Page 55 of Ravaged With You

“Do you want me to keep going?”

I nod. Then I shake my head. Both answers are true. Then I say, “I want to understand. If you’re willing to tell me, I’ll listen to anything you say.”

The tears I’ve tried to hold back are falling now. There’s nothing I can do about that. He reaches over and gently brushes one away, and that only makes me cry all the more.

When he leans back, he rubs his palms over the scruff of his thin beard. “I don’t know why they picked me to survive. Maybe they knew that I’d been dating Lisa. They knew she was undercover, though I have no idea how they learned that. But whatever the reasons, soon, it was just Lisa and me.”

“Were you together at least? Could you talk to her?”

He shakes his head. “No. They only brought us into the same room to watch each other being tortured. Mine was water.”

I frown, not understanding what he means, but he continues.

“I was tied to the chair like I told you. They would strap me down so tight then they would pick me up, turn me over and dump me into a water barrel. Just leave me there.”

He meets my eyes. “When I saw the video of what they did to Mel...”

He trails off with a shudder, and I feel sick. He must’ve almost lost his shit seeing that after what happened to him.

“Every day—every goddamn day—I wished I had a knife. I’d always carried one habitually. Still do. But they’d stripped me, so my lifelong habit was fucking useless.

“Every day, I’d tell myself that if I had one, even just a three inch blade, I could have gotten free. Killed every last one of those motherfuckers, and gotten me and Lisa out.”

His throat moves as he swallows, and his eyes are glassy with tears. “I don’t know if I would have managed or not, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t have my knife. And even if I did, I don’t know that I would have been able to get to it. There was an opportunity once or twice that maybe, if I’d been careful and clever, I could have retrieved a knife hidden in my clothes. But of course, I didn’t have my clothes. When they didn’t leave us naked, Lisa and I were wearing rags. Literally rags tied around our bodies.”

“How did you get out? Did Lisa surv—” I stop the question. I see the answer in his eyes.

“They tried to make me rape her. They couldn’t do it. But oh, God, what they did. I—”

He turns his face away, and I have never seen such a look of agony in my life.

“When I refused, they gutted her. I’m not even going to—” He draws a breath. “They killed her in the most horrible way. And all I could think was that I should have been able to save her.”

“No. None of this was your fault. They’re the bad guys.”

“If I’d only had a knife. Hell, if only I’d had a damn cyanide capsule.”

I shiver. “Then you wouldn’t be here now.”

His smile is infinitely sad. “No, I wouldn’t be. And Lisa would still be dead. And wishing things were different doesn’t change anything. It was hell, and for the rest of my life I have to know that I lived through hell.”

“Yes,” I say. “You lived.” I shift so that I’m sitting upright and take both his hands. “You survived, Red. It’s horrible that you’re the only one who did, but that’s not your fault. That’s their fault. You survived. And that’s amazing.”

I lean back again. “Will you tell me how you survived? Were you rescued?”

“I escaped.” His voice is ripped. Exhausted. As if he’s back in that torture chamber. “After almost a year, I finally escaped. And it wasn’t even because I’m so damn special as an agent. If I was that special, I wouldn’t have gotten caught in the first place.”

“Do not say that,” I interrupt. “It is not your fault any more than it’s the fault of the rest of the members on your team. You don’t blame them, do you?”

He shoots me a sideways look. “No. You’re right. Of course I don’t. And no, it wasn’t our fault. There were a lot of things that contributed to our capture, but most were out of our control. But as for how I escaped, they got lazy.”

“Lazy?”

“They were planning on killing me soon, I knew that. They were about to move locations and leave me behind in the rubble as a message. But a guard got careless. And I got lucky.”

I shift on the couch, leaning forward.

“He came by himself, and when he bent to unchain me so that they could wash me again, I managed to strangle him. Somehow, I got the keys off his body. The rest was—is—a blur. I remember bits and pieces. I know I got to their weapons room, and I loaded up. At that point, I didn’t care what happened to me, and I fell into a frenzy. All I cared about was killing them. What happened to me wasn’t even an issue.”