Page 32 of Reclaimed (Hostage Rescue Team)

He knew the second she woke. She hitched in a breath, and he realized there were tears on her cheeks.Ah, baby…

“Come here,” he murmured, aching for her. What could he do to make her less sad? What could he say to help her heal again?

He reached for her as she rolled toward him, wrapped her up tight in his arms. She laid there, pliant, not making a sound as her tears dried. Her pain pierced him, made him feel helpless.

Not knowing what to say, he simply held her and stroked her hair, her bare back, letting his fingertips drift over her soft skin. He kissed her forehead, down her nose to her cheeks, kissing the tears away. His lips brushed the corner of her mouth, testing, asking. If she’d just meet him partway…

She went completely rigid in his embrace. Stiff as an iron rod, as though she couldn’t bear his touch. A second later she shoved a hand against his chest, physically distancing herself from him, then scurried a foot away and rolled over, giving him her back.

Shutting him out physically as well as emotionally.

The rejection was the equivalent of a sucker punch to the face. A sharp pain lanced through his chest, momentarily making his heart and lungs seize.

Adam lay there frozen in the darkness for a few moments, too stunned to move. But when she didn’t say anything or make any move to reach out to him, he got the message.

She didn’t want him there. Didn’t want him fuckingnearher, let alone touching her.

And he couldn’t take it.

Rolling from the bed, he dragged his clothes on and left, closing the door behind him.

****

Present Day

Summer woke from a light doze when her stomach rumbled angrily. She was past hungry, famished to the point that she actually felt sick.

Since she’d been locked up here they’d given her nothing but some water and a piece of flatbread. Maybe because they didn’t see the point in wasting their precious food supply on a sacrificial lamb who wouldn’t be alive much longer.

She swallowed hard at the thought and shifted her shoulders in an attempt to ease the stiffness in the joints. Her wrists and ankles were raw from where the plastic flex cuffs had rubbed away the skin in some spots.

Two of her captors had released her bindings only long enough for her to relieve herself, while under guard, in a pit someone had dug behind the building she’d been housed in.

She’d only had a minute each time to take in her surroundings while she did her business before the guards had ordered her out from behind the blanket serving as a kind of privacy screen and put the hood back on her. The small village they were in seemed to be perched on a hilltop. She’d seen five small dwellings in her vicinity but nothing else to help orient her.

With the guards keeping close tabs on her, there had been no further opportunity to look for or try to communicate with Jim or Mark. She didn’t even know whether they were both okay.

Rapid footsteps approached and her growling stomach shrank into a hard ball beneath her ribs.

It was time. Hadad must have finally finished whatever meetings he’d been in. He had sent for her and he’d be expecting her to unlock her laptop for him.

The cell door squealed open. A rough hand seized her upper arm and hauled her to her feet. She stumbled, her balance hampered by the plastic ties around her ankles.

Her guard cut them loose then he began towing her out of the cell, shoving her head down as they passed beneath the low, narrow opening. She hurried to keep up with his long strides, every part of her wanting to dig in her heels and fight.

But that would not only be useless, it would be stupid. And it might get Jim or Mark hurt or killed.

He dragged her across an open space and into another building.

“Take off the hood,” she heard Hadad command in Arabic.

She blinked when it was pulled over her head. Hadad stood behind a desk with her open laptop on it. And Jim and Mark were both seated on the floor next to the wall to her left.

They stared up at her with identical tight expressions. Jim had a split lip and a black eye and Mark looked nearly gray in the light from the single lantern hanging from the wall above them.

Hadad turned her laptop around so that the screen faced her and stood tall, folding his arms across his chest. “Your password.”

There was no mistaking why he’d brought her coworkers in here for this. If she didn’t comply, he’d beat or maybe kill them right in front of her. And she knew his reputation well enough to realize that he would be ruthless unless he got what he wanted.

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