Covertly Strong (The Strong Series Book 1) (40 page)

A dark, musty room fills her retinas. There is no furniture, only gray, murky walls surrounding her. Putrid humidity seeps from the cracks of the stone ceiling. A large door highlights the room with an intimidating quality. She makes note of the drain that resides in center of the room, gathering the residual water that streams off her body and down the decrepit chair she is secured to.

She breathes deeply through her nose, her mouth gagged with a repulsive cloth that’s knotted behind her head. Her stomach rolls in uncomfortable waves whenever her tongue brushes against the foreign material that’s secured across her mouth.

A damp, mildew-like odor assaults her nostrils with each shallow intake of air. The only light seeping into the room comes from the small, barred window that’s framed inside the large, wooden door. The obvious sunlight that hovers across the concrete floor proves that time has progressed without her. Shadows of light taunt her, making her starkly aware that she’s been unconscious for several hours. The last memory she can recall occurred at some point during the night. And now…it looks to be midafternoon.

How long have I’ve been here? Hours? Days?

She sees the gunshot wounds on her left thigh and right shoulder. Blood slowly oozes from the raw opening that rests at the tip of her shoulder blade, soaking her clothing with scarlet stains. The wound is not deep, merely superficial, but still depleting her body of energy.

The makeshift tourniquet that’s haphazardly tied across her thigh substantiates that this wound is much deeper. The profound, agonizing ache that resonates from within her leg has her aware that the bullet rests deep inside the muscle of her thigh.

After taking inventory of her body, Sloan is certain that she’s only been here hours instead of days. No one could last days in this condition. And she’s well aware that she’ll be lucky if she lasts another thirty-six hours. The shot to her thigh is far too deep to go without medical treatment for much longer; infection is probably already setting in. Septic shock is inevitable.

She is faced with the stark awareness that she’s in a situation she can’t get out of. She’s restrained, her body has been beat to hell, and she’s losing blood by the second. Her intelligent brain is already calculating the estimated blood loss and the ever-increasing risk of infection.

All of the data points to…
not good. Pretty fucking bad, actually.

Life isn’t like the movies. Sloan won’t miraculously release herself from the restraints around her wrists and ankles and magically find a means of escape. There are no hidden weapons or secret superpowers she can unleash to extricate herself from this horrible scenario. This is reality, and in real life, the odds of her survival are slim.
And that’s sugarcoating it.

As her weak eyes continue to scan the room, taking in every detail, she’s cognizant that she’s never been inside of this room, but she still knows where she is—
La Familia Arturo compound.
Her mission didn’t go as planned, and that comprehension sits inside her gut, heavy as a bowling ball.

She tilts her head back and finds the rigged water source that relentlessly drips across her face. Her eyelashes flutter from the incessant drops of musty liquid that continue to pound across her brow.
A pathetic form of torture.
She can only assume that she’ll be faced with Hector Arturo himself, threatening her life and attempting to obtain information from her.

As her brain searches for clues, the only thing she recalls is Agent Sims being at her place of residence in Guadalajara. She’s pissed at herself for being so goddamn obtuse. She shouldn’t have allowed herself be so vulnerable. She should have known. She should have fucking known that going back to that house was a bad idea.

Her head falls back in frustration, in extreme irritation. She had hours—mere hours—before she was due to head to the airport for a red-eye flight out of Guadalajara.
Only a few hours and she would have been homebound to San Diego. So many mistakes were made.

Mistakes that I’m probably going to die for.

She shouldn’t have relied on the house’s two secret guards—
whom Sims most likely killed
—to protect her while she showered and packed up her belongings. And she shouldn’t have acknowledged her connection with Sims. The moment she saw him inside her house, she should have acted aloof—not voicing her recognition of him.

God, if she would have just headed straight to the airport, everything would be different.

Sloan is pissed at herself for not following her gut in regards to Agent Sims. She had reservations when it came to the new agent, but she never truly stated those concerns to Chief Dubois. And now, she’s tied up in this shithole of a holding cell in the pits of the Arturo compound after having been kidnapped by Nico
and
Agent Sims—a man who should have had her back.

Her memory becomes clearer as she recounts the moment when everything went to shit.

A knowing smirk covered his sharp jaw once they established eye contact. Sloan was more than surprised to find Agent Sims comfortably sitting on the couch in the living room.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” She stood directly in front of him.

He only laughed in response. His demeanor showed no concern for either of their safety and well-being.

“You need to get the fuck out of here,” she demanded. “Chief is already pissed about the impromptu meeting you set up a few weeks ago and the fact that you haven’t been answering any of his calls. He’s going to be furious when he finds out you’re here. Our entire cover could be blown. You’re putting my life and your life at risk.”

“No, not mine. Just yours.” His olive-toned hands rested comfortably on his thighs as his harsh, gray eyes stared back at her with a confident air.

Something is off, something is different…

Awareness hit her like a freight train. Awareness that should have kicked in three minutes earlier but, unfortunately, hadn’t. She had missed her opportunity and knew immediately that whatever conversation had just occurred between her and Sims hadn’t just been between the two of them. Someone else had been listening.

No doubt in her mind that Sims was wearing a mic.

Every word that had come from her lips had been relayed.

Her mind fumbled through every detail she knew about Sims, searching for any signs—any clues—as to why he would be willing to put her life in jeopardy. She’d learned early on in the CIA to trust no one, and sometimes, that lesson applied to the people she thought were on her side.

She glanced behind the couch, calculating the distance to the Glock she had concealed underneath the small, wooden table in the kitchen.

Too many fucking steps is the estimated distance.

If she were smart, she would have already had the Glock in her hands and the barrel pointed between the traitorous CIA agent’s eyes. But the moment of opportunity had already passed. She had to find another way. She wasn’t sure what Sims was up to, but subconsciously, she could guess that it had everything to do with Hector Arturo.

“Don’t even think about it.”

The demanding tone of his voice urged a thousand pins and needles to poke underneath her skin. Things were about to get serious in a matter of seconds, and she needed to make some quick decisions.

“Chill out, Sims,” she told him with a tight smile as she feigned ignorance to his menacing presence.

She sat down on the couch beside him, understanding that the only way she was going to be able to defend herself was with hand-to-hand combat. Her eyes scanned his body, quickly making note of what she was up against.

Glock secured to his waist, hidden behind his leather jacket.

Smith & Wesson revolver strapped inside his shoulder holster.

And a small knife tucked underneath the black sock on his right foot.

His gray eyes watched her with sick amusement. He obviously had a plan. His overconfident facial expression told Sloan that they wouldn’t be alone for much longer. No one looked that poised without backup.

He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and made a quick call. “Ready,” was the only word he spoke into the receiver. He wasn’t using the CIA-issued Blackberry; it was different.

He hung up and smiled widely at her, sliding the phone back into his pocket with ease. It wasn’t a friendly smile; it was an evil, threatening kind of smile. The type of smile that would have most people shaking from fear and uncertainty—but Sloan wasn’t most people. She was highly trained to deal with these types of scenarios.

And the clock was ticking.

Her clear head developed a plan of action with one goal in mind—extricate herself from this situation and come out alive. She needed to get out of there fast and before someone physically took her out of there. She was far too aware that once a victim is taken to a secondary location, their chances of survival decrease tremendously. And she refused to play the fucking victim.

Agent Sims might be bigger and physically stronger than she was, but she could still outsmart him if she kept a rational head.

Yes, size does matter—but it's not everything.

She might be smaller than Sims, but she’s faster, smarter, and savvier than he is. Her CIA training taught her to find the advantage wherever she could, and she knew that his brute strength was no match for her highly intelligent brain. His overconfidence was going to be the one thing she would use against him.

If he were smart, he wouldn’t have been sitting down on her couch, giving her the opportunity to counterstrike. But that’s what he was doing. He gave her the chance to use the element of surprise against him. Three quick, precise strikes to Agent Sims’s face came from her skilled hands. Two blows to his nose with the heel of her palm and one swift, chopping assault to his throat.

A strangled, choking noise came from his chest as blood unceremoniously spurted from his nose down his shirt. She wasted no time, jumping off the couch before his hands could grab her. Her legs sprinted towards the kitchen to retrieve the Glock from underneath the table. It was pure bad luck that the front door was kicked open as she crossed the living room, her body vulnerable and exposed, completely unprotected.

Bang. Bang.

She heard the noise before she felt it.

She hit the floor before she even realized that she had been shot.

And her head thudded loudly against the hardwood before she could find the strength to stop her momentum.

Piercing pain shot across her shoulder blade and down her leg. Her right arm attempted to grab on to the throbbing sensation radiating from her thigh, but the gunshot to her shoulder had incapacitated her ability to move. The excruciating pain slowed her down, debilitating her forward progress towards safety.

Muffled voices resonated around her.

“Hector is going to be pissed, you fucking idiot! If I wouldn’t have gotten here in time, this little cunt would have shot your ass!”

“Shut the fuck up. I had it under control.”

“Sure you did.”

“Well, hello, beautiful.”

A harsh grip to her hair urged her eyes to open as a brown cloth was cloaked over her nose and mouth. A bitter, putrid smell invaded her nostrils and she held her breath, desperately trying not to inhale. The hand over her face was relentless, practically suffocating her.

“It’s time to go to sleep.”

A menacing laugh echoed inside her ears. Her brown eyes focused hard, attempting to make out the man’s face.

Nico Delgado—the man who had put a bullet into her thigh.

Her suspicions were one hundred percent correct.

But how in the hell did Agent Sims get involved with them?

Her body thrashed and moved against the ruthless hold on her hair. Her brain refused to inhale air through the rag across her face, but her lungs were slowly suffocating from lack of oxygen

Chloroform. She knew the chemical, knew its capabilities to depress the body’s central nervous system. This is something that is widely used by criminals across the globe to debilitate their victims, and now, it was being used against her.

She felt another body—which she assumed was Sims—sit across her legs, tying something tight around her ankles as Nico straddled her chest, pushing the anesthetizing rag into her face with harsh strength. Her face moved back and forth, urgently trying to find untainted air to breathe, her brain becoming fuzzy from lack of oxygen.

Darkness slowly began to invade her senses, seeping in through her eyes and moving through the rest of her body at a quickening pace. Chloroform began its impermeable assault on her central nervous system. Her eyes were open but unable to see anything, and she knew that the damage was already done…

Her strangled breathing soaked in the anesthetizing chemical, pushing her over the edge into perpetual night.