Page 17 of Into Hell: Prelude (Holding Cell: Return to the Island)

T he island.

Was this some strange coincidence? Ardan stared at the cowboy, at a brief loss for words as his men appeared as startled to hear those words from Clint. Ardan cleared his throat. “The island? The one that we…?”

“Yes,” Clint said. “Agent Alvarez and his men followed the lead to the island.”

Ardan exchanged a quick look with Saint. “You were there? On the island?”

The agent nodded. “We went in the same as your team, up the bluffs at the far end of the island.”

“What did you see?” Saint asked.

Alvarez paused a moment. “A compound. Heavily guarded. A human trafficking holding cell.”

“You know that for sure?” Ardan asked. “It couldn’t be a drug or weapons trafficking operation?”

“We rescued some kids who escaped the cells,” Alvarez said. “They were able to provide us some information. Enough to piece it together. Shafer is in there somewhere.”

When Ardan and his men went quiet, exchanging silent looks, Clint spoke. “What is it?”

“My reason for calling you,” Ardan murmured, “was also about the island.”

“What?”

Ardan explained the circumstances surrounding Evon’s brother, Garen. “We picked up a signal briefly, and it was in the same quadrant as the island. Which now makes sense if a new trafficking ring has set up shop there.”

Cochise’s face turned to stone. “This kid deliberately let them take him? Posing as a trafficked victim?”

“Yeah,” Ardan sighed.

The Egyptian looked as if he might explode. “These damn kids need to leave these jobs to the fucking adults.”

Arden understood where his frustration came from; one of their own—Maddy—had done something similarly stupid and reckless during the last mission. The kid almost didn’t make it back from the island. He was damn lucky he had people looking for him. Ardan feared that Garen may not be as lucky.

“A – fucking – men,” Brennan echoed the Egyptian’s sentiment. “I swear, it’s like these kids’ brains fall out of their asses. It won’t take them long to find that fucking phone. And when they do, it could very well fuck up any stealth mission to the island by putting those fuckers on high alert.”

Ardan agreed; once the traffickers found the phone, they would be expecting some form of infiltration on the island, putting the entire rock under surveillance.

“We have satellite photos of the island,” Alvarez said. “I can pinpoint the location of the compound.”

“We took satellite photos on our last mission,” Saint said. “That was only a few months ago. They should be similar.” He pulled up his photos on a large TV screen.

“They look the same.” Alvarez stood up and walked closer to the screen. He checked the numbers on his phone, then pointed out the latitude and longitude quadrant of the compound.

Clint rose to his feet and approached the screen. “What about this?” He indicated an area off to the corner of the island. “The castle ruins.”

Alvarez frowned. “The what?”

Axel joined them. “That’s where they kept me, Cory, and John,” he said, a haunted look creeping through his eyes. “There are underground cells, almost medieval. Not a lot of them, but each one is large enough to house quite a few children when you’re not concerned about comfort or hygiene.”

“Do you think the new owners know about this place?” Ardan asked.

“If I were running an operation that large on an island,” Saint said, “I would make sure I was familiar with every fucking square inch of the rock. I think we should assume they know.”

“The kids we found,” Alvarez said, “they were kept in dark, dank cells.”

Axel released an uneasy breath. “Sounds like the same place to me.” His face pinched. “I can’t stand the thought of little kids being kept down there. The place was dark and fucking cold, and smelled of rot and… death.”

Talk of the underground cells was triggering PTSD in Clint.

For a moment, he was transported back there—walking through the shed above ground, the entrance to the chamber below—and down the stone steps into the dungeon…

with no clue what they might find. There had been no guarantees on the island—no promises that Axel and Cory would be alive when found.

Clint shivered, remembering the chill of death’s fingers brushing the back of his neck as they entered the stone stairwell leading down into a black void filled with pungent odors and a stench that reminded him of the orphanage —a fucking horror pit unlike anything he’d experienced.

Clint took a deep breath as if trying to clear the ghostly smells from his nose, his mind momentarily stuck in that dark place of the past. He recalled every fucking dire thought that passed through his head as each step down that short stairwell felt like one step closer to hell.

The fleeting jolt of despair when he snapped on the flashlight and first glimpsed Axel chained to the grimy stone wall.

For a split second, he’d thought he was looking at the corpse of the man he loved—once again, arriving too late…

standing helpless outside a cell… fucking useless to those who needed him most—

“Clint?” Axel spoke low, touching his arm. Concern rimmed his voice. “Are you okay?”

The others were focused on the satellite photos. Everyone except Cochise, whose gray eyes held on Clint.

Clint swallowed. “Yeah,” he rasped.

Axel read him like an open book, fully in tune with the inner workings of the cowboy’s mind and what each look on his face signified. He leaned closer, whispering, “You saved me that day, baby. You saved Cory. You saved us all. You weren’t too late.”

John wasn’t alone in the trauma he carried home from the island.

Although few detected it, Clint also brought baggage back from that place.

Cochise, too. He had long since deleted the video of John’s near-rape, yet it played on a loop in his head to this day.

That fucking rock had maimed many of them, leaving behind a residue of pain that wouldn’t wash away.

And now, that goddamn hell pit had a whole new batch of horrors to serve up.

Cochise remembered those cells vividly; they were no place for children.

No place for human beings. The kids trapped there right now rose in his mind, their faces the faces of his kids, Clint’s kids, all the kids in their extended family—Jules, Reuben, the twins, Eli, Rosa, Terri, Jenny, Eric, Jacob—the faces were endless, compiling all the kids from the foster home, the children they’d transported to Canada, every child they passed on the street.

The large Egyptian, known for his strength of body and will, nearly broke beneath the nightmare that the Rock of Horrors alone threw at them.

How many dead children would they find on that fucking rock?

How many who might as well be dead? Cochise glanced at Clint; he didn’t know how much more the cowboy could handle before shutting down for good.

The little girl at the prison had nearly been the final straw that broke the camel’s back.

Perhaps she was, and they just hadn’t realized it yet.

“I have to ask,” Lance posed while mixing up a second batch of homemade barbecue sauce.

“What does domestic life look like with the Egyptian?” He chuckled lightly.

“Just by looking at him, I can see the warrior he is in the field, but…” He shook his head and smiled. “… it’s tough imagining him at home.”

Kane laughed softly. “Understandable. When I first met him, the last thing I imagined him being was a family man.”

“How did you meet him?” Lance looked at him with deep curiosity. “I mean, how do you meet a man like that amidst your everyday life?”

“Well…” Kane chuckled. “I guess… divine intervention?”

“I would think so.”

Kane’s thoughts jumped back in time, as they often did, to the very moment the Egyptian walked into his life… and changed the course of his destiny.

· · ·

One was decked out in denim and cowboy boots, reminiscent of an old West cowboy – minus the hat – hardened by the toils of life. While the other…

Kane faltered, an unexpected surge in his pulse catching him off guard.

When he first looked at the man, he thought he was of Native American descent, but after a moment, he suspected Middle Eastern.

Neither of the men noticed his entrance as they glanced around the office.

Their presence alone felt strange, but the small, filthy pup gripped in the second man's hands somehow made the scene even more surreal.

Kane cleared his throat and moved toward the admittance counter. The men instantly turned their full attention to him, making Kane flinch inwardly. “Can I help you?” he asked softly.

Both men looked at him as if he wasn’t quite what either expected.

The man with the pup stood as still as a post — even rigid — his eyes boring into Kane’s face until Kane felt the urge to squirm.

The probing eyes drifted from his face, almost against their will, and moved lower — making Kane self-conscious of his drenched shirt that suddenly felt like a second skin.

His wet smock pants clung to his crotch and upper thighs, leaving little to the imagination, though a quick flicker through the man’s gray eyes made Kane suspect he might be imagining something.

Kane rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry,” he smiled, indicating his clothes. “Some patients don’t like bath time.”

The Middle Eastern man seemed to develop an anxious shift to his feet as his gaze snapped repeatedly to Kane’s wet body.

He didn’t appear at all comfortable looking at him, yet he continued to do so.

Zoe would tell him it was because he was so damn handsome, but Kane had never taken his appearance to demand attention.

He was fine with his looks, but he was hardly lust-worthy.

The cowboy cast his friend a narrow-eyed glance, along with a fleeting quirk of his lips that was gone in an instant as he stepped forward. “This pup needs care,” he spoke in a clipped tone, almost abrupt, his strong southern drawl accentuating his cowboy persona. “Can you look at it?”

· · ·

Lance laughed softly when Kane recited the moment, explaining he was a veterinarian. “That must’ve been a sight; the big bad gangster holding a puppy.”

“It was.” Kane smiled fondly at the memory. “In retrospect, I was smitten with him then and there. I didn’t know it at the time, even after…” His words slid away, and he quietly cleared his throat, a warmth flushing his neck and cheeks.

Lance cast him a curious look and grinned. “What? You can’t stop now. You’ve piqued my interest.”

Lowering his eyes, Kane chuckled, a little embarrassed by his promiscuity of the past.

“Trust me, nothing you say will shock me.”

Kane cleared his throat again. “Let’s just say, things got a little… heated that night.”

“Nice,” Lance laughed quietly. “Where was the cowboy?”

Kane shook his head and chuckled. “He had left to deal with other business.”

“So, even after…” Lance arched an eyebrow. “… you had no idea he was the one for you?”

“Nope.” Kane shrugged. “Well, I may have been in denial, because Zoe, my niece, saw it right off. Looking back, I’m pretty sure that deep down, I was fully aware he’d stolen my heart the moment our eyes met, even before… other parts of us met.”

Lance laughed and patted his back. “Well, however it happened, you got yourself one hell of a good man.”

“I do,” Kane smiled. “The best.”

“We have to go in assuming they’re expecting us,” Alvarez said.

“By now, they must be aware that someone has already been on the island. They’ve likely discovered the dead men my agent shot.

And the kids that escaped are nowhere on the island.

Surveillance will be tight as fuck. Any window of opportunity to slip in under their radar will be even tighter.

A single false move, and what little cover we have will be blown. ”

“That window of opportunity,” Ardan asked. “Any idea how we figure out just what it is?”

Alvarez wished he had a better answer. “No. But it’s there. It always is. No surveillance system is one-hundred percent unbreachable.”

“He’s right,” Saint said. “The former system was set off by traps around the island. This operation likely has sensors set up, especially along the perimeters.”

“If the sensors were there when we landed on the island,” Alvarez said, “I think we may have somehow avoided detection. There were men out searching for the missing children, but the activity around the compound wasn’t indicative of a perimeter breach.”

“But they’ll be ready this time,” Clint muttered. “Keeping watch on the waters as well as the land.”

Saint rubbed his mouth. “Maybe we don’t go in by water this time.”

Clint frowned. “How else?”

“Helicopter.”

Renley looked confused. “Wouldn’t that be more easily detected than a boat?”

Saint exchanged looks with the men in the room. “Not with the right helicopter.”

“What do you mean?” Ardan asked. “We have access to helicopters, but nothing quiet enough to slip in undetected. Only the military has access to stealth choppers, and even the information about them is heavily classified.”

Saint stroked his chin and remained silent.

Ardan narrowed his eyes. “What do you know?”

“Maybe nothing.” His face twitched. “Maybe something.”

“Clarify?” Arden gestured at the man.

Saint cleared his throat. “I think it’s time we called Ian.”

“Ian?” Alvarez looked at the man. “Who is Ian?”

Ardan replied in a low tone. “A man with an… unfathomable reach, and a bottomless well of resources.”

The cowboy had implied that their friends had proper connections— the kind of connections needed to pull off an operation of this size. Whoever “Ian” was, it appeared he was that connection.