Page 65 of When You Are Mine

With the wrong man.

Walsh blinked back useless tears, still reeling from the incomprehensible events that had landed him here. He would not give the thug bastards the satisfaction of one tear. Not one. The emotion almost leaking from his eyes was not from fear of what they’d do to him, though he did feel fear. He kept seeing Camille and Josiah, Paul’s wife and young son, in the pictures he had so proudly shown Walsh. Surely by now Camille knew her husband had been kidnapped. What she didn’t know, couldn’t know, was that it was Walsh’s fault.

He had pieced it together in his mind. It was no secret he was from a wealthy family. In addition to his being on a fact-finding mission to identify where they could pour large sums of money, his profile had been pretty high over the last few months. Hell, the kidnappers might even know about his “supermodel” girlfriend and their extravagant lifestyle back in the States. His captors had probably been watching him almost since the beginning, and when he and Paul had struck out to scope land in the mountains for possible expansion, they had made their move, ambushing their car and snatching them both.

Walsh banged the wall behind him with a weakly clasped fist. He had awakened in this darkened, infested pit to find Paul already sitting up beside him against the wall. Both of them had nursed wounds on the backs of their heads.

“These men are mercenaries,” Paul had whispered, his eyes holding Walsh’s in the dim light. “But they aren’t fools. Your family is one of the most wealthy, prominent families in America. They won’t kill you. They just want money. We’ll get out of this.”

The door had burst open, revealing two of the three men who’d snatched them in broad daylight. Their tirade of French went over Walsh’s head, but Paul understood every word.

The tallest pointed to Paul, his voice echoing off the narrow walls.

“Tenir à vos pieds!”

Paul had stood slowly, casting an uncertain glance back at Walsh before unfolding to his full height.

“Faire demi-tour!”Their captor gestured for Paul to face Walsh, his back toward the three men with guns. Paul turned to face him, and Walsh saw a deathly resignation on his face. He spoke in a rush.

“Take care of my fam—”

Paul didn’t get to finish, but Walsh knew Camille and Josiah were in his final thoughts when the tallest captor pulled the trigger.

“No!” Walsh heard himself scream as if from a distance, the horror and senselessness of Paul’s death stealing his breath.

Paul collapsed, falling forward, eyes stretched open in a death stare, a crater blown into the back of his scalp. Walsh surged to his feet, heedless of the danger, lunging toward the tall man looking at Paul’s lifeless form dispassionately. The man raised the barrel of his gun, catching Walsh under the chin. He used the butt of the gun to hit Walsh in the face, slamming his head to the side and leaving a thin trail of blood under his eye.

“Sit down,” he said in heavily accented English, his eyes flat and expressionless, as if killing a man didn’t even scrape the surface of his soul.

Walsh stumbled back, tripping over Paul’s body. He fell against the wall, sliding down its length into a crouch, resting his head back, wincing when the already-painful wound hit the wall.

“You have seen I am not afraid to kill.” The man gestured with his gun toward Paul. “This is not an idle threat. I know your family will pay to get you back. I am not asking for much. One million American dollars. They will pay. You will go free. It is a simple transaction, as long as you cooperate.”

Walsh hadn’t said a word, only watched, wishing he could make out the man’s features. They’d all worn bags over their heads before, and even then, the man’s dark face had been hard to see in the dimly lit room.

“Mange!”the man repeated now when Walsh made no move toward the bowl of rice. He couldn’t eat with Paul’s body there beside him. Complete darkness shrouded the room, but nothing could obscure the image emblazoned in his mind’s eye. The image keeping him sane. Keeping him hopeful.

Kerris.

He hoarded every image he’d collected in the short time they’d known each other. As he awaited his fate in that darkened cage, he held on to the hope that he would see her one more time. He hated to think his last words to her would be those he’d spoken in her kitchen. Words of anger, frustration, and resentment.

The scratching of unseen rodents tortured his ears, and the shadows tore at his sanity, but Walsh clung to the depth of the feelings he had for her. Though she’d never be his, she had ignited and illuminated something inside that he knew would make him better. It ennobled him, elevated him, expanded him. He lost the fight against oblivion, succumbing to undernourished exhaustion, clinging to the promise of things to come.

* * *

Walsh pried his eyes open. He glanced at the bowls of untouched rice lining the wall. They kept coming with depressing regularity even though he hadn’t eaten even one. Three new bowls meant another day had passed. He must be up to five days in this crevice of hell.

The sound of raised voices, a bastardy of French, Creole, and broken English, roused him. He forced himself to his feet, unsure of what to prepare for. Death. Freedom. At that moment he welcomed either with equal enthusiasm. Two men dressed in camouflage with grease-painted faces, wielding automatic weapons, rushed in.

“Walsh Bennett?” one of them demanded, his eyes rapidly assessing the small, dank space, seemingly unsurprised to see Paul’s body at Walsh’s feet.

“Yes.” Walsh’s voice was a wisp of smoke.

“Your father sent us,” the other man said. “Come on.”

Walsh glanced at Paul’s long-still form and guilt welled up inside. Paul would still be alive if it weren’t for him. They’d taken his life to prove a point, to gain a psychological edge. Now Camille was a widow and Josiah, fatherless.

“We have to bring him with us,” Walsh managed to say, nodding toward Paul.

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