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Chapter Twenty
Alex
Ileaned back against the hard brick, wishing I was anywhere but here. The cells we were locked in were barren and cold. We’d been separated when we were first brought here, two of our security team killed, and the rest put amongst the cells to keep us apart.
I’d been stabbed in the thigh and had a shirt tied tightly around it. The bleeding had stopped, and I was lucky they hadn’t hit a major artery. I had no doubt that I was getting an infection in the wound and had thoughts that it would be my downfall. My head throbbed, my jaw ached, and I was glad the two cuts to my head had finally scabbed over. Although as I flexed my jaw, one of them stretched taut, and I felt it pull open. If I was lucky enough to get out of this, it was going to require a few stitches or a little plastic surgery to clean it up. Not that I cared about a scar. I was more worried about what was going on in other parts of the world—namely back home.
By now, I assumed that Annie had heard. Which meant Nica knew too. Was she wondering if she’d ever see her father again? Was she sitting up at night, thinking over the small amount of time that we’d spent together? I knew I was. I’d gone through every memory of her multiple times, and now I was praying for more.
That first night I’d arrived, I’d had a bad feeling, but things had gone well the next day. It wasn’t until our next stop that things had gone wrong. We’d come into a small town where we’d been promised shelter overnight. An hour after we arrived, we were ambushed, and the people we were staying with were part of the plan. We’d had no chance as we’d quickly been surrounded by armed men, and while two of our guys fought to take control, I knew that with ten armed men on us, and our guns an arms-length away, we did not have the upper hand. I watched as a guy named Weaver and another man that I didn’t know well went down and put myself between the armed men and two of the civilians. I’d gone peacefully, as had the rest of our group, but even though we hadn’t fought with them, that didn’t mean that we weren’t injured.
Most of the people with us had been beaten. By the grace of God, the woman with us hadn’t been raped, and I think that is why I’d taken the beating that I had. I’d gotten in the way after they locked us up, and it took four of them to put me down. Somehow, they had marked me as the leader of the group, and although I wasn’t, I took the responsibility.
I’d been knocked around, kicked, stabbed, and had a gun put to my head. I knew that if anyone saw the video that they forced me into, then they knew we were in bad straits. Now it was a waiting game.
Either someone would try to rescue us, or we’d die one at a time. Some of us might die from injuries, others from medical issues. One of the men with us was a diabetic, and he wasn’t getting any medication for it. I’d heard through the bars that he wasn’t fairing very well.
Now we waited. We ate the small ration of food that they gave us each day and sat staring off into space, lost in our own thoughts most of the time.
Angela, the woman with us, had her head resting on my good thigh. She’d been knocked out a couple days ago when she’d asked to use the bathroom, and I was pretty sure she now had a concussion. I shifted my back slightly, and her eyes opened and latched on to mine.
“Sorry,” I murmured, and she tried to smile at me as she sat up and put a hand to her temple.
“Don’t be sorry. How long was I out?”
“Probably ninety minutes or so,” I told her.
She shifted against the wall beside me. “Didn’t feel that long. I feel like I just closed my eyes.”
“I know the feeling.”
“Do you think we’ll get out of here alive, Alex?”
“I don’t know, Angela. I hope we do, but it’s been about a week, maybe longer. Hard to tell when we have no windows.”
She nodded slowly. “Do you have anyone at home waiting for you?”
“I have a daughter,” I told her. “You?”
“My kids are in college; I just got divorced. It’s why I decided to do this. The money was good, would have paid for both their educations.”
“I hear that,” I replied.
“You’re not married?” she asked softly.
“No, divorced, although I was just starting to get serious with someone before I left.”
“Do you think she knows?”
“I don’t know, but she kind of broke things off with me when I came over here. She lost two people very close to her in the war and didn’t want to lose someone else.”
“Ever wish you hadn’t come?”
I chuckled. “Just about every hour since we ended up in this shithole.”
“Do you love her?”
“Yeah, I think I do. I could picture us starting a life, having children, building a future.”
