“Help!” he shrieked. “Heeelp!”
It was Rook who put a stop to it, hitting Fairchild with a hard right cross. The lights went out again.
CHAPTER 26
“Fairchild. Hey, Fairchild. Wake up…”
Gwain Dutton watched in silence as Reece called to the unconscious woman. It seemed almost cruel to rouse her from her slumber, considering the situation they were in. But then, she was going to have to deal with it sooner or later. Better to get it over with, so they could start working on a way to escape.
They were in a rectangular room with blank metal walls. Bulkheads, technically. They were no longer on Calyxia. They were on some sort of ship. Even with dampening systems in place, Dutton’s enhanced nerve endings could detect the faint vibrations of the propulsion system.
He had come willingly, more or less.
Reece was there too. So was Nash. The three of them had been stripped naked and bound to identical, upright slabs.
Fairchild was in front of them, also naked and bound, but she was reclining in a metal seat. The kind one might find in a physician’s office. A pair of metal stirrups held her legs open at a wide angle. She had a fresh bruise on one side of her mouth, and the sight of that bruise made Dutton’s blood boil within him, but he kept his rage in check, for now. There was no point in losing his cool, not when so much was at stake.
What mattered was this: Fairchild was alive.
Dutton intended to keep her that way.
He’d been hanging out by the swimming pool at the foot of the hotel tower when Slayn’s guards had approached him. A cadre of large men in suits and shades. They’d asked him to come peacefully, and he had. It wasn’t because he was afraid—not for himself, leastways. The guards were big and tough-looking, sure, but Dutton could have taken them in a fight, no sweat.
The problem was Fairchild. A few seconds before Slayn’s men had shown up, her beacon had winked out. One second, it had been there in Dutton’s specs; the next, it was gone. One wrong move, Slayn’s men had said, and she would die. Maybe they were bluffing, but Dutton wasn’t about to test them. Too risky. If Fairchild got killed because of his actions, he would never forgive himself. He’d decided to go quietly instead.
Once they were away from the pool and in a secluded section of the resort, Slayn’s men had injected him with some sort of tranquilizer. Must have been some heavy-duty stuff to get past the defence nanites in his bloodstream.
When he’d woken up, he’d been bound to this metal slab, in this blank, windowless room.
His internal clock told him he’d been out for a whole twenty-four-hour cycle.
Same for Reece and Nash. They’d both woken up about the same time as Dutton, both bound to identical metal slabs. Fairchild was still unconscious in her chair. She must have been given a bigger dose. If Dutton found out who had given her that bruise, he was going to rip the fucker’s arm off and shove it up his ass.
Orherass. Dutton had a feeling the big blonde was the one who’d done it. The one they’d seen in the restaurant, and later inthe theater. As a rule, Dutton didn’t hurt women, but in this case he was willing to make an exception.
From the other side of the room, Reece called to their unconscious teammate again.
“Fairchild. Hey, Fairchild.”
At last, her eyes fluttered all the way open. She glanced around briefly, taking in her surroundings. Then she looked at the three males in turn, first Reece, then Nash, and finally Dutton himself. His heart panged when he saw the hurt in her eyes.
“No,” she whispered. “No…”
“I’m afraid so,” Reece said. “But we’re all alive. That’s what matters. How do you feel?”
“Groggy, but otherwise okay,” Fairchild answered, looking around again with clearer eyes than before. “They captured you too,” she said. “All three of you. How?”
Dutton had never been much good at talking, so he let Reece explain. The team leader filled her in, and Dutton watched as her face shifted from disbelief to naked indignation.
“Youletyourselves be captured?” she halfway shouted. “What thefuckwere you thinking?”
Reece shrugged. “It was the easiest way to get close to you. Storming the hotel was too much of a risk. They might have killed you.”
“But—”
“No buts,” Reece said. “We can argue about it later, once we’re free. Right now, it’s time for a sitrep. What happened with you and Slayn?”
Dutton listened intently as Fairchild gave them a rundown of what had taken place in Slayn’s penthouse. The decoy. The tasers. The true identity of Slayn’s companion.
