Chapter 3

January 11th

12:35 P.M.

Her confidencethat rescue was just on the horizon was starting to wane.

Scarlett shivered as a wave of pain rolled over her.

Lying on the cold, hard, unforgiving stone floor of her cell was not the place to be when you were littered with cuts and bruises.

At least she didn"t have to worry about infection. Yay. Raul was keeping her pumped full of antibiotics. He didn"t want her getting sick and dying on him before he got what he wanted out of her.

Not that she was giving it to him.

Whatever he dished out she, would have to take. Honestly, there was no other option because she wasn't going to betray her team and Prey and hand over a drug that had the potential to save millions of lives.

But Prey better hurry up and find her because she wasn't sure how long she could last.

So far, she'd been roughed over, nothing too serious, for now, but she got the feeling that Raul was trying to feel her out, find out the best method of getting her to talk. Scarlett had taken harder hits in the gym when she was working out, so she'd managed to keep her mouth shut and taken the punches, walking away with a litany of bruises but nothing broken.

Next, Raul had upped his game, he'd had her stripped naked and strung up from the ceiling and whipped until she could feel her blood running down her skin. Again, she knew he hadn"t pushed as hard as he could have. While her back felt like it had been ripped open, she knew it definitely wasn't as bad as it could have been, not that it was at all pleasant.

None of this was pleasant.

Not even close.

Actually, it was as close to hell as she had ever been.

And she had no idea how she was going to handle whatever came next.

Problem was, she had no experience in withstanding torture. Her parents and grandparents were mean, they didn"t love her or her brother, and they'd definitely mistreated them and pushed too hard too many times to count, but they weren"t psychopaths.

As children, she and Zander had lived on a strict diet. There were no fun snacks, no chips or pretzels or popcorn. No candy or chocolate or cake. Not even a birthday cake. They also worked a strict exercise routine, a workout early before school and one when they got home. Then there were drills to run, and lessons in shooting, and martial arts training. Plus, all the chores and her parents and grandparents expected her and her brother to remain honor roll students in every subject.

Life hadn"t been fun, but she had never feared for her physical safety, and she had no idea how to do this.

Why hadn't Prey come for her?

They had to be looking, she trusted her team and her colleagues implicitly. Prey was more of a family to her than her own had ever been, and she knew they wouldn't leave her hung out to dry.

When she heard footsteps approaching, Scarlett instinctively curled herself into a ball, making herself as small a target as possible. It was stupid, and it wasn't going to achieve anything.

Wishing she knew what she was doing, that she could handle this, that being tortured for information with no end in sight was something she was capable of surviving wasn't going to make it true.

This wasn't something she could do for much longer.

What happened when she reached the end of her rope?

Giving over the information on the drug was not an option which meant her only option was … taking herself out of the equation.

Was she strong enough to end her own life if it came down to it?

From the tears trailing down her cheeks and the way her body shook like it had been encased in a block of ice, Scarlett feared that she wasn't.

All these years spent believing she was strong for not being forced into becoming who her parents wanted her to be, for forging her own path in life had evaporated. She wasn't strong, she was every bit as weak as they had always believed her to be.

There wasn't enough strength left in her at the moment to get up onto her feet, so she simply stayed where she was. The guards didn"t speak as they came to her and grabbed her roughly, of course making sure to grab her around the gunshot wound. Just because infection wasn't going to become an issue didn"t mean the wound didn"t throb along with the rest of her aches and pains.

A small cry escaped despite her attempts to smother it, and she hated the grins on the guards' faces, their satisfaction in causing her to show her pain.

Once again, she was taken back down to the room that, in her mind, was called the torture chamber and shoved again into the chair in the center of the room. Another small cry of pain fell from her lips as the metal cuffs were secured around her wrists and ankles. The skin there was torn and bloody from rubbing against the rusty metal as she strained and struggled against the bonds.

When she was rescued—if she was rescued—the wounds would leave scars. Scars that she would see every single day, a constant reminder of what she had lived through.

But as Raul strolled into the room, dressed impeccably as always, her hope died a little more. With every passing minute, her hopes for rescue seemed to disappear. Of course, she knew that Prey weren"t miracle workers, and nobody had an exact location on Raul's jungle mansion, but surely they would have found something by now.

Weren"t they coming?

Didn"t they care about her?

Were they going to leave her behind like everybody else always did?

"How are you today, Ms. Madden?" Raul asked, his tone polite, conversational, like she was his guest here.

With a weary sigh she met the man's dark, soulless eyes. "We're not friends, Mr. Castillo, and I"m not here voluntarily, there's no need to pretend you care about anything other than the fact that I"m in pain. And yes, I can confirm that I am one whole throbbing mess of agony, and I"m sure it will be worse when you finish whatever you have planned for today. But as much as I hurt, I"m not going to give you the formula for the Reactivator."

That much Scarlett was certain of.

If it came to it, she would find the strength to kill herself rather than give over the information the weapons dealer wanted.

"You offend me, Ms. Madden," Raul said with a chuckle. "I am not always going to inflict pain, and any pain that has been inflicted so far was brought upon by yourself. You could have just told me what I wanted to know, and you would have been gifted a quick death once you created the drug for me."

If that was an invitation to spill her guts, she wasn't accepting it.

When she remained stubbornly silent, Raul continued, "Among other things, I am a collector. Yes, I deal in weapons, it is a lucrative living and one I enjoy. Besides the money, I find I enjoy the thrill and excitement of it all, the danger, knowing at any moment I could be caught or killed. But I have other interests and collecting unusual drugs is one of them. Your Reactivator is one I would relish having in my collection, but there are a few others that I find amusing. This one in particular."

A nod at the man beside him had that man lifting a syringe filled with something clear. Scarlett didn"t have to know that whatever was in that drug was something horrific. Something terrifying.

There was nowhere for her to go, though, when the man walked toward her and pierced the skin on her upper arm, pushing the plunger and administering whatever concoction the syringe contained.

"What did you do?" she asked, panic hitting her system with a massive dose of adrenalin. "What did you give me?"

Raul chuckled. "Pain isn't the only motivator in the world, Ms. Madden. This beauty of a drug was given to me by a friend who works in a different trade. Flesh. Women. Sex. There are many men who enjoy it when a woman struggles, when she is not a willing participant. But many enjoy it when a woman begs and pleads for more, when she is insatiable, they love to feel her coming around them. Think of this drug as a large dose of arousal. I have yet to see it in action, but I have heard the reports. Women screaming and crying as they beg a man to have sex with them. I"ve heard they remain aroused for hours and that if their needs are not taken care of, it is extremely painful for them. How long do you think you will last, Ms. Madden, before you are pleading with my men to relieve your pain, to give you the orgasm your body craves even as your mind rejects the idea? How long until you are willing to offer anything to get some relief from the arousal coursing through your system?"

January 12th

5:48 P.M.

Where are you,little traitor?

Are we getting closer?

Tate was pumped high on adrenalin and anger as he and his SEAL team slunk through the Mexican jungle.

They'd been there for going on thirty-six hours and knew they were closing in on their target when they'd finally located a road.

Well, not so much a road as a track barely recognizable unless you were looking for it. But since he and his team were there looking for signs of a hidden mansion, they'd spotted it as soon as they'd gotten close.

Now they were following along parallel to the road while still maintaining hidden within the cover of the trees. If someone was monitoring the road, they'd be spotted, but Tate was banking on the fact that Raul Castillo thought he was safe tucked away out there.

Ego had been the downfall of many a man—or woman—who had crossed his path, and he had zero doubt that it would be the downfall of Scarlett Madden as well.

Chances were, she also believed she was safely hidden away out there.

Game's up, sweetheart.

While he would love to be the one to personally destroy the woman who'd had him tied up in knots for almost three months, his orders were to retrieve her and deliver her back home. He was not to engage, he was not to confront her with what they knew because the plan was to try to get her talking once she was in custody. If he pushed too hard, she might be able to escape, but once she was cuffed and in an interrogation room, she would have no choice but to realize she was all out of options.

There was at least one good thing to come out of this mess, and that was Raul Castillo had officially become a big enough problem that it was time for him to be eliminated. Tate was hoping this was going to be a two-birds-with-the-one-stone kind of situation, and he'd walk away with both Scarlett and Raul, but the priority for this op was Scarlett.

They already had a read on Raul, but Scarlett was somewhat unknown. If she was willing to sell this drug, what else had she or would she be willing to sell? To work at Prey, you had to have a high security clearance, which meant she could have already, or been planning to, sell any number of secrets if the price was right.

Traitors had no conscience, they were out for self and self alone, and Tate was looking forward to watching the look on Scarlett's face when she realized this time she wasn't coming out on top.

Just as he noticed the thinning of the trees and the shape up ahead of them that looked like a large building, he heard the unmistakable sound of the whir of helicopter blades.

As he watched, a helo rose above them, taking off into the sky away from what was quite obviously Raul Castillo's hideout.

Damn.

The man was escaping.

Had they somehow tripped a sensor, alerting those in the mansion that someone was approaching?

Seemed possible given the timing.

Double damn.

Was Scarlett also on that helo?

Shouting orders into his comms to his team, Tate took off at a dead run toward the mansion ahead of them.

They were approaching the building from what looked to be the back because he could see a large pool and an outdoor dining patio area behind the large wire fence. A fence that was likely electrified.

As he broke through the tree line, someone immediately began shooting at him.

It took him less than a second to identify the direction of the shooter and fire off a round of his own.

A faint thud told him he'd hit his target and dropped the body, so he spared no more time on the guard. He had to find a way over that fence because he saw her.

Scarlett.

Standing naked by the pool.

Had the woman been out there, lounging around and enjoying herself, when they'd set off the alarm?

Looked like her buddy Raul had left her to the wolves and fled.

Not that he was in any way aligning himself with the weapons dealer, but in this moment, he sent up a silent thank you that Raul had left Scarlett behind when he left.

"Not so nice when someone betrays you, is it now, sweetheart?" he whispered as he snagged a branch and tossed it at the fence. Sparks flew as it hit, and with his assumption about the fence confirmed, he ran toward a nearby tree.

There was no time to figure out how to get the electric fence turned off, he had to get in there and get Scarlett before she fled.

Why wasn't she running?

She was just standing there by the pool.

Frozen in shock?

From what he knew, Scarlett had zero field training. Maybe she was overwhelmed by the shooting going on around her and didn"t know what to do.

It took him mere seconds to climb up the tree closest to the fence. He'd have to jump, hope he missed the barbed wire topping the fence, and it would be at least an eight-foot drop, but he didn"t have any other chances.

He wasn't letting Scarlett get away.

Flinging himself forward, Tate jumped from the tree, somehow managing to clear the top of the fence, and landed with a bone-jarring thud on the other side.

"I'm over. Going to get target," he informed his team as he took off toward Scarlett.

It wasn't until he got closer that he realized why Scarlett wasn't moving.

It wasn't because she was in shock or panicking because of a lack of field experience.

It was because she couldn't move.

Someone had tied a large rock to her leg. It was too big for her to pull around with her which meant she was stuck there.

For a moment Tate faltered.

Why was she outside, naked, by the pool with a rock tied to her leg?

Made no sense.

There would have been no time for Raul to organize for her to be disposed of and get himself onto a helo if they"d set off a sensor.

Which meant he had already been planning on disposing of her.

Had she been double-crossed?

Would serve her right if she'd given her intel to Raul, and he had promptly decided to be done with her.

"Scarlett," he called her name as he got closer.

Immediately, her head whipped around in his direction. Was he mistaken or was that relief on her face as she spotted him sprinting toward her?

Before he could examine her expression, she cried out, and the next thing he knew, she was falling into the pool. The weight of her body falling was enough to drag the rock, which as he was closer now, he could see had been balancing right on the edge of the pool, down with her.

Water splashed everywhere as Scarlett thrashed, but she was weighed down with her head beneath the surface.

Drowning.

She was drowning.

Unless he got her out, she'd die.

"Oh no, you don't," he muttered as he reached the pool and dived into the water after her. Scarlett didn"t get to die now. She was going to stand and face justice and suffer the consequences of her actions.

As soon as he reached her, Scarlett began to grab at him. For a moment Tate thought she was trying to shove him away as though that would somehow stop him from getting to her, but he quickly realized she was panicking and thought he was her savior.

Not your savior, sweetheart, not even close.

I"m about to become your worst nightmare.

I won"t stop until I make sure that justice prevails and you're punished for what you did.

Unable to do anything with Scarlett panicking like that, he moved behind her, locked her arms to her sides as he wrapped one of his own around her chest and pressed her against his body. Then, with his free hand, he pulled out his knife and sliced through the rope attaching the rock to her leg.

With Scarlett free, he swam them both back to the surface then lifted her up and onto the tiles, keeping a hand on her as he pulled himself out in case she decided to try something stupid and make a run for it now that she was free.

But that wasn't what she did.

The opposite in fact.

Water streamed down off both of them as Scarlett threw herself into his arms, wrapping herself around him as though she were a small child who'd had a nightmare and needed to be comforted.

Automatically, his arms wrapped around her, and that was when he noticed. Her back was littered with raw, open wounds. There were bruises on her pale skin as well, and her wrists and ankles were also covered in open wounds.

Looked like she had been tortured.

But that made zero sense.

What the hell was going on here?