Page 55 of These Reckless Hearts

I glare at him despite fear overtaking everything. Part of me thinks they won’t kill me because there must be a reason why Lance wanted me here, but the other part of me wonders if they’re only waiting to put that bullet in my skull until Jacobs gets here. “What happened to the people I was with?”

The man smirks. He has blond stubble and striking eyes. “No idea. Not our assignment.”

“You always play someone’s bitch, then?”

His eyes harden. “It’s called working for money, not that you know anything about it.”

I laugh because I haven’t heard anything so funny in my life. “You think I have money? That’s rich.” Laughter keeps pouring out until my side protests, and I seal my lips together, swallowing a moan.

My captor tilts his head, but a voice calls out behind him, and he immediately shuts the door.

I drop to my knees by the bucket and move the shirt and pants away from the puddle. They’re still drier than the clothes I’m wearing so I don’t waste time stripping. A sponge bobs on the water’s surface, and I use it to coat my skin in the freezing liquid. Asshole didn’t even warm it up for me.

I scrub and scrub, rubbing away all the mud and bits of pieces of mountain shrubbery that I brought back with me, carefully washing out my injuries to take better stock of where I’m at. The gash on my side hurts the worst. I don’t dare scrub away the hardened blood because I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing keeping the wound from bleeding. There’s also a laceration on my right calf that I think was caused by a tree branch when I was being swept away in the water. It, too, is held together with dried blood that I don’t touch no matter how much mud is also caked around it. I have nothing to dress it with and better that it doesn’t start bleeding again.

Dipping my hands into the water to cup some in my palms, I throw it against my face, waiting for it to rinse off right back into the bucket. It’s a far cry from Stone’s rainfall showerhead, but it will have to do.

I step into the bottoms and pull them up, leaving the waistband open since it hits right at my injury. Internally, it feels a lot worse than it appears, and I wonder if I’ve bruised my ribs from being thrown up against that hard surface that I believe was a boulder.

I wiggle into my shirt, then sit against the very edge of the mattress where it’s dry. I tug my shirt over my knees and curl into a ball, staring at the light shining in through the window. I’m sure he wasn’t lying about this place being heavily guarded, there’s no doubt about that, but in my condition, I couldn’t run away anyway. I don’t think they’d kill me, but they’d probably drag me right back here in worse condition than I am right now.

“How about some food?” I call out.

“Jesus. She’s worse than the Iraqi mercenaries we had to deal with.”

“Pain reliever?” I shout more forcefully. “I’ll even just take some drinking water.”

“I figured you’d had enough of that,” someone rasps from outside the door.

I grit my teeth. My fingers curl into my skin, giving me something to focus on. Finn helped me a lot, but he didn’t teach me how to defeat a five-man ex-military unit.

Hours drag by. I sleep some, but I’m more awake than dreaming. My stomach is a dull pain of hunger, but I’m used to that. Or I used to be. It’s harder to ignore how hungry I am now that I no longer have to live that way. By the time the door opens again, I’m surprised if it’s not because he can hear my stomach growling.

A different face greets me than the one who brought me the bucket. He has the same tough exterior only with darker hair. He doesn’t smile at all. His lips are a thin line and nothing about him and the gun he has hanging by his side tells me that this is a conversational visit. “Get up,” he demands.

I struggle to my feet, wincing as the pain in my mid-section drives home again. “I could really use some pain reliever,” I choke out.

He ignores me altogether and gestures with his gun. “Go through the door and await my further instruction.”

I do as he says, trying to walk as normally as possible even though the bottom of my feet feel like they’re shredded. There’s a reason why we wear hiking boots in the mountains. Being tossed around in a sudden raging river aside, I was bound to have some scrapes and bruises just from walking over the mountain floor.

“Turn right,” the voice orders.

I turn right and find myself at the end of a corridor. There are doors on either side of a hallway that stretches about ten feet in length before opening up. Further into the interior of what I now realize is a house, I can only see slots of light fanning in from gaps in the blinds in the otherwise unlit space.

The furnishings are nice enough. It’s a step up from the house I lived in with my dad, but it doesn’t even come close to the Jacobs’ houses. I’m beginning to think this might not have anything to do with Lance at all unless he’s really trying to throw me off. I can’t imagine him in a space like this. He’d turn his nose up at it.

“Keep going,” the guy barks.

I increase the pace as much as my body will allow. Every step I take, I wish that Stone, Wyatt, and Lucas were with me. Maybe I’ve become too accustomed to having them in my life. Now that they’re not, I’m freaking out. If Lance hurt them, that will be the last thing he does. I don’t care what I have to do. I’ll die on that mission as long as Lance feels my wrath.

“There’s a chair in the corner of the room, move toward it.”

I emerge into the living area where a plaid couch sits awkwardly angled away from the wall. Turning to my right, I find a dining room chair sitting in the corner and move toward it as I’ve been instructed. I keep studying my surroundings and note we’re most likely in an uninhabited house. Maybe a newly sold house that hasn’t been moved into yet? It’s missing pretty much every comfort of a home, and that has nothing to do with the military professionals sitting at a connected dining room table with guns. The one who tackled me to the ground twice grins at me. He’s missing a tooth just to the right of his front set. “What happened to the people I was with?” I ask again, thinking that they must know something. They must have seen something.

“She doesn’t listen very well, does she?” the one who I assume is the leader deadpans. The missing tooth isn’t the only odd thing about him. Two jagged scars mar his cheek.

A firm hand on my shoulder shoves me into the chair, and I breathe through a flare of pain in my side. “I just want to know that they’re okay. Please.” My voice shakes as I beg. I don’t care that they’re looking at me like I’m a naïve little girl that they could grind under their shoe. I need to know what happened to Wyatt, Stone, and Lucas. And I might as well throw Ninja in there, too, because the big, burly Dragon has endeared himself to me.

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