Page 16 of Fighting for Valor
Ryker
We leave Ford’s apartment and head directly to Second Sight. Dax hasn’t said a fucking word since we walked out the door, and I don’t know how to reach him. Or if I even can.
He’s out of the car faster than I think should be possible for a blind man and headed for the elevator, his cane tapping lightly on the concrete. “Don’t,” Wren says when I take a deep breath, ready to stop him. “Let him have a few minutes.”
Meeting her gaze, I can see my anguish reflected in her green eyes. “Sweetheart, I’m…” My knuckles crack as I ball my hands into fists, little lightning bolts of pain shooting through my fingers. But it’s only a fraction of what I deserve.
“You didn’t leave him,” she whispers. Gently, she cups my cheek, leans in, and ghosts her lips over mine. “You thought he was dead. You had every reason to believe he’d died six months before you escaped. He wasn’t in Hell. You had no way of knowing where he was. I know you, Ryker McCabe. If you’d had a single shred of doubt, you’d have turned that whole country upside down to find him.”
“I can’t get those words out of my head. ‘Faruk took his name and his honor. Everything that made him who he was.’” I need to hit something, but the steering wheel of the rental car wouldn’t be a good target, and I want the whole team on a transpo to Afghanistan as soon as West gives us the go ahead. But if there’s time, I’m finding Dax’s boxing gym and punching the shit out of a heavy bag. “I thought…I thought I got him killed, Wren. But this is worse. I…destroyed him.”
“Stop that right now,” she says sharply. “That horsepucky isn’t going to do you—or Ripper—any good. You didn’t destroy him. Faruk did. You are going to get him back. Now, come on. We’ve given Dax enough time alone, and West, Inara, and Graham should be here soon.”
As we reach the elevator, I wrap my arm around Wren’s shoulders, pull her close, and kiss the top of her head. “I couldn’t do this without you, little bird. I love you.”
“You’d do it.” Her lips curve into a half-smile. “Because that’s who you are. But you don’t have to do it alone.”
My team—Inara, West, and Graham—along with Dax, some guy named Clive, and Wren all sit around a conference table with a view of the Boston skyline. And I doubt any of them have even looked twice at it.
“This is going to be tricky,” West says as Wren projects satellite images of the compound on the wall. “He’s got a shit ton of firepower, a position with three-sixty visibility, and we have no idea if the target’s going to welcome us with open arms or try to kill us.”
I slam my fist down on the table, and Wren stifles a yelp. “This is Ripper we’re talking about. He’s Special Forces. There’s no way he’d turn on us,” I say, the words rough as they scrape over the back of my throat. I know the guy. Knew him, at least. “We all had two weeks of SERE training. And fuck…we survived Hell. Ripper didn’t disappear for six months. He was as messed up as Dax and I were, but the last time I heard his voice, he was singing Bohemian Rhapsody as he was trying to do…well…something. Never knew what, but that was our code for resistance.”
A quiet, low voice from the door startles all of us. “SERE training helped you and Dax survive being prisoners of war. But that bastard who carved the two of you up wasn’t trained in enhanced interrogation and psychological torture.”
“And you are?” I push to my feet, straightening my shoulders to show off all seven feet of my bulk. This guy’s small—compared to me—and I don’t want anyone else in this room. Hell, I didn’t want Clive here, but Dax insisted.
“Trevor,” Dax says. “Sit down, Ry. He’s one of mine. Ex-CIA. You can trust him.”
My gaze slides to Dax, and I nod. “Fine. But are we inviting anyone else to this circus?”
“No.” Trevor shuts the conference room door, but doesn’t sit. Instead, he shoves his hands into his pockets and rests his back against the wall. “McCabe, I don’t know you. But between the little Dax has said about his time in Hell and your face, I’d bet your torture involved pain, movement restriction, isolation, and starvation. Along with your captor trying to convince you everything would be okay if you’d just tell him what he needed to know.”
“Trevor—” Wren begins, but I squeeze her hand.
“It’s all right, sweetheart. I know what I look like.” Returning my gaze to Trevor, I growl, “Add in time in the hole and you’ve got it pretty well covered. So?”
“That’s not how you break a man.” His voice quiets even more, and his eyes darken. “That’s how you torture a man. But if you want to break him, there’s more to it. And if you want to take away everything he is…that’s only the start.”
West clears his throat—not that it does much good. “He’s right.” All heads turn in unison. “My team…we were trained in some of the techniques. I don’t…I need a minute.” He strides from the room, glaring at Trevor for a beat before slamming the door behind him.
“Keep going,” I say.
“Wren? Are you sure you want to hear this?” Trevor asks. “I can come get you when—”
“Flippin’ Flapjacks,” my little bird says as she rolls her eyes. “I was kidnapped, drugged, and beaten by the head of a Russian bratva less than six weeks ago. No, I don’t want to hear this. Yes, I’m going to. Get on with it.” She links her fingers with mine, and I feel the tremble. Anger flares, hot and prickling along my skin, and I tighten my free hand around the arm of the chair until it creaks in my grip.
With a sigh, Trevor runs a hand through his hair. “If you want to destroy a man’s psyche, you don’t just beat the shit out of him. Pain is only a small part of the process. First, you take him away from everything he’s ever known. That didn’t happen in Hell. It probably happened there,” he points at the map. “Faruk’s compound is a good four hours from the mountains by truck. Then, you switch things up. Hell was cold, yeah?”
Dax and I both grunt our assent in unison. Deep under the mountain, the intense heat never penetrated.
“That part of Afghanistan where Faruk is? It’s hotter than the surface of the sun in July. So hot, it’s hard to breathe. They might feed him. Might not. But they’d deprive him of water until he was almost dead. Then, they’d give him a sealed bottle. Tell him it was clean. But all you need is a hypodermic needle and a lighter and you can inject a bottle full of LSD or other psychotropic and no one’s the wiser.”
Trevor’s voice takes on an almost monotonous tone now, and he’s not looking at any of us. His gaze is focused somewhere over my head, out the window. “Within twenty minutes, the prisoner won’t know up from down. He’ll see things. Hear things. And he’ll be susceptible to programming.”
“Programming?” I sit up a little straighter. “Did they get him addicted to drugs?” It’s too much like Wren. Too many memories, and I want to carry her away, back to Seattle where nothing can ever touch her again.
Trevor frowns. “No. They wouldn’t risk that. Not if they wanted something from him. But the drugs would leave him off balance. Anyone here ever done LSD? Mushrooms?”
