Page 340 of Wild Mustang Security Firm

“Fifty percent is better than none,” her brother replied. “Do what you can. She can take the IV drip while she’s tied up in the courtyard. If she dies… well, he’ll still come the minute he sees her. It’s Reid I want, and I don’t care what it takes. You take him alive. Oh, and Doctor? No sedatives or painkillers. She’s earned every agonizing minute. I want her to feel it.”

Clenching his jaw, the doctor said, “I’ll need my bag.”

The heat in her back was already dying into dull throbs now that he was no longer touching her. Aliya was helpless to look away as Fariq brought the doctor his kit. Taking it from him, the doctor pulled a chair up to the table and set it on the seat. It might have been the fever, but when he bent to check the pupils of her eyes, for just a moment, she thought he caressed her hair.

What minute comfort that gave her vanished when the first thing he pulled from his bag was a syringe. After sorting through his supplies, he filled it from a labeled vial.

“Antibiotic,” he told Fariq. “One of two she’ll need.”

“Stick her as many times as you like,” her brother replied. “You don’t even need to be gentle.”

Except the doctor was gentle. She barely felt the pinch as the needle went in.

“Second antibiotic,” he said, filling a second syringe.

“How very sterile of you.”

Again, when the doctor touched her for a moment, Aliya could have sworn he gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze just before she felt the prick, and a warm rush swept through her, dulling the pain away to nothing.

She caught her breath at the sudden weighted heaviness that pulled at her, followed by blessed relief.

“I am not a torturer,” the doctor said flatly, dropping the now empty syringe on the table. “If you want me to treat her, fine, but I won’t help you hurt anyone.”

Realizing what had happened, Fariq tsked first, then laughed. “Goddamn it,” he said mildly. “I do so hate being disobeyed.”

Drifting in a haze of drug-induced euphoria, Aliya didn’t even jump when she heard the gunshot or the heavy thump when the doctor hit the floor.

This was too easy.

The thought kept running through Reid’s head as he made his second circle of the villa. All the lights were on—inside though, the house looked dark as a tomb. Someone was definitely home, but it wasn’t until he glimpsed the flick of a lighter igniting the cherry tip on a cigarette in a dark corner of the porch, he knew for certain Fariq was here. For just a second,as the man had inhaled, he’d caught enough of his features to recognize him before the front door opened, and two more men came out, dragging a third by the wrists.

After so many years, Reid knew a corpse when he saw it. The man was dumped in a corner of the courtyard, then the other two went back into the house, leaving the man hidden in the shadows to smoke his cigarette while, supposedly, keeping a lookout for intruders.

One man in the courtyard, two in the house, plus Fariq, Aliya, and anyone else he didn’t know about. So far, that gave him potential five-to-one odds.

Failure wasn’t an option, but potential four-to-one was markedly better. That’s what he got when he crept into the villa behind the smoker, who stood with his back propped against the doorway. Where were the motion detectors and security cameras? Obviously, this place had never been outfitted to be an even halfway effective safehouse, which worked in his favor. Reid got within six feet of the smoker before the other noticed him. Six feet wasn’t ideal, but close enough, the other didn’t have time to shout or to get his gun up before Reid had him in a chokehold.

It wasn’t quick and only got quiet once the kicking stopped, but no one came out to investigate. Not even after the smoker kicked the side of the house twice. He didn’t particularly want to kill the man, but the smoker would have shot him if he’d had the chance, and Reid couldn’t afford to have him waking up to join with Fariq against him in the fight yet to come. He didn’t relax his grip on the smoker until the man went limp against him.

Leaving the body where it fell, he didn’t go in through the front door. He found a second-floor balcony to scale and entered the villa through what might have been a bedroom, though there was no furniture.

His steps made little sound as he crept into the hall beyond. He hadn’t been able to see any interior lights due to a combination of heavy drapes and boards on the windows, and the only well-lit room was on the ground level, tucked up under the stairs and down another hall.

“I don’t suppose either of you gentlemen knows how to insert a saline drip?”

That was Fariq, and there were at least two other men with him. Why the hell did he need a saline drip?

He’d never felt the urge to run hit him stronger. It hurt—physically hurt, a punch through his gut that stabbed up into his chest—not to get to her right now. He moved along the wall toward the stairs, craning to see into the foyer below him. Every nerve on edge, straining to hear just a whisper of her voice, but she didn’t say anything, not a single protest or hint of a struggle. He couldn’t even hear her moan, but he did hear the sudden crash of something heavy being thrown and scattered across the floor.

“Do you want me to find another doctor?”

“Oh, I doubt you’ll make it to the car,” Fariq scoffed. “Enough time has passed. I expect our guest will be here any minute.”

Furious intent moved through Reid, twisting around the cold left inside him from that punch-stab of his own wayward emotions. He never should have touched her. Everything that had happened to her was because of him. Yet the idea of not having touched her or not knowing the sweet, sensual peace to be found between her thighs was unthinkable.

Lie down with dogs, and you’ll wake up with fleas, or so his grandmother used to say. Well, he’d been ‘lying down’ with Fariq for years now, but never had he felt the biting of all his misdeeds as he did now. He wasn’t a good man. Even his own people at NATO wanted nothing more to do with him. Aliya was paying the price, but not for much longer.

He crept past a darkened doorway, his eyes locked on the foyer, making his way to the head of the stairs as quickly as absolute silence would allow. His gun was in his hand, and his thoughts were solely on what he had to do.

---