Beyond Vengeance: Pacific Prep #3

by R. A. Smyth

  I must pass out, as the next thing I know, I’m back in my cot. The same routine continues the next few times someone comes to my cell, and slowly I start to regain my strength, managing to keep the food down and feed myself. The question is why. Why are they feeding me? Why now? I highly doubt it’s because they’ve taken a sudden interest in my wellbeing.

  The next time the door clangs open, Bowen is standing there, looking as menacing as ever. I haven’t seen him in several days, and while it’s been a small relief, the panic of wondering when he’ll come back and what fresh hell he’ll have in store for me, is slowly wearing me down.

  “Put this on,” he orders, throwing a pile of black tactical gear at me.

  “Why?” My voice is hoarse from lack of use. When was the last time I spoke? Looking at the clothes, I do my best to keep the longing for actual clothes off my features. I’ve been naked since he first shackled me to the wall seven days ago, or was it eight? They are all starting to run together.

  The wicked smile that brightens his heinous features has me forgetting all about the clothes.

  “Tonight’s challenge night.”

  On challenge nights, we usually work as a team, every team competing against one another to achieve a common goal, but I get the impression I’m not going to be working as part of a team tonight.

  Standing on unsteady legs, I quickly pull on the black trousers and matching top, noticing the asshole didn’t bring me shoes.

  “What’s the challenge?” I ask, making sure to sound uninterested.

  “Why, D, I’m so glad you asked.” He grins menacingly, his next words making me blanch. “You are. You’re going to face off against all twenty recruits in your age bracket and see if you make it out alive.”

  Fuck.

  “As an added incentive, if you lose, you’ll get to find out what it feels like to have my blade shoved up your ass.”

  Fighting hard against the shivers threatening to overtake my body, I focus on trying to remain positive. Sure, I’m beyond exhausted, half-starved and I haven’t trained—or so much as stretched my legs—in far too long, but I used to be the best recruit here. That’s got to count for something, right?

  “And if I win?”

  The maniacal look on his eye doesn’t give me any reassurance.

  “Then you’ll only get to see what the handle feels like.”

  The sick fuck escorts me to the fight hall and I’m unceremoniously shoved through the door. Based on the roar of the crowd, everyone is here, including the adult mercenaries who are here of their own free will; who chose this life.

  Passing a few younger kids, their eyes are wide with terror, but as I meet the gaze of others my age, that terror is replaced with steely resolve. By the time you’re our age, you’ve accepted your fate, if not grown to revel in the bloodshed.

  Not about to let anyone think I’m weak, I throw my shoulders back and lift my head. Shaking off the sentinels tasked with ensuring I don’t try to escape—where the fuck would I even go?—I make my way unaided into the ring. The ring itself is enclosed with a large wire fence that goes all the way to the roof, preventing the crowd from pushing against the ropes, and stopping anyone from trying to flee if things don’t go their way. As I step through the gateway, it’s closed and locked behind me, locking me in with my opponent—a heavy-set beefy man that I vaguely recognize. He wasn’t one of my team members, so I only know him in passing. Good, that should make it easier. I didn’t spend any time with my team members outside of training, and while there was a professional acceptance of one another, there was nothing more between us; still, it’s going to be awkward if I come face to face with one of them tonight.

  The second the bell rings to start the fight, he charges at me, and despite his size and the fact I’ve been locked in a cell the last few days, I’m still agile and light on my feet, and I easily maneuver out of his reach, quickly coming up behind him. With a few well-placed kicks and an elbow to the head, he goes down.

  Fight number one over, only nineteen more to go.

  I steadily make my way through opponent after opponent, bringing them to the ground or knocking them out. The room becomes a blur as I zone out, ignoring the roars and chaos around me. The only thing I focus on is the guys. They’re all that matter. I know over the last few months I’ve grown softer. I’ve learned to relax into a hug and enjoy small touches. I’d deny it until I was blue in the face, but nothing beats a snuggle sandwich on a cold morning. Some might think that learning to rely on the guys has made me weak, but as I pull on the well of strength I can feel glowing within me, I know those people are wrong. The guys are what I’m fighting for. Every time I punch, kick, and maim my opponent, it’s because I’m fighting to get back to them. When I first found out about Cam and devised my plan to get out of here, it was because I wanted to survive. It was a novel goal, but now I want so much more. Now I want to live—for the guys. With the guys. That will to do whatever is necessary to get back to them is why I’m going to win every one of my fights tonight. It’s why I’m going to survive this hellhole yet again. Everyone in here is fighting for survival, but I’m fighting for love, and that’s why I’ll win every time.

  Everything hurts. The cuts Bowen carved in my skin have torn open and are freely bleeding, and I’ve a fresh set of cuts and bruises to match. My legs are shaking uncontrollably, and I can tell I’m minutes from passing out as, with the last of my energy, I take my final opponent to the ground, pinning them to the mat until they tap out. When the whistle is blown, I roll off them onto my back, fighting to remain conscious. I can’t pass out yet. Not here, surrounded by enemies. I need to get back to my cell.

  All I can hear is the rushing of blood as it pounds through my ears, and I stare absently at the ceiling high above me until the face of a monster obstructs my vision.

  “Looks like you’ve still got it, D.” He pouts. “Guess my blade will just have to play with your asshole a different day.”

  On those lovely words, I promptly pass the fuck out.

  Chapter 27

  Where the fuck is she?

  I throw my mug at the wall as yet another lead turns out to be a dead end. Beck and Wilder filled us in on what had happened when we got back to campus—not that they seemed to know much. Hawk went absolutely apeshit on them, giving Wilder one hell of a shiner when he confessed he was the one that let her leave on her own. She was only going to the dining hall to meet Michael, so he thought it would be fine. Fuck, I wanted to hit him too, but honestly, I’m more pissed at myself for not drilling it into him that she wasn’t to go anywhere alone. As much as I want to blame him, it’s not like he knows the fucked up shit that’s going on with our families, or what a threat Lawrence is to her. Surprisingly, he hasn’t tried to pry or ask questions about any of it, although, no doubt he suspects something.

  Once Hawk chewed the two of them out, we spent the rest of the night scouring the campus for her. We tracked down Michael, who confirmed he had coffee with her that evening, but claimed that after they were done, he went to the library, and Hadley was making her way back toward the guys’ dorms—so what the fuck happened to her? She didn’t just fall off the face of the earth.

  Even weirder, we found her phone down by the lake but after interrogating everyone in the school, no one was able to confirm if they remember seeing her down there that night. It’s fucking infuriating.

  I hear them before they enter; Emilia’s loud voice carrying as she demands answers and updates. That girl will not stop and it’s made me realize just how perfect her friendship with Hadley is. She’s been on our asses since the minute she stepped back on campus after the break. Hadley obviously hadn’t been answering her calls or texts all day Sunday, after she disappeared, and Emilia showed up breathing fire, demanding to know where she was.

  It was a difficult one to explain. It’s not like we could tell her anything about our parents or the compound, and she wasn’t buying our bullshit about Hadley being in bed, sick, so that
basically just left us telling her that something had happened, but we didn’t know what, and that we were doing everything we could to bring Hadley home. I think it’s fair to say she took that news about as well as Hawk did, and she’s been demanding daily updates ever since.

  Hawk sighs as the three of them come through the door. “I told you we’d let you know when we had something,” he gripes.

  Emilia spits fire at him with her eyes. “Right.” She scoffs. “You wouldn’t tell me anything if I didn’t harass you every day.”

  Turning toward her, he pins her in place with a serious expression. “I promise we’re doing everything we can to find her.”

  Emilia’s brows are slightly furrowed as she studies him. I’m pretty sure she’s trying to determine if she can trust him or not. Surprisingly, Hawk lets her look her fill. The two of them stare at one another for so long it grows uncomfortable to watch, but finally Emilia gives a tight nod of her head.

  “Okay,” she admits reluctantly. “I still want updates though.”

  Without waiting for a response, she turns on her heels and walks out. No one else would dare talk to Hawk—or any of us—like that and then turn their backs on us. They’d be asking to get their asses handed to them. But despite her meek appearance, there’s a lot of defiance in that girl. She reminds me of Hadley. Thinking of my fierce Little Warrior has a now familiar ache forming in my chest, and I glance hopefully between Hawk and Cam, eager to see if they found anything. “Well?”

  “Nothing,” Hawk grits out.

  “You?” There’s a wistful look on Cam’s face that only intensifies as I shake my head. He grimaces. “Maybe West has something.”

  Yeah, maybe. He’s been glued to his computer screen, going through security footage on campus, verifying students' stories and trying to find any glimpses of Hadley so we can see where she went after she met up with Michael.

  It doesn’t make any sense, though. She wouldn’t just wander off on her own. She knows to stay with one of us when she’s out. She spent all week with Beck and Wilder, so why, the night she knew we were due back, would she decide to go off alone?

  The only thing we can think of is that Lawrence somehow got to her. Maybe he threatened her into meeting him, or going with him somewhere. I don’t know. I can’t think of any other explanation. Of course, after we’d searched every inch of the school, we went home to make sure Lawrence didn’t have her hog tied to his bed or some sick shit like that, or her parents hadn’t done something stupid, but there was no sign of her there.

  West has been tracking Lawrence’s phone, and scouring the security footage for both our parents’ homes and their office building, so we have eyes on him everywhere. The problem is, he hasn’t gone anywhere suspicious—the office and home. That’s literally all he does.

  “We need to find out where she was before she came here. Maybe he’s holding her there,” Hawk growls in frustration.

  I look between him and the others, clueless. She’s never told me anything about her past. I know whatever happened was fucked up, but I don’t know where she was.

  Cam shrugs too, as unhelpful as I am.

  “Seriously?” Hawk snaps. “She didn’t tell you anything? You didn’t think to ask?”

  “Did you?” I argue, riling him up.

  He snaps his arm out, shoving me. “You’re supposed to be in love with her. You’re supposed to get past her barriers and get her to open up to you.”

  “Yeah, and if you hadn’t spent all of the first semester making her hate you, maybe she would have opened up to you!”

  “Hey!” Cam yells, barging his way between us. “Stop it.” The look he gives us is lethal, and it’s enough to have us dropping our fists. “None of this is helpful. If we can’t work together, then we don’t deserve to get her back, so pull your heads out of your asses!”

  It’s rare that Cam raises his voice, and it’s yet another reminder of how close we all are to losing it without her.

  Cam flops down into one of the armchairs, scrubbing his hands over his face and groaning. “If he has her, I don’t know where my dad would have taken her.”

  “He literally hasn’t gone anywhere except home and the office all week,” West updates us, strolling into the kitchen in a pair of sweats and a stained t-shirt. He goes straight to the coffee machine and fills his cup to the brim before joining us in the living room.

  The door opens again, and Beck walks in, looking as bleary-eyed and exhausted as the rest of us. “Anything?”

  The three of us shake our heads, and his shoulders slump in defeat.

  “We’re trying to work out where Lawrence could be hiding her,” I explain as he collapses into a vacant chair.

  Pursing his lips in thought, he asks, “What about the compound?”

  West shakes his head. “Nope. Not since I hacked into his GPS, anyway.”

  “Still, he could be keeping her there,” I argue.

  “I just think it’s too obvious, right under our parents' noses,” Hawk dismisses.

  “It might not be completely implausible…” There’s an odd look on Beck’s face as his eyes dart between each of us, making us sit up straighter in our seats.

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Hawk snarls, sounding like a rabid dog.

  Beck’s lips flatten, and he looks reluctant to share whatever he knows. “She should really be the one to tell you this, but you need to know.”

  There’s a sadness in his eyes when he looks back at Hawk, and I know whatever he has to tell us is something significant.

  “Hadley grew up in the compound.”

  Hawk scoffs, waving away his words. “Yeah right, like Lawrence could hide a kid in the compound all those years without any of our parents hearing about it.”

  I grimace. “Actually, that might be more plausible than you realize.”

  The attitude drops from Hawk’s face as he stares at me, his gaze intense and slightly confused. I feel bad having kept this from them so long, but with everything we’ve been dealing with since we got back from Easter break, there hasn’t been the right moment to tell them all.

  “When I was up in Black Creek, I, uh, uncovered something, about Nocturnal Mercenaries.”

  I quickly rehash everything I overheard, and my words are met with a stunned silence.

  “Kids? What, like eighteen-year-olds?” Cam asks confused while the other three sit in silence, mulling over what I’ve just said. It’s not every day you’re told your parents are grabbing kids off the street to turn them into weapons, so I fully understand the shock they're experiencing right now—hell, it’s been nearly a week since I found out and I’m still in shock.

  I shake my head. “The kid I saw on the video looked more like eight or nine.”

  Beck leans forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees. “So they’re taking kids from Black Creek?” he questions. I get why that would bother him, having grown up there himself.

  “Amongst other places, but Black Creek seems to be their main feeding ground. They have some sort of deal with the leading gangs there.”

  Beck purses his lips, but unlike the other three, he doesn’t seem surprised at what I’ve said.

  “Fucking kids?” Hawk snarls in disgust. “What the fuck is wrong with them? Is it not enough that they’re already performing a black market service for god knows what sort of underground criminals?!”

  My gaze is still focused on Beck’s contemplative ones as Hawk goes off on a rant, cursing out all of our parents.

  “Why are you not surprised?” I demand, watching him closely.

  Beck looks up at me, sighing before leaning back in his chair and looking at the others. “I knew.”

  “You knew?!” West repeats, sounding outraged.

  “And you never told us?” Hawk snaps, turning on him. He’s been ready to beat the shit out of Beck every day since Hadley went missing, so this is probably only adding fuel to the fire.

  “I couldn’t,” Beck responds, unfazed by Hawk
’s glower.

  “That’s the secret job they were getting you to do by threatening me,” West states, successfully putting all the pieces together with his computer brain.

  “Yeah.” Beck sighs, rubbing at his eyes. He looks ten years older than he did before the guys and I left for Easter break. Although, glancing at the others, we all have bags under our eyes. Without Hadley, we’re struggling.

  He spends the next ten minutes explaining exactly what they’ve had him doing, filling us in on all the details he’d previously left out when he discussed his visits to the compound.

  Rage consumes me as he tells us all the fucked up shit he’s been involved in. The haunted look in his eye is enough to see how much it’s all been getting to him. Now that I see it, I don’t know how I didn’t pick up on it before. He’s obviously expended a lot of energy trying to keep all of this from us. Simply keeping up the act of pretending he’s not losing a part of himself every time he goes there must be exhausting. I get that he was protecting West, but we’re a team. The guys and I always lean on each other when we need to. Beck needs to understand he can do the same. He’s one of us now.

  “You could have told us, man.”

  He shakes his head. “Nah. This shit eats away at your soul. I didn’t want that for you.” He looks pointedly at West, before glancing at the rest of us. “For any of you.”

  Fuck, well, if that doesn’t endear me to him, then nothing will. The fact he’s been looking out for us all this time, even when West was pushing him away, makes me like the guy even more. I’ve never had any issue with him, other than doubting whether or not we could trust him in the beginning, but it’s hard to not like the guy, especially when he looks at my girl the way he does. He solidified our friendship, and his place in the group with me, when he kicked my ass in the ring. It’s been a long time since anyone managed that, and I sure as shit didn’t expect him, with his preppy waistcoats, to be able to best me, but he’s clearly spent a fair bit of his youth at the gym, working out.