Ribs, abdomen, back, head, the two men kicked and punched her, while Alex stood watching, a delighted smirk on his face. But the last thing she saw as unconsciousness finally claimed her wasn’t his face but Ryder’s, standing over her like her own personal sentinel.
Peace overrode the pain and the fear, and she floated off into the blackness.
11:34 P.M.
It was time.
After hours of excruciating waiting, planning, and evaluating, it was finally time to go in and get his girl.
Relief filled Spider, he could be a patient man, but that was when the life of the woman he loved wasn’t hanging in the balance. Abigail had been with Alex for twelve hours now, there was a lot that could be done to a person in twelve hours. For now he had to keep that fear shoved to the back of his mind because if he dwelled on it then he wouldn’t be able to function.
Since they knew that they were walking into a trap they had to plan out this mission differently than they normally would. It was always a possibility of course, and there had been times when he and his team walked into an ambush, but this time they knew for sure that was what Alex had planned, and they had the added concern that Alex had trained with them, worked with them, he knew how they operated and what they would be likely to do.
Quietly, Spider and his team approached the building where Abigail’s tracker said she was being held. They didn’t have a floor plan for the building so they were going in blind, but Abigail was in there, and they weren’t leaving without her.
They had split up into two teams, himself, Chaos, and King in one, and Night, Fox, and Shark in the other. The other team was providing cover for them as they approached the building. From their observations, it appeared that there were four groups of two-man teams guarding the building. They circled in a counter-clockwise manner around the structure so that one team was monitoring one side of the square building at all times.
The men were of course armed, but they weren’t as highly trained as his SEAL team and they were able to easily eliminate all eight guards and enter the building.
It was old but looked like it was in the process of being restored, and Spider wondered whether this was Alex’s personal home. It was on the far end of the Perez compound, the opposite end to the one where he and Abigail had hidden out when he’d rescued her the first time.
Since they were still on the Perez compound there was a chance that Alex could call up more men if he felt like he needed them, but they knew Alex had been planning this for over a year and Spider assumed that whoever he had here was who he thought he needed to best them.
There were no lights on in the house, and it was quiet, no more guards, no voices talking, nothing.
It was like the place was empty.
Only they knew it wasn’t.
Abigail was in here somewhere.
The house was large but not exceedingly so, around thirty rooms spread out over three floors. They cleared the first floor without finding any signs of life, then moved on to the second and then the third; both other floors were similarly empty. It was obvious that someone lived in the house, there was food in the kitchen, tools and building materials in several rooms, furniture strewn haphazardly about in a couple of the rooms, and a few of the bedrooms had clothes in them and toiletries in the bathrooms.
Finding no one waiting for them they headed to the one place they hadn’t looked yet.
The basement.
Taking the lead, the three of them made their way back down to the first floor and started searching for a door that would lead to a basement. There was nothing obvious, and it wasn’t until they started checking out all the walls that a portion of the kitchen wall popped open, revealing a set of stairs leading down to a dimly lit space.
Abigail was down there, he could feel it, she was there, and she was waiting for him to come for her.
They made their way down a long staircase until they had to be deep underground, the air was chilled and smelled musty, and there was the unmistakable metallic smell of blood.
At the bottom of the stairs they found themselves at one end of a long passageway, on either side of the passage were cells. The cells were all empty until they came to one about halfway down and on the left. Inside there was a chair, and a small figure huddled in the corner.
Abby.
Leaving King and Chaos to finish checking the cells, Spider curled his hands around the bars, desperate to get to Abigail to check her out and see how badly she was injured. That she was injured was a given, she hadn’t responded to his presence, she just lay there, unmoving, and he prayed that she was still alive.
No.
Of course she would still be alive.
Alex wanted them to suffer, which meant he wanted them to watch while he tortured Abigail.
“We’re clear,” King said, returning to his side.
“I don’t like it,” Chaos muttered. “Why have the guards on the outside of the building but no one in here except Abs?”
Right now he didn’t care why. All he cared about was getting to Abby.
“There were a set of keys hanging down on the wall at the other end, I’m guessing they open the cells,” King said, handing them over.
Spider’s hands were shaking as he took them and inserted the first one into the lock on Abigail’s cell’s door. He had to go through five keys before one finally gave him the clink he had been waiting for.
Wrestling the door open, he ran to Abby, dropping onto his knees at her side as he pressed his fingertips to her throat.
Not only was he rewarded by the thumping of her pulse but she moaned at his touch and tried to curl in on herself.
“It’s okay, Abby, it’s me,” he said softly, wanting to reassure her, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were still playing into Alex’s hands, giving him exactly what he wanted.
“Ryder?” she croaked weakly.
“Here, babe. I’m going to have to move you, sorry,” he said, wincing, already knowing this would hurt her. Still, he couldn’t stop a gasp escaping when he rolled her as carefully as he could onto her back so he could get a better look at her injuries.
“That bad huh?” she asked, one corner of her mouth quirking up. “I would say it’s not as bad as it looks, but it really is.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” Tears burned the backs of his eyes. She had endured all of this because of them, because Alex blamed them for his own choices.
“Not your fault,” she murmured as her swollen eyes fluttered closed.
There was no point in arguing with her. Of course this was their fault, they were the ones that Alex was after. Needing to check her injuries before they moved her in case there was anything life-threatening that had to be dealt with, he bypassed the obviously broken cheekbone and bruising on her face, and ran his hands over her body. She sucked in a pained breath when he touched her ribcage and when he pulled up the t-shirt she wore he saw her entire front was already covered in a mottled array of black and blue bruises.
He swore under his breath as he clamped one hand on her shoulder and the other on her hip and carefully rolled her onto her side so he could examine her back. It was likewise bruised, and he prayed that none of her organs had been badly damaged. Internal bleeding wasn’t something they could deal with in the middle of an extraction.
“How bad?” Chaos called from the door of the cell.