Page 67 of Catch Me When I Fall

“I had it handled,” Ash snapped.

“You call that handled?” I quipped, raising a brow. “By the time I found you, you were nearly gone.” His body was fucking mangled. I’d never seen anything like it. It was going to take years for me to forget those images of him bleeding out on a dark, damp, and dirty concrete floor.

Ash’s gray eyes flashed as a muscle jumped in his cheek, but still, he said nothing.

“Three fucking months,” Hayes said quietly, his eyes on our team member.

That was how long it took me to find him. Three months in that fucking hell hole, listening to all the horrors that came with it, day in and day out.

The next two months were spent sitting in the chair beside his hospital bed. Those fuckers were ruthless, torturing him in ways not even Dominic had heard of. Ash was touch and go for a long time. It scared the shit out of us—all of us.

This past month, I’d been trying to catch up on everything I’d missed while we helped Ash heal.

I scrubbed a hand down my face, muttering a curse under my breath. This career path was supposed to be easier than the Marines. I bent my head, letting out a heavy sigh before pushing off the desk and pacing behind it.

“Do you even care?” Hayes pushed, his voice hard. “We were fucking losing it, Ash.”

I didn’t have to look at Hayes to the see the pain in his eyes. He lost more men when he was in the Air Force than I did when I was a sniper, and I knew that if we’d lost Ash, it would’ve sent him over the deep end.

Ash’s silence was like nails on a damn chalk board.

Spinning on my heel, I tried to keep my voice level as I pushed out, “If you want to die that badly, brother, just tell me. Tell me, and I can make it happen.”

“Grayson,” Hayes hissed.

I ignored him, keeping my focus on Ash. He had demons; we all did, but his were deeper, more terrifying. I’d give him peace. If that was what he really wanted—needed—I could give it to him.

Ash’s eyes met mine. “I don’t want to die.”

My shoulders sagged a bit.

“At least, not until I find her,” he finished and my shoulders were back up as I stiffened.

“Her?” I parroted.

He nodded once. Hayes and I shared a look.

“Doss, what the hell are you talking about?” Hayes demanded to know. “There was a woman?”

Slowly and more smoothly than I expected, Ash rose from his seat, walking to the windows, his eyes on the mountains. “The client had a wife.”

Hayes moved to my desk, picking up the file on the client we’d sent Ash to six months ago.

“There was no wife,” I said to his back, folding my arms over my chest. The client wasn’t married, not according everything Jake could dig up about him.

“It wasn’t publicly known,” Ash noted. “It was an arranged marriage performed by his church.”

Hayes dropped the file onto my desk before putting his hands on his hips, letting out a sigh. “Okay, so what about her?”

Ash turned back to us. “She’s the reason I went into Devils Den,” he explained.

My gut twisted. “Ash…”

His gray eyes flicked to meet mine. “The client was holding her hostage in his fucking bedroom, Gray. She was chained to the goddamn bed with a fucking bucket to piss in.”

The client was a preacher. He’d hired Red Snake Investigations six and a half months ago to hunt down an accountant who’d stolen a little over half a million dollars from the church. The client wanted it done under the table, away from the press, which was why he didn’t get the cops involved.

“Fucking finished the hunt, and went to that preacher’s house to collect payment. No one was home, and I was about to leave until I heard screaming,” Ash seethed, baring his teeth.

---