She not only took it upon herself to tell him at that point how she felt about him, the then-nineteen-year-old Natalie thought it would be the best idea in the world to give herself to him.
Literally. She’d told him she’d saved herself for him and asked him to take her virginity.
Before he could get over the shock of that and finding her in his room practically naked, she kissed him.
Then she double shocked him by telling him she loved him and begged him to stay.
That was the night their friendship went to hell.
Luke had a weakness for beautiful women and could honestly say that he’d never been with a woman who’d rivaled her beauty and the pure sexiness she’d exuded that night. He knew he’d embarrassed her to no end when he shunned her, but she meant too much to him to be with her.
Maybe that made no sense and wouldn’t if he tried to explain it, but it made sense to him. It was also for the best, so he allowed her to believe what she wanted and believe in the rejection.
He doubted she would have told Jessica or any of their friends what had happened.
She wasn’t like that. She was a private person, even back then, and he didn’t think that part of her would have changed.
The memory of her in her lingerie displaying her fine assets was something he would never forget, but the thing that would burn in his mind forever was her confession of love.
He knew she meant it, and hoped that by telling him he would stay.
She thought her love would be enough. She told him she feared something terrible would happen to him.
She couldn’t have been more right about that.
Something terrible did happen to him, and he almost never saw anyone again.
Chapter 3
Luke
* * *
Two months ago…
The smell of smoke was the first thing that caught his attention. Smoke and burnt rubber.
Burnt rubber usually meant something well and truly sinister had happened. Like last time.
That was three weeks ago. He’d tried to intervene when militants infiltrated the Khamyab District and practically destroyed the Chintakani village.
But he and his team were too late. The militants had killed several people by placing tires around them and setting them on fire. They’d killed whoever they could catch: men, women and children. It didn’t matter to them. As long as you were weak, unable to fight back and capturable, that was it. The end.
The sight of that disaster got to Luke. In all his years of being a Marine, he couldn’t remember feeling such anguish and sorrow for the loss of life.
He could just imagine what they’d all gone through. It was heartless, cruel, evil.
This time felt exactly like that.
He had the same feeling come over him as their truck rolled into the Yerraboinapalli village.
That feeling of doom.
It was so heavy upon him that he’d gone silent and reserved himself to deep thought while the others talked. He would normally join in the conversation, but his thoughts held him back.
His best friend Terry talked enough for all of them, anyway. He was talking about going home to his mom’s cooking. That got the guys talking about whose mother could cook the best and the best dishes they served.
It was the kind of conversation Luke would have jumped into because his mother was really such an amazing cook, and he didn’t think anyone’s mother could cook better than she could.
The smell of rubber grew stronger as they got closer to the village’s center.
It was close to evening so things were quiet anyway, and most people were inside their houses. Luke just thought things were unusually quiet. It felt like they were being lured into a trap.
“Guys, could we quiet down a bit?” His nerves made him ask that.
They looked at him and laughed. Terry ran a hand through his dark blonde hair and over his beard.
“Why, because your mom can’t cook?” Terry asked.
“My mom is amazing in everything she does. Something doesn’t feel right,” he said, looking around.
He looked at the village houses and saw something he failed to notice on entry. It was approaching evening, the meager street lights lit their way, but no one had their lights on in the houses.
“Look at the houses. All in darkness,” he observed. That made the guys look around too.
“Pete, stop here,” he told their driver.
Pete slowed their truck to a steady stop.
The silence that filled the space between them was now a sure sign that something was up.
They were in a village that usually had more activity going on at this time. This was one of the areas they’d been assigned to patrol on a basic routine check, so they came by a few times a week.
It was never usually this quiet. Not to the point where you could hear yourself breathe.
“Let’s get out and split into two teams. Brad, you take the south side with Mark and Ben, I’ll cover the north with Terry and Henry. Pete, you and Sam wait here. If you see anything strange, leave and go back to base.”
“Are you sure I shouldn’t wait around?” Pete asked.
“Yes.” He was sure. The militants that destroyed the Chintakani village were part of a larger group who were worse than the Taliban. At first they were a myth and all sights were turned to the Taliban after 9/11.
Then they emerged. They didn’t have a name, but he called them the Ra because their members had a tattoo of the Egyptian symbol for the sun god: a sun disk.
He was one of the first to see them and capture one of their members, who killed himself with poison before anyone could get him to talk.
When Luke saw that, he knew they were up against something big. That was about four years ago. Since then they’d surfaced a lot, but always for a reason.
Before they destroyed that village, there was a rumor going around that the Russian scientist Vladmir Kramar had visited the area for research. Luke found out that the research had something to do with a precious metal he’d discovered that he wanted to use in a chip. It was interesting and would get any science geek talking for hours, but the dangerous side to that was the chip could be used for other things too. Like powering a warhead.
Nothing had been confirmed yet, but Luke believed the village was destroyed because Vladmir did indeed go there. The villagers had housed him but would never give any information on where he went next.
So Luke suspected that caused the disaster.
He didn’t know what Ra would be looking for here, but that didn’t mean they weren’t here, or that they didn’t need to be careful. He was in charge of this team and this area. He didn’t want anything disastrous happening on his watch.
They got out of the vehicle and started to grab what they needed. Luke went to the trunk to get some extra ammo but heard a whistling sound whizzing through the air.
It sounded like—
“Get down!” he screamed just as the bomb hit the building opposite them and it blew up.
Luke and Terry threw themselves to the ground in time to escape a spray of bullets. But Henry didn’t get down quick enough. Luke saw a host of bullets strike him, and then Henry slumped lifelessly to the ground near the hood of the truck.
Luke had known Henry since their rookie years. He and Terry were the men he called close friends because they’d watched each other’s backs and kept each other alive.
“No,” Luke breathed.
“Get yourself together, Lieutenant,” Terry said . Luke looked up at him, wondering how he could be so inconsiderate, but then he saw the shock and deep sadness on his face.
Luke did need to get himself together. He was in charge and they needed him.
“Is everyone okay?” he called out.
“No. Ben, Brad and Mark are down,” Pete replied.
“Are they alive?” Luke called back.
“Lieutenant, we need to get out of here, there are militant trucks coming towards us.” Panic f
illed Pete’s voice.
Luke looked in the opposite direction, as he heard trucks too.
“Shit. We need to go. But where?” Luke said to Terry.
This was a trap alright. They’d been lured and ambushed.
“Man, just get in the fucking truck!” Terry yelled, grabbing his shoulder.
They made it back into the truck, although bullets were flying. One caught Luke’s thigh, grazing it. He cried out from the pain but kept going. He’d been shot before and survived, but it was the kind of pain that instantly weakened you.
As soon as they got in the truck, Pete launched forward and spun it around to fly down the alley near the shanty-looking houses.
They made it through, escaping the trucks, but what they landed themselves in was far worse.
Pete stopped the truck and Luke stared ahead of them.
That burnt rubber they smelled was indeed rubber, and used for the same purpose it had been last time.
He saw stacks of tires around burnt bodies. The villagers’ bodies. But for more effect the evil bastards displayed the corpses of those they hadn’t burned on the trees. They’d tied them all to the trees in the most distasteful of ways.
“Ugh.” Luke winced. This was something he’d only ever seen in films, not real life.
He’d seen some truly terrible things, but this was of a different classification.
They were all so engrossed with what they saw, which was an obvious distraction, that they didn’t see that more trucks had come along and they were now completely surrounded. No way out.
There were trucks and tanks that outdid the vehicle they had. A whole army circled them. Luke had to wonder where the hell they’d gotten so much from, but clearly they’d stolen it or acquired it somehow.
Two men with machine guns jumped out of the largest truck. Then a man wearing a balaclava and a hooded jacket jumped out.
“Guys, this isn’t good,” Pete said.
“Radio HQ quickly,” Luke managed, but his eyes were fixed on the man with the balaclava.
Maybe this was the elusive leader of the group.
Pete radioed headquarters with the emergency word and sent a signal of where they were.
That was all he was able to do before the men got to them.
Holding their guns high, they yelled at Luke and the others to get out.
“What do we do?” Sam asked. “The minute we get out we’re dead.” He looked freaked out.
“We’re dead if we stay or go,” Luke informed him. Being in the truck didn’t mean squat. The bulletproof glass would surely shatter if these people decided to throw a bomb on them. “Man up, boys. Whatever happens, it’s been a real honor to serve with you.”
Luke pulled in a breath and looked at Terry, who nodded at him. His eyes spoke his appreciation and honor to have served together.
The men seized them as soon as they stepped out of the truck. From there the real hell began. Their heads were covered with bags and they were taken somewhere. Where was anyone’s guess.
When the bags were removed, Luke guessed they were in a cave because of the way the roof looked. It was made of stone and the place felt damp.
He was sitting in a chair with his hands bound behind him in what felt like shackles. Pete, Sam and Terry sat around him in the same debacle, but their mouths had been taped up with duct tape.
His was not, which meant he’d have to talk at some point.
“Good, you’re awake,” said a voice from the shadows of the room. A man emerged. The man with the balaclava. He took it off. “No point to this since you’re all about to die.”
Luke looked at the Middle Eastern man with dark eyes that were filled with hatred.
“What do you want with us?” Luke asked.
“Oh, to the point. Okay. That’s fine.” The man smiled. “Vladmir Kramar. Tell me where he is and you and your friends will die quickly.”
“We don’t know where he is. What do you want with him?” Luke answered.
“That’s my business. Tell me where he is. You wouldn’t be protecting the area so heavily if you didn’t know.”
Damn, this fool had taken their patrolling to mean something else. Now they were paying the price with the option to die fast or slow.
“We don’t know,” Luke hissed at him.
“Okay, that’s fine. You will die slowly then.” The man gave a signal to someone Luke couldn’t see.
He attempted to turn his head but the jolt of electricity that blasted through his body seized him. It pummeled from the shackles on his hands and spread throughout his body.
Luke cried out from the intensity of the pain.
It went on for a few minutes then stopped; all the life felt like it had left his body.
“Still don’t know?” the man asked with an amused expression on his face.
When Luke didn’t answer, the man gave the signal again.
The days that followed came with more torture, each day worse than the last. For all of them.
Then when the man saw he wasn’t getting any closer to breaking them into giving information they didn’t know, the evil bastard amplified the torture and made them all watch as their comrades were literally slowly dying.
A week passed like that. Then two, then Luke lost track of time.
It must have been evident that none of them knew anything about Vladmir by then, so they’d become toys. Toys the militants could play with, torture and eventually kill.
Sam was the first to die. Luke knew when they threw him in cold water and electrocuted him that he wouldn’t survive.
He didn’t.
Pete was next. He seemed to have suffered a heart attack.
That left Terry and Luke.
One day Terry gave one of the men a bad look and the guy blinded him with his knife. He said he’d never be able to look at anyone again. Then, just for fun, he shot Terry in his head, killing him.
Killing him right there in front of Luke. His friend was dead. Years of friendship over just like that, and for nothing.
A part of Luke died too, because he knew he would suffer the same fate and it could be over something as simple as nothing.
The day after that they unbounded him and put him in a cage. A metal cage that they lowered into a pit filled with crocodiles.
The first time they lowered the cage into the pit, Luke thought he would die. It was like being in a nightmare. But it was their fun. The men would gather around each evening and watch the spectacle of him trying to stay alive. When he survived, the cage would be charged with electricity and give him a good jolt. The last time that they did it to him Luke passed out, and the last thing he remembered was his leg dangling in front of a massive croc.
He slipped into a dream where his mind took him right back to the night when Natalie asked him to stay.
He could feel her warm lips on his as she stood on the tips of her toes and brought him to her mouth for that kiss.
“Stay, don’t go.” Her voice echoed off the walls of his mind.
“I have to go,” he replied, just like he did when she asked.
“I love you. Please don’t go. Please stay…with me.”
He felt his heart beat within him at the sincerity of her words. He remembered the way her eyes looked at him, as if what she had to say was the most important thing in the world to her, and then he remembered how she cried the day he left. All because she thought she’d never see him again.
It was funny, in his dream he’d taken her more seriously than he had in life.
Those words fueled him with something unimaginable.
Life, pure life, or new life filling him. He knew his family loved him to no end. But her words did something else to him that he couldn’t describe. It gave him energy.
When he came to he was still in the cage, with his leg intact and with another type of determination.
Determination to get home.
Luke waited for the man who brought him food. Usually he was too weak to acknowledge an
yone that came inside the cage, so they’d grown used to him just sitting there waiting to die.
When the guy came inside and dropped the food like he was serving it to an animal, Luke sprang forward straight onto the man. That caused the man to stumble backwards and fall straight into the pit with the crocs. They were on him within seconds and he didn’t even get the chance to scream.
Cage open and freedom beckoning him, Luke ran. Natalie’s voice giving him strength.
He managed to sneak into their garage and onto the back of a truck.
Luke literally and stealthily slipped from their grasp, escaping.
He got to headquarters days later, after disguising himself to keep out of sight, and that’s how he got back home.
Returning a broken man who’d lost his friends and comrades.
He was the only man to survive that mission.
Chapter 4
Natalie
* * *
Good, the reports had just come in for J.J. Belmont, one of the companies their clients were thinking of taking over.
Natalie looked at the email on her desktop and pulled in a deep breath. There were a lot of reports here to go through.
It was great that they sent it by email, but she wanted a hard copy of everything too. That was how she worked. Her intuitive skills and drive to be thorough wouldn’t see her doing anything less.
It was what made her so highly valued in the companies she worked for back in L.A., and what she knew made her valued here, too, at Donovan Inc.
It was a bright Monday morning and she’d actually been looking forward to going in to work.
That was what she liked about working here, and what she’d never experienced anywhere else. It was Caleb Donovan, Luke and Jessica’s father, who’d inspired her to pursue a career in finance. That she became an analyst was something that just happened. Back in college she realized she had the skill set for it, so she just developed her academic qualifications and experience around it.
She loved it and had worked for a variety of companies that saw her as an asset.
As she got older, she realized that she wanted something more comfortable and not so high powered, where she was always so busy that she barely had time for herself or her family and friends.
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