Page 27 of Fighting for Lucy

What could make a man who had made it into the elite Delta Force turn on his country and go to work with a notorious weapons trafficker?

Right now, the whys didn't matter, they weren't going to help her. They wouldn’t ease the need drumming through her body, and they wouldn’t help her escape. There was no way Prey would find her there and she couldn’t expect any help from Zander.

Scarlett had told them how her plan had been to take her own life so she couldn’t be forced to give up the formula for their drug. At the time, Lucy had been aghast to know her friend had felt like that was her only option.

Now she got it.

It was her only option, too.

Only she wasn’t going to go down alone.

Everyone thought she was too caught up in the haze of need the drug induced to do anything else.

But she wasn’t.

If she was going to die, there were two men she wanted to take out with her. Of course, one of them was Raul Castillo, and he would be her priority, but she also wanted to take Zander Madden down with her.

As though sensing her fury, his head suddenly turned in her direction, and their eyes met. A myriad of emotions spun through the blue eyes that looked back at her and she briefly wondered why he’d bothered putting the contacts back in again.

Lucy didn't bother to hide anything she was feeling, letting it all bleed into her gaze. Her arousal, her hatred that her body sang at the thought of Zander’s large hands easing her suffering, her anger at him for betraying all of them.

And her promise.

Her promise to take him down with her.

January 24th

9:55 A.M.

She was goingto do something crazy.

It had been written all over Lucy’s face in the dining room at breakfast.

The worst part was, Zander wasn’t sure how to stop her from doing whatever it was she was plotting.

Seeing her in danger was so much worse than anything he’d ever experienced.

This wasn’t the first time he’d witnessed an innocent person being tortured. It was always hell not being able to immediately intervene, and he had thanked his near photographic memory more times than he could count for the details he’d been able to relay after an op was successfully completed and victims had been recovered because of it.

There had been no doubt in his mind that being chained to a wall in the relentless heat of the desert, and listening to the screams of his teammates as they were dismembered alive while he was forced to watch was the worst thing he could ever experience.

It had changed him on a fundamental level.

How could it not?

It was his fault.

His refusal to give up the intel the terrorists wanted and to not so much as flinch with each strike given to a man he would gladly suffer and die for, was what had angered them and egged them on.

So much blood shed over those seven hellish days.

So many screams, so many tears, so much anger had taken root inside him.

He’d never expected to survive. Hadn't been counting on the rescue that had come too late for the seven other men on his team and too early for him.

Zander hadn't wanted to live with the guilt of knowing he was responsible for their deaths. Their painful, horrific deaths.

It didn’t matter how many times they reassured him that they understood, that he was doing exactly what they wanted him to do, those screams, the stench of blood and decaying flesh, were forever etched into his mind.