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Rebecca’s brows furrowed as she focused on his confused expressions. “Can you hearme?”
“Did you say she wasn’t in thebuilding?”
“Yes! Remember in the van?” Every word was shouted over the roar of the fire, but at least he could hear her. “It was a trap! She wasn’tthere!”
Daniel’s shoulders fell, his head lulled back and more tears fell from his eyes leaving a reflective trail down his weathered cheeks. “We’re toolate.”
“No!” Rebecca grabbed his arms and shook him. “Keller is in Navi! That’s where she has to be. Daniel, we have to go! You can’t give upnow!”
“Grant.” His head shook in disbelief, his voice laden withgrief.
Rebecca released her hold and let her forehead fall against Daniel’s chest. “I don’t think he had time to getout.”
“No.” Daniel turned her around to see a dark figure stumbling through the rubble on the far side of the street. “Grant.”
“Grant!”
Twenty-Six
“You may not rememberour last time together,” Jauhar purred as he wiped something cold and wet over the exposed skin on her elevated thigh. The way he moved around her felt strangely reverent. There was a creepy gentleness to his touch that conflicted with the hard indifference in his eyes. “But I assure you, pet, you will never forget or doubt who owns you after thisday.”
Thalia tried to close her eyes, to escape back into the dark and painless place he’d forced her from, but he wouldn’t let her. Every time she began to feel the pain fall away, Jauhar would make herscream.
A part of her wanted to die. She welcomed the pain and hoped she was close enough to death she could somehow force them to push her over the razor thin line that existed between her life and her nightmares. No matter how much that part of her begged to be heard, she could not deny the rage. It gnawed at her insides, eating a hole in her soul which quickly filled with a dark need for blood. Jauhar’s blood. She wanted to live. For no other reason than to kill the monster who had ended her life so long ago; to see him suffer, see them all suffer in such a way they would feel their pain long after theirdeath.
Jauhar leaned in and whispered in her ear, “We are not usually so barbaric these days, pet, but a simple tattoo for you does not please me. I want you to always remember who your master is.” He nipped her ear, intending for it to sting, before he rose and turned away. “Senator, you may do the honors.” Jauhar nodded to the man who had joined him and Don Lalia in her continued humiliation and torture. He was American from what little she could tell by the few words he spoke. Salty streaks of gray streamed through his darker, wavy hair. Thick lines appeared at the corners of his mouth and eyes when he smiled at her like a boy who had discovered a new toy or fun game. His eyes. When she looked into his eyes she couldn’t help but notice the darkness residing in his soul. They held the same potential for the merciless evil Jauhar had inflicted uponher.
She could see the long, metal rod in his hands as he approached the side of the table, a glowing-hot crest the size of her fist attached at the end. His perfect, white teeth appeared from behind his evil smile as he raised the brand to her thigh and the first wave of searing heat kissed herskin.
Nooooooo!Her body thrashed against her restraints, every thought and fear burned from her mind. Only the raw, visceral instinct to survive was left behind. She felt nothing, heard nothing , saw nothing but a blind frenzy of light and darkness as every cell in her body waged war against her restraints. When the stench of burning flesh wafted strong in the air she managed to suck in through her tormented screams, she fought harder, struggling against the hands that held her, beating them off with a savage rage she no longercontrolled.
* * *
“Go! Go! Go!”Dax Keller gave the order and his men stormed the club. Sounds of gunshots blasted through the building, but he ignored the threat and pushed his way through the chaos. The team’s breacher kicked in the door to the basement and he rushed the Senator, taking out the two guards standing in his way. Dodging the hot branding iron Collins wielded like a knife, he caught the man’s wrist and held him at bay as he struggled against him. He fought the urge to shoot him. He was under strict orders not to kill the sick fuck or he would have. He was a spry old man, but one punch to the throat and it was game over as he dropped to the floor, the hot end of the iron tumbling across his face and searing Jauhar’s mark into his skin as he gasped forair.
Dax lunged for Thalia. In her fight to survive she’d broken through some of her restraints. She struggled against his hold, fighting him as if he were her tormentors as one of his team members freed her legs from the harnesses. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you. You’re safe.” He tried to console her, to break through the madness that consumed her. She fought him as if he were the devil himself, kicking and biting, screaming at the top of her lungs until suddenly the fight drained away and some of his words finally began to filter through her rage. “That’s it. It’s over, Thalia. You’re okay. Shhh, we stopped them. You’re safenow.”
It had taken him nearly an hour to console her enough to move her without a fight. Dax sat on the floor with Thalia cradled in his lap, a thin blanket covering her naked and beaten body. He would never forget her animalistic cry of fury that filled the dark basement he and his team had secured. Above all else, every case he’d ever worked, every soldier he’d ever watched die on the battlefield, he knew that sound would haunt him for the rest of hislife.
He held back his team for as long as he could, waiting for any verbal confirmation from Collins that he knew about or was part of Jauhar’s trafficking ring. Intel or no intel, there was simply no way he could sit back and watch as this innocent girl was mutilated by these wicked bastards. Contrary to some of his superiors’ beliefs, there was no piece of information worth herlife.
They had the Senator on a Christmas list of other charges, but kidnapping and assault with intent was a far cry from international human trafficking and murder. The bureau wanted all of them alive, so putting a bullet in his head was out of the question no matter how badly he still wanted to do justthat.
He stared at Jauhar across the room sitting smugly in a velvet covered armchair, his cuffed hands crossed arrogantly in his lap as he watched him rocking Thalia in his arms. The only consoling thought he could conjure was that he would never see the light of day once they got him extradited to stand trial on American soil. He wished the coward had put up more of a fight. The only thing that would have satisfied him more than a bullet would have been to beat the life out of him then andthere.
Collins had given him a bit of surprising fight, but it had ended much too quickly for his liking. Seeing his face meet the hot end of the branding iron he’d been all too eager to use on Thalia didn’t come close to satisfying Dax. Thankfully they had gotten there in time to stop him from inflicting more than a superficial wound to Thalia’s thigh. He smirked as they dragged Collins from the club, stripped off his prestigious suit and tie, and paraded him naked through the gathering press to a medevac van waiting to take him to the hospital. Old sagging balls weren’t pretty in prison. He’d be lucky to last a week before his asshole became nothing but a cum dumpster. That was a very satisfyingthought.
“Keller!” His team’s intel supervisor jogged up, a stack of photographs a half inch thick in his hand. “You’re not going to believe this,sir.”
Dax carefully slid his arm from beneath Thalia’s trembling body and took the pictures from his hand. “Can you find me an extra blanket to wrap around her? I think she may be going into shock.” The supervisor turned, but Dax couldn’t wait any longer. He needed to know. “Have you heard from Reb—Ms. Danesyet?”
He had no other choice but to ignore the panic injected into his bloodstream when the man shook his head. He had a scene to process and miles of red tape to unravel before dawn. Don Lalia had managed to escape through the chaos of the initial firefight, but they still had his henchman, Hamisi. He was sure to give them hours, if not days, of pleasurable interrogation. And then there was Thalia. He couldn’t leave her with just anyone. She needed Rebecca. Dammit,heneeded her. And for many more reasons than he should be allowing himself toconsider.
They found the surveillance van, or what was left of it, on the side of the road across from the explosion. Emergency response teams weren’t as quick or plentiful in India like they were in the States, apparent by the fact Thalia still hadn’t received more than a cursory inspection of her wounds. The fire was still raging at the supposed secondary location with no firemen in sight. They had yet to determine if there were any casualties. Dax couldn’t bring himself to think of the wordbodies.They would find her alive. And then he would fire her for disobeying his orders right before he kissed her senseless and spanked her bratty ass until it was as red as herhair.
“This was all I could find, sir.” Dax sat the pictures on the floor and grabbed the thick cotton sheet, scolding himself for letting his mind travel down a road he had no business going down. “Everything else is locked down for evidenceprocessing.”
“This is fine.” He carefully draped it over Thalia’s frail shoulders, tucking it in around her shivering frame to hold in what little body heat he was able to give her. “Rest, Thalia. This will all be oversoon.”
