He saw the two faces in front of him in his nightmares, and when he let his mind wander during the day—both far too often.
Caleb obviously had the same problem. His friend just hadn’t put two and two together yet.
“We’d gotten some intel that they had some kind of underground compound, but we knew we couldn’t just storm it, or even recon it.” It had been far more rudimentary than they’d expected, given DMH’s resources. They quickly learned how effective the stark, primitive space could be—dark, dank, alternately sweltering and freezing, depending on the time of day and the weather. Sometimes, it was the only way Mace was able to keep track of the passage of time.
Part of the earth and never coming out …
He would get out of this if it was the last thing he did. And it damned well might be.
He stood, his shoulders and head hunched since the ceiling was shorter than his six-foot-four frame, looked through the bars and saw darkness. He pressed hard with his upper body, and the grating groaned and gave slightly.
And then he was hauled up by rough hands, his body protesting from the many beatings he’d endured over the past three days.
At that point, it had only been three days—seventy-two hours. He’d counted, refused to lose track of time.
He shook his head to rid himself of the memory and instead told her, “It was all a mind fuck. A damned good one.” But it hadn’t ended there. “We were tortured.” His words were quick, clipped—the torture hadn’t been. Day after day turned into weeks as Mace desperately tried to keep track of the time—the hours—and his men.
He’d been in charge of the op, had been separated from the rest of them—somehow, their captors had known he was the man in charge, even though he’d never told them. And Gray and Caleb never would have, that Mace knew for sure.
Except the drugs they’d given Caleb …
No. He shook his head again so that he could banish the thought.
Caleb had been drugged simply by luck of the genetic draw. Reid had been down for the count and the three of them that were left—himself, Gray and Cael—were equally capable, but Caleb was broader, definitely the biggest of the men, and DMH had figured they needed brawn.
Mace still shivered when he thought about what they’d wanted Caleb to do, what he may have done to one of his best friends in the entire world.
How in the hell would he ever survive knowing that? Mace could barely hold it together on the mornings that followed the particularly rough nights filled with nightmarish renditions and endless replays of the twenty-four days, four hours and seven minutes before he woke up with his throat slit.
“Was it over quickly for Gray?” she asked, and fuck, he wanted to tell her yes, that Gray had bled out quickly.
Truth was, Mace hadn’t been anywhere near him. “Yes, it was quick.”
She didn’t believe him, he knew that, but she didn’t press.
“You were hurt.”
“I healed fine.” His shoulder still ached most days, his vocal cords sustained some damage, giving his voice a low rasp at times. The bruises had long faded but the scars that ran along his back and the backs of his thighs from the strap they’d used hadn’t faded as well.
Why don’t I have those marks? Caleb would demand.
Because they broke you …
But You were lucky, was what Mace would tell him.
“How much does Caleb know, then?” Paige pressed on.
“He knows we went in. But we were separated from one another—at least I know I wasn’t with the rest. Reid says he was unconscious shortly after they put him in a cell and he woke up in the same position on the floor, right before Caleb ran out with me. I can only tell Caleb what happened to me.”
“But you haven’t told him everything.”
He stared at her. “I couldn’t.”
“You can tell me.”
He looked like he wanted to break her gaze, but he didn’t. “I woke up gasping for air.”
He was sucking wind. The hand he pressed to his throat came back covered in blood and it was then that he saw Caleb coming into the room, holding a bloody knife. As Mace watched helplessly, Caleb moved forward and only when he reached Mace did he seem to remember the knife he held. He stared at it for a second before he threw it on the ground.
“It’s okay, I’m getting you out of here,” Cael told him, then pressed a cloth to Mace’s throat and picked him up.
Everything was hazy. He shifted his eyes, refusing to let panic take over when Caleb carried him out … and that’s when he saw Gray’s body, prone on the ground where Caleb must’ve left him. Gray had sustained the same injury as Mace, but hadn’t been nearly as lucky.
Lucky.
He laughed as he finished talking, a sharp, bitter sound after he told her what he remembered about those moments, as bitter as the whiskey that now burned in his gut.
Paige looked worried. Scared. And fuck yeah, she should be both of those things, and more.
He heard the explosions next—grenades. AK fire. Shouts. And then Reid burst in, with other men behind him.
“Mace, we’re rescued. It’s all right.”
Was it? Mace wouldn’t know for sure for a damned long time.
“It was twenty-four hours before Caleb spoke a single word. Even then none of it made much sense. He was freaked. The only way they could calm him down was to put him in the hospital room with me. Guarding me seemed to ground him, but he didn’t remember anything. He just knew he wasn’t supposed to leave any of us behind.”
“And he didn’t.”
“No.” Despite the massive amount of drugs that lingered in his system, confirmed by various blood tests. “What DMH told me they were doing to him … well, let’s just say they weren’t lying.”
“Why did they target you?”
“They were looking for Kell. He killed one of DMH’s major players last year. But he wasn’t on the mission.” And since then, Kell had been MIA. Though if Mace had to guess, Noah knew exactly where the man was.
No doubt making sure that the men who did this to his team were ripped apart, limb from limb.
Mace wished him all the fucking luck in the world with that task. Wished he could’ve joined him, but realized that his job at the present was of equal, if not greater, importance.
Paige blinked, hard, fast, as if to keep tears at bay. Crying would do neither of them any good, but he wouldn’t blame her if she broke down.
“We were there for three weeks. The DMH men kept telling me that Caleb was doing well with his indoctrination. Fuck, we still don’t know what they fed him, don’t know the long-term effects beyond the memory loss. Or if the memory loss is from the drugs or the trauma or a combination of them.” He ran a hand through his hair in obvious, heartbreaking frustration.
“What does he remember?”
“He remembers carrying me to safety. There’s no way he would’ve done that if they’d somehow brainwashed him.” Mace sounded more like he was trying to convince them both. “Cael told me later that when he carried me out, he saw Gray and that Gray was already cold. And he kept asking me, What happened, Mace? What the hell happened in there? Was I next?” Mace scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I know he knows on some level what really happened. I know he didn’t hurt any of us, wouldn’t care if he never remembered the hell he went through. Except he’ll never rest until he does.”
She wasn’t going to rest easy either—he could see it in her eyes, the shift of her body as she said, “I want to know, with Caleb, what he did …”
He knew exactly what she couldn’t fully articulate. “You want to know for sure whether or not he tried to kill us. Whether he killed Gray. But if you knew Caleb the way I know him, you’d never question it,” he told her fiercely. “Caleb saved me. It was too late for him to save Gray, too late for any of us to. Reid is so freaked that he didn’t help anyone, he’s gone—disappeared.”
He couldn’t talk about this anymore. “So now you know what happene
d to your brother. You know as much as I know, and I’ve risked my career telling you.”
“I won’t tell anyone that you told me.”
“Was it worth it? Does it help you to know? Because it doesn’t help me at all.”
She hung her head for a few long moments and he lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, remembering the bars and the dark sky above, the rank smell of the earth.
In so many ways, he’d never really left that hole. Not yet. It was a slow climb, and he was still reaching for the surface.
When he finally looked at Paige, she was staring at him, and he couldn’t tell if she believed him—or if she was just in shock. He was probably in shock himself, and he’d lived through it.
She swallowed hard. Blinked back tears. And then surprised the hell out of him by saying, “I’m sorry, Mace. So sorry for what you’ve been through.”
“Me? I don’t want your sympathy. I’m here. I’m alive,” he said.
“But you’re not okay.”
“No, I’m not, and neither are you. Right now, I don’t really give a shit,” he said roughly. “Does that scare you?”
“I don’t want to think about any of this right now.”
“This is why you came here, Paige,” he told her. “You don’t get to pull that head-in-the-sand shit. You wanted the truth, now you have to handle it like a big girl.”
“I’m not a girl.” She moved to stand but he stopped her easily.
“No, you’re not.” His hands held her arms to her sides. Slid down to grasp her wrists. “You’re all woman, and I want to tie you up again. Want you naked and spread out for me, just like I promised you downstairs. How does that sound to you?”
Mace’s words made her shiver, made her blood boil and her sex grow wet, and she wondered if she would always have that reaction to him.
It was all too much to process. Gray’s death, Caleb’s amnesia … Mace’s near-death experience, his torture. The scars on his back that she’d seen but not touched.
Before she could open her mouth again, he was letting go of her. “I want you, but I won’t do this. You have your information. It’s what you came for.”
It was. But watching Mace amble out of the room holding the bottle by the neck, she realized there was so much more she wanted to know.
Mace stalked to the couch and slammed the bottle of whiskey onto the side table, then reconsidered and threw it into the fireplace, watching it smash among the burnt logs.
That would make for a nice fire later. For now, he laid out on the couch where Paige had slept last night and listened to the wind try to rip the house from its roots.
This storm, like so many others before it, would pass. It would claim power lines and landscaping, but hopefully not lives. Maybe it would get named like a few others, for the simple reason that it went beyond the scope of the meteorologists’ guesses or got the weary upstate New Yorkers talking about bad weather.
In the beginning, when he first moved here, each storm like this one had scared the shit out of him. He’d dreaded the freezing cold, the hail that slammed as if trying to break in and just about every nook, cranny and creak in the place.
He had dreaded his grandparents more.
Over the years, the storms would pass and he’d barely noticed. But now this one threatened to take his defenses, which he couldn’t afford to lose. And maybe he already had.
“Sorry, Gray. I didn’t mean to.”
Ah, that was bullshit, complete and total, and Gray would’ve called him on it too. But he wasn’t here and the wind screamed as if looking for some kind of mercy.
Mace wondered if he’d ever find any for himself.
CHAPTER
6
Cael ran along the snow-encrusted paths through the backwoods behind the bar in the early morning light. He did this daily, a ritual he knew must’ve begun long before he’d come to live with Mace. It felt as right as breathing as he skimmed the icy surface with heavy boots, his air in white puffs as he tried to remain as silent as possible.
Sometimes, when the bar closed early, he’d run through the woods at night instead, testing to see if his reflexes were where they needed to be. He was remembering some of his early days as a Ranger—the bone-crushing training, the mental and physical exhaustion, the thrill of making it when you didn’t think you could.
It was all a good reminder, a way of making him feel closer to his past.
But instead of running last night … last night the woman he’d been dancing with wanted him to come home with her. He’d driven her home, hadn’t even been sure of his own intentions until they were at her front door, kissing.
And, as it had the last few times he’d tried this, it hadn’t felt right. He didn’t know why, but he’d gone home and he’d slept. Or tried to, but instead he ended up in the storeroom, drawing pictures again. The two men and the woman.
When he came to, he was slumped over, with his head on a shelf. He dragged himself back to bed for a while and woke at dawn. Noted that Mace was sleeping on the couch, while Paige was in Mace’s bed, alone. And that was odd, considering the position he’d literally caught the two of them in last night.
He shifted his weight now to avoid crashing through the thick trees, maneuvering around instead to an open patch that began the path back toward the bar. But something stopped him in his tracks. A body, lying across the path about forty feet ahead of him … he took in the jeans and a black leather jacket.
The body was so still that Caleb knew the person was dead and had been for a while. He knew he’d seen enough dead in his life to know. He moved quickly anyway, until he stood over the man lying prone in the snow.
Big Harvey had nearly been decapitated. His chest was sliced open and his eyes stared up at Cael in a way he knew he’d seen before, but couldn’t place.
He checked around the immediate area until he saw the blood in the snow. Cautiously, he moved closer, saw a knife. Recognized it.
He wasn’t alone anymore … someone was sneaking up on him. He could hear the footsteps like they were crashing cymbals in his brain—lately, everything was too loud, smells were too strong.
It was all distorted, and even though he knew that, he couldn’t stop it.
He would kill them all.
When a hand grabbed at his arm, he moved fast, took hold of the wrist with the intention of breaking it—until he found himself slammed to the ground, hard. He fought for breath and struggled to rise, but a foot on his chest stopped him.
He looked up and saw Mace standing over him.
Mace. Dressed for his own morning run through the woods—often, the men would run together.
“What the hell, Cael? I’ve been calling your name for five minutes.”
Caleb licked his lips, his throat dry as he realized the last part of his flashback hadn’t been a flashback at all. “The knife …”
“I saw it. I told you not to touch it, but you kept moving closer and closer.” Mace stuck out a hand and helped Caleb up from the snow. “Sorry about that—I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
Cael wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, but long enough for him to cool down considerably, for his muscles to ache from not being stretched properly. “I’ve seen that knife before.”
Mace didn’t say anything. Shoved his gloved hands under his arms and waited.
“It’s got a broken handle. It was in the trunk of Paige’s car the night before last when I grabbed her bags and brought them inside,” he said.
“Shit,” Mace muttered. “Let’s go call Ed.”
“Yeah.” He glanced back at the knife. “I’ve seen a knife like that before this too, Mace. There was a knife when I found you,” he said slowly, his voice pained. He looked down at his hand and then at the knife. “I was holding the knife. There was blood on it.”
Mace nodded, his face equally pained. But Cael couldn’t stop now, the words coming as fast as the images.
“They told me to kill you guys. They showed me your pic
tures. Brought me to your cells. Made me work out. Train, over and over. Tried convincing me that you and Reid and Gray were the enemy.”
“You never believed them.”
“How the hell do you know that?” he demanded harshly, got right in his friend’s face.
Mace blanched, but didn’t move. “Because I know.”
Caleb took a step back. “None of it makes sense, but I was so foggy all the time. I wasn’t myself.”
“It was the drugs,” Mace reminded him.
“Right.” Cael’s hands fisted tightly as his voice choked on that single word. “I don’t … I don’t remember why I had the knife. Where I’d come from. But I had a knife. That’s all I remember. And I know your throat was cut. So was Gray’s.” He paused. “What about the knife, the blood?”
“Mine and Gray’s, plus another type that they couldn’t match,” Mace admitted. “And they never found a trace of the two DMH guys; they haven’t been heard from since.”
“That means nothing,” Caleb said. “I just want to remember more about the knife.”
“Did you see someone using it on me?” Mace prodded. Cael thought hard, blinked hard, then leveled his gaze on Mace.
The ground shifted beneath his feet as he clawed for the memories that were hidden by a shroud of fog. Everything he needed to know—things he had to know, for his own sanity—were out of his reach still. And the realization of what Mace had been holding back hit him like a bullet to the heart. “Do you think … fuck, Mace … do you think … did I …?”
Cael couldn’t say it. Mace hadn’t been able to give voice to it either—he refused to speak about an option he would never believe without solid proof.
Even then he would question it. That was his nature. “You didn’t, Cael. There’s no way they broke you.”
“But you don’t know for sure. You weren’t conscious when it happened.”
“No.”
“So you don’t know anything for sure.”
“I know who you are. You saved my life. And Reid’s.”
In the Air Tonight Page 9
