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Lyon forced himself to stay awake. The men would be coming back soon, and he needed every second to think.
Not about Kira and their baby. No, those thoughts were reserved for the worst of his torture. When Vadim’s men were doing their best to break him, when he thought he couldn’t take it anymore, that’s when he thought of them.
Of her.
It was only her face and voice that got him through those moments when he considered letting Vadim’s men kill him.
And he could let Vadim’s men kill him. On more than one occasion, death had been so near that the men had to stop their savage work, check his vital signs, and reluctantly leave him to recover. During those moments, Lyon could feel death like a promise.
Relief, surrender.
Peace.
Then he would think of Kira’s lovely face, the way her green eyes sparkled when she was being mischievous, the way her lips slowly morphed from a frown to a smile when he finally made her laugh.
He thought of their future — of the baby they would raise to be fierce and true, of nights wrapped in each other’s arms and mornings smiling at each other over coffee and the mundanity of daily life that hadn’t seemed mundane since she’d stepped into his world.
When he got truly desperate, his hold on the world weak, he replayed every moment of their past. Not just the time since they’d been married, but all the times he’d seen her as a little girl, when he’d been both mesmerized by her and filled with resentment at the way she seemed to look through him.
He would walk through each moment as slowly as he could, continuing to the moment they’d danced at their wedding reception, the moment he’d held her in his arms on the dance floor and realized she was truly his, and onto all the moments when she tried to fight what was between them, tried to make clear she would never give herself to him.
He even relived the agony of her flight to Orcas island, the torture of being without her each day and night, the misery of believing she’d never had feelings for him.
Anything to retreat from the pain his body endured at the hands of Vadim’s men.
Sometimes he dreamed up toasts about them, conjuring Kira’s voice.
To the men who ruined our wedding day, may they never know a love like ours.
To Vadim Ivanov, may he be forced to eat Russian food for the rest of his days.
To the mindless thugs beating up my husband, may they never again know the touch of a woman.
Lyon would find himself laughing hysterically, maniacally, one of the only times Vadim’s men hesitated in their work, unsettled by the jokes known only to Lyon.
But when the men left, when they allowed Lyon a couple of hours of sleep in the chair that had been his home since they’d taken him, that was when he thought of escape.
He braced himself for pain and felt for the screw at the back of the metal chair. He had to stretch against the zip ties that confined his ankles and wrists, and he winced against the pain as his movements strained his beaten and battered body.
But there it was, on the back of the right side of the chair, where the metal legs were screwed to the metal seat. He wished it had been on the left — the way his hands were crossed and tied meant he had to work the screw with his left hand — but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
He was relieved to find the screw still in place. He’d been working it since shortly after he’d been tied to the chair, and it had taken him days (weeks? He didn’t know, time didn’t exist here) to loosen it enough to start turning it. The going had been slow at first, the screw barely turning at all with his limited range of motion. His fingers had bled, and his wrists as he strained against the bounds of the zip ties.
He hardly noticed, and his captors surely didn’t notice the additional blood.
He was already covered in it.
Now the screw was loose. Very loose.
He was trying to gauge how close he was to its end, but it was a delicate operation. He couldn’t unscrew it too far lest it fall to the floor, but he needed it close enough to release that he would be able to choose his time wisely in using it.
He used his index finger to turn it ever so slightly, closing his eyes to get a better feel for it.
Yes, it was close. Very close.
A couple more turns, maybe four or five. Then he would have it in his hands. He would use it at mealtime, the only time they released him from the zip ties. It meant eliminating an extraman when Lyon was unrestrained, a man he thought of as the Mountain, a reluctant homage to his Herculean body and an expression that was as unyielding as granite — but it wouldn’t do any good to have possession of the screw if his hands were tied.
He hadn’t figured out the rest of it yet, although reason told him he would attack the closest man first, drive it into his eye or neck, take his gun and use it on the others.
