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Whoever had a hold on her didn’t seem to care about her discomfort, but to her relief, he didn’t just shove her into another car or trunk either.

She walked next to him, trying to keep up with the long strides.

The air around her changed from the dry, hot air she’d been in for the last who knew how many days, to the artificial coolness that could only come from an air conditioner.

But more than that, Laryn smelled the familiar scent of diesel fuel.

Grease. And heard the clanking of metal against metal.

They were sounds and smells she was intimately familiar with.

They were comforting. The sounds and smells of a garage.

It seemed they were the same no matter where in the world the garage was located.

There could be cars or planes, choppers, or even lawn mowers inside, but it was still a garage.

The sounds of the garage became muted as a door opened then shut behind her.

Only then did the man who’d been holding her let go of her arm.

Then, to her immense relief, the cuffs holding her arms behind her back were cut free.

The blood flowing freely into her hands made them tingle and hurt, even though the freedom of movement felt good at the same time.

Laryn immediately reached for the damn hood over her head without waiting to see if anyone gave her permission to remove it. She was almost desperate for some fresh air and to be able to see again.

The second the material passed over her head, she took a deep breath.

Her eyes burned from the light, and she squinted, trying to take in her surroundings.

Turning her head, she saw two men standing by the door she’d obviously just walked through.

They weren’t really looking at her, but staring into space above her head, instead.

Turning back around, she saw what she’d missed when she’d first taken the hood off.

A man was sitting behind a desk, leaning back, his hands behind his head as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

His dark hair and brown eyes were intense and calculating as he focused on her.

His warm olive skin was weathered, as if he spent a lot of time in the sun, and he had well-groomed stubble on his face.

Instead of making him look civilized, it added to his air of quiet menace.

He had a lean, muscular build and hawk-like nose.

And the stoic expression on his face, along with his thin lips pressed in a hard line, had Laryn suppressing a shiver.

This was a man who was used to getting what he wanted. Who had probably witnessed, and maybe even participated in, unspeakable acts.

If she had to guess, this was Osman. As they stared at each other, his expression transformed to a smug look of satisfaction, as if he’d just been gifted with his greatest desire. And he probably had. She’d been delivered to him on a silver platter—and his smugness made Laryn see red.

She held on to her temper by the skin of her teeth and instead of railing at this man for having her kidnapped, she merely said, “Altan Osman, I presume. ”

He smiled and nodded at her as he sat forward. “It’s good to meet you in person. I hope your trip here wasn’t too uncomfortable. Desperate times called for desperate measures. And since you refused to see reason, I was forced to take more drastic actions.”

“By having me kidnapped?” she asked, keeping her voice even but unable to stop the question.

“Just so. I think you’ll find that I’m a fair employer…

as long as you do as you’re told. I am reasonable.

I know this is all a shock, but after a while, you’ll see that it’s a good thing.

You’ll have whatever your heart desires—money, food, clothes, husbands—in return for your knowledge and expertise in furthering the might and strength of our military. ”

Laryn swallowed hard. Husbands? No thank you. “I appreciate your offer, as I told you on the phone, but I have all the money, clothes, food, and men I want back home in the US.”

Altan simply shrugged. “And now you’ll have them here.

Make no mistake, you’ll be treated with respect and kindness in exchange for your skills.

You resist, and your life can become… difficult , very quickly.

But here’s the thing—we will still get the information we want.

So it’s up to you if you want a comfortable bed to sleep in, good food to eat, and to be treated as a valued member of my team.

Or if you want a room in the basement—fondly referred to by some as a dungeon—with no blanket, gruel for food, and to be treated like a prisoner.

“Now, I expect you’d like a shower and a good meal…but I suspect first you need some incentive. A reason to accept your new reality. I think a week downstairs would do you good. It’ll show you exactly what will become your new normal if you don’t wish to cooperate.”

Laryn opened her mouth to protest, to scream at him to let her go, but before she could get a word out, the men who’d been standing by the door each took one of her arms in their big beefy hands and literally dragged her out the door .

She tried to struggle but it was useless.

She managed to get her feet under her when they began walking across the large hangar, where she now saw the two barebones MH-60s were parked.

They looked nothing like the machines she was used to working on for the US military.

They seemed to be stripped down to their shells.

Obviously when they’d been sold to Turkey, they didn’t have any of the bells or whistles she’d gotten used to seeing on the Night Stalkers’ choppers.

No one stopped what they were doing to watch her being dragged toward a metal door at the other end of the large space. It was as if she were invisible, as if the people working in the room were used to looking the other way when others were mistreated. It didn’t bode well for her future.

One of the men opened the metal door and it slammed shut behind them with a loud, menacing clang that seemed like a death knell to Laryn. “Please,” she whispered, hating that she was already reduced to begging. But the men acted as if they didn’t hear her.

The air in the hallway was dank and stagnant. She could smell the metallic scent of rust, of mold and mildew, as if water had seeped into the walls over time.

They went down a flight of stairs and it got even darker and smellier the farther they went.

Unwashed bodies, sweat, dirt, even dried blood.

The scents all blended together, making her nauseous.

The unmistakable smell of human waste made it even harder to breathe as Laryn was dragged past other cells, the men inside not even bothering to lift their heads as she went by.

She wondered how long they’d been down here, what they’d done to get on Altan’s bad side.

But the fact that they seemed uninterested in anything going on around them didn’t seem like a good sign.

She was brought to the last cell on the right and shoved inside.

Laryn fell to her hands and knees but immediately sprang to her feet as the bars slammed shut.

The two men left without a word, and she pressed her lips together in a desperate attempt to not call out, to not immediately agree to anything Altan wanted her to do.

When the men were gone, silence descended on the cells. An eerie silence that made the hair on the back of Laryn’s neck stand up. Goose bumps rose on her arms, but not in the good way that often happened around Tate.

Despair threatened to overwhelm her…and she’d only been here a matter of minutes. She was tired, hungry, dirty, and scared shitless.

Backing away from the bars, Laryn stumbled and managed to catch herself by sitting down hard on the concrete “bed” against the wall. It was literally a block of concrete. No blankets. No pillows. Looking around, she saw there was only a hole in the floor for her to do her business.

Closing her eyes, she breathed in through her nose and out of her mouth, trying to stave off the panic attack that threatened. It took a hot minute, but eventually her heart rate slowed and she was able to think more clearly.

“This is a good thing,” she whispered out loud, wanting to hear something other than the oppressive silence around her.

She wasn’t too worried about anyone else overhearing her talking to herself, because even if they did, it was likely they wouldn’t care what she was rambling about…

and couldn’t even understand her anyway.

“It’s a good thing,” she repeated. “Being down here means giving Tate more time to find me. To come up with a plan to get me out of here. And if I’m down here, I’m not up there trying to figure out how not to give away the military secrets I’ve been entrusted with.”

She was alive. She’d been given food and water.

And although she was sore and her arms hurt, she hadn’t been otherwise assaulted.

Things could be a hell of a lot worse. She simply had to hang in there until help came.

And it would come. She couldn’t afford to think any other way.

She’d do what she needed to do, for as long as it took, for someone to get her the hell out of here.

Laryn told herself that she needed to stay alert.

She had no idea when rescue would come, and she had to be ready when it did.

Night Stalkers Don’t Quit. That was their motto.

She’d worked with them long enough to know they took those words seriously.

She might not be a hotshot pilot, but she’d worked alongside them long enough to absorb some of their pride in their unit, their traditions.

Then she thought about the Night Stalker Creed. She’d memorized a portion of it, because it seemed like such an honorable thing to swear to honor and obey.

I will never surrender. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy, and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country.

Gallantly will I show the world and the elite forces I support that a Night Stalker is a specially selected and well trained soldier.

I serve with the memory and pride of those who have gone before me, for they loved to fight, fought to win and would rather die than quit.

The words comforted Laryn. Made her able to relax when she curled up on the uncomfortably hard slab of concrete that would be her bed for the foreseeable future. She wouldn’t embarrass her country by giving up their secrets.

She’d rather die than give up and quit.

Tate was coming for her, it was in that creed he’d vowed to live by.

Tears dripped down her cheeks as Laryn fell into an uneasy sleep. She dreamed about monsters with huge gaping mouths full of teeth coming for her, and Tate stepping between her and a monster, smiling as he turned to her and said, “I’ve got this.”

That’s what she was counting on.