“I never forgot about you, Sierra Clarkson. Never.”
“I didn’t forget about you either,” she said in a voice so low, Grover almost didn’t hear it. Then she squeezed his hand once more and let go.
It was scary how bereft he felt when her skin wasn’t against his own.
Moving slowly, bringing his arm back through the bars, Grover clenched his teeth at the pain the movement caused. But instead of rolling over and sleeping, he slowly got to his feet.
He needed to stretch. To test his body. Because when his team came for them, he needed to be ready. Mobile.
Grover couldn’t hear Sierra moving around in the cell next to him, but just knowing she was there gave him the motivation he needed to push his bruised and battered body to the limit. He wouldn’t be happy until they were both free of this place, Shahzada was dead, and they were on their way out of the country.
Chapter Five
Sierra sat up in her cell three days later and blinked, trying to see through the darkness that was all around her twenty-four hours a day…except when her captors brought her food, or wanted to beat on her and brought a light with them. She wasn’t sure what had woken her up—but then she heard it again.
Gunfire.
It echoed in the cave around her and she scrambled to her feet. As she and Grover had discussed—well, as he’d ordered her to do—she pressed herself against the back wall of her cell, then crouched down and made herself as small as possible.
“Sierra?” Grover’s voice was strained as he called out her name.
“I’m down!” she called out.
“No matter what, don’t move!” he ordered.
Sierra wanted to tell him to get down too, but she knew that would be useless.
Shahzada had come to beat on him again yesterday, but this time hadn’t removed him from his cell. Sierra had heard every blow landing on his skin, the grunts and moans he couldn’t hold back. It took everything she had to sit in her cell and not scream at them to stop, but she’d already vowed not to do anything to make Grover’s situation worse.
Shahzada had ordered his men to beat her as well. As soon as they’d reached for her, she’d turned on the tears and started to beg. Her pathetic play-acting did mostly what she hoped. Whether disgusted with her supposed weakness or possibly just bored, they gave up on torturing her even quicker than they had in the past.
She and Grover had talked after they’d left, and he’d gone through different scenarios for how their rescue might go. He never wavered in his belief that his friends would come. And soon. He’d told her to stay in the back of her cell, making herself as small as possible, in case Shahzada’s men tried to kill them before they could be rescued.
That thought scared the shit out of Sierra. When she’d first been taken captive, she’d been terrified every day that they’d kill her. But as the months passed, she guessed she was a form of backup plan for the group. In addition to using her against others, they were keeping her as a bargaining chip, if things came to that. At first she was their practice dummy for torture techniques, but eventually she became a second, and third, thought.
But she couldn’t fathom surviving what she had for so long, only to die seconds before she was freed. So she’d agreed to do exactly what Grover asked.
Now it sounded like their rescue could be eminent.
Sierra knew she was breathing too hard and fast, but she couldn’t help it. Her heart was beating a million miles an hour and she thought she was going to pass out. She ducked her chin to her knees and squeezed her eyes shut as she heard raised voices coming toward the cells.
It took her a moment to realize she was hearing English, and not her captors speaking in their native language.
She raised her head—and looked right into a powerful beam of light.
“Shit!” she exclaimed, throwing up an arm to block the glow.
“Damn, sorry!” a male voice said. “Just making sure you were out of range. Hang tight, Sierra, we’ll have you out of there in a bit. Stay where you are.”
Sierra nodded and kept her eyes closed. All she could see were bright floaty spots anyway. She heard some loud bangs, then a tremendous crash.
She couldn’t keep her eyes closed anymore. She lifted her head.
This time, she blinked in surprise. The bars of her cell had been completely knocked out of the rock they’d been attached to and a large section was now lying in the dirt. She looked up and saw three men standing outside her cell. One held out his hand.
“Unless you’d like to extend your stay, it’s time to go.”
Sierra stood up so fast, she lost her balance. Throwing out a hand to keep herself from pitching to the dirt, she staggered toward the men. One was holding a very powerful flashlight upward, so its beam bounced off the rocks above them, lighting the entire area. The third man dropped a pack from his back and began to rummage through it as she moved forward.
“I’m Trigger. This is Oz and Doc,” the man with the light said. “We don’t have a lot of time, but you can’t go tromping around the desert like that.”
For the first time in a while, Sierra remembered what she looked like. Wearing nothing but a torn T-shirt and underwear, and absolutely filthy, she couldn’t imagine what these men were thinking.
“Sierra?” Grover said. Then he was there.
Grover was looking pretty rough himself. He’d obviously gotten a pair of pants from one of his teammates and had already pulled them on. But his chest was still bare, and covered in cuts and bruises. He had a week’s worth of facial hair and his poor face was in worse shape than the rest of his body. Sierra had a chance to see his wide, worried brown eyes fixated on her, before her face was pressed up against the very chest she’d been eyeing with concern.
“Grover, we’ve got to move, man. No time for this,” Trigger warned from behind them.
For a split second, Grover’s arms tightened, as if he didn’t want to let her go, then he nodded and took a step back. His hands didn’t leave her biceps.
“Here,” Doc said as he shoved some material toward them. Grover turned and grabbed it, then went down to one knee in front of her. He tapped her foot. “Lift.”
Confused, she did as he requested and soon found herself in the first pair of pants she’d worn in months. Not surprisingly, they were too big, but Grover quickly threaded a rope through the belt loops and tied it in front. A pair of boots thumped to the ground next to him and without looking up, Grover said, “Hold on to me and lift your right foot.”
Sierra wanted to tell him that she could dress herself, but she was so surprised at how fast everything was happening, she did as he asked, bracing a hand on his warm shoulder. She concentrated on his quick, efficient movements as he put a sock on her foot and eased it into the boot. Amazingly, it fit almost perfectly. He helped her get the second sock and boot on before grabbing a T-shirt Trigger was holding out to him, throwing it over his head, then putting his own socks and boots on.
Sierra’s relief and excitement almost overwhelmed her—until she took a step forward. Her feet felt like they were being suffocated in the boots and it was actually uncomfortable to walk. It wasn’t that they were the wrong size or rubbing against her in any way; it was just that she hadn’t had anything on her feet in over a year. It was hard to get used to it again.