Your Impossible Love

Carter's POV Pain had become a language I was fluent in. Seventy-two hours. Three days of hell in this godforsaken black site, chained to a metal chair that had seen better decades. The CIA didn't f**k around when it came to "enhanced interrogation"—just a fancy term for torture that let them sleep at night. I'd stopped sleeping three months ago. The fluorescent light overhead flickered like a dying heartbeat. Fitting, considering mine wasn't doing much better. Blood dripped from my busted lip, each drop hitting the concrete floor with a wet tap, tap, tap, that echoed in the emptiness. They'd worked me over good this time—broken ribs on the left side, cigarette burns decorating my chest like some twisted constellation, and my right eye was swollen shut. Probably looked like hammered s**t. 'Where are the Zodiac files, Stone? That's what they kept asking. Over and over. Waterboarding, electrocution, the whole nine yards. Problem was, I didn't have a goddamn clue what they were talking about. The door scraped open—metal on concrete, nails on a chalkboard. I didn't bother looking up. Couldn't, really. My neck had stopped cooperating around hour sixty. "Ready for round twelve, sweetheart?" I rasped, tasting copper. "Because I gotta tell you, your technique's getting stale. Maybe switch it up. Try asking nicely?" Boots crossed the floor. Military issue. Size eleven, maybe twelve. I'd gotten real good at cataloging my torturers by their footsteps. This one was new—lighter tread, controlled. Not the usual gorillas they sent in to beat answers out of me. "Carter Stone." A woman's voice. Unexpected. Smoke and honey, with an edge that could cut glass. "Or should I say, Carter Reyes?" My birth name. Hadn't heard that in twenty-six years. I forced my working eye open. Standing in front of me was trouble wrapped in black tactical gear. Late twenties, maybe, with dark auburn hair pulled back tight and eyes the color of a forest before a storm. Green, but darker. Dangerous. She wasn't CIA. Wrong vibe entirely. "Sorry, sweetheart," I managed, spitting blood to the side. "You've got the wrong guy. Carter Stone's dead. Hasn't breathed in years." "Yeah?" She tilted her head, studying me like I was a particularly interesting bug pinned to a board. "Funny. You're breathing right now." "That's debatable." She moved closer, and I caught the scent of gunpowder and something else—jasmine? Weird combination. Her hand came up, and I braced for another hit, but instead, she gripped my chin, forcing my face into the light. Her touch was surprisingly gentle for someone who'd just walked into a torture chamber. "Jesus," she muttered, and I could've sworn I heard something like sympathy in her voice. "They really did a number on you." "You should see the other guys." A lie. I'd been chained here since they dragged me in. Hadn't landed a single punch. Her eyes—those dangerous green eyes—scanned my face, my chest, cataloging every injury with professional detachment. But her jaw tightened. Interesting. "Who sent you?" I asked, because I was either about to die or get rescued, and I'd like to know which. "Here to finish the job?" "That depends." She released my chin, stepping back. Her hand drifted to the gun at her hip. Custom piece, Sig Sauer P226, suppressor already attached. Professional. "Where are the Zodiac files?" I would've laughed if it wouldn't have hurt like a b***h. "You know what? Everyone keeps asking me that. I'm starting to think these files are the hottest commodity since sliced bread. Maybe I should've stolen them, made a profit." "You didn't steal them?" "Sweetheart, I don't even know what the hell they are." She stared at me for a long moment, and I watched something shift in her expression. Calculation. Decision. Her hand moved from her gun to a knife at her belt—Ka-Bar, Marine issue. Great. Death by stabbing. At least it'd be quick. But instead of going for my throat, she crouched down behind me. Metal scraped against metal, and suddenly the pressure around my wrists released. The chains fell away. What. The. f**k. "Can you stand?" she asked, already moving to my ankles. "Hold up." My brain was having trouble catching up. Maybe they'd hit me harder than I thought. "You're breaking me out?" "You want to stay and see how round thirteen goes?" Fair point. "Why?" I had to ask. Trust no one—rule number one of survival. Especially not a gorgeous woman who showed up in the middle of my personal hell with bolt cutters and questions. She paused, meeting my eyes. For just a second, I saw something flicker there—confusion, maybe? Like she was asking herself the same question. "Because you're telling the truth," she said finally. "You really don't know what they're talking about. Which means someone's setting you up." She finished with my ankles, straightening up. "And I've got a thing about watching innocent people get tortured to death." "Innocent's a strong word." "Can you walk or do I need to carry your ass out of here?" I tried standing. My legs had other ideas. I made it about two feet before my knees buckled. She caught me before I hit the floor—stronger than she looked, and she looked plenty strong. "That's what I thought." She maneuvered my arm over her shoulders, taking most of my weight. "Stay quiet, stay close, and try not to pass out. I didn't break in here for a corpse." "Breaking in?" I wheezed. "This is a CIA black site. There's no 'breaking in.' There's dying at the perimeter or dying inside." She flashed me a grin that was all teeth and danger. "Good thing I'm excellent at not dying." The door opened under her hand like she owned the place. The hallway beyond was empty—too empty. Bodies should've been everywhere. Guards, agents, someone. "Where—" "Handled," she said simply. "Come on." We moved through the facility like ghosts, and I started piecing together exactly how much planning this woman had put into extracting me. The security cameras were on loops—I could tell by the way she didn't bother avoiding them. The guards we did encounter were already down, unconscious or dead, I couldn't tell. She'd cleared a path. "You're NSA," I said, because the pieces were clicking into place. Only NSA had the tech to pull this off, and only their operatives moved like this—efficient, lethal, invisible. "Was," she corrected. "Past tense. Like you and the CIA." So we were both ghosts. Wonderful. An alarm started wailing—shrill and urgent. Someone had finally noticed the prisoner was missing. "Shit." She picked up the pace, half-dragging me down a service corridor. "Can you run?" "Can I what?" "Run. As in, move faster than a wounded snail." I tried. My ribs screamed in protest, my legs barely cooperated, but I tried. We burst through an emergency exit into the night air—cold and sharp and the most beautiful thing I'd felt in seventy-two hours. A black SUV was waiting, engine running. She shoved me toward the passenger side. "Get in!" Gunfire erupted behind us. Concrete exploded near my head as I dove for the door. My mystery savior returned fire without even looking, three perfect shots that bought us seconds. She slid into the driver's seat, and we were moving before my door was fully closed. Bullets pinged off the armored exterior. She drove like a demon, whipping through turns that would've made a stunt driver weep. I grabbed the oh-s**t handle and held on. "You planning to tell me your name?" I asked, because apparently I'd lost my mind somewhere between the torture and the rescue. "Or do I just keep calling you 'sweetheart'?" She glanced at me, and despite everything—the gunfire, the chase, the fact that we were both probably going to die in the next five minutes—she smirked. "Maya," she said. "Maya Cross." "Well, Maya Cross." I coughed, tasting blood again. "Thanks for the rescue. Though I gotta ask—what's in it for you?" Her smirk faded. "Honestly? I have no f*****g clue."