Page 4 of Fighting for Valor
One step. Two. Three. I’m so tired. The room must be two miles across with the door at the end of a long tunnel. At least that’s how it feels. One foot in front of the other.
I can do this. I can make it. Find a way out of here. If only I knew where here was. My fingers wrap around the door handle, but it doesn’t turn. Shit. They locked me in.
You’re fucking Special Forces, asshole. Find a way out.
On the nightstand, several discarded needles lie on a tray. If I’m really lucky, I might be able to use them to pick the lock. But now…I have to walk across the room again. In both directions. One step at a time.
My legs give out halfway back. And then…footsteps. Down the hall. Rushing. A key rasps in the lock, and I scramble for the needle that fell from my hand.
“Isaad!” Faruk lifts me to my feet and slings my arm around his shoulders. “You should not be out of bed.” As he helps me back to the narrow cot, I try to hide the needle, but my fingers are shaking too violently, and it clatters to the floor.
Another man shouts, “Get away from the traitor!” Faruk jerks, lets me fall the last foot onto the mattress, and backs up a few paces.
“I am sorry, Amir Aazar. I only wished to bring him water.” Faruk withdraws a bottle from the pocket of his tunic and shows it to this other man. He’s taller. Stronger. Meaner.
“He does not deserve water. Or anything else.” Amir Aazar strides forward and punches Faruk in the gut hard enough to make him double over. A rough hand fastens around my arm, and then he yanks me off the cot. My head hits the floor, and my vision dims as Amir Aazar drags me down the hall, around several turns, and through what I think is a lavish parlor.
Back outside, the harsh sun beats down on my face as sharp rocks cut into my bare back. “Open the well!” Amir Aazar shouts.
“No…please,” I beg. I’ll do anything to stay out of the well. “Take me…back…to Hell Mountain.”
“You will never see the mountain again,” Aazar snaps. “Your little trick with the computer? It got the other two men from your unit killed. Days ago. The mountain is gone. Now, there is only you. Here.”
No. Not Ryker and Dax. No. He’s lying. He has to be.
Another man drags the wooden cover off the well, and I claw at Aazar’s leg, trying to hold on so he can’t throw me down there. It has to be the middle of the day. I’m burning; the scorpion bites feel like they’re on fire.
“You are the only one left, Sergeant Richards. And you will pay for the crimes of the rest of your unit.” Aazar bends down and grabs my chin, forcing me to look at him. “You and your men killed my family. You will suffer for their deaths.”
He shoves me down, throwing off my hold easily. As he rises, he brushes off his hands. I try to roll over, but I can’t. I’m too weak to do more than lie on my back, blinking rapidly in the bright sun, as half a dozen men stand around me.
“Make sure he is alive when he goes back into the well,” Aazar says. “But you may do whatever you wish to him before that happens.”
Someone clutches the waistband of my pants and rips them off of me, and when another man grabs my hips and raises my ass in the air, I send my mind as far away as I can, so I don’t have to feel them take the only thing I have left.
What seems like hours later, I land back in the well, and as the wood slides over the opening, plunging me into darkness once more, I don’t even care that they left me down here to die. Broken, violated, bleeding from…places I never wanted to think about. Death…will be a blessing.
Chapter Three
Ripper
Why can’t I let go? Stop myself from drinking the water they throw into the well? I want to. But every time…I fail.
“Your little trick with the computer? It got the other two men from your unit killed.”
Ryker McCabe was the strongest man I’ve ever known, with Dax Holloway a close second. And this asshole—my captor—had the power to murder them. It might have been Aazar who ordered their deaths, but I’m the one responsible.
My stupid attempt to tell someone—anyone—where we were got them killed. And landed me…here. Broken. Used by half a dozen men until my ass bled, kicked, punched, choked, and tossed down into this hole. How long this time? Five days? Seven? I can’t sleep. Too much pain. The only relief I find is when I pass out.
The scorpions are out again. My only indication of day or night. They don’t consider me much of a threat anymore. One crawls along my thigh, and I don’t move, don’t react. I haven’t moved in hours. Maybe even a day. My hands cup my dick, the only sliver of self-preservation I have left.
But my breathing must annoy the little bastard, because it skitters up my chest and drives its stinger into my cheek. Half my face goes numb, and I cry out as I shake my head. Fumbling for the water next to me, I pour some over the wound, swallow the rest, and then I start to hear voices.
Ry. Telling me to fight. Then Dax. He wants me to know everything will be okay. Behind my shuttered lids, I see Hab as Kahlid slit his throat in front of us. A second before the knife pierced his carotid artery, he mouthed, “Never give up.”
Fuck. I wish I could honor his wishes. As another scorpion gets tangled in my mess of matted, too-long hair, and my weak, keening cry echoes off the stone walls. It feels like a hundred of the fucking things are crawling all over me, and panic sets in. My entire body convulses, and I fall over, the pain fading away. Now I’m floating. Somewhere quiet, where maybe…maybe I’ll never wake up again.
“Isaad. Open your eyes.”
