Defy (Brothers of Ink and Steel Book 3) Read online

  I’m in.

  Chapter Four

  Rachel

  Something new—a couple hours ago they duct taped my mouth. This’ll be the second time. The first time was when I woke up one time, disoriented, and started screaming my head off. After my rage, I cried . . . hard. My nose got plugged with mucus and I could hardly breathe. I thought for sure I’d suffocate. I tried clearing my nose by blowing it and wiping the goo on the side of the mattress. Pretty disgusting, since I’m sure it’s still there. But it became a life and death situation. Even after I expelled the mucus, my sinuses hurt, and getting air through the swelling was nearly impossible. I won’t cry again.

  Why’d they use the tape this time? I wasn’t screaming. A chill, cold like a corpse, goosebumps over my skin. They’re either going to move me again or murder me, and they don’t want to hear from me when they do.

  I have to shove the fear from my mind fast.

  I mull over the five stages of grief—as categorically and chronologically ordered in my psychology textbook—denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

  Five. That’s it. That’s all the American Board of Psychologists, or whoever made up that shit, can give me?

  I consider what’s happened to me and I realize that those stages are all fucked up! Makes me wonder if there’s a hostage’s handbook somewhere.

  “Denial.” Skip!

  There’s, Why me? Why is this happening? And, God, aren’t you watching out for me? But you know what’s happened, and you feel the chilling dread of the darkest shadow you’ve ever encountered creeping closer. And with every passing day, it closes in on you—your own mortality—and you wonder how long the air will last.

  So my number one is fear. Plain, simple, easy.

  Fear.

  Anger . . . hmm, I’m going to pass that one for the moment and skip to . . .

  Bargaining.

  That’s my number two.

  I pleaded with Pedro to free me. He started to cry and left the room. He may be my only chance, as he seems to be the only one here with a conscience and maybe without a hidden agenda. Monster One and Monster Two, who tried force feeding me, each have their own ideas. While one maybe wants to dismember me, the other is following orders.

  The way I refused to eat . . . that was bargaining with my captors.

  Then, of course, there’s all the prayers I’ve been saying to any God in the universe that would hear me, begging him to get me out of this.

  If I get a real chance to bargain for my life with my captors, I will, in a heartbeat. Of course, the shooter hasn’t shown his face to me, though. I wonder if it’s the guy who got me the nutrition drinks and who stopped the other man from hitting me.

  I don’t know, but if they’ve made up their mind to kill me, I hope I can be brave enough to be defiant and spit in their faces.

  Bargaining is number two.

  Depression . . . should absolutely be number three in the hostage handbook’s stages of grief. I wonder if my captors have even bothered to learn my name. They haven’t used it. No one has spoken to me or questioned me, and the only one who talks to me is Pedro. I’m so fucking depressed—no comparison to anything I’ve ever felt before. I want to put my arms around my family and never let go. I cried for the first few days I was here—thinking about how I’ll probably never see them again—but I can’t and won’t do that anymore. Neither sorrow nor fear are productive emotions, and because they’re debilitating, I have to keep them in check.

  Acceptance? No fucking way! I can’t do that. Not ever. I can picture my little sister and my mom—it’s just the three of us. They need me. I have to get home!

  So how do I fight? How do I get out of here?

  More thoughts flood in, all day long, tormenting me silently as I sit here chained against the wall on my filthy mattress. What if this is not short term? What if they move me somewhere more . . . permanent?

  Now those thoughts jack me right back around to fear. I’ve read true life accounts about people taken. Women who were chained for years, their bodies used and beaten mercilessly. By a great miracle some get away, but most never get their miracle and are never found.

  Fucking heartbreaking fucking world!

  Acceptance? No. There is no acceptance—there is only plotting. I fix my mom and sister’s faces in my mind.

  But my captors said home, I’m reminded.

  Can I focus on that? Can I believe it? What else do I have?

  Muffled voices catch my attention. They sound like they’re coming from behind a closed door or wall, and I have to strain to make out what they’re saying.

  “I have to take measurements in that room too!” a man demands loudly. “Everywhere. What part of that don’t you understand?” His voice carries a noticeably deep and resonant timbre with a southern twang. “It’s my ass if I return with insufficient data.”

  He sounds pissed off.

  “This is a private storage room with the dimensions of a closet, it’s not big enough to be of any consequence,” another man says coolly with a Spanish accent. “Put the container by the door.”

  The first man who spoke makes it known he’s unhappy, but then it goes silent again and they’re gone.

  I don’t know how long it’s been, but the tape is still in place and no one has come.

  If . . . I mean when I go home, I’m going to do all the things I’ve put off, thinking I’d have time to do later. No more waiting for anything! I’ll eat what I want when I want—spaghetti, lasagna, pizza, milkshakes and fucking french fries. I’m going to get the little black tribal elephant tattoo I’ve always wanted but was too afraid of the commitment and the pain to actually go through with.

  I’m going to piss off my mom, drop out of Tulane—I could never step foot on that campus again—get a backpack, study abroad and travel the world. Europe, India, China, Morocco, Nepal, Australia—everywhere! I want to see everything. Then I’ll choose a university closer to home, finish my education and get on board with my career.

  And fuck? Yeah, I’m going to fuck a hot guy when I want to. I’m going to stop playing hard-to-get while waiting for Mr. Right and start having a whole lot of fun with all of the Mr. Right-nows that I want!

  I consider those things and make mental lists for each item on my list—what I’ll eat first, where on my body my elephant will go, the brand and style of condoms I’ll keep in my purse and what I’ll need for a worldwide journey.

  For a while, it keeps my mental state positive and my emotions in check.

  But the time I’m awake and alone trudges by in the most painfully long increments.

  I contort my body to follow the chain with my fingers all the way to the concrete wall it’s secured to and feel and pull, hoping it will give way. Of course it doesn’t. But I still try, just like I have every day.

  If only I could see where I was. Get a bearing on my surroundings. Maybe I could see a tool or . . . I don’t know, something to help me get out of here. If I could get them to take the blindfold and chains off . . . I could play along if I had to. I could run if I got the chance.

  I will kill to get away.

  I feel like I’m still wearing the knee-high, flowy summer dress I had on the day they took me. And I’m grateful, even as I’m surprised, that none of them have put their hands on me . . . sexually.

  Could I be in some way important?

  I listen as what sounds like a door squeaks open. Heavy feet walk towards me and someone slowly and carefully begins to pull at the tape.

  “Just rip it off, Pedro!” a gruff voice says in Spanish.

  “Yes, like you would her dress!” The men laugh and jeer.

  Once I’m free from the tape, I say, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  This is one English phrase that Pedro has learned from me. He’s quiet as he steps away and comes back with the bucket.

  So miserably humiliating to urinate and shit in a bucket someone else is holding. He squeezes my arm carefully to steady me in my
position over the bucket. He even lifts my dress, keeping it out of the way. This is his everyday job, but he’s being unusually quiet.

  “Will you sing to me?” I hum to make sure he understands.

  “No.”

  I hum more, pushing through the fear his silent stance is generating inside me.

  “No puedo cantar hoy,” he insists, and I can’t help but wonder what’s different about today, why he can’t sing. “Me siento triste.”

  Why do you feel sad, Pedro? I want to ask desperately, but I’m not ready to reveal my ability to understand their language.

  “Please?” I press. “How do you say that in Spanish? Poor favor?” I butcher the word purposely.

  He sniffs and whimpers very slightly, as if he’s crying.

  “I’m sorry. Are you hurt?”

  “Terminado.” He sets me down on the bed without wiping me and grabs away the bucket with my sloshing waste. A moment later I hear his footfalls run out of the room.

  The word freezes me in place. Terminado.

  “I told you not to get attached to her,” one of the gruff men’s voices calls out in Spanish.

  “You should have licked her pussy when you had the chance,” the other adds, and both men laugh raucously. It takes me a moment to translate that one in my head, and I have to school my features once I do so they can’t see my revulsion.

  “She was supposed to go home!” Pedro shouts in an unexpected flash of emotion. “Not go with the others.”

  The first man taunts, “Poor Pedro lost his girlfriend.”

  The next thing I hear is a splash of liquid against the floor and the man’s laughter changes to the violent shouting of curse words, a few I’m not familiar with, but I get their meaning just fine.

  “I’ll kill you, Pedro!” he screams in Spanish. “You threw her piss all over me!”

  “You said you wouldn’t hurt her!”

  “I won’t hurt her. Her buyer in Mexico City will hurt her. Why else do you think we have orders not to touch her?”

  I shudder, but try to show nothing but confusion in my expression. I must be hiding my terror well enough because the man continues smoothly, revealing my fate to me without realizing it.

  “No bruises, no cuts. The buyer wants her creamy white skin. That is why he pays Miguel so much money to buy her. Miguel will fix his problems with El Carnicero because of the drugs he lost. While the buyer gets a perfect girl to”—my mind races to translate this next word—despedacen. When I come up with the translation, I can’t help but whimper.

  Tear to pieces.

  “Poor, poor Pedro.”

  Their words churn in the deepest recesses of my belly.

  They never intended to send me home. They’re selling me! They kept me pristine so my buyer could do what he wanted with me . . .

  Then murder me.

  Anger. The final stage in my hostage’s handbook.

  Since I’ve been held hostage, I’ve believed the gunman held my fate. And maybe he does.

  But maybe, I hold his.

  Ryder

  “Cameras?” Briggs asks later when I brief him over the phone.

  “Nothing that records. He doesn’t want anything he does there caught on film,” I explain. “There’s a live feed monitor only. I hacked into the wiring down the block to give you access. I also got a motion sensor so you can tap into the back stairwell to give me some extra eyes. It’s connected to the kitchen, which is poorly understaffed and used to deliver Miguel’s meals to his office, which is adjacent to his bedroom. The security is a joke.”

  “What time are you going in?”

  “Zero one hundred hours.”

  “What’s your entrance strategy?”

  “I already disabled the security for an overlooked window leading into the basement. The entire place has got great shrub coverage. The basement contains a storage pantry that leads into the kitchen—and thus the stairwell.”

  “Exit?”

  “Back the way I came while the guards are distracted with a dumpster explosion on the opposite side of the house,” I say. “I even programmed a few other complications for them, just in case things start going south.”

  “Sounds good.”

  After we synchronize our watches, I get in a three hour power-recharge sleep. I wake up before the alarm—my body is trained to do so—and recheck my gear.

  I position my plates and carrier vest—standard Navy SEAL issued. I think about the man I loved as a father every time I do it.

  “These plates can stop up to three AK-47 rounds,” he’d remind me every outing. “You are to always wear it, Ryder—don’t you dare go off slick—capish?”

  “Yes, sir. I understand.”

  “Good. Because I don’t want to have to be the one to tell your mother you were killed because you were going without it.”

  Of course, I met my “mother” and Chief at the tender age of nine years old. Chief called her my mama, but I called her by her name, Betty, for a long time. Too long.

  “What else is imperative, son?” he’d ask.

  It’s so goddamn ingrained that I still pack my carrier and equipment, as if he were still right here beside me. Night vision goggles for night assault tactics—US SEAL issued. I check my Heckler & Koch M-4 assault rifle with suppressor and extra magazines and strap two Glocks into separate holsters. I’ve also got several smoke grenades, light canisters, my Winkler fixed blades, breaching charges, in case I’m put into a tough spot, tool box and lock picks, tourniquets and flashlights.

  “The only easy day was yesterday, Ryder.” I may be the only one left speaking the SEAL motto out loud, but it’s all Chief.

  I’m the last one alive.

  Parking the Jag a mile from the target, I grab my equipment and take off on foot.

  Through binoculars, I watch and wait as the middle rotating guard, who goes between the steel fencing and the stone wall, makes his lonely round with Cujo, the drooling canine, by his side.

  Once past, I unearth the bolt cutters I left by the fence yesterday, hidden underneath a piece of fake green turf and tucked up into a small mounded decoy hill.

  I snip myself a nice sized hole at the base of the fence, reposition the cutters back beneath the turf, crawl through and situate it so Cujo’s handler will be none the wiser.

  My thumb taps the stopwatch on my SEAL dive watch. Ten minutes in and out.

  “Talk to me, Briggs.” I barely breathe it. It’ll be the last thing I say through the communication device. But for all intents and purposes, Briggs will be my set of eyes in the building.

  “You’re really blended, I can’t even detect your movement on the cam,” Briggs marvels. “But just in case, I’m disabling the live feed with a still shot. While I’m at it . . . there. All other monitor angles are frozen as well. You’re a ghost.”

  Briggs and I have been doing this for years. He’s a great asset and friend, and we have our routine running smooth as clockwork.

  I stay low on my belly over the stone wall and keep close to the ground as I glide, almost invisible, across the compound.

  “Freeze,” Briggs says, and I do. “The guard is making his next pass. Just hold tight.”

  I’m concealed within a cluster of banana palms and positioned enough upwind that Cujo won’t catch my scent.

  Once they round the corner of the home, Briggs squawks, “Carry on.”

  The window pops open with ease after my earlier tampering and I crawl through quickly.

  The utility room is dark, but the night vision goggles keep everything illuminated. I reach the door and listen carefully before proceeding forward. There’s no monitoring equipment on the lowest level, so Briggs is out of the game, and I have only my eyes and ears to depend on.

  Following the concrete hallway, Glock in hand, I head to the back stairs, which will lead me to the kitchen, when I hear a sound that stops me cold.

  A frantic clanging of chains is accompanied by a woman’s high pitched screams, infused with panic.


  “DON’T TOUCH ME!” she yells.

  I’m not surprised that it’s coming from behind the closed door of the “closet” my home tour guy wouldn’t let me into this afternoon.

  A shrill, bloodcurdling wail follows a man’s sadistic laughter.

  One swift kick to the door leverages it open.

  The full picture is painted in a fraction of a second—a woman is on her knees atop a grimy old mattress. She’s blindfolded and chained to the concrete wall behind her.

  Her torturer stands over her, the flat of his blade stroking her leg but not cutting—yet. He is momentarily stunned by my intrusion.

  I shoot him dead without hesitation.

  She continues to beg and yank violently against the chain.

  “FUCK! You alive?” Brigg’s voice blasts through the ear comm.

  “Yeah, shut up for a second.” I bend to one knee to see how best to free her. “Stop moving. I’m here to get you out,” I breathe in her ear.

  She goes still and listens. I don’t want to risk shrapnel splay so I attack the lock with my tools. In less than a minute I have it open. The chain drops from the wall.

  The woman gives a gasp when she realizes the weight of the chain has fallen.

  I pull the chain out from the loop; her arms, however, are still bound behind her in a barbaric bar style cuff.

  “What’s happening?” Her voice is strangled with tension. “Are you going to kill me now?”

  “Ryder, we’ve got a serious complication.” Briggs’s tone is terse in my ear.

  Before I can answer either of them, all hell erupts above our heads.

  The staccato pattern of automatic weapons combined with shouts of anger, surprise and profanity becomes nonstop. Whatever is happening upstairs is separate from what’s happening down here and has nothing to do with me—but I’m not quite sure it doesn’t have to do with her.