“Wait,” I said, desperately trying to escape from my zip ties, rubbing the plastic against the rock wall. “Let them go. I’m the one you want.”
Every knight learned how to endure the pain of torture during initiation. They put us through a rigorous process for three solid months on Skull Island to prepare us for capture. I never thought it would happen. But Arlo Salvatore had designed the training with this situation in mind.
I knew better than to spill trade secrets. Once they got Lovelace, they would either leave us in the cave to die or kill us. We weren’t getting out of here without freeing ourselves, so I needed a diversion.
If Marcello were here, then that meant The Devil’s Knights were close by, which gave me hope.
“Start talking,” a masked man said to me.
“Get me a computer… or a tablet. A phone. Anything with access to the internet.”
I had created dummy servers just in case this ever happened. At the time, Tate laughed and called me paranoid, but I never underestimated my enemies.
The man in front of me snapped his fingers. “Go get the laptop.”
Another man crossed the cavernous space and plucked a cheap Dell laptop from a backpack.
“Untie me,” I said. “I need my hands to type.”
“No,” the man, who was now holding the laptop in his hands, shot back. “You talk. I type.”
“It’s not that simple. You can’t just open a web browser and enter a password. I have to do it.”
Unsatisfied with my answer, he moved over to Tate and slammed the laptop into the side of his head.
“Tate,” I cried out as his head lowered to the floor. “Tate, look at me.”
“Shut up,” the man with the laptop said, careful to only lift his respirator just enough for me to see his lips.
I couldn’t make out any distinctive features of him or any of the men. All clad in black, their faces covered, they could have been anyone. Their accents were all that stood out.
“Don’t do it, Drake,” Tate said, his voice hoarse, but he didn’t lift his head. “Fuck them.”
Already running low on air, sick from breathing in the hazardous gases, he was near death. So close to leaving me.
A tear slid down my cheek.
I failed him.
I failed Olivia.
And now, Marcello was here, risking his life to save me, and we were all going to die. The Devil’s Knights had to be somewhere close. Marcello wouldn’t have come alone. At least one of his brothers, possibly Cole or even Sonny, had to be in the general vicinity.
I rubbed the zip ties against the rock wall, hoping to create some friction. They weren’t sharp enough. I also had no feeling in my hands or arms. After what could have been days inside the cave, my body felt as if sand weighed it down.
“Hey, assholes,” I said to divert the attention back to me. “You want me. Not them. They can’t help you. Let my friends go, and we can work this out.”
The man with the laptop bent down in front of me and set the computer on the dirty ground. “Tell me what to type.”
I quickly rattled off the information he needed to locate the dummy server. To the untrained eye, it looked legitimate.
The man removed a satellite phone from his pocket and called someone on speakerphone. “We got it, boss.”
“Good job,” he replied.
My eyes widened at the voice on the other end. Maybe I was hallucinating. Or maybe I just wanted someone to blame for being in this situation.
No, it can’t be him.
