I exchanged looks with Jax and Marshall, because we all knew exactly why only Harlow had been released. We’d gotten the outrageous demand for Taylor’s ransom this morning, along with a proof of life short video clip of the female still in captivity.
As of yet, we hadn’t gotten a single word about Mark, Harlow’s boyfriend, and the mining engineer who had planned to meet the two women at the dock in Lania. Until her release two days ago, Harlow had been imprisoned with Taylor, but Mark was totally unaccounted for, and hadn’t been at the dock when the two women had been taken.
I would have forked over the money for my intern immediately, no questions asked, if I thought it would buy Taylor Delaney’s freedom.
But it wouldn’t.
I had enough history with Lanian rebels to know that the last ones being held never made it out.
Harlow had been lucky. Her release was a supposed act of good faith, but I wasn’t buying that bullshit.
“I just want them back,” Harlow answered frantically. “I don’t know what happened to Mark, and Taylor won’t last much longer. We didn’t get food at all, and the only water we could get was if and when it rained, which didn’t happen often. We could barely get part of our arm through the vents to the outside to gather as much as we could when it was raining. I checked the weather in Lania. It doesn’t look they’ve gotten a drop of rain since I left.”
Fuck! If Harlow had been critically dehydrated, Taylor didn’t stand much of a chance.
“Other than the lack of food and water, how was your treatment while you were there? Can you give me any more information about where you were kept?” I asked Harlow in a tone that was as gentle as I could manage at the moment.
“It was hot,” she answered grimly. “We were kept in a one-room structure with a steel door, and there wasn’t much air movement. There were a few openings near the ceiling, which is what we used to try to get water, but the walls were cement. There was nothing we could use as tools to try to break out of there. Believe me, we tried. We were sweltering, and I think our guards wanted us weak. If you’re asking if they beat us, they didn’t. It was mostly yelling, shoving and most of their communication was in Lanian.”
Hell, that had certainly changed since she’d left, but I wasn’t about to tell the distraught woman about that. Taylor had definitely been beaten, and judging by that brief proof of life video clip we’d seen, she was in no shape to try to get water, even if it did rain.
“And there was no….sexual assault?” Jax queried right before he let out an uncomfortable cough.
No matter how many times we’d had to ask the uncomfortable questions, it never got any easier.
“No. Or maybe yes. I’m not sure,” Harlow answered as she fidgeted in her chair. “Every night, the rebel leader came to get Taylor. He’d take her away just after dark. It seemed like forever, but she was probably only gone an hour or so before he tossed her back into our prison again. She swore he wasn’t hurting her, and that the leader spoke English, so she was trying to get him to release us. She refused to say anything else, and I’ll be completely honest, I was half out of my mind. I was so worried about Mark that I believed her at the time. Or maybe I just wanted to believe it because there was nothing else I could do. Now that my mind is clearer, I’m not so sure that she wasn’t assaulted or raped. No matter how convincing Taylor can be, I don’t buy that she was trying to talk the leader into letting us go every single night.”
And just like that, the lid I’d tried to slap down on my personal emotions cracked open just a little.
Son of a bitch! My gut started to churn as I thought about some fuckhead rebel using one of my interns as his sexual toy every single evening. And what kind of woman would go willingly, and then come back to Harlow and lie about what had happened to keep her friend and mentor from worrying?
It took some major balls to surrender when all you wanted to do was fight.
“It’s possible. I highly doubt that they were negotiating a release plan,” Jax told Harlow bluntly, not sugar-coating his response. “Can you tell us anything else that would tip us off to exactly where they’re keeping Taylor?”
Before Harlow could answer, Marshall spoke. “I think I have the location for Taylor.”
I’d known damn well I was going to take on this mission personally from the moment I’d heard Harlow’s story, and probably even before that. Like, from the moment I’d heard about this whole debacle a couple of hours ago. The rebels were fucking with two people who were under our protection as Montgomery Mining employees. If anybody was attempting a rescue, it was going to be me. Providing resources and tactical planning wasn’t going to be enough.
Not this time!
This one, I was determined to carry out myself.
The chances that Taylor was still breathing were grim.
Mark’s chances were even worse because we’d never gotten a ransom demand for him.
Harlow’s intern had recently been beaten up pretty badly. Jax and I assumed she’d tried to escape, and failed. It was a typical Lanian rebel move to pummel escapees so they wouldn’t, and physically couldn’t, do it again.
“Just out of curiosity, why was one of our summer interns on an exploration mission?” Jax questioned. “It’s kind of unusual for that to happen.”
Harlow’s face completely crumpled into an expression of utter and complete guilt. “It’s my fault. That was a bad decision on my part. I met Taylor a year ago, when she was starting the last year of her master’s program at Stanford, and I was doing a research lecture there. We kept in touch. She’s brilliant, and I jumped at the chance to be her mentor when she was offered an internship at Montgomery. When she heard I was doing an exploration, she really wanted to come, and I thought she’d be a good asset for the team. Really, she didn’t have to be there. Mark and I could have handled this initial check ourselves.”
I shook my head. “We weren’t blaming you in any way, Harlow. By all reports, it should have been perfectly safe for her to be there. It should have been safe for all of you.”
“You don’t have to blame me,” she said hoarsely. “I blame myself. I’ve already resigned from my position with Montgomery Mining, but that doesn’t matter. I still want to do everything I can to get Mark and Taylor home.”
“Why in the fuck did you have to resign?” Jax grumbled. “This wasn’t your fault.”
“We’ll discuss your resignation later,” I said, shooting Jax a warning look. “Let’s focus on the mission to rescue the two who are still in Lania first.”
While I didn’t agree with Harlow leaving our company, either, it was critical to keep our eye on our mission right now.
“Please do,” Harlow pleaded in a voice that was barely more than a whisper.
I quickly explained the basics about Last Hope to Harlow, and told her that we planned to attempt a rescue. While I hated telling anyone anything about our volunteer group, Harlow had been through hell, and she deserved to at least know somebody was trying to get her boyfriend and friend out of Lania.
I didn’t go into details since we technically didn’t exist as far as the federal government was concerned. Okay, so they actually did know we existed, and the FBI negotiators sometimes tipped us off about someone who needed help, but their official position was total ignorance about our operation.