Page 74 of The Bait

Another truck was pulling into the warehouse but Asher was dragged away. He barely saw them drop Yunho out of the truck. He landed heavily on his knees and shoulder, then was hefted up and dragged behind Asher.

“Stop there,” a booming voice yelled. The men carrying Asher stopped and Asher lifted his head as a man stalked toward him.

He was maybe sixty years old, short grey hair under a black cap. He wore black army pants and coat, and a sneer of distaste.

And Russian issued military boots.

Was this Istomin? Asher assumed it was.

“Asher Garin,” he said, his English accent stilted by hisRussian tongue. “Take a look everyone,” he declared loudly for all his soldiers to hear, “at the infamous and untouchable Asher Garin.” He tapped the side of Asher’s face. “Not so untouchable now, are you?”

Then he looked behind Asher, his sneer turning more sinister. “And the irrepressible Oh Yunho. Who the whole world thought was dead. Believe me, you’re about to wish you were. Take them downstairs.”

The two men hauled Asher through a door and down some stairs.

Another bunker.

This wasn’t good. Not good at all.

The darkness. Being underground. God, how Asher hated it.

But at the bottom of the stairs, Asher was waiting for darkness and that familiar dank smell of earth, but he found neither. This was a whole new set-up. Another door led into a long corridor. White walls, bright lights, clean smell. Asher wasn’t sure if it was a secret government admin office or a hospital.

He hoped it was the former because the idea of a hospital made his stomach roll; medical gear, torture and chemical pain.

Jesus fucking Christ.

They passed doors and Asher tried to see inside the rooms off the hall. He saw desks and computers in one room.

And the fact they’d kept Asher’s hood off meant only one thing.

They didn’t care what he saw because he wasn’t living through this to tell anyone.

Asher cleared his mind, trying to prepare himself for a long and painful path to death. He wasn’t scared of dying.Hell, he’d faced death a thousand times. He should have died more times than he could count. He’d had the gift of years many others did not.

But what he was scared of, what he did regret, was not being with Harry when they met their end.

They were supposed to grow old together in their little house with their little cat.

Asher was sad that was being taken away from him.

He’d dared to believe he could have that, and that candle of hope was being snuffed out in some bunker on the opposite side of the planet.

So far from home.

His home.

His Harry.

He so desperately wanted to know he was alive but was terrified to learn he wasn’t...

The two men dragged him down the corridor, through a warren of halls and doors and too-bright lights. They stopped at one door and took him into a large room.

Asher half expected tiles on the floor with a drain for easy cleaning, but no. This was an office.

A tactical office?

Whiteboards, computer screens, a wall of monitors, not too dissimilar to Yunho’s war room. And there were two wooden chairs in the middle of the room.

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