I’d never known hours could crawl by so slowly. So fucking slow. Three-hundred and ninety-one hours and sixteen minutes since I’d walked out of the motel room bathroom to find Scar missing. Three-hundred and ninety-one hours and sixteen minutes of the worst torture I’d ever known. I’d gladly go back to that dark, dingy basement my foster parents had shoved me in. I’d welcome every blow of his fist, every lash of his whip, and every sickening touch of their hands. I’d climb on top of that bitch while her mother-fucking husband used me like a whore. It would be sweet relief from the kind of hell I’d lived the past sixteen days.

It was sadistic irony in its most acute form. I’d taken girls from their families—usually destitute ones who would choose a life of servitude over a life of poverty for them and their families. But I’d never once given thought to how much those families suffered.

I was thinking about it now.

I deserved this. I knew I did. But Scar…she deserved to be loved and protected. Cherished. I didn’t have to wonder what was happening to her now, because I fucking knew. Maybe not every detail, but the picture was so vivid I wanted to tear my eyes out. It wouldn’t help though. The scene before me was just another road, another path to another dead end. The pictures were in my head and there was no way to gouge them out.

Sixteen days ago, I’d been hopeful. Touching down in Nogales, Sonora, Donovan’s man had been there with a report Scar might have been being held in a warehouse not far away. The warehouse was empty though. And every place we’d checked after that had been another dead end. Even Donovan seemed to be looking worse for wear, a bit frazzled around the edges. I think neither of us wanted to say it, but it was there in the air all around us. It was a crushing weight I had to claw and fight to stay above. It was one word. Four little letters that equaled more agony than I’d ever known, all put together.

Gone. Scar was gone.

She wasn’t dead. I could feel it, damn it. Though I’d never been one to believe in that kind of bullshit before, I knew it was true. The light in her green eyes was still bright in my head. She was alive.

Besides, if the devil who’d taken her had killed her, there would have been some word of it. An anonymous female body found burned beyond recognition. And I couldn’t help feeling that if she was dead, the son of a bitch would have wanted me to know it. He would have wanted to throw my failure in my face, flaunt it and make me suffer.

No, she was alive and it was the most selfish thing I could ever have wished for to hope that she stayed that way.

They had tortured her, probably from the very day they’d taken her. Beaten, whipped, raped and broken. How much of her would they have tormented out of her by the time I found her?

If I found her.

Scar was strong, the strongest person I’d ever met, but everything and everyone could be broken. Every person could be taken apart into so many pieces that it would be impossible to put them back together again. Memories of their abuse and torment wouldn’t allow it.

I’d seen Marcos bring many slaves close to that point before. Lifeless-looking shells that had retreated to somewhere deep inside themselves—the only escape they could find. But every once in a while, a grimace, a shudder, a spark of hatred flashing through their eyes meant they were still in there. There was still something to save, even if the road back would be a long and painful one.

There’d been one though. One that had seemed to drive Marcos to the brink of insanity. Four years after he’d taken me in—two years after he’d introduced me to the world of training pleasure slaves—she’d arrived with a handful of others. He’d singled her out and hadn’t let a man there touch her. He’d touched her though. And whipped her, and beat her to within an inch of her life.

As much as I’d respected the man, it had been the first time I’d ever voiced an objection to his methods. I could still feel the crunch of the bones in my nose from the blow he’d struck. Then he’d sat me down while my nose bled onto the floor and explained that some slaves required a firmer hand than others. One day I would understand, he’d said—unless I interfered ever again, in which case I would be too dead to understand anything. Then he’d locked himself in his training room with her and hadn’t come out for nine days.

I would never forget the dead look in her eyes when they emerged. Nor now, years later, could I avoid thinking about the striking resemblance the girl had borne to Scar and her mother.

Was that what they were doing to Scar now?—whoever the fuck ‘they’ were. Subjecting her to horrors from which there was no coming back? Marcos’ slave had been dead to the world after nine days. Scar had been gone sixteen. Sixteen days. Three-hundred and ninety-one hours…and twenty-one minutes.

I stopped the car at the top of another long, winding driveway and scanned the surroundings through a haze of red that seemed to perpetually obscure my vision now. It was a grand estate, apparently home to yet another man who, while he did not train pleasure slaves, was an avid collector of them and kept himself apprised of the market—according to Donovan.

It had been excruciating to drive around from one false hope to the next with the man, to wait with bated breath for the next useless lead his contacts provided. It wasn’t the man that made it agonizing really. He was a cold fuck, but he did little to grate on my nerves.

It was the waiting. Waiting for him to make contact. Waiting for him to acquire leads, and for him to negotiate exchanges of information. And the uneasy feeling that had me constantly resisting the urge to reach for my gun.

Abandoning any hope of maintaining an element of surprise, I’d begun reaching out to my own contacts by the end of the third day.

At first, it had seemed important to leave Marcos’ network thinking I was dead, that whoever had taken her had killed me in the process to keep them from bothering to bury her deep. But the strategy hadn’t done a damn bit of good, so while Donovan had been meeting with yet another useless contact, I’d put in some calls of my own.

My phone had vibrated against my chest not five full minutes ago and while my fingers itched to pull it out, I waited. Call it a distrustful nature, but there was no reason Donovan needed to know what I was up to unless it proved fruitful.

Donovan nodded and slid out of the passenger seat. I waited while he ascended the front steps, and the moment he disappeared into the house, I pulled out my phone.

“No news on a missing product,” the short text read. The same as a half dozen others had read in the days before. Fuck!

I was just slipping the phone back into my pocket when it vibrated against my fingers, signaling another message. The number was an unknown, but the message got my attention.

“I’ve been watching your missing product since it arrived, and it’s about to be cleared for transport,” it read.

“Where?” I texted back while my heart pounded.

“Right here.”

Right here? Where the fuck was right here?

“Watch out behind you,” the next text appeared on the phone’s screen.

I dropped the phone in my lap and glanced in the rearview mirror. A guard had appeared there, ten yards back, just standing there.

But how…

Oh, fuck! Right here meant here. This house. She was here. Unless the mystery message-sender was fucking with me, Scar was alive. And she was within my reach.

But how the hell was I going to get to her and get her out? A guard behind me. Two more at the post we’d passed on our way in. I could see another at the far, left corner of the house, and no doubt there was at least a handful more I couldn’t see.

There was something else though. The estate’s owner only purchased slaves, but he didn’t train them…and yet Scar was about to be transported. Something didn’t add up. Had Donovan’s contact perhaps led them right into a trap? Or was the mystery man texting me full of shit?

“Proof?” I typed with my phone on my thigh.

“None,” he texted back.

Just fucking great.

The guard in the rear view mirror started back the way he’d come, disappearing around a bend in the driveway.

“Right side of the house. Go now.”

Fuck. I was probably about to walk right into a trap, but I was sliding out of the car anyways. What choice did I have? She could be here. No fucking way could I walk away from that. So, I walked casually toward the right side of the house, not spotting a single guard on the way.

The phone vibrated with another text just as I’d rounded the corner. “Second door.”

I walked to it and just as I grabbed the handle, the door made a quiet click and it opened when I pulled.

Inside, the phone vibrated again. “Don’t move,” the text read.

Yup, I’d just walked right into a trap. And it seemed my suspicion was confirmed when I heard the murmur of voices coming closer.

Closer. And then quieter.

They passed right by the door that separated the four-foot foyer where I stood from the rest of the house. There were two other doors, one to my left and the other to my right. A quiet click of the door on my right told me which door the mystery man wanted me to take.

I opened it. The door led to a staircase. Fifteen stairs down to a gloomy stone landing below. There was a door there as well. It looked just like the one I’d opened. If I climbed down the steps and the door at the top locked behind me, I’d be trapped like a sitting duck if the one at the bottom didn’t unlock for me. Or, I could open the door down there to find a sea of guns pointed at me.

Or…I could open the door and find Scar on the other side.

That last thought had me taking the steps down two at a time, but I reached for the guns from the holsters beneath my shirt. If it turned out there was a welcoming committee of gunmen beyond the door, I was at least going to take at least a few of them out with me.

“Wait” the message appeared on the screen.

Wait? For what?—an engraved invitation? Hurry the fuck up, damn it.

Another text, “Two men. Seventeen yards in.” And then another, “Breathe.”

Breathe? This wasn’t a fucking yoga class.

Another, “It’s bad.”

Fuck, I couldn’t think about what he meant by that. I couldn’t.

Adrenaline was coursing through my veins. Every muscle taut. Ready. Two men?—I’d rip them apart with my bare hands.

More messages, “No gun. Too loud.”

Then it seemed like my bare hands were going to get the chance to do exactly that. I holstered the gun. Fuck, I was putting an awful lot of faith in mystery man.

The quiet click I’d been waiting for sounded. I opened the door as quietly as I could.

A quiet moan of pain assailed my ears, though it felt more like a knife through the heart. Scar? It couldn’t be. It sounded so weak.

The crack of a whip. Another moan. I wanted to cover the distance in one flying stride, but I forced one silent step after another until I could see what I was up against, praying to a non-existent god that it wasn’t her.

Two men, just like mystery man had said. But the girl who hung limply, held up by one set of beefy hands, couldn’t be Scar. It fucking couldn’t be.

The same long, auburn hair hung down the girl’s back, but it was matted and stuck to her neck and back by sweat and blood.

Oh fuck. No. No. The nausea, the bile at the back of my throat, the sting behind my eyes, the knife piercing my heart were all wrong. They were wrong. It wasn’t her.

This girl had been whipped so many times there was scarcely a flash of creamy white flesh between bloody lashes. What wasn’t whipped had been covered in bruises and cuts.

Her head lolled to the side and I could see the crusted scab that covered her entire cheek. Her eyes opened briefly. I barely saw them before they’d closed again, but I saw them.

Scar. There was no way to deny it. It was her. At least, it was Scar’s body. Whether they’d left any of her soul in her body, I didn’t know.

The bastard with the whip dropped it to the floor and the hands holding her wrists released her. She crumpled to the ground, facing the exterior stone wall.

I became pure rage. It consumed every cell in my body. White hot fire flowed through my veins. A growl rose up from the depths of my being.

I pounced on the one nearest to me, the one who’d had the whip. His head smacked against the wall with a heavy thud, and his eyes rolled back in his head. He slumped to the ground. Fuck. Too hard.

“Who the fuck are you?” the other one exclaimed as he stood up tall, flexing his bulky muscles.

I lunged at him. No amount of steroid-fed muscle was going to help him. I had his arms behind his back, both shoulders popped in seconds.

Screams.

I bent his arms at his elbows, then further. And further. Crack. One and then the other snapped.

More screams.

I kicked in one knee.

He wailed in agony as he crashed to the ground.

The other knee. More grotesque screams. And then he was whimpering like a fucking child.

The whip-wielder moaned, coming to and pushing himself up off the floor.

The feral animal in me smiled. I wanted blood. I’d never felt the urge to sink my teeth into another human being and tear the flesh from his bones. But that was precisely what I wanted. I wanted to feel the blood drain out of him.

The stupid fuck actually charged at me. The feral animal’s smile grew wider.

I caught his wrist as it flung at my face and yanked it behind his back. The bastard struggled so hard he snapped his own shoulder. Bowed like he was, it was easy to reach. Irresistible. I knew exactly where the jugular vein was located and I sunk my teeth into his neck. I didn’t want to rip it right open. Just a pierce. Just enough to know that his death would be slow, pulsing, agonizing. And certain.

He kicked back as he howled, making contact with my shin. The force could have snapped it, and I wouldn’t have known. I didn’t exist at that moment in a realm of human limitations. Rage had no limits. It didn’t feel. It didn’t hurt, and it couldn’t be stopped. It lashed out and ripped apart everything in its path.

And that’s just what I did. Shoulders, elbows, knees—the fucker looked like a marionette on strings, just like his accomplice.

I caught sight of her out of the corner of my eye. She’d rolled over and faced me now. Her eyes were open, sunken and ringed in dark, but their green centers sparkled behind a veil of tears and it sucked the rage from my body. Life. There was still life there. That’s what I was seeing, wasn’t it? God damn it, there had to be. No way was it just a figment of my own desperate imagination.

“Don’t look, Scar,” I whispered in a voice so raw with emotion it didn’t sound like me.

She closed her eyes obediently. Was that because it was me? Or because there wasn’t an ounce of free will left in her?

I grabbed a dirty, bloody towel off the floor and shoved it in the bastard’s mouth to shut him up. He would die slowly. The bite to his throat would make sure of that. I leaned down next to the other man and placed my hands on either side of his head, right where they needed to be for the twist that came next.

Snap. And he was dead. Then I forced their miserable existence from my mind.

I approached her slowly, arms at my sides, palms out. I wanted to rush to her and gather her in my arms, but I was afraid of how she’d react. Would she just see a large figure coming at her, touching her, hurting her?

“Scar?” I whispered as I knelt down in front of her.

It was several long, agonizing seconds before she opened her eyes, but when she did, she stared straight ahead at my knee.

I reached down slowly to brush her hair off her forehead. She grimaced, but she didn’t pull away. I wasn’t oblivious to the need to get her out of there. With guards crawling all over the place, the threat was far from neutralized. But I had absolutely no fucking idea what to do.

The bastards on the floor, they were simple. I’d known exactly what to do to them. Hell, if I’d had more time, I would have cut them up into hundreds of pieces, one careful bit at a time so they’d survive every minute of it.

But how the hell was I supposed to help Scar? Pull her to her feet and drag her along with me?—would she understand what I was doing? Pick her up and carry her out?—where could I touch her that wouldn’t hurt her?

“I’m so fucking sorry, but I need you here with me, Scar, just for a few minutes. I have to get you out of here now.”

She blinked and finally, she looked up at me. “Just…go,” she croaked in a raspy whisper.

My heart broke seeing the resignation in her eyes, hearing it in her voice. It was even worse than seeing her broken and bloodied body. Was I too late?

No fucking way, I decided. She was strong. We would find a way for her to heal. I’d failed her; I’d let these monsters get to her, but this wouldn’t be the end for her. This would not be how life ended for the girl who deserved so much more than the world had ever given her.

“No. If you die here, then I die with you.” I sat back on my ass to make it clear I meant it and hoped to hell that still meant something to her. That she could even understand what I was saying.

The first flicker of something stirred in her eyes. “N-no,” she stuttered as fresh tears slipped cross her temple and soaked into her hair. But she made no effort to move.

“Scar, you will heal. I promise you will. No matter what they…” I couldn’t say it. My heart lodged in my throat, and I couldn’t force the words out. “Please,” I choked out instead.

Was that a nod? It looked like it, and her small hand pressed against the floor as if she was trying to push herself up. Yes, I knew it. At least, I’d hoped. But the proof was right in front of me. Nothing could beat Scar. She had a life to her that was made of fucking steel.

All of a sudden her eyes went wide, and she was no longer looking at me. Her whole body trembled as her eyes fixed on something behind me.

Not something. Someone. I didn’t have to look to know.

Fuck! My phone hadn’t vibrated once since I’d been in the stairway. It had been a trap, but I hadn’t come this far only to fail her again. As discreetly as I could, I withdrew my gun from its holster.

“Drop the gun, Senor Vaughan,” an unfamiliar voice spoke from behind.

I placed it down carefully, right in front of her, and I met her eyes until I was reasonably certain she understood what I was trying to tell her. “Kill the mother fuckers, Scar,” I’d screamed with my eyes. And as much as it fucking killed me to think it, it was a last resort, too. To make sure she could escape…one way or another.

I stood up slowly and turned to face what was behind me.

Three men. Two strangers, one of them with a gun pressed to Donovan’s head. Yeah—like that was going to stop me. The guy could blow his head off for all I cared. The only thing in the world that mattered was lying on the floor behind me.

Something was wrong though. Out of place. A disturbance in the power play that prickled down my spine.

The other stranger stood just apart enough to mark a separation between him and the others. Was he the one in charge, carefully trying to conceal it behind hunched shoulders and downcast eyes?

I caught sight of the phone in his hand when it slid from inside his sleeve and into the palm of his hand. A phone?—for what? He pressed a button and the phone in my pocket vibrated silently a second later.

What the hell? This was the mystery man? Was this his trap, or had he been dragged into the cage as well?

“Now then, Derek,” the one holding the gun drew my attention back to him. “Let me welcome you to my home. My name is Filipe Ruiz. I must say, I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for quite some time.”

“I’m afraid I can’t say the feeling’s mutual.”

He laughed. Or was it a cackle? He stepped closer, forcing Donovan with him. It was strange though that he made no effort to have me pat down for more weapons. Did he really think that gun was the only one I had?

Yes, I realized, he did. It was clear in the surety in his stance. And that was interesting information, indeed.

“Come, you can sample my slaves later. For now, let us have a drink and get to know one another better. James has told me so much about you. He was so determined to have you to himself, but I’m sure you understand I can’t have that.”

Was this asshole for real? There was no fucking way I was letting Scar out of my sight ever again.

I forced my shoulders to relax though and loosened my limbs. Outwardly, I was the pinnacle of calm.

And then I reached for it. I had the other gun out of its holster, in my hand and cocked so fast, the stranger didn’t have time to switch his aim from Donovan to me. The bang of my gun reverberated off the stone walls around us, but Filipe Ruiz didn’t make a sound. He couldn’t. I’d shot him dead center between the eyes. He fell to the ground in a heap of worthless flesh.

The phone in my pocket vibrated against my chest. Another signal?—for what?

“Get away from my merchandise, Derek,” Donovan demanded as he aimed the gun he must have been concealing behind his back.

That’s what mystery man had been trying to signal. The whole fucked up mess crashed down on me in that second. It had all been a lie. The bastard I’d just shot had been nothing more than a decoy. Donovan had known exactly where Scar was from the moment I’d called him because he was the one who had her put here. His own daughter, for fuck’s sake. Maybe not by blood, but it shouldn’t have fucking mattered.

“How could you, you sick fuck?” I seethed as I inhaled rage and it seeped into my cells.

“She’s the spawn of a whore and a traitorous bastard. What other future was there for her? I’d intended to turn her into Marcos’ slave before you came along and fucked up my plan. When he’d used her body in every vile way imaginable…then I was going to reveal the truth to him—that it was his own daughter he’d tortured. Unfortunately, you beat me to it, and Marcos has been resting in hell for some time now, hasn’t he?”

He raised the gun higher and I stared down the barrel. I was going to die, but with my finger on the trigger, so was he. I had to trust that the mystery man who’d helped me get to her would help her get out.

“I loved you,” Scar’s voice spoke from behind me. She was no longer on the ground. It sounded like she was right behind my shoulder. And though her voice was hoarse, it wasn’t weak.

“After the horrible way you treated me, the hell you put me through, I still loved you,” she continued.

And then she shocked the fucking hell out of me.

“I love you,” she whispered, and then the gunshot reverberated off the walls.

With his face contorted in fear and surprise, he fell to the ground. And then so did she.

She wasn’t shot. Donovan hadn’t shot her. His gun had discharged, but the bullet had hit my arm, on the opposite side of where she stood. It hadn’t hit Scar.

She was on her knees, bent over with her arms pressed against her stomach. My heart soared at the demonstration of her strength while at the same time, her hoarse sobs threatened to tear it apart.

“You have to leave. Quickly,” the mystery man said. He hadn’t moved from the place he’d been standing when I’d first turned around.

I didn’t want to scare her or hurt her, but he was right. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed four men were missing. So, I stripped off my shirt, draped it over her and bent down to gather her up as gently as I could.

She resisted. “Please, just leave. I don’t want to go with you,” she choked out between sobs.

I refused to acknowledge the twist of the knife in my heart, and I picked her up anyways. She fought to get down, but she was so weak it equated to little more than writhing in my arms. The struggle subsided quickly and she laid still in my arms, now huddling closer to my chest. I could feel the exhales of her breath against my bare skin. It was the most comforting thing I’d ever felt.

Up the stairs and out the door that led to the four-foot foyer, but the mystery man stopped there. “You’re not coming?” I asked.

“I’ve sat in front of those cameras for six years. Six years, and I didn’t do a god damned thing. I couldn’t. Or maybe I was just too much of a coward. I’ll do something now though. Stay here. As soon as I send the next text, get her the hell away from here. I hear it’s going to get awfully hot soon—like a big-ass bonfire.”

I nodded, but I needed to know, “Why?”

“She reminded me of my wife—looked an awful lot like her actually. Alicia was taken from me and sold eight years ago because I fucked up. When you showed up in the driveway, I knew you were looking for her,” he inclined his head toward Scar. “I guess I did what I wished someone had done for Alicia.”

Eight years ago. A girl who looked a lot like Scar. Fuck. It could be a coincidence, but what were the fucking chances of that? The girl Marcos had tortured. Guilt washed through me, but there wasn’t time for it. Not until Scar was safe.

I had a feeling mystery man intended to go up in a blaze along with the house, but who was I to object? Hell, if I’d lost Scar, I wouldn’t have lasted eight days, never mind eight years.

And the second the phone vibrated, the door unlocked and I took off, back along the side of the house to the car still waiting at the top of the drive. I placed her in the passenger seat as gently as I could and buckled her seatbelt when she made no move to do it herself. In the driver’s seat seconds later, I revved the engine, but then it hit me. The guard post.

As if reading my thoughts, the phone vibrated. “All clear up ahead,” the message read.

It was a good thing mystery man had been thinking further ahead than I’d been. I started down the drive with the phone still in one hand.

“Name?” I texted.

“Michael.”

“Thank you, Michael.” There weren’t many times in my life when gratitude had been warranted. This was one of them.

“Take care of her, Derek.”