Page 80 of The Bait

Then he went silent, his shallow infrequent breaths the only proof that he was still alive.

He never told. Never said a thing.

Harry wasn’t sure what that meant. Harry remembered that Lucas was supposedly an MI6 agent. Maybe it was true?

Maybe.

Harry wasn’t getting anything else out of Lucas right now. He could try again later, if Lucas woke up again, that was.

It wasn’t looking good.

Harry shuffled around and leaned his back against the wall, his legs outstretched near Lucas’s head. The darkness, the exhaustion, the pain settled over him and he closed his eyes.

The unbearable grief of knowing he may never seeAsher again lodged itself into Harry’s heart, and as heartbreak overwhelmed him, silent tears escaped his eyes, and he allowed himself to cry.

The pain woke Harry.He had no clue how long he’d slept. No clue of the passage of time.

Without a window or a watch—in a dark underground room—there was simply no way of knowing.

Lucas was still breathing. His quiet raspy breaths were no better, but they were also no worse.

It took a long while for Harry’s eyes to adjust again, for him to see there was nothing else in this room. No water, no food.

A human body could go seventy-two hours without water, right?

He had no idea how long it’d been already, and there was truly no point in starting to count from now.

It didn’t matter.

Not anymore.

Not without Asher.

His mind grew dark, his eyelids heavy. Lucas’s weak rasps were a lonely metronome. Harry couldn’t believe it was going to end like this. He always thought he’d go out in a gun fight or a fist fight, on his feet, at least.

Then, in the last two years, he’d hoped he’d meet his end with Asher at his side, both of them old and grey.

It was a different kind of grief knowing that that wasn’t likely now. And instead of being grateful for the last two perfect years with Asher, he mourned the next fifty years they’d robbed from him.

Maybe he deserved this.

Maybe they all did.

Another silent tear fell from his closed eyes. With his bound hands unable to wipe it away, he let them fall.

The next time Harry woke,it was with more clarity. His body still ached and it still hurt to breathe, but his mind was clearer now.

And he was pissed.

Pissed at himself for wasting precious minutes, wallowing in self-pity and unfounded grief.

The old Harry would have never allowed himself that.

Lucas’s breaths remained the same, the death rattle persistent but no closer.

Harry had to do something. He had to try.

He still couldn’t see much, the room impossibly dark, but his vision had adjusted. It probably helped that the blinding headache was now just a dull thump. He scooted over to the opposite wall, to the door. Mad at himself for not even trying to open it, certain the acrid smell of metal and sulphur had meant it had been welded shut.

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