, he said, “Give me one more minute. And then we’ll be ready

  to go.”

  Kinsey duly waited, and true to his word, Hathaway was back in a few moments. “Okay, Kinsey. Here’s what we’re going to do….”

  Chapter 13

  Time lost all meaning for Mitch. He measured it in minutes for a while, then in moments between waves of pain and then in individual breaths. Apparently, his captors had decided to finish him off before they took off to get a bite to eat. Bastards.

  He nurtured the spark of anger, blew gently on it with a pep talk to himself that he’d outlast these yahoos, piled the dry tinder of Kinsey’s smile and his desperate need to get back to her on the tiny flame, and gradually, it caught. A fire grew in his belly that he fanned into a roaring flame of determination to survive. He was going to see Kinsey again. He was going to lie beside her and feel her arms around him, kiss her sweet lips, lose himself in the infinite warmth of her eyes. These petty little twerps weren’t going to stand in his way. He’d outlast them no matter what they threw at him.

  Maybe they sensed the change in him, the renewed strength, for they broke off electrocuting him abruptly, cursing. One of them swore for a while and declared himself hungry and tired of this crap.

  Mitch watched his captors carefully from the swollen slits of his eyes. Were they tired enough of messing with him to kill him now, or would they cook up some new-and-improved way to make him suffer? He thought fast. If they made a move to off him, he’d have to talk fast to prevent it. He rehearsed what he was going to say to give them pause.

  A murmured argument ensued across the room. The jerk in charg
e’s hand came to rest on the pistol holster at his waist. Crap. They were leaning toward just offing him now. He sat up straight, ignoring the agonizing protest from his abused kidneys. He shifted his weight so his chair scraped the floor loudly. All eyes turned toward him. His chin went up.

  “Is that the best you can do?” he commented casually in Spanish. It hurt his loosened front teeth to talk, but he endured the shouting nerves in his mouth. Pain, no matter how bad, was preferable to death.

  The men’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, then slammed together in fury.

  So much for a midnight snack, boys.

  Snarling, they advanced on him, all thoughts of finishing this off fast gone from their minds.

  I win.

  The first heavy fist landed on his upraised jaw. His head snapped back and white shards of pain exploded behind his eyes.

  Sort of.

  * * *

  Kinsey lay on the ground behind a fallen log only twenty-five feet or so from the front door of the metal building. She couldn’t believe Hathaway and company had actually let her move in this close to the soldiers lounging on the fenders of their vans. She could smell the smoke from their inferior cigarettes. Mitch was seriously going to owe her one when this was all over. She refused to consider the idea of failure. She would rescue Mitch, and both of them would walk out of this in one piece.

  Another groan issued from the building, this time genuine agony. Kinsey all but doubled over from the pain. Her face felt on fire, her ribs ached until she could hardly breathe and every bone in her body screamed its suffering.

  Hathaway’s voice was emotionless in her ear. “Final target locked in. Fire on my command in three...two...one...bombs away.”

  Somewhere high overhead, a Predator unmanned aerial vehicle was loitering, looking down on this nightmare. And it had just launched its pair of onboard Hellfire missiles at the two vans directly in front of her. Hathaway had warned her it would be dangerous to be this close to the targets, but she didn’t trust her marksmanship any farther away from the door than this.