Savage Escape (Savage Security #1)

Chapter 7

7

CADEN

C aden had been through this same ol’ song and dance many times before. Not just as the torturee but also the one doing the torturing, so it went rather like a checklist in her head.

Display an arsenal of clever little torture devices.

Rid victim, aka the asshole stupid enough to get caught in the first place, of torture-hindering apparel.

Bind said asshole.

Attempt to reason.

Torture.

They’d done spectacularly so far.

She’d gotten a good view of the torture devices (a strategically placed set of knives and, hell, she wasn’t gonna bitch at their lack of creativity) when she’d been pushed into the room.

Number one, check.

She’d been stripped of her jeans and tied to a chair that was bolted to the floor.

Check and check.

He’d asked her politely and in the best way he knew how to be reasonable. All he wanted was a location. That was it. There was no need for this mess. If she only told him, then he’d let her go back to her cell. Didn’t that sound easy?

Check.

And when that hadn’t worked, he’d started cutting into the soft flesh on her inner thighs, always asking the same question.

“Where’s the boy?”

She was grunting and growling and focusing on breathing. On inhaling the cold dank air and letting the exhale be her release. Really, physical pain wasn’t all that torturous. Sure as fuck hurt, but it was just that, hurt. It really only served to fuel the rage in her belly and put names on death lists. As heart-stoppingly painful as torture was, she could handle it.

And really, it served as a frustratingly demoralizing reminder that she had yet to achieve any kind of progress on the whole ‘getting dead’ front.

She was bored. Pissed and hurting, but bored all the same. Or maybe bored wasn’t the correct descriptor. Maybe it was defeated or enraged or couldn’t-be-bothered-to-give-a-flying-fuck. One of those or all of those, it didn’t matter.

That wasn’t to say that getting a knife to the soft flesh of her inner thighs over and over didn’t hurt like fuck, but it was now just... just a stall. And she was so fucking sick of the stall.

Here, Caden was in the hands of the man who’d recently suffered the loss of his firstborn. The killer of that little shit-fuck-weasel was sitting right in front of him. He had a knife. He had a gun and he still wasn’t killing her.

No, instead he found a reason as to why she, the murderer of his son, should still be breathing.

“Just tell me where the safe house is, Quinn, and it’ll stop.”

Fucking—fuck!

Caden was trying her damndest to get dead. How fucking hard was that supposed to actually be? How many times had she dodged a well-aimed bullet or deflected a killing blow? How many times had she been on a gurney flat-lining? How many people had she killed, there and breathing one moment and gone the next? It was simple, right? But somehow, a woman that had killed more times than she wanted to count and had practiced dying (the whole dead for two minutes and some odd seconds thing when she was young), couldn’t even get this fuck-wad to off her.

It seemed as hard as she tried to get dead the Universe or Aliens or Gods (whoever the fuck was pulling the strings) were trying just as hard to keep her breathing.

It was just... she was done.

First with Nathan, the only good man she knew, getting tossed into her cell. And now with this problem Kyott pulled out of his ass. A problem she, and only she, had the answer to. It was frustrating and disheartening.

Which to any other person on the surface of the planet may have been a flashing neon sign reading, ‘Quit your goddamn bitchin’ and pointless efforts and get on with your pathetic fucking life!’ from said Puppet Master, but to Caden, it was another challenge. Another fight she had to win.

But maybe that wasn’t true anymore. Caden was always fighting for something. But now... what the fuck was she fighting for now?

She had nothing left.

“Quinn, pay attention.” Kyott brought her back to the conversation with a deep cut to her underarm. “All you gotta do is tell me where he is and I’ll let ya go back to your cell. Hell, maybe I’ll even think about hiring ya on.”

It took a long moment to find her voice and beat back the waves of white-hot pain smothering her nerve endings.

“You do have a position to fill now, don’t ya? Seeing as how Liam’s... well, he’s not gonna be jumping outta his grave any time soon, is he?”

Her intention was to remind the fuck-wad why she was in the chair and then maybe he’d finally get the job done. But it did not have the effect she was intending. The man only smirked and let out a short incredulous huff like he found her amusing. Apparently not a whole lot of love in the Kyott family.

“Ya got some balls on ya, you know that?” The flat side of the bloody blade hit her cheek a few times. “For a woman who’s said to have survived well—fucking everything —you don’t seem too keen on staying alive.”

Well, mother fucking hallelujah, give the man a prize.

“Is that—” He jerked back like he’d been stuck and the knife went with him. “Is that what this is for you, Quinn? You wanna die? That’s it, huh?” He gave a sadistic little chuckle and patted her cheek with the knife again. “Well, how ‘bout this? You tell me right now where he is and I’ll kill ya. As messily or quickly as ya’d like—I’ll kill ya.”

The ‘he’ in that sentence was the son of a rather dangerous man she’d worked for six months back. She’d acted as the kid’s bodyguard while they moved base camp and again when Harrington decided his son needed a more secure and secret location. The ‘he’ was eight, named Trevor, and liked Oreos on his pancakes.

“How ‘bout it?”

Caden was many things, a killer chief among them. What she was not, in any way, was a snitch. Especially where a kid was concerned. She did not kill innocents. Sure, there was the random beat down should said innocent come between her and her job but never kill. Despite his parentage, Trevor was an innocent.

It wasn’t a big mystery why Kyott was suddenly so interested in Harrington. They were always comparing dick sizes and trying to out evil the other. The fact that Kyott was now going after Trevor either meant Harrington had done something similar or he was making a play for the scum-bag crown.

“What do you think?” She couldn’t catch a break.

After a moment of what looked like contemplative concentration, a smirk curled his lip and he moved within head-butt range.

“Wrong answer.” With that, he stabbed down, impaling her forearm and then the wooden arm of the chair before leaving it there and turning back towards the table. White hot searing pain jolted up her arm and smothered everything else.

It was moments like those that Caden dearly wished she’d been tossed into a vat of toxic waste at birth; telekinesis would be mighty handy. Unfortunately, Caden was not a mutant, and the knife was not gonna magically unsheathe itself from her arm and plunge into Kyott seven or eight times. So Caden focused on breathing. On drawing breath and letting her exhale be her release.

Inhale.

Exhale.

He turned back around, syringe in his hand, and flicked it a few times, looking rather smug. Caden guessed that it was either some kind of poison or sodium pentathol. Her money was on sodium pentathol though, seeing as how he was interrogating her. Poison wasn’t a thing a man like Kyott would spend any kind of time on if there was a gun readily available.

Inhale.

Exhale.

There was a pinch on her neck followed by a cold burn under her skin and the merc bit back a growl; she hated being drugged and the loss of control that came with it. She’d been drugged before, of course, a few times, but only ever twice before with sodium pentothal—the Truth Drug. In Caden’s seasoned opinion, it wasn’t so much the Truth Drug as the Talk Drug. All she had to do was talk and keep talking. It wouldn’t take long to infiltrate, considering her body mass and the lack of sustenance in her belly.

Kyott, looking ten shades of pleased with himself, moved back to the table and positioned himself against it so he could watch as the drugs kicked in.

“Oh, here, I’ll take that back.” He grinned sheepishly and leaned over to pluck the knife out of her forearm.

Inhale.

Exhale.

It took a good five minutes to set in properly, which, by Caden’s count, was a whole minute and forty seconds longer than it took the last time some ass-hat had injected her with it. Hell, maybe she was building up a resistance.

Slowly Caden could feel her muscles loosen. The burning pain from all the cuts and slices subside and a sense of ease settled in her head. Like she wasn’t being tortured and maybe Kyott wasn’t so bad. He was trying to make a living like everyone else.

“How are you feeling, Quinn?”

The all-around pain dimmed to a dull roar in the back of her mind and allowed Caden to focus on the man in front of her. Yellow flicked in the corner of her eye.

“Oh, you know peachy.” Weirder than peachy, though. More like her lips had been rusted shut for a while and Kyott had oiled them to working condition again. Like the Tin Man in that creepy ass movie with the flying monkeys and the floating heads. “Fuck, if those flying monkeys show up, ya’ll are on your own. That’s like giving wolves wings—’cept wolves don’t throw their shit. Oh god, could you imagine? Shit raining from the sky while you’re getting dived bombed by ill-intentioned monkeys wearing creepy fucking uniforms? Who thought of that? That’s like some twisted Beetle Juice shit right there.”

Yellow flickered again and Caden tried to decide what exactly she’d said aloud and what she hadn’t. And what the hell was that yellow thing?

“Quinn.” Hot hands gripped her face and suddenly she was seeing pores and nose hairs she didn’t want to see. “Focus, Caden, I need you to tell me where Trevor Harrington is.”

“Focused. I am so focused. Well, maybe not as much as you want me to be, but definitely more focused than that time in Belgrade. No monkeys there, no. They had this guy—who only had one arm—on a unicycle juggling flaming knives. Now that is some serious skills. I would not want to meet him in a unicycle fight. Shit would get intense real quick and he’d probably skewer me with a flaming machete. But wouldn’t that be a way to go? I mean how many death certificates read, ‘death by flaming machete lodged in gut whilst fighting a one-armed man on a unicycle’. Not many is my guess.”

This was nice. She’d never gotten to tell anyone about the one-armed, unicycling man before.

“Quinn.”

“As soon as he was off the stage, though, I was focused. Like laser-focused. Well, okay no. First, I tracked the one-armed guy back to his apartment so I could find him later and have him show me how to unicycle. But after that, I focused.” Caden Quinn did have a work ethic after all. Stealing and maiming first and then the extracurricular activities. “Completely forgot about that till now. I never actually gotta go back there, either. G-men started popping outta the ground once someone recognized me.”

“Where is Trevor Harrington?”

“I don’t know. Emotionally, he seemed pretty scared when I left. Though he was doing that brave kid thing, too. Putting on a smile and trying to pretend like his palms weren’t sweating. I mean, he didn’t have his dad with him and his mom just died from a car bomb. That was all nice and protective of Harrington to move his kid, but he was leaving him alone so he wouldn’t have to deal with the kid’s grief. That’s not good parenting.”

“No—physically, where is he physically?”

“Umm, I’d say... like a hundred-thirty, hundred fifty—kid’s got some girth on him. Comfort eating, and no outside time, plus his genes ain’t the best. I mean, you’ve seen Harrington. You know what I mean.” The yellow turned into a head of hair. A yellow set of locks, she somehow knew. “Though he was much less fat when he was younger—more muscle-y. Once he made Bossman, he let himself go. Not a good choice considering his career, though.”

“Trevor Harrington, Quinn. Where the fuck is Trevor Harrington!?”

“Ezzy?” The word was like a punch to the jaw. It sent her reeling and grappling for something to hold on to. “Ezzy.” The owner of those yellow locks. It couldn’t be her, though. “Ezzy!”

But there she was. Standing in the corner. Her head jerked up at the sound of her name and her blond locks fell over her shoulders. Her cheeks were pink and healthy. Like she wasn’t dead and buried. She waved jazz fingers and smiled that smile she used when she was trying to be patient.

“No! Trevor Harrington!” Kyott, not particularly blessed with an overabundance to begin with, lost his patience and slapped her across the face.

Panic set in when she couldn’t see Ezzy for the long moment it took her drugged brain to catch up with her eyes. But she blinked away the haze and turned to watch her baby sister stand in the corner, fingers impatiently plucking at her backpack straps, biting at her bottom lip, and making a concentrated effort not to glance down at her watch every few minutes.

Just like she’d done when they were kids.

Caden would be coming off a shift and Ezzy would be waiting in a corner booth, pretending to read or focus on her homework, but was really counting down the minutes. Caden couldn’t help but smile at the memory of her impatient sister. Ezzy smiled back. Looking all kinds of alive and ready to get going.

“Quinn, where is the safe house?” He moved back into headbutt range, blocking her view of Ezra. Rage lit in her veins and pushed a half-strangled screech from her throat. The merc took a moment to calmly draw a steadying breath, snap her head forward, and break the bastard’s fat nose. He screeched and stumbled back, bringing Ezzy back into focus.

“Fucking,” pissed, Kyott returned with a bone-cracking right hook to her nose, “bitch!” and when that didn’t fully satisfy, he brought the knife back into play.

A muffled sort of burning cut into her side this time. It moved to her thighs and then the soft under part of her arms. She had the presence of mind enough to know that the drugs were softening the pain and that they’d hurt like hell if she woke up again, but it didn’t matter because there was Ezzy, alive.

Like she wasn’t actually six months dead and buried.

She was alive and waiting on Caden’s ass to hurry the hell up.

How did she get out of her grave? Caden had watched the coffin lower into the ground. How was she alive? Why was she even fucking questioning it? Ezzy was alive! There had been some horrible mistake—Ezzy wasn’t actually dead. She smiled again, and Caden felt her heart sink.

Kyott would see her. He would see her and do terrible, horrible things to her. No, she couldn’t let that happen. Caden had never let anything from her dirty world touch her baby sister and she sure as fuck wasn’t gonna start now. She had to focus on keeping his attention.

She had to.

Ezzy was right there, all bright-eyed and innocent, sticking out like a sore thumb. But he was turning to trade knives and panic was closing her throat up.

He didn’t see her.

She was standing right there, but he didn’t see her. Ezzy grinned again. All kinds of triumphant and proud. The same smile she’d broken into when she had successfully lied to a cop or a landlord when they were kids. The same smile she’d worn when she’d gotten her PHD.

“You cunt!” Another slash of white-hot pain, hit to the gut, and he was done. Kyott stormed his way to the door, passing within a foot of her baby sister without seeing her, and screamed at the meatheads standing guard.

“Get her outta here!” Big hands were on her, pulling at her—rough, too rough. It hurt. But her stare stayed on Ezzy. Ezzy the innocent. Ezzy the dead sister. Not the only sister she failed, not the only person to be dead because of her. Caden tried to walk but she was so... tired and couldn’t get the message to her feet quick enough to keep up with them.

Pain.

Something hurt. She was hurt, right?

Ezzy. Ezzy was hurt or no, not hurt. But she was going to be if Caden didn’t get out of her drugged stupor.

She was cold, but her skin was warm. Something was burning her cold skin. Her blood—it was her blood that was burning. She had to snap the fuck out of it.

Ezzy was still there, trailing along behind them, looking like a bright little flower in the middle purgatory. She needed Caden sober.

Caden pushed away the heavy fog, kept her eyes wide, and forced her feet to catch the floor. By the time she found her feet, the big hands were shoving and pushing again. Her face found the cement before she could right herself, but that didn’t matter; wasn’t like her face could get uglier.

“Ezzy!” She flopped over and almost started balling in relief at the sight of her baby sister standing by the door swinging her arms, a sign that she was getting more impatient by the second.

The burning wasn’t so bad anymore. She was cold all over now but maybe that was worse. Her mind was screaming some kind of warning at her, but it didn’t matter—nothing fucking mattered. Ezzy was alive.

It was okay. It was gonna be okay. Ezra was alive, and Caden was there to protect her. She’d be okay.

Everything was all right now.

So cold. Cold, but not dead. Not green and pale cold—not dead cold. Not yet. Had Ezra been cold when she died? Had she felt pain? Did the constant mix of drugs dull her death?

No. No.

Ezzy was dead, right?

Caden had held her hand and watched the life leave her big brown eyes. She’d seen her pretty little sister white and green with death. She’d raged at the doctors and screamed and threatened and cried—too young—not fair—she hadn’t even lived—she couldn’t fail Ezzy too.

No.

Ezzy was dead.