Extreme Risk, page 1
Extreme Risk
Jane Blythe
Copyright © 2023 Jane Blythe
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, reverse engineered or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without permission in writing from the publisher.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Bear Spots Publications
Melbourne Australia
Cover designed by RBA Designs
I’d like to thank everyone who played a part in bringing this story to life. Particularly my mom who is always there to share her thoughts and opinions with me. My wonderful cover designer Letitia who did an amazing job with this stunning cover! And my fabulous editor Lisa for all the hard work she puts into polishing my work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Book List
About the Author
Chapter One
June 20th
2:47 A.M.
The smell of death and pain hung heavily in the air.
Combined with the stench of blood and human waste, it was slowly choking the life out of him.
His luck had run out.
His time had come.
Antonio “Arrow” Eden knew he was going to die in this hellhole somewhere in Somalia.
Not just him, but his team too.
Although it was hard to keep track of time passing down here in this underground bunker, where there was no natural light, no glimpses to be had of the outside world, best as he could figure it had been two weeks since he and his team had been captured.
They’d come to Somalia to look into a possible link to a weapons dealer based here. Not just any weapons trafficker, but one who they thought might have links to what appeared to be a much more complicated plot to overthrow the government than they had originally thought.
What had started as a survivalist with ideological plans for a utopia with no government and everyone living off the land, now included a corrupt family law firm that blackmailed wealthy clients to raise funds. That firm appeared to be linked to weapons traffickers. They still had no idea who was running things, but it was someone with power, contacts, and a determination that said they weren't going to stop.
When they’d arrived at the location where they were supposed to meet with a source who supposedly had information they could use to find who was really in charge of this plot, he hadn't been there.
Instead, an entire army of over a hundred men had been lying in wait.
They’d been set up.
He and his team might all be former special forces operators, but there was only so much six men could do against that many armed militias.
Still, they’d managed to take out at least a quarter of them before being captured and brought here.
Here where they had been tortured for information they would never give up.
Their captors were growing tired of torturing them, Arrow could tell. There was no longer the same joy and amusement in their eyes when they delivered daily beatings. They were going through the motions, but they had already learned that nothing they did was going to get any of his team to talk, so they were ready to move on.
To killing them.
No doubt their deaths would be broadcast across the internet to make a statement. Arrow and his team worked for the world-renowned Prey Security. A private security, black ops, and hostage rescue firm run by six billionaire siblings, founded by the oldest, Eagle Oswald. Their deaths would make waves, but these men didn't seem to realize they were painting a gigantic bullseye on their backs.
Prey would stop at nothing to avenge their deaths.
Nothing.
Working at Prey meant becoming part of a family of men and women who always had each other’s backs. When they realized he and his team had been captured, Prey would have been doing everything within their power to find and get them out.
Didn't matter how long it would take, Prey wouldn’t give up, and if Alpha team didn't survive, they would eventually find the men responsible for their murders and make them pay.
Arrow shifted on the cold concrete floor, trying to find a position that didn't cause his battered body pain.
Of course, that was impossible.
Two weeks of being beaten, starved, dehydrated, whipped, waterboarded, electrocuted, and cut up until he looked more like a pincushion than a person had taken a toll. His muscles were wasting away, his strength along with them. Even if an opportunity for escape presented itself, he doubted whether he or his teammates were strong enough to take it.
Thinking of his team—his family, brothers bonded in blood—inevitably made him think of his family at home.
His dad might have ditched them when Arrow was a kid, his mom suffered from depression and refused all their attempts to get her help, but he had three little sisters who would be worried out of their minds.
It was his job to protect them.
Take care of them.
To take care of his team as well.
He’d failed.
Not the first time he’d failed, of course, but it ate at him just the same.
You couldn’t save everyone. Wasn’t that one of the first lessons you learned as a medic? And yet, every time he lost someone, he felt a piece of himself die along with them.
A groan jerked his attention out of his own head and to the cell beside his. Apparently, their captors had been afraid enough of his team and their combined strength to keep them separated. His cell was about eight feet by eight feet, with concrete on one wall, then concrete about four feet up with metal bars that ran from the concrete to the ceiling on the other three sides.
The sound was coming from his left, Asher “Mouse” Whitman’s cell. The man had a seven-year-old daughter and had recently become engaged to Phoebe Lynch, the woman who had saved Mouse’s daughter Lolly’s life twice. Now his friend would likely die leaving his daughter an orphan.
“Mouse?” he asked, crawling toward the wall. There was a metal cuff around both his ankles with heavy chains that ran from them to metal rings embedded in the center of the cell. At first, he’d dedicated hours to trying to dig the rings free, but eventually realized it was a fruitless effort and a waste of energy that could be better spent keeping himself alive.
“I'm okay.” His friend’s voice slurred weakly.
He wasn’t okay.
None of them were.
They looked like extras in a post-apocalyptic zombie film. Covered in cuts and bruises, caked in dirt and grime, stinking and weak.
Close to death.
Hating that there was nothing he could do but unable to fight the need to help however he could, Arrow planted his hands on the concrete wall dividing his cell from Mouse’s and pulled himself up to stand. There were no lights in the cells, but his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, now preferring it to the blinding light of the interrogation room down the end of the long hall.
Mouse’s huddled form was visible in the middle of his cell. Arrow’s fingers curled around the bars, squeezing tightly, taking out their impotence on the sturdy metal. If only he possessed super strength like the superheroes little Lolly believed them to be.
Unfortunately, he was nothing but a flesh and blood man incapable of ripping metal away from concrete or bending it to his will.
“Where do you hurt the most?” he asked Mouse.
“I'm fine,” Mouse repeated, only his voice sounded weaker this time than it had just a minute ago.
“Not what I asked, brother,” he said. “Where do you hurt the most?”
There was a long pause, then a grunt, half of pain, half annoyance. “Abdomen.”
Damn.
That likely meant internal bleeding.
Without swift treatment Mouse would die. He wouldn’t be the only one, but he might be the first of them to go.
“How bad?” Luca “Bear” Jackson asked from the cell to Arrow’s right. There was pure fury in their team leader’s voice. Bear took his position as Alpha team’s leader seriously, and he knew the man had spent the last two weeks beating himself up over the fact that they’d been captured.
“Bad,” he muttered. Even if he could convince their captors to let him into Mouse’s cell there was nothing he could do for the man. Mouse needed a hospital and surgery to stop the bleeding, it was nothing Arrow could provide. “Domino woken up yet?”
“No.”
The one-word reply reminded him that while Mouse might be first to die they were all going to fall like … well … dominos.
Dominick “Domino” Tanner had received serious head injuries a few days ago. Serious enough that the man had barely regained consciousness and hadn't been lucid or coherent when he had.
It had been at least twenty-four hours since Domino last woke up, and that had quite possibly been the last time he ever would.
“I want to do something.” Caleb “Brick” Quinn’s frustrated voice came from the cell on the other side of Mouse.
“We all do, man,” Christian “Surf” Bailey said quietly from the cell next to Brick’s. Even their resident ray of sunshine had lost his light over the last few weeks. At first, Surf had been telling jokes, rallying team morale, repeating that they would find a way out of here, but a few days ago reality seemed to have settled over him.
Settled over all of them.
They weren't finding a way out of here.
They weren't making it home to their families.
Mouse would leave behind his daughter and fiancée. Bear would never meet the baby his new wife was only a month away from delivering. He would never see the three baby sisters he’d practically raised walk down the aisle.
The only thing in their futures was death.
The clunk of the door opening to the basement dungeons drew his attention. It was a sound all of them recognized, a sound that immediately had his body tightening as it braced for the coming pain.
Arrow felt like a Pavlov-trained dog as he moved himself to the back of the cell. Was it his turn? They took them one at a time, the interrogation room close enough that they could all hear the screams of whichever teammate was being tortured. Which was, of course, the point. He always did his best not to verbalize his pain and knew his friends did the same, but these men were relentless and always managed to pry cries from his dry, cracked lips.
There were no voices, but he heard the sound of footsteps echoing down the narrow corridor that joined all the cells to the interrogation room at one end, and the door at the other that led to the house above where their captors lived.
A bright light bathed him, and Arrow sucked in a pained breath as his eyes instinctively snapped closed against the agonizing intrusion.
So, it was his turn next.
A soft voice mumbled something he didn't catch, but the next words spoken took a long moment to penetrate and sink in.
“You guys ready to go home?”
* * * * *
June 20th
6:38 P.M.
Piper Hamilton was exhausted as she walked out of her office and locked the door.
Exhausted but exhilarated.
Alpha team had been located after sixteen very long days. They had been extracted and taken to a hospital. All six men were alive, although all were in bad shape, particularly Mouse who had been bleeding internally, and Domino who had some very serious head injuries.
But they were alive and safe, and that was what was most important.
As the psychiatrist hired to work at Prey Security, she would likely wind up speaking with Alpha team once they were back home. Hearing about the hell they had been through would be hard—horrific really—but she would do it. She would listen, help in any way she could, and hopefully be able to clear all six men to return to work presuming they were cleared physically.
Her job wasn’t an easy one, far from it, but helping people, counseling them, was what she’d wanted to do with her life for a long time now. Being able to help heroic people like the men who served on Alpha team made her job even better. Not that the average Joe deserved less help or was less deserving, but it felt good to know she was playing a part—however small—in making the world a better place by supporting these brave men and women.
As Piper made her way through the quiet office building toward the lifts, she thought about the men who had been rescued. There was gruff Bear who was about to become a dad, Mouse who had found love again after his first wife died in childbirth, Surf who was always happy and laughing and flirting, Domino who was always so quiet you almost forgot he was there, and Brick who was so tightly in control of every single thing he did.
Then there was Arrow.
Handsome Antonio with his thick dark hair and summer sky blue eyes. Antonio who she had started using the Prey gym for so she could ogle his six-pack and sculpted chest when he worked out. Antonio who flirted with her to the point where she had almost considered breaking her own vow to never get involved with anyone at Prey since she might have to wind up treating them. Antonio who made her stomach flutter, her pulse race, and her panties wet when she daydreamed about what it would be like to have a man like him touching her.
Antonio who had never been Arrow to her even though she thought of everyone else at Prey by their nickname.
Antonio who she had almost lost.
Not that he was hers. Because he wasn’t. Never could be. Especially now when she would likely wind-up counseling him once he and his team had recovered enough to return home.
Ignoring the pang in her chest at knowing nothing would ever happen between her and Antonio, Piper walked into the lift when it opened and tried to focus on how she could best help and support Alpha team when they came home.
It went without saying that the former military men and women who worked at Prey weren't the ones who usually came to her voluntarily to chit-chat about their feelings. They were tough guys and girl who didn't dwell on things. They were pros at shoving away their emotions so they could focus in the field and watch their teammates’ backs. Usually, they only came to see her when the boss man Eagle Oswald ordered it.
But it was her job to make sure they were all healthy on the inside so they could go out there and be the heroes they were.
The warm air curled around her bare arms and legs when she stepped outside. Her white pencil skirt hit just above her knees, and her pale pink blouse had little ruffles over her shoulders and a line of pearl buttons down the front. While she was a sucker for a killer pair of heels, she tried to be a little more conservative when she was at work. Her current pair added only two inches to her five-foot-two frame.
Since most of Prey’s operatives avoided her like the plague unless ordered to attend sessions, she had a lot of spare time. Everyone was nice to her of course, respectful and friendly enough, but she always felt left on the fringes. She had no team, she was the only psychiatrist Prey had on staff, and since she was used to being an outsider looking in, she hadn't pushed to make friends with anyone.
But she loved that with her free time she was able to do some volunteer work with a kids’ crisis hotline. As much as she loved what she did, working with teens and young kids who needed someone to talk to was her real passion.
Considering what could have happened to her so many years ago she was lucky to have such a wonderful life, and if she was a little lonely sometimes it was a small price to pay to give herself peace of mind.
The gentle breeze caressed her skin as she strolled down the street, it was only a fifteen-minute walk from Prey to her building, and she liked the fresh air and stretching her legs. Normally, she’d walk even if it was raining or snowing, she kept a change of clothes in her office if she really needed it.
After those horrific days she’d spent locked in a small windowless room, Piper had learned to appreciate the freedom of fresh air, natural light, and space to move.
Tomorrow would be a busy day, and as she walked, she ran through the mental checklist of things she’d need to do. First up was to speak with Eagle and gather whatever information he could give her about Alpha team’s time being held captive, she needed to be prepared when she spoke with them. It was possible she would need to do some research into various forms of torture so she would be better able to empathize. And there was the possibility Eagle would want her to fly to Germany where the team was and speak to them immediately, but that was unlikely.
Usually, she only traveled to meet up with a team when they had rescued someone who needed immediate psychiatric help. Coming face to face with those victims always hit her right in the heart, it was like looking into a mirror. But she harnessed her own pain, led from her own experiences, and did her best to comfort and listen.
By the time she reached her apartment, Piper felt prepared and ready to tackle whatever problems Alpha team would need help with.
