“Sheriff, I know Mr. Jones said he sent Brock to school, but I’m telling you that little boy never made it on the school bus. Feel free to ask the driver. Marcus Jones is beating his son. I would stake my career on it,” Miss Rachel said.
“Brock! It’s Miss Rachel. Where are you, sweetheart?”
Shouting pulled me out of the past and into the present. Glancing around, I breathed a sigh of relief that the shouting was from a neighbor’s house and not anyone inside coming out to disturb my solitude. I threw the beer can in my hand so hard it bounced off the side of the garage. All this shit with Adam was dredging up stuff I’d buried a long, damn time ago. That had been the last time he’d beaten me.
He hadn’t always been that man. We’d had the perfect family when Mama and Mandy were still alive. Two-point-two kids, a dog for me, a cat for Mandy, and Mama pregnant again. Daddy didn’t drink, and he’d never raised a hand to me.
Then it all went to shit. Mama and Mandy died in a car accident. They were in the car with the man Mama had been seeing on the sly. Come to find out, the baby she was carrying wasn’t Daddy’s, and she’d been planning to leave him. That’s why she had Mandy in the car with her. She was taking Mandy with her and leaving me behind with Daddy.
That day Miss Rachel showed up on the farm was the last day I’d set foot on the property. When the old man died a few years ago, I had the realtor sell the house and farm as-is to the first bidder. Then, I donated the money to an organization that helped children rescued from severe abuse and neglect.
The only person who knew about my past was Adam. I’d confided in him one night when we were drunk off our asses. He’d seen me stripped down so many times, same for me with him, but he’d been mostly unblemished until we joined the teams, whereas my body was riddled with scars left over frommy childhood. The worst was the scar that ran down my back from being dragged out of the barn that last night I spent on the farm.
CHAPTER 3
ADAM
SUMMER 2009
Three days.
At least, that was my best guess. I could see the sun rising and setting through a crack in the metal near the door.
The majority of the days since being captured had been spent stuffed in this tiny-ass metal box. Twice a day, they came. They pulled me out of the box. It was during those times when I was removed from my cage that I prayed for the solace of this spot. Especially after I’d tried to escape. Clearly, I’d not succeeded.
Who they were, I had no clue. I hadn’t seen my abductors when they grabbed me, and they stayed covered while in my presence. The only piece of skin I’d seen was around their eyes, that showed through their masks.
What I could see of their skin tone coincided with where I’d been captured. The issue was, we were on a black op. Completely clandestine. No one knew we were here outside of a handful of vetted senior SpecOps commanders and one or two well-trusted individuals in the intelligence community.
Someone said something to someone.
I didn’t want to go down that route. These men and women held my life, the lives of my teammates, and the other operators in their hands. If one of them had divulged info, we were all screwed. The package we were after was high-value. If the details of our mission got out, we were all dead. And our families, too.
The door opened, startling me. I’d not heard them approach this time. Light flooded the box as someone snagged my ankle and dragged me from my safe space. Or at least the safest space I had at the moment.
The guttural sounds of Arabic sounded around me as they bagged and flex-cuffed me yet again. They’d learned their lessons the other day when they’d pulled me out the first time. I whipped ass until someone had shot me with a non-lethal round. I had dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
They’d also taken my shoes and clothes the other day when I’d pulled my Houdini routine. The motherfuckers. I’d just gotten those boots broken in good.
Once secured me, they half-dragged, half-carried me along between them. I couldn’t see anything other than shadows. I knew exactly where we were heading. Given that they’d pulled me out of that fucking box so many times over the last couple of days, I knew the direction and route. There was a sharp stone coming up that they always bounced my knees off of.
Fuck, that hurt.
As usual, they managed to hit it dead on the money. My knees were fucking killing me. Hell, everything fucking hurt. I’d been beaten, electrocuted, and waterboarded. I was sure that was what I was in for again today.
They might as well fucking kill me, because I would die before I broke. They wanted troop info. Shit that, yes, I knew, to a point, but no way in hell would I ever divulge.
I bounced off the ground as they slung me into the room. I didn’t know if it was the same one as before. I’d bounced off the hard floor so often you’d think I’d be intimately acquainted with it.
“You are stubborn man, Navy SEAL,” a voice said from above me in heavily accented English.
The man was a native Arabic speaker. He was the same man who had interrogated me whenever they pulled me from the box. I found out that smarting off to him didn’t get as much of a rise out of him as staying silent.
Mute it was, then.
He revealed shit when angry. Shit said in Farsi that he probably thought I didn’t know. I sucked at languages. At least speaking them. I could do it, but I never sounded like a native.
Unlike Foster and Rocket.
