“Two more days,” he whispered into my hair. “Give me two days to assure myself you truly are whole. Then we will go for them.”
Tears spilled down my cheeks, and I cradled him closer. “Only if you tell me everything today.”
It wasn’t a negotiation, not really, but he and Campbell had been holding back. They’d been protecting me. I would do my best to assuage Andreas’ fears, but we needed to find them.
I needed them back.
“Si, mi amor,” he whispered, then pressed a kiss to my cheeks, chasing the tears. “Do not cry.”
“Te amo,” I answered him, and he stilled before his whole expression transformed. Love shone in his eyes.
“Te amo, también.”
He loved me, too.
Chapter 5
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” - Charles Darwin
HATCH
Consciousness returned in waves. First came smell. The rankness of sweat. Body odor. That made sense. It reeked. There was something almost metallic beneath it. No, the metallic was in his mouth. Blood. Great. Must be time for another beating. The other smell was astringent, really. Reeked. Almost as bad as the body odor.
The next was a faint ringing in his ears. It came and went. A dull thudding noise underscored the escalating notes of a ringtone, that alternately climbed several octaves then descended again. The throbbing noise echoed the pain resonating through his body. Fuck, could his pores hurt? Everything else did.
Voices began to penetrate the cacophony of sound as a hacking wheeze worked its way up from his lungs. Vision was the last to return, the swim of blurring images as he blinked slowly.
“Well, Mr. Benedict, you have deigned to rejoin us.”
Hatch said nothing as he worked some spit into his mouth. The metallic flavor only grew a little worse. Oh, his nose was bleeding. Leaning a little to the side, he spat.
A man swore and someone cuffed him in the side of the head.
“Don’t!” The first man to speak ordered with a snarl.
The blow didn’t really hurt, but damn did it set his ears to ringing again. Fuck…there was that beat again. The thudding rhythm.
Only it was out of sync. Oh that was annoying. “Remind me to pay you back for that, you spineless fucking cunt.”
Probably would have come out a better threat if he weren’t slurring the words. Shit. Had they drugged him? Compressing his lips, he tried to swallow what little spit he’d managed to make. It didn’t do much for the patch of desert making up his throat, but it did allow him to lift his head, which seemed to increase the blood flowing from his nose.
He wiggled it once. Not broken.
Well that was something.
His fingers twitched though. Slivers of pins and needles stabbing at his arms and shoulders as he stopped sagging against the bindings securing him to a chair. As the haze over his eyes cleared, he made out Dirk strung from chains in the ceiling. Shirtless, his chest, arms and sides were a mottling of old and new bruises layered one over the other.
Probably didn’t look as good on him as they did on Hatch. That was just basic biology. It took a minute to register, but Dirk was awake and staring at him steadily. Utterly expressionless, he betrayed no emotions except…
“Fuck me, who was your barber?” Hatch spluttered, then spit out more blood. The idiot from before managed to leap and dodge the spray of it this time. Too bad. He’d have to work on that aim. But the more his vision cleared, the better he could make out Dirk. And his shorn head. Someone had shaved all the hair from it, and there were gouges against his skull, like they’d taken some of it out by the root. “And I hope like fuck you didn’t tip the bastard, mate. He did a right job on you.”
The faintest of smiles curved Dirk’s mouth. Even his beard was gone. Though, like his head, stubble graced his cheeks.
“You should see what they did to you.”
Horror filled Hatch, and he gaped at the other man. “Not the hair…anything but the hair. Damn, mate, do you know how good my hair is?”
The snort of sound was probably as close to a laugh as Dirk was going to get. But then he couldn’t put his feet down and his arms had to be fucking aching hanging like that. Still, Hatch’s were killing him.
“Are you quite finished, Mr. Benedict?” The snap of the Manchester accent brought his head around to focus on the man in the button-down white shirt with his sleeves rolled up.
“No,” he answered Smithson blithely. Because A, fuck him, and B, seriously, fuck him. “I’m not done, you cocksucking pollywank. Who the fuck do you think you are?”
Dirk huffed another laugh and shook his head.
“I think I’m the man in control of your future,” Smithson responded in an utterly bored tone. “So if you need to get a few more insults off your chest before we get to work, let’s do that.”
“Arsehole, you can beat me until you actually sully that overpriced suit you’re wearing. You can burn me. Stick me. You can shave my fucking hair…though don’t think for a second I won’t pay you back in kind, only I’ll be sure to take your balls off while I’m at it. I’m not fucking cooperating with you.” They’d hounded him for days.
Twice, they’d tried to install him into their version of the memoriam, and both times, he’d jettisoned straight out and then promptly thrown up all over their techs.
Good times.
They wanted him to explain how he was doing it, and on that subject, he remained mute. They beat him for answers. They beat Dirk for answers.
And they were getting exactly nothing.
Not that they needed to know the reason he wouldn’t tell them shit was also because he didn’t know how he did it. The first time, they’d apparently tried to inject him while he’d been unconscious, and that hadn’t worked at all.
Thank fucking Christ. Because if he woke up in that hellish landscape without Valda there, he had no idea what he’d be dealing with. So they’d attempted to do it awake, and it had resulted in a brutal beating to even get him in the chair.
He’d taken more than a few of the jackholes out that time. They’d broken two of his fingers and dislocated his shoulder. The two fingers in question were still taped together. He leaned a little to look at them. Still had decent color.
Good. At the rate they liked to beat him, he wouldn’t be surprised if the fingers bloody well fell off.
“Perhaps I’ve changed what I want,” Smithson told him, dragging his attention back to their present circumstance.
“Oh? A good spot to pick up fish and chips? Sorry, mate, the best pubs closed down a decade ago. That alcohol ban in England never did go over well. Sure, you can find a black market for it somewhere. Tell me which part we’re in, and I might could hook you up with a lead.”
Honestly, he’d kill for a fucking pint right about now.
Surprise flickered through his eyes before Smithson could mute it. Dirk’s expression tightened for spare seconds before he forced it to relax. Yes, the captain had caught the same thing Hatch had. England.
They’d been transported all the fucking way across the pond. That meant Blossom Foundry. Fucking bastards.