Page 30 of Aftermath

Cam gave him an impatient look. "We'll try to defeat him. The two of us. Right now. Gun or no gun—we have to give it a go."

"Even if we're cuffed behind our backs?"

"Yes." Cam stepped closer and lowered his voice. "Ram into him. Shoulder him in the gut or something. I don’t fucking know—pretend you're a football player. Tackle him. I'll follow right behind and try to take his gun."

It was too tempting to pass up, even if Austin was in serious pain and had just spent the past two days being sick. Perhaps they'd been here so long that they'd lost a pinch of fear for something that could end their lives in a heartbeat. The gun their kidnapper liked to wave around—and use, for that matter—wasn’t as dangerous anymore.

"Okay." Austin took a breath and nodded. "Okay."

The two men steeled themselves and stood shoulder to shoulder, waiting as the unsuspecting devil outside opened the hatch.

"Uncuff yourselves."

Austin and Cam knew the procedure. They got rid of their restraints only to put them back on, this time behind their backs, and lastly threw out the keys again. Then the door started to slide open, and Austin exchanged a quick look with Cam.

"Gun or no gun," Cam mouthed.

It would be their motto in the future.

Austin nodded minutely—gun or no gun—and flexed his muscles. With a final, deep breath, he faced the opening and charged forward just as the man raised his gun.

Forcefully slamming into their kidnapper, Austin caught him totally off guard, and he almost dropped his gun. Almost. They tumbled to the dirty floor, Austin landing on top. Despite his arms burning and his inability to use them, Austin struggled like a savage. He spat out a curse and brought his knee up to the other man's chest. But just as he heard Cam scrambling over to them, a shot was fired.

"Motherfucker!" Cam screamed.

Without thinking, Austin turned his head in Cam's direction, and his face paled when he saw that he'd been shot. Cam—damn it, Cam had been hit. In the shoulder. Shoulder; quick thinking. You could survive a bullet in the shoulder, and with that conclusion, Austin turned back to wrestle his way to victory. But it was too late. That tiny second Austin had spent checking on Cam was all the madman needed to regain leverage.

Instead of glaring into brown, beady eyes, Austin was staring into the barrel of a gun.

"Get. Off. Me," the crazy man growled.

"Cam," Austin choked out and doubled over in his seat. He gasped repeatedly, trying to get air into his lungs. In the background, he could hear Cam speaking urgently to him, but he couldn’t for the life of him hear what he was saying. All he could see, hear, and feel belonged in that metal cage. The smell of death and despair, every ache and sorrow, all that anger and desperation…

If a man was shot, you reacted. You called 911, you tried to help, you prioritized that person. But Austin and Cam had been driven to the point where perfect health didn’t matter. Broken bones, bruises, and bloodshed…it was allnothing—as long as they could get out alive. And it sounded plausible in theory, but to actually sink that low, where that way of thinking became natural, where men became savages…was it weird that only Cam could understand Austin? Was it so damn weird that he couldn’t connect with Jade?

He was still part savage. He was still struggling to get back to being human.Treat a person like an animal, and he'll become one. But like Cam, Austin was decent at faking. Not great, but decent. When in reality, he just wanted to crawl into a hole and fall apart.

"Austin!"

He could feel Cam's hands on him, his cheeks, his forehead, yet focus remained out of reach. He was dizzy, nauseated, and out of breath. His lungs burned.

"Snap out of it. Talk to me, baby." Someone was shaking him, holding him. "Austin! Come on!"

Sooner rather than later, Austin ended up in the room on the first floor that Cam had described to him. But he wasn’t directed to sit at the table like Cam had been. Instead he found himself attached to a chain that was fastened to a hook in the ceiling. Both feet were still firmly on the ground and his cuffed hands remained behind his back, but Austin had no room to move whatsoever.

The two-inch thick chain was like a choking snake around his body. It circled his legs, his midsection, his chest, his arms, and his damn neck. His skin got pinched between the links if he eventriedto move, and if he so much as tilted his head, it was like breathing through a straw.

"You used to be my friend, Sam."

Austin groaned in pain, trying to focus. "My—my name is Austin," he panted. Christ, the links were really digging in everywhere, and his arms were twisted, the chain pulling too tightly. "It's Austin Huntley. Not Sam."

"Silence!" The scream was piercing. "Now—" a deep breath "—as I was saying. You used to be my friend, Sam." The man approached slowly, and there was a knife in his hand. "Then you became the king of baseball and forgot about me. You made my senior year hell, and you have no idea how hard I fought to make sure my family believed I was still a star." He spat in Austin's face. "You ignored me in the halls, you laughed when Kirk and the others pulled pranks on me, and you—"

"I'm not Sam, you sick bastard!"

For that, Austin earned himself a fist in the gut, and it was only the beginning. He was beaten over every inch of his body. The knife sliced through his skin in several places—deeply, but superficially enough to keep him alive.

It was torture. Literally.

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