by Tawny Weber
“There’s been a kidnapping. A civilian with military ties and potentially dangerous information was forcibly removed from her home two days ago. Operatives have discerned the group behind the act and pinpointed her location.”
The words her and military ties added a layer of urgency to an already volatile mission.
“The cell is based inside the continental United States,” the rear admiral informed him. “The leader of this branch of terrorists, as well as a number of those serving him, is a U.S. citizen.”
Touchy. And way outside the SEALs’ usual M.O.
“In two days’ time, a team will neutralize this cell. Every effort will be made to keep the targets alive.”
Blake gave a mental grimace. Targets had an unfortunate way of becoming collateral damage. Hostages, even more so.
“Your orders are to extract the hostage. You will go in alone, answering only to me. You will have twenty minutes before the team deploys. You will inform nobody of this assignment, nor will you coordinate with the team itself.”
His mind took off in multiple directions. One part wondering why the hell his role in the mission was on blackout. Another part assessing what he’d need to do to pull it off without risking the team’s mission or the safety of the hostage. Yet another part was already shifting into mission mode, emotionally distancing himself at the same time he set in place the expectations for victory.
“You were specifically requested for this assignment, Landon.”
Blake frowned.
As a SEAL, his training was intense and his skill set diverse. But so was the rest of his team’s. He was the Assault Force commander, the radioman and a linguist. And he was damn good at what he did. But, again, so were a lot of the team. So why him, specifically? Blake waited. If Lane wanted him to know who’d put in that request, he’d say so.
The rear admiral shifted. It wasn’t the uniform, the rank or the shock of white hair against a rock-hard face that made the man intimidating. It was the cold look of determination that said this was a guy who’d do whatever it took to get the job done, not because he felt the consequences were worthwhile, but because he didn’t even see consequences. Only the goal.
After giving Blake another assessing look, he pressed the intercom button on his desk. He didn’t say anything though. Just waited.
Blake waited, too. But for less time than it took to exhale. The private door to the right of the rear admiral opened.
His mentor, his recruiter, the man who’d shaped the direction of Blake’s career and had fathered the sexiest woman alive, stepped through the door. Pierce didn’t say a word. He just stood at ease, his face unreadable as he stared at Blake.
The rear admiral lifted a file from his desk, tapped it a couple of times against his thigh while giving Blake another of those assessing looks. Finally, with a lengthy stare at the admiral, he handed over the file.
“Your assignment.” Unspoken was the order that it be read and memorized here in this room. Blake had access to the information, but the contents would stay under lock and key.
Used to that, Blake glanced at the admiral again, but got nothing. Then he unwrapped the cord holding the folder closed and pulled out the stack of papers. On top was an eight-by-ten color photo. His heart stopped. His breath jammed in his throat. A feeling he barely recognized as fear clenched his belly.
His gaze flew to the admiral’s.
“Sir?”
Pierce’s jaw tightened. His eyes dropped for one second to his hands, then met Blake’s again.
“I’m calling in a favor on this. A number of them, actually. I’m sure you understand why.”
Shocked, Blake looked at the file again but didn’t respond.
Pierce came around the desk in swift, determined strides. He didn’t stop until his face was inches from Blake’s.
Through gritted teeth, he commanded, “As of this moment, and until the mission is complete, you report directly to me and Rear Admiral Lane. You will rescue her. You will keep her safe.”
Cold blue eyes bore into Blake as if imprinting the orders on his brain.
“You bring my daughter back. Safe and sound, Lieutenant.”
The or else didn’t need to be said. The message was implicit in the admiral’s furiously set jaw, and in the vicious bite of his words.
“You will rescue her before the team storms the compound. You will get her out, safe and whole. And you will keep her hidden and safe until you get my order to bring her back home.”
Blake didn’t have to ask if this mission was sanctioned. He knew the rear admiral was dancing on a fine line, doing this favor for his old friend. But he hadn’t crossed it. Even if he had...
Blake’s gaze dropped to the photo again. Alexia’s face stared back at him. An official government ID shot, her brilliant hair was pulled back, but wayward curls escaped to dance happily around her face. The photo captured the brilliant brown of her eyes, the same brown that haunted his dreams. Her smile, with that sexy overbite, was just this side of wicked. He remembered how soft those lips had been under his. How sweet and sexy she’d tasted.
He tried to bank the fury savaging its way through his system. Emotions had no place on a mission. Not a successful one. And this one, he promised himself, would be a success.
He met the admiral’s eyes, his own hard with determination.
“I’ll bring her back, sir. Safe, sound and secure.”
* * *
IF SHE COULD JUST KEEP breathing, Alexia promised herself, she’d survive with her life, her sanity and maybe—by some miracle—her faith in humanity.
Eyes closed, carefully inhaling through her teeth to try to block the rancid smell in the room, she focused on calming her mind.
In.
Out.
Just keep breathing in and out.
Don’t think about anything but breathing.
“You’re going to hyperventilate if you keep sucking in air like that.”
Her next breath slid through her teeth with a hiss as she slitted her eyes open to glare at the man across the dining table from her.
The source of the rancid smell, his scent perfectly fit his personality. She’d memorized his features as a part of her promise to herself that she’d not only get out of this nightmare, but that as soon as she did, she’d have as much ammunition as possible to fry his ass.
Short, probably about five-seven, he had that small-man syndrome, flexing his power left and right. Dark hair, brown eyes, a nondescript face marred by a small scar on his chin, he had the beady-eyed look of a rat. Which made sense, since he had the personality of a rabid rodent.
A rabid rodent with a large contingent of creeps on his payroll. The creeps who’d grabbed her on the sidewalk in front of her condo. The creeps who’d put a hood over her head, hauled her to the snowy regions of hell, aka the wilds somewhere in Alaska. The creeps who’d taken turns guarding her when she was locked in her room or the makeshift lab they’d set up. Or, she slanted a look sideways at the big bruiser leaning against the wall of the large dining room, wherever she happened to be. Then there were serving creeps, administrative creeps and, she’d discovered when she’d stood on the back of the chair in her tiny room to peer out the tiny barred window, a tidy number of creeps guarding the perimeter of the icy compound.
“You might as well say something,” the rat instructed, his bored tone at odds with the irritated tapping of his glossy fingernail on the arm of his chair. “You’re not going back to your cozy room until you detail the progress you made in the lab today.”
A seven-by-seven space with no heat, a cot-sans-sheets, a blanket and a spindle-backed chair and rickety floor lamp didn’t quite say cozy to her. But to a rat, maybe that was heaven.
Alexia deliberately took a deep, loud breath in, then exhaled. But she didn’t speak.
He tapped louder.
She almost smiled. These tiny rebellions were pointless, but they were all she had. It’d been four days. Four long, nerve-shattering day
s since she’d been grabbed. Someone had to notice she was gone by now. Michael would have alerted their father. He might not be much in the way of a great parent, but when it came to protecting the interests of the United States and its citizens, he was hell on wheels. Which meant he’d get her out of here soon. At last that’s what she’d been promising herself.
For four days.
The first day, exhausted from terror and travel, she’d begged to know why they’d abducted her, pleaded to be released. The rat had said he’d fill her in on what she’d need to do to stay alive in the morning. After she had a nice little rest and time to think about all the possibilities, he’d gloated. Then he’d locked her in that dark, dank cozy room.
The second day, fury overshadowing her bone-numbing fear, she’d tried threats as soon as he unlocked her door. The rat had laughed in her face before instructing her to follow him to the dining room. Couldn’t have her wasting away from starvation until she was done with her new job.
Since the Science Institute had refused his many legitimate requests, he’d decided it was time to get what he wanted the illegitimate way. Through force and kidnapping. Since she was the public face of the institute’s subliminal project, she was clearly—at least in his mind—the expert. It would be her duty, he’d explained over smoked fish, runny eggs and undercooked bacon, to develop a new subliminal program. One that would take the technology she’d been developing for sexual healing and use it to stimulate and heighten anger.
She’d tried to reason with him. The science of true subliminally enhanced emotional response was new, she’d explained. Unlike the cassette tapes of years gone by with their spoken message whispered through soothing music, actually effecting a specific, targeted emotional change via brain waves. Her psychological focus was human sexuality, not anger. She’d never studied how sound related to human perception of negative emotions. She wasn’t a neurologist, she didn’t know where anger was triggered in the brain, so she couldn’t create a program that would target it.
He’d pointed a fork dripping with egg and bacon grease her way and suggested she get her ass to learning before he lost patience. Then he’d had her escorted to what he called her new lab. A room barely bigger than the one she’d slept in, it was fitted with a desk, a workbench and two chairs. A used and slightly beat-up-looking stack of audio and digital equipment littered the bench, including a processor, data streamer and a closed-loop stimulator. Next to that was an array of psych books and a digital tablet.
After ordering her to work, he’d left her there until this morning. With bargain-basement equipment that did her no good, a pile of books that meant nothing, no research access and a ton of time for her brain to scramble between terrified images of what would come next, to blinding hope that someone would get her the hell out of there before she had to face the rat again.
But here she was, pretty much running out of hope.
So she was tuning him out. The games, the threats, the fear. Four years of yoga breathing and tapping into her long-abandoned meditation practice were all she had left.
With that in mind, and yes, because she’d seen the irritation on his face, she closed her eyes again and inhaled deeply through her teeth.
“You’re doing it wrong,” the whiny voice snapped. “You’re supposed to inhale through your nose. It’s a filter. Are you sure you’re a scientist? You don’t seem to know very much.”
Alexia’s eyes popped open, followed quickly by her mouth. Luckily, she saw the gleam in his beady eyes before she spit a word of defense.
She clamped her lips shut.
“I’m not surprised, actually,” he mused, contemplating the slab of bloody red steak on his fork. “Disappointed, but after your lack of progress these few days, not surprised at all.”
Shifting that same contemplative stare to her face, he wrapped his fat lips around that huge chunk of meat and chewed. A trail of blood dripped down the side of his mouth, over his receding chin, then plopped on the front of his white shirt. He didn’t seem to notice.
He was waiting for her to rise to the bait.
Alexia refused.
His eyes gleamed, as if the more defiance she showed, the happier he was.
“I’d have thought a woman like yourself, with all those fancy degrees and who’s made a show of thumbing her nose at her family, would be a little smarter.”
Alexia’s blood froze. She’d figured this was all about her research. But if he knew who her family was, that changed things. Was this really about creating an anger switch? Or did it have something to do with her father? If the latter, why the elaborate charade?
“Please,” she said, trying to sound reasonable and calm instead of freaked out and frenzied. “Just let me go. I can’t do what you’re asking. You’re smart enough to have researched the technology yourself. You know the equipment you have here isn’t adequate. The research isn’t cohesive enough to work with.”
Yes, she was playing fast and loose with the terms smart and research there. But she figured saving her life was a good enough excuse to employ a few lies and fake flattery.
“You’re on the verge of a breakthrough. You just did an interview on TV last month. It’s in the papers, other scientists are commenting on it in their blogs,” he said, shaking his finger at her as if she had done something naughty.
Blogs? Seriously? Alexia’s nerves stretched tight, ravaged from alternately fearing for her life and peering into corners looking for the hidden cameras that would prove this was all some elaborate, sick hoax.
“So there’s no reason you can’t take the same research and give it a little twist. Passion is just as easily channeled into anger as it is into something as trivial as sex.”
“I told you, it’s not a simple matter of flipping a switch. My research has been focused on the physical body and healing. Not on the emotions. I don’t know how to tap into anger, fury or any of the other destructive emotions you want.”
His contemplative stare didn’t change. He didn’t even blink. Maybe he was more snake than rat.
“Perhaps you just need a little motivation,” he decided. That damn finger still tapping, he tilted his head to one side as he gave her body a thorough inspection. Her skin crawled as if someone had just dipped her in a vat of lice.
“You’re a pretty woman. Robert—” he indicated the henchman who most often guarded Alexia “—has expressed an interest in your charms. Perhaps I should reward his exemplary service, hmm?”
Her eyes blurry with fear, Alexia’s gaze slid to the henchman, whose own beady eyes were gleaming with lust. Bile rose in her throat, but she was too paralyzed with terror to even throw up.
“Of course, Robert did go a little far with his last reward,” the rat continued in that same contemplative tone. “She was useless to us when he was through. It’s hard to see much through the snowstorm, but if you look out your window, you can see her grave just on the other side of the electric fence.”
Black dots danced in front of Alexia’s eyes, her breathing so shallow she didn’t think any oxygen was reaching her brain.
“I’m more inclined to wait on the reward,” he said slowly, pausing to sip his wine, giving her time to take a small step back from the panicked cliff she’d been about to dive over. “Myself, I find rape a poor persuasion. If the mind is broken, the body isn’t good for much except more of the same. And I need your mind in good working order.”
Alexia wasn’t sure if her mind would ever work again, even as it shied away from the hideous images she couldn’t stop from running through it.
“So many possibilities to consider,” he mused, now tapping his lower lip as if that would help him decide. “I’ll have to sleep on it and let you know in the morning.”
His smile slid into a smirk. “In the meantime, I suggest you trot on over to the lab and see what you can do now that you’re a little more motivated.”
“You can’t do this,” she breathed, half denial, half prayer.
“I can d
o anything I want,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Go. Robert will see you to the lab.”
Alexia got to her feet, subtly resting her fingertips on the edge of the table until her knees stopped shaking enough to support her.
“Go on,” the rat ordered, flicking his fingers toward the door. “Get to work.”
Yeah, she decided, trying to find the fury through the choking waves of fear threatening to overwhelm her.
He was definitely a snake.
9
FOURTEEN HOURS LATER, Alexia finally understood what it was to have fear leach every ounce of energy from a body.
She was completely numb.
She cradled her head in her arms and tried to stop her teeth from chattering.
From her bare toes—made colder every time she glanced at the window to see the white blizzard of snow swirling outside—to the top of her aching head, she was ice.
Desperate for a focal point other than the hideous visions her captor had stuck in her head, she had resorted to digging into the books. Somewhere around hour three, she had filled a notebook. Not anything that’d produce the results he wanted. But maybe enough to make it look as if she could, which might buy her some time.
The words were a blur on the page now.
It took Alexia a minute to realize that was because she was crying, her tears making the ink run.
A sound, barely a whisper of the wind, caught her attention. Her body braced. Tension, so tight even her hair hurt, gripped her. Barely daring to breathe, she shifted her head just a bit in her cradling arms so she could peek over her shoulder.
Crap.
She blinked, trying to focus on the figure standing inside a window that should be too tiny for a body to fit through. The freezing air wrapped around her like a shroud, making her blink again.
Her shivers turned to body-racking shakes. Alexia still didn’t bother raising her head.
“I sure wish hallucinations came with temperature control,” she muttered to her biceps.
