Chapter Two
Things could be worse. Things could be worse. Things could be worse.
Jean-Luc Cavalier kept repeating the mantra to himself as he sat propped against the stone wall of his prison, trying to ignore the throbbing in his arm where an ugly knife wound was still oozing blood and beginning to fester. Though he wasn’t sure how anything could be worse than his current situation. The guard who was supposed to be guarding him had dropped dead half a day ago and now rotted on the other side of his prison’s door. He had no food, no water, and no way to communicate with his team, who were halfway across the world because he was a coullion who went chasing weak intel with only one questionably sane man for backup.
And who knew where Marcus Deangelo had ended up. Or even if he was still alive. They’d been separated when militants attacked their truck and Jean-Luc hadn’t seen him in days.
HORNET’s commanders, Gabe and Quinn, had warned Jean-Luc not to come to Nigeria. Had told him he’d get himself dead if he did. At the time, he’d thought they were just spooked by the team’s last clusterfuck of a mission in Martinique. They had lost a man that night—Marcus’s best friend Danny—and nobody wanted a repeat.
Jean-Luc didn’t blame his commanders for their caution, but nor could he stay at HQ twiddling his thumbs while Harvard, their computer whiz, gathered actionable intel. He’d made someone a promise.
Claire.
He shut his eyes and brought her face up from his memories. Brilliant blue eyes, the dusting of freckles over her slightly upturned nose. Her shoulder-length bob of blond hair that somehow looked both severely professional and ungodly sexy at the same time. She was petite, not a lot in the way of curves, but merde, her mouth. She had lips made for kissing, upper lip slightly fuller than the lower. She wasn’t all beauty. She had a brain to match, and a tongue sharp enough to draw blood. She fascinated him.
Claire was the reason he’d disobeyed orders and endangered his career as a linguist for HumInt Inc.’s Hostage Rescue and Negotiation Team. She was the reason he was here. When he’d helped her escape Martinique, he’d promised to find her again, to help keep her safe.
He didn’t intend to break that promise.
Which brought him back to his current predicament.
It could be worse.
Yeah. Maybe if aliens invaded? That would be worse. The apocalypse would be worse. Four Horsemen, End Times, and all that. But barring those scenarios, nothing was fucking worse than this.
Jean-Luc sighed and pushed himself to his feet. He’d been trying to reach the keys on the dead guard’s belt for hours until exhaustion finally won out, but it was time to move again. He wasn’t dying here. Not like this.
He bellied up to the bars and reached his good hand through. He could almost catch the guard’s shirt between his fingers. He just had to stretch…a little…farther…
His fingers brushed the edge of the T-shirt, but he couldn’t get a grip on it. For the first time in his life, he wished he didn’t have such muscular arms and shoulders. He only needed another inch, and he’d have a fist full of the fabric. He stretched, felt the rusted bar dig into his biceps, ignored it, and stretched more, and…
Nothing.
Putain! He couldn’t reach.
He sat up and leaned the side of his face against the bars. He was shaking and sweating from the effort he’d expended. Exhausted. Every muscle in his body ached, even his goddamn eyelids. He hoped his current state was due to the beating he’d taken plus a lack of food or water, and not whatever had killed the fils de putain who was currently stinking up the place. Because he did not want to go out like that guy had, leaking blood from multiple orifices while coughing up his lungs.
Man, he’d seriously screwed up this time. He wasn’t going to be able to talk, fuck, or kill his way out of this mess.
When he first arrived in Africa two weeks ago, he’d had a purpose, a plan, and a partner in crime. He’d find Claire and keep her and her research safe. He’d failed her so spectacularly two months ago in Martinique that he hadn’t been able to get a good night’s rest since. His need to find her became all consuming until he finally narrowed his search to Nigeria. Marcus had come along, chasing—or maybe running from—his own demons.
Had Marcus stayed in Nigeria after they were separated? Had he called in the rest of the team for help? Probably not. They’d gone against direct orders by coming here. That act of defiance had likely been the end of their careers with HORNET. For all he knew, Tucker Quentin, CEO and founder of HumInt, had written them off.
He shouldn’t have come here. This time last year, he wouldn’t have. He would have shrugged Claire’s problems off as her own to deal with and gone about the rest of his life without much concern.
But when his grandmother died unexpectedly eight months ago, his whole world had tilted sideways. The foundation he’d built everything on had crumbled. He’d been determined to fuck and drink away the grief and had been doing a damn fine job of it until he’d crossed paths with a voodoo queen on Mardi Gras, and she’d cursed him with celibacy. Now Jean-Luc Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler Cavalier was gone and he didn’t recognize the person he’d become. He wanted his old life back—go on dangerous missions and rid the world of some bad guys, come home and drink himself stupid, have some fun with a woman or two. Lather, rinse, and repeat. He’d liked it that way. Hadn’t seen any need to change a thing.
So why the fuck had everything changed?
Claire. It all came back and centered on her. His life had only been sideways and unstable until he met her. But that night in Martinique, when she looked across the poolside bar with those sea-blue eyes and flatly told him his rendition of “The Piña Colada Song” was off-key—that was when everything flipped fucking upside down.
He wished he could hate her for it. He didn’t. Even now, the need to find her chewed at him.
Jean-Luc heaved in a breath and straightened away from the bars of his prison. If he didn’t find a way out soon, he might as well dig his own grave in the hard-packed dirt beneath his feet, because this was where he’d bite it. He climbed to his feet, paced around the small space, looking for something, anything to aid his escape. A crack in the wall, a loose bar in the door…but his captors had known what they were doing when they chose his prison. Nothing short of a grenade was getting through these walls.
Dig a grave.
Now there was an idea. Maybe he could Shawshank his way out of here. Only problem was he didn’t have a rock hammer or twenty years to dig his way to freedom.
He looked down. His captors had taken his boots, and his feet were bare and filthy. He dug one toe into the dirt floor. It was hard packed, but not so much that it was like concrete. It could still be moved.
He gazed over at the barred door again. There were about three inches between the bottom bar and the dirt floor. He wouldn’t need to dig a hole deep enough to fit his entire body. Just one big enough to allow him to reach those damn keys. The throbbing in his arm spoke up right then, reminding him this would be a one-handed endeavor.
Mais, things could be worse.
He shook his head once, dropped to his knees in front of the door, and started digging.