Captor Mine (Base Branch Series Book 13) Read online

  Kat thought about the man who owned the house. His blood ran through her veins. They’d lived in the same house for several years. She didn’t know her father at all, but she could take a guess at the combination. She entered her father’s date of birth. The light above the numbers blinked red, denying her access. She tried her and her brother’s date of birth. Denied once more. Her fingers punched in several other combinations to no avail. She was about to give up when one last combination struck her.

  “My light.” She groaned the endearment and typed in the corresponding numbers for the words. The light on the keypad turned green, allowing her to turn the knob and enter the place she’d tried to escape from for the past month.

  Unlike outside, Kat sure as shit worried about the guards. The doorway led to the corridor where her father had found her snooping on Aron’s torture. An eerie quiet enveloped the space. Was it too early for torture? Tea first, torture later? She closed the door quietly. Her gaze homed in on the hallway, which led to her father’s gym. She shimmied along the wall. Something sharp caught her thigh, and the sound of a thousand tiny cymbals eradicated the silence. Kat’s hand shocked to her leg. Her gaze moved with it to find a low end table overflowing with keys, and every one of them announced her arrival. She grabbed a handful of them, stuffed them into the pockets of her scrubs, and ran.

  Four closed doors configured the corridor. All the doors throughout the house were thick golden mahogany. Save for the two farthest from her. They looked black like death as the doors to a morgue should look. Cold. Slick. Uninviting. Kat wanted nothing to do with those doors. Aron had been behind the second one. In the quiet, she still heard the echoes of his deafening screams seeping from underneath. Her entire body revolted against those doors, yet she walked to the first.

  Hunter had to be behind the door, which was probably locked. They wouldn’t leave it open…unless he was no longer inside. She’d checked his adjoining room that morning. He hadn’t returned.

  Kat reached for the door. It creaked and gave at the hinges. She jerked away, slamming her back into the corner of the wall in an effort to escape. The door only opened a millimeter. No one bum-rushed her. No one exited at all. Were she inside a horror film, this was where the audience would scream themselves hoarse, telling her to run away. She pressed her face close to the crack. A sliver of the room revealed its horrifying darkness. The light from the hallway seeped inside, dimly illuminating the bare concrete floor and walls of an unfurnished room. There was no grandeur here.

  Where the hell was Hunter?

  She pushed the door open and covered her mouth. A shrill cry bombarded her shaking palm. Dead eyes stared at her. The clear blue that had terrified her days ago did so in a different way. Death had clouded over the clear blue orbs since Aron’s death—murder. Dried blood covered his contorted face, telling her the deed had been done before his killing. His screams poured over her on a sickening loop. She closed her eyes and covered her ears to block out the guilt. This man would have killed her, but it didn’t mean he deserved this. She stumbled from the room and opened her eyes only after pulling the door closed behind her.

  Over the years, she’d seen awful things. Murder even. This was the work of a devil.

  Kat’s eyes shifted to the other death door. She retched. Her body stole control, tossing her stomach—not its contents, but the entire damn thing—into her throat. Her eyes watered. Hands on her knees, she stumbled forward, stopping at the door. With her stomach lodged inside her esophagus, the retching ceased. Tears rolled haphazardly down her cheeks.

  She wrapped her hands around the handle and pled for it not to open. Locks, she could deal with. Hunter’s mutilated corpse? Her head shook away the notion as moisture gathered on her lips. She wiped it away with the back of her arm, gritted her teeth, and yanked the lever. The door gave from its frame. Her stomach blocked the scream that ricocheted through her body.

  “Different day, same answer, fuckwad.” Hunter’s gruff voice squeezed through the opening.

  A sob, a happy one squeezed its way through the terror and out her mouth. Kat caught it in both hands and shoved through the door.

  “What the hell? Kat?” Hunter fought against leather bonds like a feral beast. His naked body displayed the effort of every taut muscle. Blood crusted around wounds on his wrists and ankle. His pretty lips were split on the right side. One eye was swollen shut. “Kat, talk to me. Are you hurt?”

  “No.” She hiccupped the answer.

  “Why are you crying? Why are you here? How?” His questions came too quickly. They crawled all over her and cut off her waterworks just as fast.

  “You are.” She snarled the answer and closed the door.

  “I’ve had worse.” He shrugged as much as the straps allowed.

  “That doesn’t make me feel better.” Kat sniffled.

  A wheelchair sat in the corner. She ran forward, lurched for it, and rolled it to the cross they’d lashed him to. Monsters.

  “Anything broken?” Kat locked the wheels in place.

  “I thought I told you to leave.”

  “I can’t leave you.”

  “Of course, you can. Go.” His swollen eye opened wide with emphasis. Red surrounded his pretty amber iris.

  Strength Kat hadn’t felt since her father had her ushered away from her life filled her lungs. She stood as close to Hunter’s face as the height difference would allow. “You can waste time trying to get me to go, which won’t work, or you can help me.”

  He hesitated for three long seconds then huffed. “What do you need me to do, Doc?”

  “After I unfasten the straps, wrap your arms around my shoulders. I’m going to start with your foot.” She was glad his weight was already on the ground. Had he been suspended at all, the damage would’ve been a lot worse.

  “If you want a hug, all you have to do is ask.” His words were as playful as they’d been before even though his tone was strained and his voice hoarse.

  “I could use a hug about now. How about you?” Kat slipped the latches free as quickly as she could. A large swath of raw skin pinked a wide line around his ankle.

  “I’m not about the touchy-feely,” he hissed. “But yeah, I could use one.”

  She worked on one wrist and then the other. A muffled groan rumbled in his larynx. Free, his arm only lowered a handful of millimeters. His vocalization intensified.

  “Save the hug for later.” She wrapped her arms around his middle. Gel-like moisture covered his back, slicking her arms and making the transfer even more difficult. His near dead weight compacted her chest, which made breathing impossible. She pulled, twisted, and lined him up with the chair. “Sit.”

  Hunter collapsed into the wheelchair.

  Kat braced her hand on the back, still hugging him close for several heartbeats while she caught her breath.

  “We have to move.” His voice was whisper quiet, almost hollow.

  She stood. The horror movie returned. Fresh blood and old clots greased her inner arms. There was so much blood. “No.”

  “Forget it. Let’s move.” Hunter fumbled with the brakes, muttering a curse.

  When he leaned over, Kat caught a glimpse of the mangled mess that was his back. Her curse blended with his. How in the hell…? Her gaze lifted to the base of the cross. A thousand thick, sharp points gave her the finger. “Holy shit. Hunter?”

  “Kat?”

  “What?” she hissed.

  “Look at me.”

  Kat blinked the tears from her eyes and turned to Hunter. He’d unlocked the brakes and angled himself toward the door. “Do you want to live?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we need to get the fuck out of this place right now. Lock it up. Cram everything into a box in your mind, toss that shit into a corner, and let’s figure out an evac plan.”

  She nodded as he spoke, kicked all the questions into the recesses of her forever altered mind, and yanked a handful of keys from her pocket. “The back door is at the end of the
hallway. There are cars outside.”

  “How far to the back door?” He wheeled himself to the closed door. Fresh blood seeped from holes on his back.

  “Thirty meters.”

  “To the cars from there?” He eased the door open a crack and peered out.

  “Fifty,” she whispered.

  Hunter motioned her forward. “If they come, you’d better run.” She didn’t speak. Thoughts like that didn’t have a place in her mind. He turned. “Promise me.”

  “Fine.”

  “Follow me. Watch our six.”

  “Our what?”

  “Our backs.”

  Kat nodded and then followed Hunter as he rolled himself across the hall and along the wall. He hesitated at each doorway, assessing the interior and scanning the corridor. When he happened upon Aron’s body, his demeanor didn’t shift at all. He simply closed the door and continued.

  17

  Strung up on the cross, Hunter had had too much time to think. With Kat behind him and the potato-peeled eyes of Royan’s guard in front, he wondered again what the sick fuck would do to his daughter for her betrayal. Kat never spoke of her family, but he’d guess she didn’t have a mother. No telling what Tor had done to the poor woman.

  Hunter rolled faster, searching sloppier. A horde of guards could be bunked in any one of these rooms. The silence of death reassured him. He opened the last door before the promised land. Jackpot, motherfucker. An arsenal lined the walls. Grenades. Guns. Knives. Bombs. Just what the doctor ordered.

  “Grab that bag. If I nod at it, you grab a handful and stow it inside.” Hunter rolled to a stack of C4, grabbed a hunk, and worked it into a strip. She stalled in front of the wall of weaponry. “Those. That.” Her shoulders rolled back. She grabbed and loaded magazines and pistols into the sack.

  Kat pulled open several drawers and cabinets. “I don’t see any uniforms or clothing.”

  He stared hard, trying to understand why, in the midst of an arsenal and a deadly escape attempt, she looked for clothes.

  “You’re naked.” She pointed at his cock.

  “Born that way and I’ll die that way unless we get gone.” He nodded at a display of knives near her head. “Stick to the important stuff. Those.” She huffed and reached for the eighteen-inch blades above the ten-inch blades he’d nodded at. “No, I like your moxie, but the shorter ones work better. Up on the shelf.” He didn’t bother calling things by name because she wouldn’t know them. Just like he knew shit about medical stuff.

  She worked quickly, building them a small buffer.

  “Good. Now, close it, put it on your back, and grab that big gun.” He molded the last of the C4 around a grenade and grabbed some para-cord.

  “I thought shorter ones worked better.”

  “Depends on the tool in the job.” Hunter secured one end of the cord to the metal grating and tied the other end to the pin. He grabbed another length of cord. “Come here.” When she reached his side with the gun outstretched like it were a live bomb, he took it from her, released the safety, and handed it back. “Point and shoot. Just don’t point it at me.”

  “I can’t shoot anyone.” Her soulful eyes were wide. Nearly as wide as when she’d entered the chamber where he’d been tortured. Thank goodness, the tears had dried. He’d never been a fan of chick tears, but hers cut him in a way that left scars.

  “I know you’re not supposed to do harm and all, but you’re going to have to make a decision, Kat. Him or you?”

  “You can aim better than I can anyway. I’ll do what you’re doing.” She handed him the gun.

  “Not if you don’t want to kill anyone.” He didn’t take the gun. Neither would he make her kill someone if he could help it. He hoped like fuck he could manage in this state. His eyes were swollen. His ribs and back hurt like a mother. Oh, yeah, and he was missing a leg. He was no longer strapped to the damn cross, though. “Flip on the safety and at least carry it out.”

  “Okay.” Kat flipped the safety like a pro. A fast learner. He could have her shooting a three-inch spread at twenty yards in a day. She slung the strap over her shoulder.

  His blood covered her arms and the sides of her scrubs. He focused on the task at hand, not at how much he hated the look of blood against her smooth skin. “Hand me a pistol with a magazine from the shelf.”

  Kat handed over a CZ Sphinx 3000 and held out three different cartridges. Hunter put the expensive as fuck gun in his lap loaded with the correct ammo and hurried her into the hallway.

  “If we have incoming, I want to know fast.”

  She nodded while scanning the hallway.

  Luckily, or not, Hunter had experience with wheelchairs. He set the grenade in his lap and whipped the chair through the door backward, pulling the door as he wheeled without shutting it completely. Brakes flipped, he leaned forward. His back and ankle screamed. Breath hissed through his teeth. He used the extra cord, wrapped it around the grenade and interior handle several times and knotted the makeshift detonator.

  “Hurry,” she begged.

  Hunter gently shut the door. The muscles in his arms stung from the strain after the lethal combination of captivity and inactivity. He grabbed the wheel handles, ignored the searing of his wrists, wheeled to the exit at the end of the hallway, and opened it.

  “When we get ten feet from the house, you run and don’t stop for anything. Do you hear me? Get out of the open as fast as you can. Find a car. If I’m not there, go.”

  “Let me push you.” She grabbed the handle of the chair.

  “Two targets make one big one. Apart we have a better chance.” He turned toward her, forcing her hand away.

  “You mean, apart I have a better chance.” Kat’s hands balled into fists.

  That was exactly what he meant. “Are you going to waste time arguing, or are you going to run, no matter what?”

  Her lips pressed into an angry line. Tears threatened to spill over her lids.

  “I’ve been shot at before.”

  “You mean shot before?”

  “My point is…I’ll run through—wheel through—a spray of bullets. I’m preparing you to do the same. Don’t freeze. Don’t wait for me. Go.” Two voices poured down the hallway that were not their own. “Now.”

  She did as he commanded, starting in a perfectly crouched sprint. Keys jangled in both her hands.

  Hunter rolled over the threshold and closed the backdoor to Torture Manor behind him. He wheeled out nine feet and over two. The position allowed him sight of the roof line and back door but didn’t set him up like a carnival target. The urge to look back at Kat and make certain she’d run like the devil himself chased her heels nipped at him. He ground his teeth. Sore gums jolted from the fresh abuse. Pain focused his mind.

  He no longer heard her footsteps.

  Okay, maybe not so focused.

  The house remained quiet. No one patrolled the roof. Hunter gripped the pistol and raised it, using its sights to scan the grounds. Kat danced in his periphery along the line of fancy cars. His shoulder quaked. The perfect line between the front and rear notches blurred.

  “Fuck.” Hunter blinked, rolled his shoulders, and shifted the barrel point to the doorway, and then lifted it to the roof. Sweat collected across his chest. Gooseflesh stampeded over his skin in turn.

  A beep, beep as loud as an atomic bomb fractured the silence. Kat must have unlocked a car’s door. Fucking alarms. Hunter’s organs jumped to attention.

  From the back corner of the rooftop, a guard popped into view as though he’d been sitting on his ass leaned against the chimney catching a nap. The guy stretched his arms high overhead. His mouth yawned into a massive O. He wasn’t one of the three who’d wrestled him to the ground, hog-tied him, and wheeled him to the torture chamber. If he were, he’d have been dead the moment his forehead cleared the brick.

  Hunter drew a deep breath and let it exit his lips as slowly as his lungs could muster. His heartbeat slowed. His gaze tracked the man’s ball scratch.


  An engine rumbled to life. The herd of horses drew the guard’s gaze. He jumped to attention, blinked wildly, and eased to the wall’s edge. His jaw dropped. The man reached for his waistband. Sunlight glinted off the scope of a B&T sniper rifle.

  “Amateur.” Hunter centered the man’s forehead and hoped like hell the guy would withdraw his weapon. Surely, he wouldn’t shoot at the boss’s daughter. Surely, the guard wouldn’t make Hunter take his shot and alert the small contingent Royan had inside.

  While the guy brought up the rifle, he also fumbled with the radio at his shoulder. One way or the other, Tor or his man in charge would know about their escape.

  Hunter exhaled and split the air with a well-placed bullet. He wouldn’t have a sniper eyeing Kat’s exit. Not even a shitty one. The man dropped his weapon and slumped over the brick.

  Shouts lifted from the hallway and carried through the door. Wheels peeled themselves against concrete. Horses reared. The back door flew open. A guard exited at a run with his weapon at his side. These guys might have been paid as professionals, but they lacked the sharp edge Hunter and his comrades whittled to a deadly point through years of training and countless battles.

  Four more men filtered into the far end of the hallway. Skillful or not, one was bound to get the drop on him. That couldn’t happen until after Kat escaped. He centered the first man’s forehead a fraction of a second before their eyes met.

  Two for two.

  Live rounds peppered the doorway, shattering glass and ripping away chunks of wood. He rolled backward an inch to stay out of the line of fire. Burning rubber and the whine of a throttled engine assaulted him a second before a sleek, black car nearly reversed up his ass. Good thing he’d only rolled back one inch.

  The passenger door flew open at his left side.

  “Come on,” Kat screamed.