Page 1 of Zain

CHAPTER 1

Zain should’ve beenstartled by the crack of bullets. But that sound hadn’t rattled him in a long, long time.

Nothing did anymore.

Not bombs shaking the ground. Not missiles decimating buildings. Not even the screams—holy fuck, the screams. He liked those the least. But they didn’t scare him.

The April night air froze his exposed skin, but he didn’t cover his face with the wool shawl draped over his shoulders. He welcomed the cold. The crisp air allowed more oxygen into his lungs and gave him clarity he didn’t have with all the noise and Pashto in his ear all day. He spoke the language fluently because he rarely got the opportunity to speak English anymore.

The desert nights were the only thing he enjoyed—thoughenjoyedmight be too strong a word. The chilly temperature matched his stone-cold insides.

He’d become desensitized. Didn’t know anything but blood, gunshots, and shady motherfuckers he couldn’t trust. At one point, he’d just wanted to survive. Now, every throb of his pulse demanded revenge.

He wanted to kill the ones causing the suffering. And he would if he didn’t die first. Death wouldn’t be such a bad thing, though. What the hell did he live for anyway? Nothing important. Nothing he could remember. And if he stayed in this fucked-up camp with its cave of prisoners and cruelty, he’d turn into one of them.

A howl sounded from the depths of the cave at his back. Zain closed his eyes as the keening turned to guttural cries.

Crack!

The gunshot echoed off the stone walls, so damn loud Zain tipped his head to his shoulder. The hysterical shouts stopped.

Emotion evaded him. Compassion and empathy were gone. In truth, he’d already started to morph into one of them.

Like a vampire’s bitten victim, Zain was on the cusp. The poison had already entered his veins. Now he waited with bated breath to become what he despised most. Every day he grew more indifferent. Every minute he lost more of his ability to give a fuck. And every second he forgot more and more about the man he once was.

All he was . . . was this.

Hollow.

Zain ran his hand over his beard. Even the desire to trim the scraggly strands was gone. As fucked up as it was, he accepted this reality. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t been killed yet. Tilting back his head, he gazed up at the stars.

Christ, the sky was brilliant out here. No light pollution in the mountains of Afghanistan. Looking up at the stars almost convinced him there was more to the world than terrorism.

No, probably not.

Just another illusion.

Picking up his gun, he went back into the moist-smelling cave. He couldn’t let himself remember the good.

Not when darkness had become his only ally.

***

“You don’t haveto do this,” Dana said softly into the phone. She glanced at the clock on her nightstand. If she wanted to catch her flight to Pakistan, she needed to leave now and not give her travel companion any way out.

Not that she wanted to leave Brick without options, but truth be told, she couldn’t make this trip alone. From the moment she’d heard about Rami’s missing brother, she’d been riveted.

A Green Beret soldier missing in action wasn’t exactly something you forgot about. He’d been gone almost three years, supposedly kidnappedwhile on a mission in Afghanistan. Dana had been given a photo of Zain taken six months after his supposed capture, and, well, she hadn’t been able to stop looking.

That was four months ago. She’d spent countless hours scouring every piece of surveillance data she could get her hands on. Thankfully, she still had contacts from her previous job as an FBI intelligence analyst.

So now, here she was, doomed to traipse into dangerous territory for a man she’d never met—a man who was probably dead or at the very least had been tortured for nearly three years. And she thought she could find him.

If that wasn’t a toxic trait, she didn’t know what was. It had the wholeI can fix himvibe. Lord help her.

Brick Slater scoffed through the speaker. “Is that why you called? Look, you and I both know Idohave to do this. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to. Believe it or not, I miss living on the edge. I need an adrenaline rush.”

“Rami will be pissed,” she said.

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