Page 111 of Nothing to Fear

A mechanics tool chest was open beside him. Ordinary devices turned into instruments of pain were spread out on one of the plastic-lined seats. Gideon asked the mercenary a question. If he didn’t get an answer, he used one of those tools. With shocking precision and gut-wrenching imagination.

The rest of the team didn’t appear fazed. Alistair slept, stretched across a leather sofa. Reece read a comic, The Walking Dead, sipping a prepackaged protein shake.

As Gideon ripped out a man’s teeth with pliers—an evil man who’d tried to kill her—Maddox filed her fingernails, rounding each tip into a perfect oval, rubbing a peachy-smelling oil into her cuticles. Giving herself a freaking manicure!

Oh my God. Willow would never be able to stomach the scent of peaches again.

With earbuds also tucked in, Sean—or rather, Ares—nodded to the beat of whatever music played from his iPod, but like Castle, he never took his eyes off what Gideon did.

They acted like torturing a man for information was normal, another day in the field, protecting and serving the country. But this was…

Extreme.

Violent.

Nauseating, yet necessary. This craziness was their baseline.

The last few days had shown her the true depths of danger that came as a package deal with Gideon’s job. She’d been inches from death today and shot a man in the head in self-defense. A terrifying man trying to kill her, yes, but she’d taken a life. Acid roiled in her gut.

Gideon wasn’t just trained as an interrogator. He had done this, exclusively, for months with the CIA. She understood the ugly nature of what transpired at black sites where prisoners were grilled, where he’d done his work.

But knowing a thing and bearing witness to it were worlds apart.

The information they needed was vital. Her sister’s life depended on the answers this mercenary provided. Yet no amount of rationalization stopped bile from burning her throat. The man wailed, handcuffed to a seat. Blood-chilling screams broadcast through the cabin, and the agonized sounds twisted her insides.

“Daedalus!” The merc spat out a gob of blood. “Daedalus has her.”

Gideon stood motionless, but Willow reared back, taking the blow of surprise for him.

If Daedalus was alive, then Gideon killed the wrong man three years ago. Amanda must have tampered with mission details somehow to protect his identity.

“Is he on-site with her?” Gideon’s voice was tight as a whip.

“Yes. He wanted to handle things in person.”

“Where are they?”

The battered man shook his head, sniveling. “He’ll kill me. I-I can’t tell you.”

Gideon held out his latex-gloved hand, smeared red with blood. Eyes ice-cold, body taut with a honed hardness.

Castle slapped a power drill into his palm.

Squeezing her eyes closed, she couldn’t take anymore, but she also couldn’t sit fifteen feet away and not look. She pried her eyes open.

Gideon pressed the spinning drill bit to the mercenary’s kneecap.

Her gut convulsed, slushing up the breakfast in her stomach. She flipped the buckle of the lap seatbelt and dashed to the bathroom, legs quaking like toothpicks. Inside, she slammed the door shut and retched into the toilet.

42

Gray Box Headquarters, Northern Virginia

Monday, July 8, 4:56 p.m. EDT

The sickened expression on Willow’s face was tattooed on Gideon’s mind. How she’d rushed to the bathroom—no doubt puking up her guts—and stayed inside until Maddox told her the interrogation was done wouldn’t leave him.

Worse, he’d seen fear in her eyes. Fear of him and what he was capable of when push came to shove.