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“If you live through the night you’re going to need a new job to feed those twins.Choose your next employer with caution.”Grant slammed his face into the top of the desk, breaking his nose and knocking him out cold. Satisfied the guard would no longer be a problem, he tossed the leather wallet onto the desk and left theroom.
Moving through the mammoth hallways, his footsteps silent against the plush carpet, he found his way to the servant’s staircase and swiftly moved through the second floor. His gut instinct screamed at him to pull back, every one of his senses set to maximum sensitivity levels. The whole thing reeked of a setup. Why else would Jauhar have cut his security forces by half? The other half was probably waiting for him behind one of the closed doors in front ofhim.
“Mr. Jauhar is not here, I’mafraid.”
Grant froze, his back glued to the wall outside what was supposed to be Jauhar’s office as the unfamiliar voice raced down his spine. Cold sweat peppered his forehead as dread and regret churned in his gut. A twisted chuckle echoed through the opened door from inside the room, confirming the worst possibleoutcome.
“Come in, Mr. Kendal. There’s no use in prolonging theinevitable.”
Fuck-fuck-fuck.He’d been made. His eyes closed on a steadying breath.Dammit! Shit!He’d had called him by his alias. Only a hand full of people knew him as Grant Kendal, and this dickwad, whoever he was, shouldn’t be one of them unless he’d seriously screwed up somewhere along the line.Dammit!
He was right. There was no sense dicking around with this guy. If they knew he was coming, Jauhar would be long gone. He might as well get as much intel as he could before he killed this fucker, because no way in hell was he giving up. He’d dog Jauhar to the ends of the earth if that’s what it took to make sure Thalia wassafe.
With a grunt, he pushed away from the wall and stepped through the darkened doorway, his pistol aimed at the looming shadow before him when a blinding light suddenly flooded the room. Squinting through the glare, he found himself surrounded by nothing but unoccupied office furniture and old books as he faced the still unfamiliarthreat.
“Please, have aseat.”
Grant sized the man up. Six-two, one-ninety, maybe two hundred pounds. It was difficult to tell with the traditional, white sarong he was wearing covering most of his features. He looked like a native Indian, but spoke English with a cultured British accent. His stance and tone screamed basic asshole with a god complex, but something in his cold, black eyes told him not to underestimate thisman.
“No thanks.” Gun in hand, he inched his way to the right side of the room. If he was about to be ambushed by a team of guards he was going to have the wall at his back and go down shooting. He’d be damned if he wasn’t going to take at least a few down with him. “Who are you? Where’sJauhar?”
“I would like to thank you for taking care of a few…personnelproblems I’ve been putting off for far too long. You cannot just fire people in this business. They see too much.” An incredulous chuckle bubbled past the man’s lips and he ruefully shook his head. “I venture to say Mr. Jauhar will not be as pleased to hear the news of Nadal’s accident. She may have been a pain in my arse, but he seemed to be quite fond of her specifictalents.”
So this loser was Jauhar’s head of security. Grant tensed as the man reached for a box sitting atop the obnoxiously oversized executive desk. When he raised his gun the man paused, his steady hand hovering over the box’s varnished lid. “Cigar?”
“Stop fucking with me and tell me what you were left here to tell me.” The man casually shrugged and began to sink into the plush oversized chair behind the desk. “I don’t think so.” Grant motioned for him to move from behind the desk. “Over there. Keep your hands where I can seethem.”
“I am unarmed,” the man chuckled and held out his hands, palms up for Grant to see. “I believe we can dispense with the threats and discuss our business like civilized humans, can wenot?”
“I said move!” Grant was one second away from making dog food out of this guy’s frontallobe.
The man leaned forward, resting his palms on top of the desk, his fingers splayed wide. “It is not I who you should be concerned with, Mr. Kendal.” He pinned Grant with a deadly stare. Ice filled his veins as the corner of the man’s mouth pulled into a wicked, knowing grin. “Over your left shoulder is a television monitor. If you want answers, Mr. Kendal, I would advise you to turn it on. I believe you will find the answers to everything you wish toknow.”
Keeping the gun trained on his target, Grant backed away until he could easily reach the giant monitor. Sliding his finger along the bottom edge, he pushed the button and the screen blipped to life. He studied the crude, greenish image on the screen, an eerie feeling churning to life in the pit of his stomach as the night vision camera zoomed out. He could see the outline of a woman’s body lying on a table in the dark room; her arms stretched high above her head, the top half of her face covered by some sort of cloth or blindfold. Her mouth parted on a silent cry, her head turning frantically back and forth as a bulky, male figure moved into the picture, partially blocking the woman from view as the sound of ripping fabric filled his ears. A familiar whimper of fear leaked through the speakers as the woman twisted away, trying desperately to free her arms.Jesus Christ!No!
“Hand over the thumb drive and you can walk out of this house and disappear back into whatever cave you live in. No questions asked.” Grant watched in horror as the sick fuck on the screen touched Thalia, rubbing his slimy hands over her beautiful skin. “Or we can watch together as he takes her apart, inch byinch.”
Fuck, no. This was not happening. It had to be a trick. She was supposed to be on a plane with Daniel two days ago! Before he could convince himself it was a lie, Thalia’s voice rang unmistakably clear through the speakers. The sound of defeat in her tone nearly brought him to his knees as she pleaded with hercaptor.
Fire raced through his veins, his lungs tightening in his chest as they filled over and over with panicked breath after panicked breath. A thick hand clamped over his shoulder and he flinched, barely able to contain the raging fire inside that pushed him to the edge of his sanity. “Don’t think your Thalia gave you up without a fight, my friend. Jauhar can be quite persuasive with thewomen.”
His well-defined and tightly leashed control snapped. He shrugged the man off and pushed him away, a wildly thrown punch finding nothing but air as Jauhar’s henchman calmly stepped away untouched. The gun in his hand felt larger than life and every ounce of his focus was drawn to it. One bullet and this piece of shit would never utter her name again. His normally calm hand shook almost violently as his finger tightened against the trigger. Panic fueled his rage; a deadly cocktail of emotions he knew could be his end if he didn’t rein it in. And fast. He wanted to kill this mother fucker; rip him apart limb by limb and put a bullet between his eyes for even thinking of touching her, but it would solve nothing. He fought every ounce of training and instinct he’d ever possessed not to pull the trigger.He needed to thinkgoddammit!
Time. He needed time and information. Most of all, he needed to make that bastard touching Thalia pay! Forcing himself to keep his eyes on his target and not on the screen, his mind raced to come up with a plan. Fear paralyzed his instincts. He couldn’t function likethis!
“I don’t have it,” he spat, fighting like mad to tune out the desperate cries for help blaring from the screen behindhim.
The parasite laughed. Actually laughed! He was wrong. Grant made a silent promise right then and there. If he got out of there alive, this man would never see the mercy of a bullet. If it was with his last dying breath he would see this man diescreaming.
“Mr. Jauhar thought you would say that.” The man turned and paced back to the desk. He took an expensive looking cigar from the box and lit it. The acrid stench filled the air as he took his time to savor the taste before he exhaled the putrid smoke and continued. “I’m sure Jauhar will be able to find a brothel somewhere in Cambodia that could make a profit from her flesh. While light skinned girls such as your girl can be very lucrative, I’m not sure how attractive she will look once Hamisi is finished withher.”
His insides twisted as images of those evil, filthy places littered his thoughts, threatening the limited amount of control he’d been able to gather. They were nothing but slaughter houses for the young and innocent where children and women were drugged, beaten, raped and discarded over and over by sick, rich men who thought they were entitled. Bile rose in his throat and he swallowed it back.Turn it off.His teeth ground together, his jaw aching with the force of his efforts to close that door. The harder he tried to tune it out the closer the unfamiliar terror came to consuming him. He couldn’t afford to lose it now. If she was still alive... No! She was alive. He had to believe that. She needed him. He was no good to her like this. He. Would. Not. Fail.Her.
Digging in, he channeled his training, something he hadn’t had to do in a decade. From a dark place deep inside, a violent tempest of anger and resentment was born. Severing any ties to the useless, crippling feelings of love and sympathy he’d only recently discovered, he shut down every other emotion he possessed one by one. He embraced the rage that tore its way to freedom and locked on to the trained killer he’d spent the last year and a half trying to destroy. Every nerve ending, every cell hummed to life in perfect unison. He felt the moment it happened, the moment when everything else fell away and nothing else mattered but the mission; the moment when the beast inside him surfaced from a deep sleep and took its first breath in over a year. He welcomed it, giving it full rein and control. It was like an alcoholic tasting a fine whiskey after years of abstention. A warm calm fell around him, bringing with it a lethal clarity he was shocked to discover that he’dmissed.
He filtered the last ten minutes through fresh new eyes, and Grant laughed as he saw the many flaws in this idiot’s demand. If Jauhar knew he was coming then he also knew he no longer had the thumb drive. This douchebag had been left behind to rot and he didn’t even know it. A new plan unfolded before him, his thoughts firing with a sharp intensity he hadn’t had in months. It felt good. He laughed again, not because there was anything funny, but because he couldn’t believe they actually thought him to be that careless. And because he felt fuckingincredible!
“She could already be dead for all I know.” He forced himself to look at the screen. Nothing but vengeance filled his soul as he watched Thalia flail like a fish on that goddamn table, her clothes being cut from her body piece by piece. “Take me to her. Let me see that she’s still alive.” He turned his venomous glare away from the horrid scene playing out in front of him and focused it on Jauhar’s hired hand. “And if she walks away with so much as a single scratch, so help me God, the contents of that thumb drive will be front page news in every newspaper on the face of this planet. Jauhar will have every agency known to man crawling up his assto—”
