Hell for Leather (Black Knights Inc. #6)(83)
“Did I not tell you this was our chance?” Haroun said. Qasim could hear his voice through the cellular connection but also across the short distance. He thumbed off the device and shoved it into his pants pocket. “Did I not say trust in Allah and all would be well?”
“You did indeed, brother.” He squeezed Haroun’s shoulder when his second-in-command pulled even. He glanced down at the limp, scantily dressed woman and spotted the small patch of blood matting the back of her head. He raised a brow. “You hit her?” he asked as they carefully made their way inside the cave, moving toward the lamplight dancing at the back.
“I had to act fast. But, rest assured, she isn’t too badly hurt. We can revive her with the smelling salts.” Smelling salts…a standard component of any torture arsenal. After all, pain didn’t work nearly as well when the one being tortured was unconscious.
Haroun grunted when his ankle turned on a loose stone. Qasim reached out to steady his second-in-command. In doing so, his hand brushed against Delilah Fairchild’s soft hip. Curiosity…and lust…stirred at the contact. His lips curved into an anticipatory smile as it occurred to him that perhaps his initial plan of holding a gun to Miss Fairchild’s head in order to get Theo to talk wasn’t necessarily the most expedient course of action. After all, forcing someone to watch the rape of a loved one was not only a tried and true method of information gathering, but also there were times when it was more powerful and motivating than the promise of death…
They made their way into the small circle of light cast by the kerosene lanterns and Qasim found everything just as he’d left it. Theodore was on the ground, his back propped against a wet boulder, his broken leg stretched out in front of him. With his hands tied behind his back and his head bent forward—he’d been losing consciousness often from shock and loss of blood—the old Marine couldn’t see their approach. But soon…soon he’d understand Qasim was a man of his word.
Sami and Jabbar stood on either side of Theodore. Jabbar munched on an apple, his blackened eye having turned an angry purple, and Sami sucked down a can of Coca-Cola through a striped straw. Both smiled widely when they laid eyes on the nearly naked woman. It was obvious that they, too, had ideas about how the interrogation should proceed from this point on.
Haroun bent to carefully lay the redhead on the ground and Qasim sucked in a startled breath. Because she was even more beautiful from the front. Ripe, round breasts. Even, lovely features. His cock swelled inside his trousers.
Yes, he rubbed his hands together, this could be quite fun.
Jabbar tossed away his apple, stepping forward to hand Haroun a handkerchief to be used as a gag and a plastic zip tie to be used on the woman’s wrists. Haroun applied both, then glanced up at Qasim. “Shall we begin?”
Oh, yes. Qasim was very, very ready to begin. With his blood running hot, he smiled at his men and nodded. “Let us enjoy this first step, my friends, on the journey that will see our names immortalized…”
***
Delilah jolted from the darkness to discover her heart pounding, her brain buzzing, her lungs heaving, and her head…
Ow!
With her eyes squeezed tightly shut, she reached up to touch the tender spot—
No. No, she did not reach up, because something was tied around her wrists. Something was tied around her wrists, and something was tied around her mouth, and—
Timberlands! The terrorist! It all came back to her in a flash.
Her eyes flew open, but she could make no sense of her surroundings. Darkness? Dancing light? Craggy shapes?
She blinked. Trying to focus beyond the splitting ache of her head. Eventually the world snapped into view, and she could see a low rock ceiling hanging above her. Flickering yellow light created macabre little shadows in its crevices and glinted on the droplets of water occasionally falling from it. Beneath her was cold, wet stone, but she could hardly feel the chill for the hot terror burning through her blood. The smell of wet earth and bat guano filled her nose just as the dark faces of four men filled her vision.
She recognized one of them. Al-Hallaj… He’d taken her. Against all odds, against four Black Knights and three CIA agents, he’d managed to take her. It seemed impossible. And she might have thought she was in the middle of a nightmare had not the excruciating pain in her head been so unmistakably real.
Crying out when two of the men reached down to grab her shoulders, she absently noticed how the noise was muffled against the salty-tasting gag pulling the corners of her mouth tight. Crunch! The sound of her kneecaps slamming into the rock floor echoed in her ears a split second before her central nervous system registered the agony.
Somebody screamed. Was that her?
Her face felt hot. Were those tears?
She knew she was on her knees. Knew there were hands supporting her. Knew the air inside the cavern was cold. But she could feel none of these things. Not when her body was inundated with pain signals from every direction. Her head pounded. Her knees throbbed. Her shoulders ached from having her hands wrenched behind her back.
But all of that was nothing compared to the agony in her heart when her eyes fell on her uncle. This time she knew the scream that echoed around the cavern was hers. It was her uncle’s name, garbled by the gag.
Oh God, Uncle Theo… Her mind tried to make sense of it all, to claw through the thick, sticky cobwebs the pain and disorientation had stitched through her mind. Uncle Theo…